Namaskar. The mind is very malleable. The emotions flexible. One day you are happy; another day you are sad. Another day you are angry. And the mind gets involved in this project and this thinking and that thinking and that thinking.
Sometimes it can be quiet for meditation. Other times, even in meditation, it’s busy, busy, busy, thinking, thinking, thinking, or becoming fuzzy or sleepy and kind of numbing out during meditation with sleepiness, falling asleep, feeling foggy. All of these mental states and emotional states are flexible. There is no fixed state to the mind.
So, you ask, what is an awakened state? When there is no fixed state to the mind, what does self-realization mean? Because the human body has good days and bad days, times of health and times of illness, times when it is very cooperative, times when it is not. And the mind likewise goes tither and tither; the emotions go this way and that.
So what happens when you realize the divinity, the Godself? What happens because the vehicle that you have does not change? The mind still goes tither and tither. The emotions are up and down. The physical health, that sense of well-being, goes up and down. This is the nature of your physical incarnation.
So, to realize the Self does not mean to suddenly become someone else. It does not mean to change your mind, your emotions, or your body. Though they may change to one degree or another, the nature of the vehicles will not change.
So what changes? What changes as you deepen in your spiritual life? What changes as you realize the divinity within? What is self-realization? What is awakening?
There is an unchanging component. And that is the deeper Self, the Self of your self. It remains always the same, unchanging. Your life in the world goes up and down like a wave in the sea, rising and falling. Like the waves of the sea, the mind rises to heights of enjoyment and happiness and crashes to lows. This is a part of the human experience.
To realize the infinite is not to stop being human, but to establish an ongoing realization, an understanding of the nature of your own Self, both intellectually and in the heart, in the feelings. There is a cat here who wants to be a part of the situation. So this ongoing experience of understanding the nature of the Self, of realizing the nature of the Self, is flexible during your meditation.
At first you may not feel it, you only think of an idea that surrounds it. “Oh, I want to achieve self-realization.” And then after some years, you realize, “I’m still meditating. I have not achieved self-realization.” And then, as the mind grows in magnitude and the heart opens, you realize there is nothing to achieve, that it isn’t a matter of acquiring something more for the ego and the body-mind structure, but of surrendering, of letting go. There’s nothing to be achieved.
But when love grows in the heart, and the mind becomes clearer, two things happen. You acquire Viragya, or a sense of dispassion or detachment. You realize that all the things you can get and achieve really don’t amount to much.
And you also acquire Viveka, an understanding of the real from the unreal. When this happens, you begin to perceive reality clearly, without the veil of your own Samskaras, your own delusions of mind. You begin to have a feeling of the nature of the innermost Self, the nature of the infinite. And as you touch it, the flood of bliss, the flood of love, the flood of ecstatic union fills you. And you feel that your heart opens.
And you achieve a state of Samadhi of different levels that has no thought, no mind. Instead, your awareness is caught in the bliss of being, without the activities of the mind. There’s no high and low of mind. Mind is on hold. And instead, awareness is of the bliss of being, of the infinite nature of divine love. And so you are basking in that bliss.
And whether it be for a second, or a half hour, or an hour, or eternity. It does not matter. It is all the same. For when you touch it, you are in a state of timelessness. Depending on the depth of the touch, time will cease to exist. That state is forever, present in the present moment.
So in the process of Sadhana, this exposure to divine being, to these states of Samadhi, to this subtle mind, grows in magnitude. You feel there is a grace, a divine presence that you can touch, you can feel, you can experience, you can understand. And as the heart grows more open, more in love—the more exposure the greater the love because that which is is of such exquisite nature—you cannot help but love the divine.
You cannot help but love Parama Purusha. There is an emanation of beauty and bliss that stirs the human heart. You cannot stay away from that. When you feel that presence, you cannot do other than love it. And in that love, the mind gets lost...in the surrender, in letting go to the love. And you become absorbed in divine ecstasy, divine existence.
But these states of absorption come and go because the body must continue to function. The mind must continue. You must continue all of your activities in the world. And so these states fade.
But the impression they have made on you never fades. You are forever changed when you have touched this divine source. But to go from this in and out to self-realization is often not understood or talked about. It is not a state that can be achieved. It is not an accomplishment. And it is not something you acquire.
Rather, it is dissolving, finally, permanently, this sense of ego. The feeling, “I am; I do,” gets surrendered. And the realization comes that there is no self, no personal self.
There is a body; there is a mind; there is consciousness; there is the accumulation of experience and Samskara. There is consciousness, but whose consciousness? Who has the body; who is conscious in the body, in the mind?
The false assumption of the individual ego is what changes. The realization comes that there is really no personal self. The personal self is surrendered at the altar of the great. And then what is present is infinite being, is the divine unitary love of the great, a cohesive whole. And the realization comes, the realization, self-realization, that the mind and body, that which you have called yours, there is no you, there is only divine being. There is only the infinite one manifesting in untold forms, in all of creation.
Parama Purusha, the divine essence of being, the infinite consciousness, is manifesting in the play of creation, in the creation, in the preservation, and in the destruction of all forms, all dualities. It is a play within the mind of the infinite. And who is there, who are you? There is no you. There is only the infinite one. There is no separate self.
And when this realization really comes, not as a fleeting “aha!” but as a permanent understanding, it gets so ingrained that the old habits of thinking, defining a separate self, defining you as a separate self, go by the wayside. They’re replaced by Viveka, true understanding. And with that true understanding comes Viragya, comes the detachment. Because there is nothing to be attached to; there is nothing you can acquire; there is nothing you can lose, where all is the one infinite Self.
The mind still rises and falls and does what minds do. Emotions rise and fall and do what emotions do. The body rises and falls. The vehicles maintain their nature.
But who is conscious? The understanding of self changes. And with that being deeply different, with true steady realization, the very nature of your relationship to your incarnation changes. For who is incarnate? Who can die? Who can be born? The infinite one abides in all creation, in the manifest and in the unmanifest.
When the sense of self is burnt on the altar of the supreme, true realization comes. Only Brahma exists. Only the infinite one, only the beloved of your heart. The you that is in love is the dream in the mind of the great dreamer.
When realization comes, you realize there is no separate self. Every being, every blade of grass, every tree, every animal, every person is the same person. Even the rock is conscious, it is in the mind of this consciousness that has created all of the manifestations, the good and the bad. When there is no separate self, there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain. All is part of the whole. All beings are one being.
The body and the mind are the creations of the infinite. The consciousness that abides in them is the consciousness of the infinite one. There is no separate consciousness. The Atman and the Paramatma are the same. It’s the dream of separation. And when you realize the Self, the dream of separation, of a separate self, falls away.
This can come for a moment here, a moment there. But there is a point where it becomes a steady perception. Mind grows in magnitude. The heart opens. And when the little one, the little self, is surrendered on the altar of the infinite, there remains only the infinite one.
This is not some high state or some great Yogi who has meditated for 40 years, 24 hours a day, in a cave in the Himalayas. It is for ordinary people. It is for anyone and everyone who wishes to have radical honesty with themselves. Who wishes to truly be truthful. Who wishes to truly be kind.
All the dreams of the individual self trying to protect itself, fearing loss, illness, old age, and pain—when self-realization comes, who is there to fear and what is there to fear? The Self, Parama Purusha, is everywhere. Nothing is lost. It simply changes form, abiding in the mind of the infinite.
So know the Self of your self, the Self of all beings. And let go of the illusion of a separate self. All right?