Monday 26 October 2009

Over come Your Fears to Face Divinity... BY MANI SHANKAR

"Neti, neti..."
"Not this, not this..."  --- Chandogya Upanishad
"Tear the Veil from Deity's face"__ Sri Aurobindo.. Not 'God'
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Vedanta's position on God is very clear.  What ever supreme being is 'out there', is also 'in here', inside you.  You are a wonderful creative expression of That, and in a sense, you tare That.  You don't need to go anywhere else but the depths of your own being to discover that 'God'.  And conversely, if you cannot discover that 'God' inside you then you cannot discover 'God' outside either.  So all the time spent in visiting a temple, for instance, is pleasant time pass, but of little value in tangible terms, since the real temple is within, the real 'darshan' is within.  If you didn't get that 'darshan' within, then the 'God' outside is just a stone idol.
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If you don't hear the music within, then the ritual outside is just a soothing meaningless chant.  If you didn't open your inner eye, then you are blind to the subtle truth of existence.  Inversely, if you did get the experience within, then it does not matter what or who your worship in what form, culture, religion or language.  It does not matter even if you don't worship anything at all.  All external rituals become inherently meaningful or completely meaningless.  Either way it's ok.
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The inner vision is aglow.  No words can describe  the experience, so it's pointless to talk about it.  You have found an impenetrable peace within, a words don't matter any more.
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Strangely, the path towards this experience discovers atheism as its first stage.  Atheism is a far more honest attitude than theism without the inner experience.  The atheist rejects the untruths his rationality and common sense cannot accept.  While he may not know what to believe in, at least he knows what not believe in.  In glaring contrast, a so called believer chooses to override his plain common sense and believe in a whole set of practices and customs that his instincts are telling him is not true.  But that is the power of mass deception.  When a lot of people accept some irrational thing to be true, they gain comfort in the assurance that either all are smart or all are dumb.  Either  way it's comforting to know you are not alone.
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Vedanta does not have much use for the G word, simply because its effort is to take you beyond words, beyond thought, beyond mind itself.  'God' is just a convenient term the mind has created to express the inexpressible.  Having stated the G word, the mind feels it has touched the inexpressible, and moves on with a false sense of achievement.  The G word is more an idiom of blindness than sight.  Too much use of the word just leads to delusion.  In fact the more a person uses it, the less they know anything about what the word means.
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'Neti, Neti."  Not this.  Not this.  God as a notion is just a creation of the mind.  You can keep on describing that concept in the most glorious of terms, but all the descriptions are only more words.  You will never experience God by just using more words.
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You need to go beyond -- you need to overcome your fears and dive into deep pools of joy, you need to touch the source which created the mind in the first place.  If you can do this, you will suddenly, spontaneously come face to face with Divinity itself.  You will, as Sri Aurobindo said, 'tear the veil from Deity's face'.  You will understand what every great Vedantic master has understood from the last 35 centuries, and like them, you will never be able to describe what you felt.  When Buddha was asked about God, he looked at a flower and smiled in silence.  Your answer will probably be the same........

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