An unforgettable event
Fridays in my parents' household followed a pattern, as did most days. It was the day my mother returned early from work to do the family's washing. This Friday was no different, except that I was back from college.
Since she would be home in a couple of hours, I readied the twin-tub for use. Having done so I began to feel a very strong urge to lie down, which was baffling because I was in excellent health, not in the least tired, and had done nothing more strenuous that day than wheel that machine a few inches.
No sooner had my head touched the pillow and my eyes closed than the world, the dream of life, vanished without trace. I was instantaneously and effortlessly fully awake in my real being – a wakefulness that far exceeds that of the everyday waking state.
I was home, not in my parents' flat, not in any geographical location at all, but in my true abundant self. I was home in a home I fully and instantly recognised and knew I had never left and never could leave – yet somehow had forgotten or overlooked.
What was present then is present now. The difference is that then I knew it directly and now, unfortunately, I no longer do. All that remains is a knowing that I am presently 'asleep' and, in a superficial but significant sense, not myself.
Home is infinite being, measureless joy, infinite knowledge. I mean infinite – literally. My true being is infinite, just as yours is, for we are not different. There is not a multiplicity of beings; there is only one being, clothed variously, appearing to be many.
This substantial limitless being has no spatial limit. Undifferentiated, I am simultaneously everywhere. There is no fraction of that infinite immensity that is not myself.
This infinite being is not dark, it is bright – brighter, far brighter, than dozens of suns – and yet that very bright light is not in any way unpleasant or uncomfortable. On the contrary, it is perfect peace and ease, flawless and completely free from all discomfort and hankering. What it is to be free from desire! And from all burdens! How utterly simple and natural.
That bright light is so bright and so omnipresent that there is nothing in that infinity that is not lit equally and fully. What is known is known absolutely, with complete certainty. There are literally no shadows of doubt. Yet that knowing is an innocent knowing: it is not a knowing of objects, ideas or experiences because there is nothing but one's own limitless, changeless self to know. It is a knowing that is utterly simple and easy and immediate.
There is not the slightest trace of the world in it to know or experience. The world is totally absent, just as a distant night's dream is absent. More than absent, there is no world and there never has been. As with a dream, the waking world is real only while in it. It is at best an inexplicable memory on waking up. It has no existence of its own.
That infinite self is perfect peace and unimaginable happiness. All that is known is oneself, and that self is adorable. It is unbounded self-delight. Knowledge and love and beauty and being are one and not different. The love that is known is perfect and all human love is a dim reflection of it.
This exquisite, endlessly happy, changeless self is never uninteresting. It is unlimited not only in extent but in capacity: it is unfailingly fresh and interesting while remaining ever the same.
The unmistakable recognition of having returned home meant that the world that had so completely disappeared was certainly not home. I had been merely a sojourner there and now was perfectly at rest again in my true home. Wonderfully, there was not the slightest regret for the mistake of believing the world had been my (or anyone else's) home, nor any regret for what had happened there, nor any sense of loss at losing those I had known. There can be no sense of loss for a world that does not and never did really exist!
There was no regret at having been so mistakenly embroiled in the world (a world of which this immensity is the only reality and substratum) and for losing those whom I had cared about. What we experience while dreaming in bed at night is of no consequence on waking. What I had woken up to was unsurpassable fulfilment in which regret or a sense of loss is impossible.
However, that absence of regret implies memory of what had been, a memory of something no longer present. And something was being remembered...
Now, over 'there' in that infinite consciousness was a transparent shape, like a glass bell jar or śivaliṅga. The walls of the jar were indescribably thin – thinner than thought – and fully transparent, so that the light within was undimmed compared with the light without; and the richness of being, consciousness and love was similarly fully present, unchanged and unrestricted, both within and without the hollow jar.
The jar-like shape was very beautiful because its substance was the same as that of the infinite consciousness in which it had appeared.
There was no concern at the jar's presence, just interest, for it too was within that great vastness that was myself. Suddenly, though, my viewpoint, instead of being simultaneously everywhere in that infinity (including inside the jar) became confined to within the jar alone. That infinity of being was still known, and known to be my own being, but now it was seen from just one vantage point instead of from all vantage points simultaneously. This was undeniably a limitation of view, but not of the joy or the love which were unaffected by this change.
This sense of limit seemed to be a harbinger of further change. Suddenly a small, insubstantial, wispy cloud apppeared. It was the world, and with this jar-like garb I was about to return to it.
Small black 'disks' started to hurtle down onto the curved top of the jar. There seemed to be no more than seven or eight of them, but it was impossible to be sure of the number for consciousness was progressively dimmed by each as they fell onto my 'head', the dome-like top of the jar.
As each descended it had a powerfully limiting, burdensome and painful effect. The weight of those disks was enormous and is a terrible burden to still now carry on my head. I was quickly being returned to that tiny, wretched creature I had been before all this began. Those disks were bringing back the rag bag of mental and emotional habits, conditioning and false convictions that constitute 'me', the so-called person or individual.
It was agonising and miserable to experience all these restrictions descending and to be unable to do anything about being returned to the prison they hold me in. I was rapidly and unavoidably being returned to 'normal' and I hated it.
As the disks fell, consciousness rapidly diminished from that earlier purity and I entered an increasingly dark unknowing, descending through it like through cloud. Very, very quickly all my previous personality and character were refurnished exactly as before, along with a continuing awareness of that weight on my head.
I became aware again of the body and senses, aware that this body, to which I was once more limited, was lying on a familiar bed in a familiar room.
I was astonished by what I had just experienced, and dismayed by its contrast with what I now experienced. The old familiar surroundings were once again convincingly real. What I had just experienced was also undeniably far more real – it had not been a dream for I had definitely not been asleep, and had witnessed the details of the descent into normal consciousness. On the contrary, I knew I was now very much asleep again, even though (in all everyday usage of the term) I was fully awake.
Being 'fully awake' again bears no comparison with that prior incomparably greater wakefulness. The difference is inexpressible.
That true wakefulness seemed now tantalisingly out of reach. However, one thing remained clear (and still does, years later) that that immensity is still there and that the wall separating 'me' from it remains thinner than thought and so should be easy or at least possible to cross, given the right means. It couldn't, in fact, be closer and yet somehow seems so difficult to touch.
I went for a walk, again and again checking my assessment of what had happened, questioning how the world could once more seem so utterly real. I was enormously grateful to have have known what I had, but also shocked and dismayed to be no longer experiencing it. I was horrified at the prospect of perhaps not being able to return there, for I could see no ready way of doing so.
That infinite reality is still known to be present as the very core and substratum of this aggregate of memories and conditioning that I call 'me' or 'myself'. Being its innermost essence it supports and sustains it, giving it its apparent reality.
It is also the identical and unchangeable core of everyone and everything else – it is certainly not my private property, nor is it in any way peculiar to me alone. Being equally and identically present as the innermost self, the only reality and substratum of all, it is most definitely universal. The entire universe and all its content springs from it, just as the magic trick springs from the magician and the ocean wave from water.
What effect has this event, this fruit of pūrva janma puṇya, had on my life since? It has confirmed beyond any possible doubt that Advaita Vedānta that I studied subsequently is true. Just as importantly it has given me the firm conviction that, as Śaṅkara said, "Brahman alone is real, the world is mithyā [dependently real, neither real nor unreal] and the individual and brahman are not different."
I am well aware that it is hard to accept that the world we see around us is only seemingly real, but it most definitely is so – it is exactly like the imagined snake in the rope or the dream in bed at night – convincing only while experiencing it and involved in it. Brahman, that infinite immensity, is, by contrast, reality itself. In that immensity there is no God, no world, no individual – only oneself.
That unforgettable day has been remembered often, not because I have wanted to recall it but simply because events remind me of it. Sometimes, being reminded is painful due to the profound sense of loss and the apparent enormity of the work still to be done; sometimes it has been a strength and support through difficulties; but, whatever it has been, it is impossible to forget.
For years I lived in a quandary: the world seemed undeniably real and yet what I had met that Friday showed that the world had no reality at all! Like a dream, it has at best a borrowed reality.
Had I fortuitously experienced the true self? No, consciousness is ever that which knows. It does not become 'the known'. Yet, being naturally self-evident, it is being intimately experienced or known all the time as one's own unchanging existence, as one's innate sense of self that remains ever the same throughout life, no matter how thoughts and feelings change.
However, its nature may be known – just as one's own face, although never directly knowable, may be reflected in a mirror.
The universal or cosmic mind is such a mirror. Within it, the nature of the self is known in all its glorious abundance. That reflection is nirvikalpa samādhi.
The individual mind has only three states (waking, dream and sleep). When it is inactive the world is not known. When there is no thing to know, consciousness can be aware of its own self-evident presence, which is not a state but is the substance of the three states, just as gold is the substance of the ring, bracelet and chain. The reflection of that limitless presence is nirvikalpa samādhi.
Some imagine that by repeatedly knowing nirvikalpa samādhi one's birthright can be regained. That is not true. Nirvikalpa samādhi is not, as some imagine, a means of liberation. It is spontaneous self-delight.
The universal mind is able to reflect that delight in its full glory, whereas the individual mind can, at best, do so only partially. Just as one wave only hints at the magnificence of the unbounded ocean, the natural limitations of the individual mind leave it unable to fully reflect the limitlessness and incomparable beauty of pure consciousness.
Since the individual mind is inactive and unavailable in deep sleep and samādhi, and inoperable in dream, freeing its intellect from the errors arising from ignorance can be accomplished only in the waking state, for there alone the mind is fully active, there alone free will exists. That freeing is only for the intellect, the seat of ignorance.
How is liberation gained? It is gained by carefully correcting, in the waking state, the error of mistaking oneself for what one is not. That correction primarily consists of viveka, discrimination between satya and mithyā, the real and the apparently real; and the resulting vairāgya, dispassion for the apparently real.
That correction of the individual intellect's mistaken notions about oneself, the world and God is possible only by the grace of the Vedānta śāstra, unfolded by a competent teacher. Such study is essential. Incompetently led or unaided study of the śāstra only compounds error.
Years after that remarkable day there remains unshakeable certainty that traditional Vedānta accurately presents how things are.
The contrast between the clouded individual mind and its clear universal counterpart is huge. There is work still to be done, a weight still to be shifted, but the direction is clear: full ascertainment and assimilation by means of both vairāgya and nididhyāsana.
A student of Pujya Shrī Swamini Atmaprakashananda