I am trying to be what I am not

Dear Srama,

Thank you for taking the time to read it and responding. Answer to your question, "Are we not attaching more to the "I" than ever when we seek to attain enlightenment or when we think I am or I am not this or that", is "no" with my limited knowledge. It depends on whether we assume we are this body or mind or ego or consciousness.

Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi delved on this question "Who am I?" for years and found the answer and expect everyone to delve on that question. It was Gautama Buddha's persistence to find answers to resolve the sufferings and mortality that resulted in Him achieving enlightenment. Jesus Christ paved way for us by teaching that "I am in the father, father is in me" and I and the Father are one", the three steps to achieve enlightenment.

Karma Yoga, Bhakthi Yoga, Gnana Yoga and Raja Yoga are means to an end and they are not end in itself. They allow you to go through the process of concentration, contemplation, meditation and then reach Samadhi stage. Each of them lead to the same end. However, we need to know why and how to do such yogas.

Every learned seer has taught us not to blindly follow the principles of right living without spending time to understand why we are doing them. However, no one has taught us that we should not believe in the Divine Principle without us comprehending the Divinity. We need to believe we are a divine being having a human experience not human beings having a divine experience.

Every scientific theories in this world were developed with enormous amount of effort, repetitive experiments and analysis of data emerged out of such experiments and then presented to the scientific community for acceptance. Finally, when we see the end result, it is something that existed already that was proved by significant effort. The scientist in my opinion is not a creator or inventor but discovered the theory to prove the existence of a thing or process. But the scientist learned everything about all aspects of what he experimented. But by looking at those experiments, none of us can understand how it evolved and what triggered the mind of the scientist to explore. Similarly, finding the how and why of creation is beyond our comprehension as we are the invention and the Divine Principle is the Creator.

Our body and mind is created by the Creator and sent to this planet with divinity residing inside of it. The reason for its existence is because of encryption it has through actions of body and mind. Therefore, we need to first believe we are a divine being. Then, we need to understand what is the purpose of our existence as a human being. We need to build a character that would help us to control the vagaries of our mind and senses, control desires and attachments and identify ourselves with our consciousness. Slowly, we reach the level of Atmanivedanam (total surrender) after we remove the encryption. When we reach that stage, we achieve enlightenment. It may take one life or many but we should keep trying as all we accumulate in each life to learn more is carried forward to the next.

Our mind trying to comprehend the divinity is like looking for sun (light of divinity or enlightenment) in the darkness (ignorance) with the help of a torch (mind). We only need to learn to find and recognize divinity and not comprehend using our mind.

Viswa