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Who Am I?
By David Jevons
This is a personal statement,
which simply reflects my own spiritual journey and it may or may
not be applicable to you. No criticism is implied and no offence
is intended if you are walking a different path.
Many of you, I am sure, are aware
of the words in the letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, when
he says "For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is
imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass
away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up
childish ways." Inherent in this statement is the fact that it is
perfectly natural and acceptable for a child to think and to act
as a child. There is nothing wrong in a child being a child.
Indeed one has to be a child before one can become a man.
However, when one becomes a man, one has to start behaving like a
man and letting go of one's childish ways, no matter how
comfortable or accustomed one is with them. It could be argued
that Saint Paul is referring to physical change and social
behaviour, but I feel that he is talking about spiritual change
and spiritual behaviour. In my own case I see Saint Paul's words
as a commentary on my own path to spiritual awakening in this
life. At first I was a churchgoer, then an agnostic, then a
medium, and then a follower of a guru. Now, however, I have
reached a state of being when I can look back and see that all
those stages were but stepping-stones to that moment in time when
I gave up all those, what St. Paul calls, childish ways and became
a man. I now believe that I am an actual part of God, that I am
actually God in manifestation, as is everything around me, and
that any separate identity from that God is an illusion. The
perfect understanding has come, and so the imperfect must pass
away.
Over the years, as I have
walked my spiritual path in this life, I have been privileged to
meet many wise men and women. I can recall meeting a wonderful
lady who was in her eighties, a Theosophist, who moved me on from
the ritual and dogma of Christianity, when I was in my thirties.
Then in my forties I became a medium and published books of
channellings and teachings received from the White Brotherhood,
and whilst on a trip to the Carmel Valley in California I met
another wise soul, a retired English professor. I was full of
enthusiasm for the channelling process and the messages that I had
received and I offered him one of my books. He declined very
politely saying " No Thank you. There was a time when I would
have been interested, but now I have gone beyond all of that. I
am reading nothing. I have turned within." I remember that at
the time I was rather shocked by his attitude and thought to
myself "How is it possible to go beyond channelling? Surely
channelling provides the highest source of Truth that is available
to Man?" Then in my fifties, after discovering the limitations of
channelling, I came into contact with Sri Sathya Sai Baba and was
introduced to the concept of the avatar, of the long awaited
messiah returning to Earth, and the statement by some of his
devotees that he was God on Earth. At first I found this concept
very difficult to accept, because it conflicted with all of my
spiritual understandings, for here was duality carried to the
extreme! However I slowly succumbed to the glamour of this
proposition, especially when I was at Sai Baba's ashram and was
surrounded by long-standing devotees, who constantly affirmed that
he was God on Earth. The concept of a man of miracles, a messiah,
who was supposed to have raised people from the dead, and turned
water into wine, was very alluring. In retrospect I am amazed
that not once did I ask any of those devotees on what personal
experience, rather than second hand experience, such as reading
books, they made this claim. If one has never seen or experienced
God, how can one possibly identify Him? Moreover Sai Baba himself
has asked his devotees not to worship his form. Now, in my
sixties, I have come to the stage in my life when I feel the need
to reject dualism in any form and I have become attracted to the
fundamental philosophic principle of Advaita or Non-Dualism, which
simply states "Not Two, but One." If there is no two, then
everything is an actual part of the One God, of the One
Consciousness. So there is no me; there is no you; there is only
God! So who am I? I am God!
After almost seventy
years of living I have come face to face with the question that I
have avoided answering up to now, the one that I have been too
lazy to answer, hoping that someone else would do it for me,
namely, "Who am I and who is this I that is asking the question?"
As I look back at some of the spiritual concepts that I have
embraced over the years, I smile inwardly, and realise why I have
placed them aside. It was because I was thinking as a child. I
was firmly fixed in duality. I was seeing myself as separate from
God and all of His creations. When Sai Baba said to me in one of
my earlier interviews with him, "Remember, you are God, you are
God, you are no different from God", I did not really believe him.
All my religious and spiritual conditioning had taught me that I
was separate from God, that I had fallen from grace and that the
purpose of my being was to journey back to God. I believed that
in order to achieve this goal I either had to endure thousands of
physical lives on the Earth, practising great austerities, or else
I had to follow a guru unquestioningly, who would grant me
liberation if I led a pure life and balanced out my karmic
account. I was, I must admit, very comfortable with this
philosophy, because it was much easier to keep on coming back for
life after life or to follow a guru who promised liberation than
it was to discover the reality of the Godhead for myself.
Then, quite recently, whilst
reading a book about Non-Dualism, I came across the following
statement, which hit me like a lightening bolt; 'any guru is
simply sitting on the bank of the river offering a cup of water'.
The implication here is that what the guru is offering is just a
sample of the river. In order to fully experience the river (the
river of God Consciousness) one has to dive in and experience it
for oneself. The guru cannot do this for you. Only you can do
this, and it comes not from reading books, not from attending
spiritual workshops, not from following any guru, but from
immersing yourself in that stream of God Consciousness. So why
wasn't I prepared to climb up on the bank and to dive into the
river? Why was I satisfied to accept the cup of water and not to
question whence that water came? It was because the cup of water
was more readily available and, more importantly, was less
daunting than the task of finding the source. Moreover I realised
that just as any water in a cup would lose all of its identity
when it was poured back into the river, rather like a raindrop
falling back into the ocean, so would I if I gave up my apparent
individuality and merged back with the Source of All Life. I
discovered that I was attached to my spiritual identity, not just
in this life, but also in my past lives. The continuation of my
identity as a separate, unique and identifiable soul was important
to me. It gave me comfort and security. Yes, I was going to die,
I was happy to accept that fact, but at least a part of me would
live on after death. But was that part real, or was my soul just
another false identity, another false mask? Was there something
behind the soul? When I say 'I am a soul', who or what is the 'I
am' that is asking this question?
Throughout my life I have been
aware of what I call the 'I am' presence manifesting in me. At
first I regarded it as on over-soul, as a spiritual presence
standing behind my soul, but gradually I began to realise that it
was not an individual source, but a universal source. It was the
Divine Presence. It was totally universal. It was totally
unconditional. It was all-seeing and all-knowing. Wherever it
guided me was always for my highest good. Whatever it prophesied
always came to pass. Amazingly, whenever I wanted it to appear,
it rarely did, and whenever it did appear, it was usually unasked
for. I soon realised that it sought me; I did not seek it. I
could not make it appear. Whenever it did appear, there was
absolute certainty in my life. I felt totally at one with the
whole of creation. There was no question of whether or not to
accept its wisdom and guidance. It just flooded my being and I
was at one with it. The 'me' of this life, or of any past life
for that matter, did not enter into it. There was no 'me'. It
was a very strange feeling, mainly because I was unaccustomed to
it, but nevertheless one with which I felt totally at home.
Perhaps because I thought that it
was for the most part inaccessible, even if it was the highpoint
of my spiritual life, I did not dive deeply into the true nature
of its being, but turned instead to more accessible inspiration,
believing that the cup of water was a fair substitute for the
river. I did not dive deeply to find the pearl of great wisdom,
but chose instead to stay near the surface with lesser jewels,
with which I was more familiar. Looking back on my life I have no
regrets for making this decision, because I simply did not
appreciate the value of what I was missing. Today, however, on
reading about the experiences of the few people who have found
that pearl, who have become one with the Source of All Life, who
have experienced and indeed live in non-duality, I realise that my
whole life has been but a preparation for this final act of
surrender. In truth, though, there is no act of surrender. The
'I am' is the totality of everything, so what is there to
surrender, and who is doing the surrendering? It is more a case
of seeing the reality and the unreality will automatically drop
away.
So today I seek to always place
myself in a frame of mind that sees only non-duality. Of course I
am still living in duality. Non-duality is still only a concept
for me. I really don't feel that I am God. However, when I catch
myself acting out of duality, when I find myself seeing division
and separation, when I observe myself judging and comparing, when
I feel the little 'I' rather than the 'I am' rearing its ugly
head, then I try to empty my mind of those thoughts, I try to
create an atmosphere within me, a receptive energy field, so to
speak, in which the 'I am' presence can appear. To this end I
follow a threefold path. Firstly, I try to practise total
acceptance of everything that comes into the aura of my being,
every waking and sleeping minute of the day. God's energy impels
everything. I am simply God meeting God, so who am I to question
what God has decided either for me or for anyone else? There is
no good or evil, no pleasure or pain, no loss or gain, for
everything is God, so everything is perfect. I recognise that
what I am seeing simply reflects what I am within. Every day I
appear to be faced with choices, but the reality is that I really
have no choices to make. To use the analogy of a hero in a film;
in the beginning of the film the hero might appear to be agonising
over the choices he has to make, which will supposedly determine
his future, but if we jump forward to the end of the film, we can
see that his future is fixed and that he really has no say in the
matter. The director has already decided his future and God is
the ultimate Director!
Secondly, I try to base my daily
life on the principle of unconditional love and, as such, I try to
stop judging and comparing, I try to be alike to everyone; I try
to see everyone as the presence of God standing before me. I try
to help everyone who comes into my path each day in whatever way I
can. In any situation of conflict or criticism I simply say, "I
am God meeting God. I will only be a channel for God's love."
The old saying that love makes the world go round is so true, but
we should realise that it is not physical love, but divine love
that impels our lives. If we love God, and if we love ourselves
because we are God, then we can only exude love and everywhere
that we go and every person that we meet will be touched by our
love. If you squeeze an orange you will get orange juice, there
is no choice in the matter; similarly, if a person filled with
love is 'squeezed' by some conflict or outside pressure, then you
will get only love from that person, there is no choice in the
matter. Conversely, if you 'squeeze' someone who is filled with
hatred and bitterness, then you will get only hatred and
bitterness out of them.
Thirdly, I try to be happy with
my situation in life, no matter what is happening to me or around
me. Bliss is the inherent nature of realised beings, which are
untouched by the so-called troubles of the world, because they are
one with the God Presence, Whose very nature is bliss. Spiritual
ecstasy, as opposed to physical ecstasy, is the bliss that we
seek, because it is permanent and lasting. It is our birthright.
Sai Baba is constantly exhorting his devotees to be happy and is
forever saying, "I am always happy." The 'I am' is always happy.
If we are unhappy then it is because we have separated ourselves
from God or, rather, because we think that we are separate from
God. We are not prepared to accept that God is in everything,
that God empowers everything. We are saying that the drama of
life should be in accordance with our wishes, not God's, and as
that will never be, so we are doomed to be unhappy.
So I invite you all to go on a
journey of self-discovery, of self-enquiry, a journey that will
probably begin by you establishing what you are not. Start with
the fact that you are not your body and progress onwards from
there. Ultimately, I believe that you will come to the simple
statement 'I am God-consciousness', which is the basic tenet of
Advaita or Non-Duality. I am one, existing without a second.
Follow the ancient Socratic injunction of 'Man, know thyself'.
Is it not amazing that our modern educational systems encourage
us to 'know' or to learn about everything that is around us, but
not what is within us? Is it not the case that the pursuit of
self-knowledge is often regarded as an indulgence in this
materialistic, goal-orientated society in which we live? Most
people today would rather watch television than observe
themselves. They believe that the external world, as seen on
television is real, and that the internal world is unreal. We
have been taught to learn by looking out, rather than by looking
in, and yet the greatest source of wisdom and truth lies within
us.
When you meet a realised being,
it is apparent that they view life very differently from the
average man in the street, in fact sometimes their views are 180
degrees opposed to conventional thinking. For instance, here in
the Western World, we usually are very happy when a baby is born,
and are very sad when someone dies. We laugh at birth and cry at
death. A realised being once said 'I cried when I was born, and I
will laugh when I die!' The implication here is that the 'I', not
the body, was unhappy about leaving the state of Oneness it
inhabited before it incarnated into the world of duality on the
Earth, but was very happy about returning to the state of Oneness
again after death. Many realised beings talk about life in the
physical body as being 'in prison'. It is self-knowledge, the
knowledge of the 'I am', that makes 'prison' bearable. The end of
ignorance is self-realization; it is the understanding that the
'I' is not a separate identity, separate from all the other 'I's
around us and separate from God. Before and behind the 'I' there
is God-consciousness. We are created by and inspired by
God-Consciousness. Look behind the veil of illusion, the body of
name and fame in this life, and know that you are an actual part
of God. Constantly affirm that you are God. Know that you are
not your body. Challenge yourself every day with the question
"Who am I?" and one day you will experience the reality of your
being and will know that all is one, and then you will be able to
say the ancient Vedic words "I am that I am" and truly know their
meaning.
Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter,
March 2004,
http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter03_04_02.htm
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http://www.ramalacentre.com
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