Where is Reality?

The Holy Scriptures say, a pure heart is needed to see God. But who attains such absolute purity? It is very difficult, but there are a great many methods one can try. I give you here and now a method. Use it, to find out how absolute purity is gained: Straighten your spine, as in yoga-posture. The energies have to flow upwards. Therefore keep the back straight and relaxed. Spine, neck and head all are in one line. Now close your eyes, shutting out the whole world of multitude, that diverts our attention and concentration. Our thoughts are affected by our inhalation and exhalation. Draw a deep breath, then hold it as long as you (comfortably) can. Automatically there is a little calm in the heart, a little quiet in the mind, an insight into purity. Use this purity now, to discover reality, God. Reality is God, the Divine Mother. That which was, which is and will ever be, that is truth, that is reality.
Where is reality? Thoughts come and go. We call such things an illusion. Say, there is a baby. Come after a few years, and the baby has changed into a youngster. The state of babyhood is over. It was an illusion. You say, it is day. Come after a few hours and it is night. The day was an illusion. What remains only for a short time, then vanishes – everything that vanishes – is an illusion. Thoughts come and go. Our feelings come and go. Our body comes and goes. All this is called an illusion – unreal. Fellow beings are no reality. The objects in time-space universe are no reality. The time-space universe itself is no reality. It disappears like in deep-sleep state. There we have no idea of a time-space world. In Samadhi, too, in God-experience, the time-space world disappears. All that vanishes is an illusion.

You say you are a mother. Yes, but in your previous life your daughter was your mother. In future lives you may again be born as the daughter of your present daughter. There are endless such stories. It is an illusory world. Everything is an illusion – passing.
Who observes all these illusions? Find out. For a short time, you have found purity of heart now. Through Pranayama – breathing techniques – and concentration and by straightening the spine, your mind was calmed. Quietude enables our reason and intelligence to work in fantastic ways.

Where is reality? Outer objects, like fellow beings, or the cup, the table, the lights disappear for you, when you stop looking at them, or they cease altogether by themselves, for what has a beginning also has an end. Everything that has a beginning and therefore an end is an illusion. So where is reality?

Look: Thoughts come and go. Who observes these thoughts? You. You observe the thoughts. You observe the body. You observe the variety in the outer world. You are the witness of the time-space universe. You observe. Who observes the states within you as a baby, a youth and as an old man? You – something in you that does not change.
Take the example of dreams. Every night you dream. Who is the observer of these dreams? You. In dream a whole world of experiences comes to you. You experience an entire life time in dream. Then everything passes. It is an illusion. Who reports on these dreams? You do. You were before the dream, you were during the dream and you are now, though the dream has vanished. You always remain.

Suppose, ten times a year you get terrible nightmares. Nightmares come and frighten you, and in the morning when you wake up everything is gone. It was an illusion. You laugh at your terrible experience: “This too was just an illusion. It was only a dream. It cannot touch me!” Again this nightmare comes. Once more, as soon as you wake up you say: “It was only an illusion, I don’t fear it. Though I was bitten by a snake in my dream, it did not hurt me.” You brush aside the nightmare as an illusion.

This observer of the nightmare and the observer of daily life in you are one and the same. The observer who witnesses, and then reports about the nightmare, and who daily encounters the world in the waking-state, experiences it and reports on it and yet always remains something else than these experiences.

This witness in us is reality. He is always present. He witnesses even death – the death of the body. Everything passes, everything is fleeting, all is an illusion, but the observer in you never comes and never goes. He is ever present. The observing consciousness is always there in us. It remains untouched by the nature of our thoughts and feelings, untouched by all that it sees and experiences.

In dream your body was nearly burnt. But as soon as you woke up you knew it was an illusion. While the dream was on, you were screaming for help. It was a terrifying experience. Still, you remained untouched by this dreadful experience.

The same happens in outer daily life. It is not reality. It is a passing drama, a passing phenomenon. Our entire life is a little dream among so many dreams and nightmares – an illusion that will soon pass. But the observer in us remains always. He does not die. He is called Tripurasundari. He is called God. This reality in us is there always. It is fantastic. It does not die. It witnesses all, reports on everything, registers everything as an illusory, passing phenomenon.

Through the little purity we have just created while sitting in this hall, by closing our eyes, inhaling – or exhaling – and then holding our breath and concentrating, stopping all thinking, our thinking capacity is strengthened and enabled to perceive.

In common man this capacity is absent. To him human life with its experiences is absolute reality; just as to the dreaming person the dream is absolute reality. He does not distance himself from the field of experience, the object of experience, be it a dream or be it daily life. He does not stand back from these experiences.

The experiencing person in us – the observer – is fantastic. No one can burn him. No one can touch him. There is not birth or death for him. He is the unborn Light in us. Only that which is real and divine, can remain forever. All else comes and goes. Since there is something in us that never ends, it is divine, it is real, it is ever present. It observes all states – dream-state, waking-state and dreamless deep-sleep state. It bears in itself the capacity to go back to former life times and discover what we were … the capacity to see in which place we will be born next life, etc. All capacities are there in this observer in us. It can develop every imaginable capability. All capabilities are there in this reality in us and can unfold themselves. Nevertheless, this truth in us remains untouched by all the things it unfolds, applies, creates, maintains and dissolves. This truth in us, God, Tripurasundari, we have to experience, constantly. There we have to root our intelligence, our heart.

In dream we have all kinds of experiences, good and bad, fortune and misfortune – duality, opposites. In this reality, in this observer in us, there is no duality. There is ever the same one observer. There is God. There is unchanging, ever the same truth – Satyam. This reality we are. This reality is undying, eternal life. Nobody – no God – can destroy it, because the true God is this very reality in us.

Think of it. The spiritual path, as we are presenting it in this Ashram, is a path of reason, a path of intelligence. No confession of faith is needed here: “You shall believe …” – Nothing you shall believe. Calm you mind and reflect. Observe the observing intelligence within yourself. Understand the nature of this intelligence. From where does this reality arise? This ever-remaining thing is always there in us.

You say you are old. This is an illusion! When you are born again you are a baby. And again this state is another illusion. All states are illusions. You say you are a father. This is a temporary phenomenon, something external, passing, something relative, something that will not be there tomorrow. All states that we experience in daily life are transitory. But the observer in us is there always. He observes all states. And in this observer there is the Divine Light. He is the supreme reality, absolute reality. In Him you are eternal.

You never need to fear a bad or frightening experience in life. It is like a nightmare. It can never harm you. No hair will be harmed on you head in this nightmare, be it the dream of life or a real nightmare. Both are the same. Both are illusory. Nothing in life, no condition, should touch you. That is absolute purity. You lose this purity, as soon as you loose your head, your intelligence, and identify yourself with the things, events, conditions and objects.

Take the example of an angry person. When anger rises in him, he identifies with it so completely that his intelligence stops functioning. Reason is gone. Discrimination is gone. He turns into a fury with enormous strength and smashes all the glass on the heads of people. He is unable to discriminate. When everything is over he is sad and apologises.
The human state is a state where the reality in us is veiled and we identify with our body and circumstances: I am old, I am a lawyer, a doctor, a cabinetmaker, a carpenter, a woman, a housewife, a scholar, a mother, a daughter, a granddaughter, and so on. We identify with these passing, fleeting states and cry and do everything possible to find a little happiness. This is the human way, and it is wrong. One has to apply reason, think and discover reality within oneself and in every being and thing.

Reality, the observer in me, is non-different from the observer in each of you. He is one and the same. Can I say, I am greater than you? Never. Or less than you? Never. Do I have an inferiority complex? Never. My intelligence is rooted in reality. Outer circumstances do not count. You chase after pleasures, you want warm clothes, you try to avoid this and that, you long for comforts, because you have no idea of reality. Reality is beyond heat and cold, beyond every kind of suffering.

With the knowledge of this reality, suddenly all doubts disappear. All suffering disappears. Death does not exist. And we are not the body. We are more than the body. Body is like a coat. Do you cry when your coat is old and torn and dirty? Never. You throw it away. It is a burden. So is the body!

The spiritual path is the path of reason. We do not ask for blind faith. Come, the way is clear. God lives in you as reality, as the observer. The Guru dwells in you as the observer. You, the Guru and God are one and the same. The soul in you and the soul in the ant are one and the same. The observer in the ant has the same potentialities as the reality – the observer – in you! Eternity in you is God. That you are, not the body, not your thoughts, not your personality, not your outer nature and character, not your outer position, not your outer wealth or beggary, not man or woman. Why?

Look here: Is this observer in you, who perceives your dreams and nightmares as well as real outer life in your waking state, is this observer in you in any way a slave of these experiences, these events or these objects of experience? Never. He is always something else, something superior to all that he observes – something greater. He remains ever untouched, inviolable. Fire may burn your body. Still the observer within the burning body remains untouched by fire.

Can thought grasp this observer, this reality within? Never. Thoughts come and thoughts go. How should petty thoughts grasp the observer in you? He remains untouched. He is more subtle than space. Space – because it is so subtle – cannot be cut, cannot burn. It remains untouched even though you move your hands and feet in it. You can pollute the air, but never space. You can heat air, but never space. Space remains beyond all these.
Yet subtler than space is the reality in you, the soul in you, the observer, God in you. No one can take hold of it. But this you are. This is your real heart, your true life, true intelligence, true happiness, true treasure. The nature of this truth we want to study. What are we? We are never our frightening dreams, or this life mixed with happiness and pain, joy and pleasure, problems, doubt, etc.

We have to find out the nature of reality in us. We get an idea of its nature through our deep sleep when our fooling mind sleeps, or when we stop our breath and the thoughts vanish. Use this purity to concentrate on the self in you, the observer in you. When you close your eyes, there is no time or space. You are in a spaceless, timeless state in this arrested breath, in this concentration.

Reflect on what is there behind this mind, behind this intelligence, behind this life. Who observes this state of silence? This observer is fantastic. He is higher than everything. He is different from everything that is in you and in the outer world. You are immortal. You are an eternal light of God. You are the observer, you create all experiences, you sustain all experiences, you dissolve all experiences. You are the one creative personality. You stay beyond your creation. You are not a slave of that which you have created. You are infinitely greater than all that you see and experience.

All that you see and experience is an illusion that keeps changing and passes by – a phenomenon. You are a noumenon, not a phenomenon. You are the observer of all phenomena. You are the absolute. Can you find the limits of this observer in you? There are no limits. In deep-sleep we gain a little insight into the nature of this reality in us, this God in us, this Guru in us, this Divine Mother in us, this immortal life in us.

In this reality there is boundless knowledge. Whatever has been there in the entire universe since its beginning is there in this observer, this reality in us. He has witnessed not only all that has happened in your life, your death, your rebirth, another death and another birth, etc., but he has witnessed the entire universe itself. He knows about all the passed cycles of creation! This truth is the all-knowing principle in you. When you develop total purity, a truly spiritual life – living it for decades – then you know everything. You gain super-human powers, virtues, unlimited perseverance, patience, peace and joy. Everything comes to you.

One should dedicate a little time to this inner fact – live here and now on this earth free from sorrow, worries, misery, troubles and lead a life in harmonious order, beyond happiness and unhappiness, for none of these two is real. Both are illusory. Here and now you can experience timeless, spaceless peace and joy, eternal life, as you do in deep-sleep. You can bring it about with this little exercise. You only first have to gain insight into the true life within you. Eternal life is already there.

When the scriptures talk of eternal life, they don’t mean that it is brought from somewhere and given to you – what can be given and taken is unreality, an illusion, a petty thing. It is less than the reality within us which is unending, absolute and all-perfect. Eternal life is already there. God is already there in us. What God means by: “I grant you eternal life” is to enable you to gain insight into the eternal life within you, as I have helped you to analyse life and its circumstances; as I have freed you from life and its circumstances with this little sermon. God does the same. He grants you wisdom.
Mind needs to be calm. Calmness is purity. When there is restlessness one is mad and cannot think properly. Then there is impurity. Emotions make us passionate, angry, pathetic, etc. All these are passing states. You on the other hand are eternal life. Reality is what is eternal. Nothing but reality can ever be called reality. Never can anything but the absolute and eternal be called reality. And this absolute infinity you are. When you observe this you have purity. When you understand this you have purity!

Just as an angry person identifies with his anger and becomes anger itself – his entire body and mind are nothing but anger – why don’t you identify yourself with the divine reality in yourself? Why should you identify with your grief, your passing sentiments, feelings and thoughts? Why do you say, it is cold, etc. and identify with it, loosing your hold on the experience of this reality that is beyond cold and heat?

God keeps calling you, constantly: “Come to me, my child, I am the reality in you, you are in my peace, eternal, timeless, spaceless. Enjoy my bliss, eternal and perfect!” This call one should listen to. This call one should follow, and let one’s intelligence sink into this reality for a while! From this hour on be sages! From this hour on be saints!

No faith is necessary. Intelligence and purity in themselves generate faith in you, increase your faith.

But faith again is an emotion. It comes and goes. You are infinitely more than that. You are consciousness itself, intelligence itself – higher intelligence beyond thoughts and feelings, beyond time and space, seeing intelligence. And that which perceives is light. Light is the being of the reality in you. You are light. You can close your eyes and see. And this consciousness in you, this reality in you has endless knowledge, omniscience. It is the mother of all lights in the world, the mother of all lights in the intelligence in every human being. This light you are. This light also is God. God and you are one for eternity. You only have to acknowledge it. As long as you do not acknowledge it, you are different from God. You can experience God only by growing one with Him. And where is He? He is the purity in you, the beauty in you, truth in you. He is the joy of joys. Joy is in you. You are the source of all joy. This happiness you should constantly enjoy. In this happiness, in this reality you should carry out your daily work. Dwell in this. This is your true home. When you act from there you are a saint, a sage, a good human being, a pure person. Such purity does good to the entire universe. The fact that you are there, somewhere, is enough for all nature to feel good.

When you are in this state you do only good. The nature of the reality in you is goodness, absolute goodness beyond goodness and badness, absolute joy beyond pleasure and pain. The nature of this reality in you is total knowledge, absolute knowledge beyond knowledge and ignorance. That you are.

Guru is there only to show what you are and to give you methods – not one method but hundreds of methods – to rapidly attain this experience. This is the function of the Guru. He needs nothing from anyone. Not from the gods either. He is the observer in the gods themselves. What has he to gain from them? Whatever could be had is an illusion – nothing can ever be added to this timeless, spaceless perfection, this peace, this joy, this light, this knowledge, this beauty and purity. This wisdom should govern our outer life daily.

We have to put into action what we see within, and God is our witness. He watches always.