The NEW PATH, by Swami Kriyananda
(Editor’s note: I am currently listening to the audio file of
Swami Kriyananda reading his own life story, The New Path and feel to share
this except. Sold by Ananda's publishing house, Crystal Clarity, you can find many of Swami's books read "on tape" by him. Listening is a thrilling and dynamic experience: one that exceeds mere reading of words on a page.)
CHAPTER 12 – Who Am I – What is God?
THE PROBLEM
Civilized man prides himself on how far advanced his
present state is from that of the primitive savage. We look condescendingly on
his tribal way of endowing trees, wind, rain, and heavenly bodies with human
personalities. Now that science has explained everything in prosaic terms,
modern man considers himself wiser for having lost his sense of awe. But I’m
not so sure that he deserves congratulation. It strikes me rather that, dazzled
by his own technology, he has only developed a new kind of superstition, one
infinitely less interesting. Too pragmatic, now, to worship, he has forgotten
how to commune. Instead of relating sensitively to Nature around him, he shuts
it out of his life with concrete ‘jungles,’ air conditioning, and ‘muzak’; with
self-promotion and noisy entertainments. He is obsessed with problems that are
real to him only because he gives them reality. He is like a violin
string without the wood for a sounding board. Life, when cut off from its
broader realities, becomes weak, thin, and meaningless.
Modern technology alienates us from the universe and
from one another. Worst of all, it alienates us from ourselves. It directs all
our energies toward the mere manipulation of things,
until we ourselves assume qualities that are almost thing-like. In how many
modern plays and novels are men idealized for their ability to act with the
precision and unfeeling efficiency of a machine! We are taught to behave in
this world like uncivilized guests, rudely consuming our host’s plenty without
offering him a single word of thanks in return. Such is our approach to nature,
to God, to life itself. We make ourselves petty, then imagine that the universe
is petty also. We rob our own lives of meaning, then call life itself
meaningless. Self-satisfied in our unknowing, we make a dogma of ignorance. And
when, in ‘civilized’ smugness, we approach the question of religion, we address
God Himself as though He had better watch His manners if He wants a place in
our hearts.
THE CHALLENGE
My probing thoughts led me one by one, however, to a
dead end. How much, after all, can the theater [art, music, literature,
science, politics, technology] really accomplish for people, spiritually
speaking? Did even Shakespeare, great as he was, effect any deep-seated changes
in the lives of individuals? None, surely, at any rate compared to the changes
religion has inspired. I shuddered at this comparison, for I loved Shakespeare,
and found little to attract me in the churches. But the conclusion, whether I
liked it or not, was inescapable: Religion, for all its fashionable mediocrity,
its sham, its devotion to the things of this world, remains the most powerfully
beneficial influence in the history of mankind. Not art, not music, not
literature, not science, politics, conquest, or technology: The one truly
uplifting power in history, always, has been religion.
How was this possible? Puzzled, I decided to probe
beneath the surface and discover what deep-seated element religion contained
that was vital and true.
Avoiding what I considered to be the trap of
institutionalized religion, of ‘churchianity,’ I took to walking or sitting for
hours together by the ocean, pondering its immensity. I watched little fingers
of water as they rushed in among the rocks and pebbles on the shore. Did the
vastness of God find personal expression, similarly, in our own
lives?
WHAT IS GOD?
The question returned to me with increasing urgency: What IS God?
One evening, taking a long walk into the gathering
night, I deeply pondered this question. I dismissed as absurd, to start with,
the popular notion of a venerable figure with flowing white beard, piercing
eyes, and a terrible brow striking fear into all those who disobey Him. Science
has shown us an expansive vastness comprising countless galaxies, each one
blazing with innumerable stars. How could any anthropomorphic figure have been
responsible for creating all that?
What, then, about fuzzy alternatives that had been
proposed to suit the abstract tastes of intellectuals? A ‘Cosmic Ground of
Being,’ for example: What a sterile evasion! What a non-concept! Such formulas
I considered a ‘cop-out,’ for they gave one nothing to work with.
No, I thought, God has to be, if nothing else, a conscious Being. I had
read alternate claims that He is a dynamic force.
Well, He had to be that, too, of course. But could it be a blind force, like electricity? If so, whence
came human intelligence? Materialists claim that man’s consciousness is
produced by ‘a movement of energy through a pattern of nerve circuits.’ Well!
But intelligence, I realized, is not central to the issue anyway. Intelligence
implies reasoning, and reasoning is only one aspect of consciousness; it might
almost be called a mechanical aspect, inasmuch as it is conceivable for
something electronic to be devised that will do much of his reasoning for him.
Rene Descartes’ famous formula: ‘I think, therefore
I am,’ is superficial, and false. One can be fully conscious without thinking
at all. Consciousness obviously exists apart from ratiocination, and is a
precondition for any kind of thoughtful awareness.
What about our sense of I-ness: our egos? We don’t
have to ponder the question objectively. We simply know that we exist. This knowledge, I have come to
understand, is intuitive. Even a newborn baby making its first cry doesn’t
become self-aware because of that cry. It requires self-awareness
for it to suffer! Even a worm demonstrates self-awareness: prick it with a pin,
and it will try to wriggle away.
Obviously, then, consciousness is at least latent everywhere, and in everything. God
Himself must be conscious, and, having created
everything, must also have produced it out of consciousness: not out of His consciousness, for consciousness
cannot be something He possesses: He is consciousness: Essential
Consciousness.
What about self-awareness? This, too, must be
inherent not only in all life, but in everything. We are not merely His
creations: We manifest Him! We exist, because He exists.
To ‘cut to the chase’: all of us, as His
manifestations, have the capacity to manifest Him more or less perfectly.
Surely, then, what we need is to deepen our awareness of Him at the center of
our being.
What a staggering concept!
I recalled the days I had spent watching the ocean
surf break into long, restless fingers among the rocks and pebbles on the
shore. The width of each opening, I reflected, determined the size of the flow.
Similarly, if our deepest reality is God, might it not be possible for us to
chip away at our granite resistance to Him, and thereby widen our channels of receptivity? And would
not every aspect of His infinite consciousness flow into us, then, like the
ocean, abundantly?
If this was true, then obviously our highest duty is
to seek attunement with Him. And the way to do so is to develop that aspect of
our nature which we can open to Him. The way to do that, obviously, is to lift
our hearts up to Him, and to seek His guidance in every thought and deed. In so
doing He must
since we are a part of His consciousness assist us in our efforts to broaden
our mental channels.
I realized, now, that true religion is no mere
system of beliefs, and is a great deal more than any formalized attempt to
wheedle a little pity out of the Lord by offering up pleading, propitiatory
rites and prayers. If our link with Him consists in the fact that we are
already a part of Him, then it is up
to us to receive Him more completely, and express Him more fully. [“But as many as received him to them gave he power to
become the sons of God.” John 1:12] This, then, is what
true religion is all about!
What I had seen thus far of religious practices, and
eschewed in disappointment, was not true religion,
but the merest first, toddling steps up a stairway to infinity! One might, I
reflected, devote his entire life to this true religion, and never stagnate.
What a thrilling prospect!
This, then, would be my calling in life: I would
seek God!
