Evolution Ends in Endlessness!

My daughter, Gita Matlock, wrote a blog article yesterday that coincides with my thoughts in preparation for my Sunday Service talk tomorrow (June 7, 2015) on the subject, "How Devotees Fall." Gita's article is entitled, "Anguishing Monotony."  http://gitagoing.blogspot.com/

Her article might, at first, sound like a "downer" but it's not. She's not capable of doing "downers." (Her dad, she says, does the downer subjects.) Rather, while she states her admiration for human striving and overcoming challenges, she wonders "Is there an end to it?" What would the struggle mean if we were not aware of it being a struggle or if we didn't seek an end to it?

Self-awareness, you see, is inextricably linked with our human experience of striving and seeking. Good, bad, indifferent qualities are, at first, seemingly inseparable from the objects (obstacles and goals) with which they are identified. But, Gita writes, behind all human qualities, even the most admirable ones, is the hidden source of all qualities: Self-awareness and Consciousness. For without self-awareness, the experiences have no meaning or significance. Indeed, from a practical matter (ours, that is!), perhaps no existence at all!

Is it possible, however, to separate awareness from the objects illuminated by it? The yogis say YES! The science of yoga shows us how, by meditation, using mind and breath control, to strip away the objects reflected in the mind of the Seer. Gazing backwards into the mirror of Self-awareness, the "Eye" confronts an "I," which, like a mirror reflecting back onto itself, reveals an infinite Self-awareness.

Thus Self-awareness, stripped of all objects, is unqualified Being, and, being without name, form, definition or condition of any kind, is complete unto itself. It simply IS! It is not, however, by that fact devoid of feeling.

If you sit very still and your thoughts subside into deep silence, there wells up out of the apparent Void a rising tide of silent joy. Discover for your Self, that Self-awareness cannot be permanently stripped of feeling. When Awareness is without focus upon any external object, subtle or gross, then its Consort, Feeling, also becomes pure and without condition. Pure feeling is No-Thing less than Bliss itself.

Thus all the struggle, striving, and strain has for its aim ..... to return to our Source in Bliss!

Is Bliss some weird No-thing in No-place that is separate from time and space? Or, does Bliss permeate creation while it remains untouched by it? As the sea can exist without waves but waves cannot exist without the sea, Bliss is omnipresent, omniscient, and infinite.

When Paramhansa Yogananda, 20th century avatara and yoga master, and author of the spiritual classic and modern scripture, "Autobiography of a Yogi," was asked "What is the end of soul evolution," he replied, "Endlessness."

Though we naturally seek rest from strain and struggle, rest is but the opposite, not the resolution of effort. Ease and effortlessness lies in the center point between the two. But so also does Bliss; so also does Infinity. As an object approaching the speed of light must, by mathematical definition, become infinite in mass, so too pure Consciousness expands toward Infinity as it sheds the limiting, reflecting and reactive light of forms, emotions, memories, and attachments.

Rest, then, in the Self, even if from this Self we expand into the Great Self of God. As Swami Kriyananda, founder of the Ananda worldwide movement of intentional communities and the best known direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda put it in his landmark text on meditation, "Awaken to Superconsciousness:"

"The more you seek rest as the consequence of doing, rather than in the process of doing, the more restless you will become. Peace isn’t waiting for you over the next hill. Nor is it something you construct, like a building. It must be a part of the creative process itself.

Learn to be restful, even in the midst of activity, and you will be able to relax better when you sit to meditate. As Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “Be calmly active, and actively calm.”

Joy to you!

Nayaswami Hriman

Retreat to the Heart of Silence

On the Value of Silence

We leave today on retreat for a weekend at Camp Brotherhood, north of Seattle. We call it, “Retreat to the Heart of Silence,” and it’s an annual retreat that we have done for many years.

Just as our body and mind needs its nightly rest and without which life would be untenable, so, too, our soul needs spiritual rest lest life only be an unending and ceaseless motion from one extreme to another, only to be relieved by sleep or boredom.

Ideas, inspiration, and refreshment descend, as it were, from above: from the heart of silence. Silence is more than empty: it is dynamic, it is rich, it is creative, it is full of life and vitality! The most difficult part to entering this realm of refreshment is putting to rest our mind’s deeply embedded habit of taking over, of trying to run the show, of pushing itself into the picture, molding reality to suit its own agenda, and of taking stock and pronouncing judgment upon everything and everybody. All of these activities would no doubt delight a Darwinian but survivalists fail to answer the question, “Survival for what?” For its sake alone? Lying in a bed paralyzed for life: is that what we live for? For grasping desperately at whatever passing pleasures we can wrench so tentatively from life?

Jesus said (paraphrasing), “I came to bring Life, that ye may have it more abundantly!” It’s not just mere existence we seek; nor merely the pleasure and satisfaction of creating new life and seeing our ourselves immortalized (or so we imagine) in our offspring (as if our genes were whooping it in some celebration: We won!)

As night follows day and day follows night, we cannot live in this ceaseless flux without following its rhythms nor without rebelling and withdrawing from the enslavement of those rhythms by seeking stillness.

If we have the courage and the strength we can confront our own Self in the silence of meditation. Who is the Seer who is sitting, observing? Am I looking or is someone else looking at me? Are we One and the Same? To return to the Silence from which we, and all creation has emerged is to go “home” and to confront, engage and meet our Maker. This is true existentialism: to trace our consciousness back to its source in Self-awareness. The experience is thrilling and revitalizing to our core.

Yet meditation (going beyond the techniques which are like a rocket being fueled on the launch pad) requires lifting off the solid earth of our mundane preoccupations and very few people have the courage and the inspiration to attempt it. For most it’s uninteresting and for many it’s scary: like the child who laughs (nervously, but relieved) when you pop out from behind the couch crying “Peek-a-boo,” the small self cannot be certain what will happen when all bodily motions, rollicking emotions, objects in the field of the senses, ceaseless (but petty) thoughts, images, and memories are at last completely still. Will I, too, disappear?

This is the adventure in Self-awakening. The Self of I is the Self of All and there is no loss when we rest in this Self. Instead there is complete immersion, expansion, and fulfillment: an objectless and unconditional dynamic energy and joy that knows no bounds. Whether the experience lasts a second or hours makes no difference at least insofar as the experience itself has no dimension (of time or space). To enter it is all that counts. “You have to present to win” is how I like to put it.

So, wish us luck as we dive deep and retreat into the Heart of Silence!

Nayaswami Hriman