Question::
When can we get freed from our “past”? How does Truth-realized persons deal with their own “past”?
(or)
What sort of things does one experience as part of ‘Self-realization’? How does he see himself in that state?
(or)
Why can’t we escape the impact of our environment? When can we escape it?
(or)
Why do we possess the limited and evolving individuality?
(or)
Why is it that the identification of “Self” with the body is termed “illusory” or “false”?
(or)
When do we feel REALLY FULFILLED?
(or)
What is the game of “Self”? What constitutes the game of God-realization?
(or)
What sort of knowledge is attained by the ‘Self-realized/Truth-realized’ person?
(or)
What sort of fulfilment does “Self-realization/Truth-realization” provide us?
Answer::
(Extracted from Meher Baba’s literature, which is a copyright of Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust(©AMBPPCT), Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, Bharat/India)
The ‘Truth-realized person’ seldom has any incentive to look back upon his ‘stored past’ as he becomes free of it and is in no way influenced by it. But the point is that the “memory” is there, though it does not restrict or distort the Truth-realized consciousness. He may make use of this “memory”; but he is not bound by it.
All unrest has been quieted; and all ‘delusion’ has melted away like mist before the sun. He has stepped outside the LIMITING and EVOLVING “individuality”, and knows himself as utterly different from it. He is not affected by its ‘fortunes’ or ‘misfortunes’, any more than a painter who knows himself to be different from his own paintings.
The painter knows all the ‘incomplete’ and apparently ‘meaningless’ and ‘uninviting’ phases through which it has grown, before it assumed its last form. But now the scribbled lines have all been taken up in an entirely new and significant picture of eternal beauty.
As long as he was identifying himself with the ‘false’ and ‘perishing’ form through delusion, he could not escape the devastating impact of ‘environment’. He did actually enjoy and suffer vicariously for his own reflection or picture, through ‘false identification’. But now he knows that–
- it was not really he, as the ‘Self’, who went through all this travail.
- It was not he, as the Self, who descended to the ‘stone-state’ or ascended to the ‘man-state’.
- It was not he, as the Self, who incarnated in numberless lives to taste the bitter-sweet fruit of duality, or enjoyed the pleasures of heaven or the sufferings of hell, or inch by inch toiled up the Path through the six planes of spiritual ascent.
The ‘Self’ remains what it ever was from the very beginning, the one immutable Reality, infinite in existence, knowledge, bliss and power.
What has gone through all this illusion is the limited and evolving “individuality”, which the Self now knows to be different from itself. The “evolving individuality” is now, in fact, known to be FICTITIOUS and UNREAL. It is at once the creation of ‘illusion’ and its victim.
The ‘Self’ has not travelled the Path downwards or upwards. The ‘Path’ has, as it were, travelled past the Self. And during that process, the Self– through ‘false identification,’ took upon itself all the multitudinous vicissitudes that befell the evolving and limited individuality.
The ‘Self’ is like a spectator of the cinema-film, identifying itself with the hero of the film story. The spectator ENJOYS and SUFFERS with the hero in each incident depicted on the screen in complete self-forgetfulness of his own true-being.
Then coming to himself at the close of the whole film-show, he finds that– nothing has really happened to him. All that the ‘Self’ took upon itself through ‘deluding identification’ really happened as part of the story of creation, of which the Self, in fact, was a witness.
But, the ‘show’ has not been seen in-vain. It has played its part in the ‘eternal life’ of the immutable Self, which now knows and enjoys its own fullness and infinite divinity as it never did before. The ‘Self’ now knows itself to be beyond all the cosmic cycles of creation.
- It remains untouched by anything that can happen in the illusion of the time-process.
- It knows itself to be that ‘immortality’ and ‘eternity’ which always itself remains unaffected by anything.
The game which the ‘Self’ has witnessed is over, and it is in no way worse for it. In fact,
it was the ‘Self’ itself that WILLED to enact and see the game. It was ‘its will’ to get temporarily lost in the game through ‘illusory identification’; and it was ‘its will’ to come back to itself, with a sigh of relief and the feeling of fulfillment.
If, however, the ‘Self’ cares to glance at the film again, it no longer identifies itself only with the ‘hero’ or any one of the other ‘limited’ and ‘evolving’ individualities, but with all the characters in the show. It knows itself to be
- the ‘hero’ and the ‘heroine’,
- the ‘villain’ and the ‘friend’,
- the ‘victor’ and the ‘vanquished’,
- the ‘lover’ and the ‘beloved’.
It knows that it itself has been and is all– individually and collectively, simultaneously and indivisibly.
In the light of the eternal Truth which the ‘Self’ has attained, it can see not only its own past, but also the ‘past’ of everyone else in its TRUE PERSPECTIVE.
As the sculptor stands apart from his work of art and views it with ‘utter detachment’, he discovers that– all the time, the chisel was at work, the ineffable and irresistible beauty which he now enjoys was taking shape, in spite of the grotesque and formless phases through which the “statue” went. In the final result, there is
- the reparation of all wrongs,
- the healing of all wounds,
- the success of all failures,
- the sweetening of all sufferings,
- the solace of all strivings,
- the harmony of all strife,
- the unravelling of all enigmas, and
- the real and the FULL MEANING of all lives- ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’.
– Meher Baba
Source ::
Sparks of the Truth, Pg:: 74-76
© AMBPPCT, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India/Bharat
