All Is Truth-Part I

Swami Chinmayananda

oi-Priya

By Priya Devi

Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 10:01

To the ordinary man, his body is himself. The ordinary man's identification with his body is deep and strong. He lives for the body, strives for the body, and knows no other mission in life than seeking the sensuous joys. There is, however, another class of men who are slightly more "grown up" and have come to recognize that they are not only bodies but also creatures endowed with a mind and intellect. Such men have therefore come to recognize the existence and the workings of their psychological personalities.

To such people human being is not a mere ineffectual worm but a sacred being possessing almost godly powers, evident in the manifestations of the mind and the intellect. Such men review the achievements of science and literature; they recognize the great thinkers and discoverers; they take into account the total victory that man has so far gained over mighty Nature. Such men come to the conclusion that man as a thinking being has a glory and power not much inferior to those of the gods.

But a perfect student of philosophy approaches Truth only after discovering in his discrimination that he is neither his body nor his psychological personality. He will have come to feel that some subtle power, subtler than the mind and the intellect, is "playing hide-and seek" within him, and that it is really the dynamic 'Life Center' which vitalizes the other coatings of matter that come to envelope and hide it. He is keen to know his own real identity before he can establish his relationship with Truth.

The philosophy of Vedanta provides such a student with arguments and convictions that lead him to the seat of life, the Self that lies within the seeker himself. When the student comes to understand fully the depth and the significance of the guru's mystical words in Vedanta and comes, vitally and intensely, to experience first hand the great grand Self that he is, he gains perfect knowledge of his true Nature.

To such a one in his perfection, he is but That (That Thou Art), as he finally dropped all his wrong identifications with his body or his psychological personality. He becomes pure Spirit, and as Spirit his relationship with the Absolute is one of perfect identity. In actuality, however, there cannot really be any relationship, as "relationship" denotes the existence of at least a pair of separate "things".

Since the student of Vedanta sought Truth within himself, his discovery of it in his own heart leads him to experience himself as the Whole. This type of relationship experiencing of the Self as One with the Whole is what is pointed out by the school of philosophy called the "Non-Dualism" of Adi Shankaracharya.

To be continued