No matter where we go and settle, we never really forget our roots. We may temporarily pretend to be in the new land, enjoying renewed pleasures, but there’s always this lurking feeling that misses home, no matter how crowded or chaotic it is. We can never fully disconnect from our roots.
Our real home is the pure consciousness that continuously pulls us towards itself. No matter how dominant your finite-thinking mind is, it is an appearance in consciousness. The place to rest is always here and now. The illusion is seeking it elsewhere.
In one of his Satsang, the late spiritual teacher, popularly known as Papaji (H. W. L. Poonja) gives an example of a fish in the ocean complaining about being thirsty. All it takes for the fish is to open its mouth and the thirst ends. While scientifically speaking that may not be how the aquatic creatures operate, but you get the point.
It’s like a human saying, “I am searching for aliveness to experience the joy of living.” You already are the aliveness that you seek. Our suffering comes from the identification with the limited. If you limit yourself to the body and the finite mind, you remain stressed and tense for they are perishable resources.
Our mind is a gift of consciousness to fully experience the wonders of phenomenality. No interactive experience is possible without the mind. However, the incessant thinking that arises from the sense of personal identification makes the same mind the bane of our existence. The frail body marred by aging, pain, and decay further compounds our misery.
Identification with the body brings about unreasonable expectations of delaying aging or obsession with appearances. The reality, as clearly put forth by Nisargadatta Maharaj is that what is born will die, perceive that which remains unaffected by the birth and death of the body or mind. It’s always safe at home – your beingness – where you always are.
The being while manifesting as the thinking mind is always free from its clutches. That is why in the scriptures it is called being-consciousness-bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda). The being is consciousness, consciousness is eternal, and the recognition of one’s eternal nature is bliss. In the words of Ramana Maharshi, “Consciousness is all there is.”
When you learn to abide in the being, you remain detached even while engaging with the world. The concern about What-IF transforms into the silent witnessing of What-IS.
The suffering arises because of the measure (comparison in separation) between What-IS and What-Should-or-Should-Not-Be. The Sage fully engages in the world while he remains immersed in the bliss of being even when the circumstances externally are turbulent.
The Sage accepts What-IS, and this acceptance does not come from a place of resignation, nihilism, or fatalistic attitude of the thinking mind towards life. It includes the mind not being okay with what is apparently happening. Our discontent with what is apparently happening is because of our filtered perception or limited view of things. The Sage does not have such limitations.
The Sage is never bothered about wars, violence, discrimination, poverty, and so on, and the Sage will not “do” anything to change What-IS, other than continually pointing to the root of all conflicts, which is the sense of separate existence. The dysfunction that we see in the external world is not separate from the dysfunction that happens in our personal lives. It is the same manifesting at a bigger scale.
While the world remains preoccupied with fighting and changing the collective dysfunction (which is also accepted as a happening), nothing really changes until the dysfunction within is recognized and seen for what it is. Such a seeing happens in the light of impersonal awareness of being and not through the individual’s effort to change.
The Sage never concerns himself with changing you. He never tells you what you should or should not “do.” The peace that you so desire is your most natural state. In the dream of separation, you forget that you never left home. The Sage is your inner guru that brings you home to where you always are. The Sage is consciousness.
