KNOWING THE SUPREME CONSCIOUSNESS


Let us think. What is this Supreme Consciousness? In India we use the word God for this Supreme Consciousness. Each of us has one's own perception and concept about this God. To some of us God exists in holy places; to some of us He is at home; some of us believe He exists in our hearts; some of us hear and think that He is everywhere (omnipresent). But how many of us really know where He is and what He is? There is a vast difference between believing and knowing something. Let us understand the difference with an example. Imagine there is a child who does not have a grand-father. His mother explains to the child about his grand father who passed away before he was born. The child would imagine his grand father believing what his mother told about him. Now there is another child whose grand father is alive and visits him very often. His mother introduces him to his grand father and the child has a live relationship with his grand father every time he meets him. For the first child, his grandfather will be a concept or an imagination, while the second child will gain true knowledge through experience with the grandfather he meets often. The first child believes in a grandfather while the second knows his grandfather.

So any knowledge that comes through experience is true knowledge. If we have to know God, the only way is to experience Him. And to experience Him, we need to have a live relationship with Him. Now let us see why we should know or have a live relationship with God.

Every minute in our life, we relate to someone or the other, at home, office, anywhere. We converse with people to work and get work from people. We establish relationship with people because this is a must for any activity. There can be no society without activity and there can be no activity without relationship. So our life is nothing but relationships. When relationships are smooth, we are happy. If these relationships should be smooth, our main relationship, that is, our relationship with God should also be very smooth. Today the crux of the problem is - Man is not relating to God the way he should. We have kept God separately in our temples/sacred places and go about without taking us with Him. Or we seek God only during difficulty. We feel that it is the work of the religion or religious people to take care of God and conveniently separate ourselves from our responsibility.

What we need to understand is - we should relate to God or the Supreme Consciousness more often than we do now, if at all we do. We need to relate to God not out of fear of punishment but merely because we need help from Him too, just as we need help from others in society. Can we exist alone in a Society? I think you are all intelligent to understand that we have to be social and cannot exist alone. Just as we need our society to help us with shops, jobs, hospitals and other establishments for our life, we need God's help too, especially in cases where most of our efforts are in vain. For this we have to establish a relationship with God.

Sri Bhagavan's Message on Mumbai Terror Attack

Q) "What can we do as individuals in the face of inhuman violence, terrorism?"

We wake up to another day’s revenge, retribution and rancor. The violence and brutality that surrounds us is the result of the destructive effect of fragmentation – one individual against another, one group against another, religiously, socially, culturally and economically. We are brothers and sisters, children of the same mother, inheritors of the same collective destiny. What we do to another, we do to ourselves. Why then do we behave as though we are inhuman warring tribal factions? How can we hunt or kill another? Is not the experience of pain same for all? Do not all living beings dread fear? How then can we perpetrate violence and pain on another? Will we today take the time to teach our children that division in any name whether sacred or secular is a crime? Will we tell them that we are human beings and not labels that divide us? Will we in this moment of crisis mould their young minds to be citizens of the world and not narrow bigots?

Ideological differences are at the root of the violence that is robbing sanity and endangering survival. When we become concerned with our own individual survival, with the survival of our group, our belief, we are being divisive and threaten the actual survival of the whole.

Let us have a deeper insight into truth. The violence and conflict we are witnessing is a dramatization of the unspeakable inner violence of humanity. We are not individuals, separate. What happens to us happens to all of humanity, all of life. Physically we might live isolated in our secluded homes, screening our domestic violence from the eyes of the world but psychologically we are inseparable from the whole of mankind. The poisonous fumes of our inner turbulence seep through the collective consciousness of humanity. The violence within us, between parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and at work is the very source of danger and destruction.

Let each one of us respond with a sense of immediacy. Let all of us, the atheist and the God fearing, the peasant at the plough and the mother beside the cradle, the office goer and the laborer, let us all own responsibility for what is happening around us. What ‘can’ we do as individuals now? What ‘must’ we as individuals do now?

How can each of us be content to see some heroes and professionals sacrificing their lives to protect the safety of others while we remain passive onlookers watching the drama of terror unfold right in front of our eyes? The specialists, whether from the armed forces or the political systems can alleviate the pain of the moment. They can remove the symptom but the cause of the violence lies simmering within our consciousness. It lurks as conflict, suppressed anger, divisiveness and spite within every one of us. Until this issue is addressed, violence would continue to unfold in the world’s nations in one name or the other. The real solution therefore is to turn our attention inward, can we recognize the violence within and give way to peace. Even if 10 million among us who belong to a nation of 1 billion will get into peace, violence will subside. If 10 millions will move into a higher state of consciousness, a state of total inner non-violence, peace and wellbeing would be possible. Though the causes of violence would continue to exist, they will not translate into acts of violence. We are the triggers of violence or peace. We cannot return to business as usual without steering away from our own inner strife.

The destiny of every human being known and unknown is tied up with us. In the crucible of terror that surrounds us, let us recast ourselves into a new generation of human beings. Let us move from the dark night of division towards the dawn of co-operation and Oneness. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

- Sri Bhagavan
Oneness University

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