Part III of the book – Towards Heaven on Earth

TELL ME WHY

Some will ask:
Does it WORK?
If the answer is 'yes',
They will say:
I will give this approach a try.

That is okay.

There are others who will say:
Tell me WHY. Give me the logic.
Don't ask me to go by your harangues.

And that is okay too.

We are reasonable.
We say, if it has been proved,
and if it is provable,
it is okay by me.
I will like to prove it to myself.
I need not wait though.
I can, until then,
go by someone else's experience.

What follows may serve their purpose.

The Mother of Aurobindo Ashram has noted
a phenomenon which
she enthusiastically describes
as 'the supreme discovery'.
She says:

The "I" of each
and the great universal I are one…
This idea expressed in sublime words,
under diverse forms,
has been taught by all the great Teachers
in all countries and in every age …
The individual i and the universal I are one.
In each world, in each being, in each thing,
in each atom is the Divine Presence,
and it is man's mission to manifest it …
For that, man must grow conscious
of the Divine Presence within him …
If we follow our way
carrying this thought to our heart,
we shall know that it is there alive
at the center of each thing and every being,
and in it we shall feel
the marvelous unity of the universe…
We shall feel ourselves swept
to the sublime current of a true spirituality
taking us out of our limited frames,
our narrow frontiers…

Of the same phenomenon,
Gautama Buddha says:
In the end, we can choose
to continue to believe
that we are local, isolated, doomed creatures
confined to time and the body
and set apart from all other human beings
(and the animal and plant kingdoms).
Or we elect to open our eyes
to our immortal, omnipresent nature
and the One Mind
of which we each are a part.
If we choose the former, nothing will save us.
If, however, we choose
to awaken to our divine Self,
we face a new dawn.

When we ignore this supreme discovery,
we give ourselves
an evolutionary downside.
When we live this reality,
we nurture heaven on earth
for ourselves and others.

This aspect of Reality has been
spotted and spelt out
by hundreds of pilgrims of Truth
in every age, in every land.
While the expression varies
according to the context,
the core is the same.
What follows is a sample of these expressions,
starting with the most ancient Vedic seers
and coming to the latest living physicists.

The few selections
from the Holy Texts and Prophets
are given in the chronological order.
The ones from saints and sages,
poets and philosophers,
physicists and public figures
are given in the alphabetical order.

Masters and mystics have pointed out
how we can have this discovery
at the experiential level as well.
It will, however, take dedication and effort.
Once we have it at the experiential level,
living the discovery will be easy.
Until that time,
or simultaneously with the effort,
we may choose to live that faith.

HOLY TEXTS

Atharvaveda 10.8.38

He who knows the first vital string
binding all the things formed in shape,
colour and words,
knows only
the physical form of the universe.
And knows very little.
But he who goes deeper and perceives
the string inside the string,
the thin web, binding separate life forces
with cords of unity
knows the ultimate reality.
Only he who realizes that the Supreme Lord
is within and beyond all formulated entities
of this vast universe
knows the whole truth.
---

Rigveda 8.58.2

See unity in diversity
behold one divine form
appearing in multiforms…
----

Yajurveda Taitreya Samhita IV

Salutations to the chief of thieves;
Salutations to the cruelest of the cruel;
Yes, salutations to those
who cheat and loot.
They too have the same divine essence
and therefore salutations
to that essence in all of them.
---

Eesha vaaysaya Upanishad:

All this is permeated by the Lord.
Every element, every entity,
every living thing
and every being in this universe
is filled by divinity.
Creation is manifestation of divinity.
---

Amritabindu Upanishad

Being the One,
the universal soul
is present in all beings.
Though one, it is seen as many
like the moon in the water.
---

Chandogya Upanishad

That Being which is the subtle essence
is the Self of the whole world.
That is the Truth. That is Atma.
THAT THOU ART.
---

.Kathopanishad

The impulses are higher
than the bodily powers;
Emotion is higher than the impulses;
Soul is higher than emotion;
Higher than soul is the Self, the great one.
Higher than this great one is the unmanifest;
Higher than the unmanifest is spirit.
Than spirit nothing is higher;
for it is the goal, and the supreme way.
That is the hidden Self;
In all beings it shines forth;
But it is perceived
by the piercing subtle soul
of the subtle-sighted.
The one ruler, the inner Self of all being,
who makes one form manifold;
The wise who behold him within themselves,
theirs is happiness, and not others.
---

Bhagavad Gita X.20

I am the Self dwelling in the hearts of all beings.

Dhammapada:Lord Buddha

Cease doing evil;
Learn to do good;
Purify your own heart…
----

Lord Mahaveera

All living beings are interconnected.
None can hurt anyone
without hurting oneself.
---

The Holy Bible
I have used the figures of speech
to tell you these things.
I have said, you are gods.

We have many parts of the body,
and all of these parts have different functions.
In the same way, though we are many,
we are in one body in union with Christ,
and we are joined to each other
as different parts of the body.
---

Adi Granth – Guru Nanak

He who has the collyrium of wisdom
applied to his eyes
Seeth the Lord in all.
He seeth Him who sees the one in All…
----

MYSTICS, MASTERS AND SENIOR PILGRIMS ON THE PATH

Albert Einstein:

A human being is a part of the whole
called by us 'universe',
a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings,
as something separated from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desire
and to affection
for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole nature in its beauty.
---

B. R. Rajam Iyer
As a man you are separate from the woman,
as a human being you are one with the woman.
As a man, you are separate from the animal,
but as a living being, the man, the woman,
the animal, the plant are all one;
and as existence,
you are one with the whole universe.
That existence is God,
the ultimate unity in this universe,
in HIM we are all one.
----

Bede Griffith

It is very significant indeed
that physics now sees the whole universe
as a web of dynamic interrelationships.
When we come to the human person,
our lives are also
a network of interrelationships.
---

Black Elk:

We two are really only one.
It is only the ignorant person
who sees many when there is only one.
---

David Bohm:

Relativity and quantum theory…
both imply the need to look on the world
as an undivided whole,
in which all parts of the universe,
including the observer and his instruments
merge and unite in one totality.
---

Glen Peter Kezwer

I have performed the experiment of meditation
myself every day since 1979.
During that time I have conferred
with a large number of people
who are meditating regularly
and I can say with certainty
that Oneness has surpassed
the level of hypothesis
and has become an established description
of the nature of the ultimate reality.
All who meditate experience Oneness
just as concretely and definitely
as you perceive the existence of the book
you are holding in your hands.
The universality of this experimental result means
that Oneness must be accepted
as a description
of the true nature of the universe…

One never loses sight of the fact
that one has a body and a mind,
but one's understanding
of one's essential nature
expands to include more,
and then much more,
and eventually everything.
This understanding that "I am the Whole"
is direct knowledge of the Knower.
---

Hanuman to Ramachandra

When the later asked him
how he looks on him:
Oh Lord, when I am conscious of my body,
I consider you as the master
and I am thy servant
but Lord, when I am conscious
of being an individual self
I consider thee as the whole
and I am a part thereof.
However, when on special occasions
I transcend my body
and individual consciousness,
I consider myself identical with thee.
---

Helena Blavatsky:

Matter is the vehicle
for the manifestation of soul
on the Plane of existence,
and soul is the vehicle on a higher plane
for the existence of spirit,
and these are a trinity synthesized by life,
which pervades them all.
---

Hugh Prather:

The thing that I lacked most
when I wrote NOTES TO MYSELF
was the experience of what connects us.
I gave lip service to the concept of oneness;
it was still mere philosophy,
just one idea among many.
In another early book I posed the question
of whether there is another way
to go through life
"besides being pulled through it
kicking and screaming".
When I wrote that,
I was still in love with the question.
Now I am in love with the answer.

But please understand
the answer does not lie
in having to embrace Judaism, Buddhism,
fundamentalism, Catholicism,
or any other ism.
Nor does it lie in mere belief in God.
Believing is of limited use.
Sacred scriptures and inspired writing
can point the way,
but finally you have to walk
where they are pointing.
This you can with the aid of a system
or by listening to the stillness within you.
---

Kabir

God first created light
all men are born out of it.
The whole world came out
of a single spark.
Who is good and who is bad?
The creator is the creation
and the creation is the creator.
He is everywhere.
The clay is the same.
The potter fashions various models.
There is nothing wrong
with the clay or the potter.
God the true resides in all.
---

Lal Ded Vakhnin (Kashmiri poetess)

Because I had forsaken unity with Thee
because I, fool, had made my body Me,
because I did not know thee who didst dwell in me,
therefore I wandered through raging hells,
because I threw away my very Self,
I, therefore, was in chains.
---

M.K.Gandhi

I believe in absolute oneness of God
and therefore also of humanity.
What though we have many bodies?
We have but one soul.
The rays of the sun are many through refraction,
but they have the same source.
I cannot, therefore, detach myself from the wickedest soul
nor may I be denied identity with the more virtuous.
---

Nisargadatta Maharaj:

As our spiritual knowledge grows,
our identification with an individual body-mind diminishes,
and our consciousness expands into universal consciousness.
The life force continues to act
but its thoughts and actions are
no longer limited to an individual.
They become the total manifestation.
It is like the action of the wind –
the wind doesn't blow for any particular individual,
but for the total manifestation.
---

Norman Cousins:

We must raise prodigiously
the threshold of our awareness
so that we could see ourselves
for what we really are:
individual cells in the immortal body of humanity.
---

Native North American Chief Seattle

All things are bound together,
all things connect.
Man has not woven the Web of Life;
He is but one thread.
Whatever he does to the Web,
He does to himself.
---

Robert Browning

Take away love
and our earth is a tomb.
---

Peter Usinov

In an ideal world,
every living being would be
everyone's responsibility.
In a rut, yet changing world,
we are shyly edging
towards such a distinct possibility.
---

Sant Darshan Singh

What does it matter
if I am called a man,
in truth,
I am the very soul of love.
The entire earth is my home,
and the universe my country.
---

Sant Tukaram

The true religion of devotees of God
Is in realizing the truth
that God pervades all over the universe.
It is a sin to differentiate amongst human beings
for any reason whatsoever.
Oh devotees of God, listen to my message
if you desire to be blessed by God,
do not hate or harm others
is the essence of worship.
---

Satya Sai Baba:

The human is indeed a manifestation
of the Divine with numerous potencies.
It is the divine that shines effulgently
in every human being.
But, because of his attachment to the body,
he is unable to development attachment to the spirit.
---

Sokei-an (a Zen master)

I saw people coming towards me
but all were the same and
all were myself.
---

Sri Aurobindo:

The mutual relations of all beings to each others
may be summed up in the single phrase,
one Self in all creatures, all creatures in one Self,
for He is both within all and contains all.
But this Self exists in each creature
not partially or fragmentally
but in its invisible completeness.
Therefore the Self in one creature is
precisely the same as the Self in another.
---

Sri Ma Ananda Mayi

Wherever you look,
you will see that one unique presence,
indivisible and eternal,
is manifested in all the universe
but that it is very difficult to perceive it.
---

Sri Ramakrishna:

Beholding diversity is born of delusion
and beholding unity is born of enlightenment.

The jiva at first remains in a state of ignorance.
He is not conscious of God,
but of the multiplicity.
On attaining Knowledge,
he becomes conscious
that God dwells in all beings.
---

Sri Ramana Maharishi:

It is only after seeing the Self within
that one will be able to see the Self in everything.
One must first realize there is nothing but the Self
and that he is that Self, and then only
he can see everything as the form of the Self. That is the meaning of saying, see the Self in everything and everything in the Self,
as is stated in the Gita and other books.
---

St. Francis of Assissi:

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much
seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
And it is in dying that we are born into Eternal Life.
---

Swami Vivekananda

The end and aim of science is
to find the unity, the One out of which
the manifold is being manufactured,
the one existing as many.
…

That is a grand idea we ought to remember.
In every man and in every animal,
however weak or wicked, great or small,
resides the same omnipresent, omniscient soul.
The difference is not in the soul, but in the manifestation.
Between me and the smallest animal,
the difference is only in manifestation,
but as a principle, he is the same as I am,
he is my brother, he has the same soul as I have.
…

The rational West is earnestly bent upon
seeking out the rationality, the raison' deter
of all its philosophy and its ethics,
and you all know well that ethics cannot be derived
from the mere sanction of any personage,
however great and divine he may have been.
Such an explanation of the authority of ethics
appeals no more than human sanction
for ethical and moral codes to be binding,
they want some eternal principle of truth
as the sanction of ethics.
And where is that eternal sanction to be found
except in the only infinite Reality
that exists in you and in me and in all, in the Self, in the soul?
The infinite oneness of the Soul is
the eternal sanction of all morality,
that you and I are not only brothers –
every literature voicing man's struggle towards freedom
has preached that for you –
but that you and I are really one.
This oneness is the rationale of all ethics and all spirituality.
---

Thich Nhat Hanh:

We are here to awaken from the illusion
of our separateness.
Our deepest sense of community
comes in mystical moments
when we feel we are one with all the creation.
That setting may be quite ordinary,
the experience, extraordinary.
---

Vimala Thakar

Only the realization of common interests
will not help us very much.
Common economic interest,
common political interest,
common social interest cannot go very far.
With that interest,
there will be some kind of contrary interest.
But there should be
a sense of spiritual relationship,
because it is common to all.
Spirit is deeper than racial distinction,
deeper than the distinction of merit.
Spiritual relationship is the deepest of all.
It transcends all differences
of culture and of race.
When you become conscious of
that spiritual relationship,
you find a bond with all humanity.
That deeper spiritual relationship comes
with the awareness of the spiritual nature
of a person,
and also with the awareness
of one's spiritual relationship
with the Supreme being.
---

William Law:

We are all of us by birth the offspring of God –
more nearly related to Him
than we are to one another,
for in Him we live,
and move, and have our being.