VBT – Meditation 23.2
You Are A Flame
You have a lamp and the lamp’s light falls on many objects. Visualize it. In your room there are many, many objects. If you bring one lamp into the darkness of the room, all the objects are lighted.
The lamp radiates light on every object so that you can see them. Now remain with an object; let there be one object. The lamp is the same, but now only one object is there in its light. Now remove that object also: now light remains without any object.
The same happens with your consciousness. You are a flame, a light; the whole world is your object.
You leave the whole world, and you choose one object for your concentration. Your flame remains the same, but now it is not occupied with multi-objects, it is occupied with only one. And then drop that object also. Suddenly there is simply light – consciousness. It is not falling on anything.
This Buddha has called NIRVANA; this Mahavir has called KAIVALYA – total aloneness. The Upanishads have called it the experience of the BRAHMAN, or the ATMAN. Shiva says that if you can do this single technique, you will realize the supreme.
Consciousness is the source of all. Consciousness is the stuff existence is made of. But there is no source of consciousness itself. Consciousness is another name of God – a better name, more scientific, less mythological.
You never ask, what is the source of God? You know that that question is going to lead into an infinite regress. God is the source of existence, but you never ask what is the source of God. Those who have asked are thought to be atheists, and they are condemned: “You are asking an absurd question.” They are not asking an absurd question. They are simply making your God himself an absurdity.
The religions have been saying that existence cannot be without a creator; nothing can be without a creator – that has been the argument of all the religions for centuries. But then the question naturally arises to any intelligent mind that if everything needs a creator, then God must also need a creator.
But then there is no end. God number one is created by God number two. God number two is created by God number three … Where are you going to stop? There is no terminus. The train goes on and on. And finally you will become so tired.
People like Gautam Buddha, who had a greater clarity than anybody else ever had, say that bringing God in is in itself absurd. Existence has always been here. Nobody has created it, and nobody can destroy it. But that does not mean that Gautam Buddha is an atheist. It simply means he has a more scientific and less mythological approach.
He says existence consists of consciousness. Existence itself is made of consciousness. And consciousness has always been here, is here, will be here. It can be asleep, it can be awake, but it is consciousness all the same.
When it is asleep you work blindly, unconsciously. When it becomes awake you are enlightened.
Tags: You Are A Flame
