Authentic Religion
Really, any authentic religious mind lives in a non-duality, not in a duality. For really authentic religion there is no duality between consciousness and body, no duality between the divine and the world, no duality between mind and matter; the duality is just a mental construct. Duality exists nowhere, the whole is one. If we take it as two, or if it appears to us as two, it is because of our way of looking, not because it is so. Through senses it appears to us as matter, and through a non-sensuous approach it appears as mind, as consciousness. But it is one! Matter is just a very deeply asleep consciousness; consciousness is just awakened matter. Matter becomes conscious. So a stone by your side is just in a deep sleep, a very deep sleep of a mind. It may take millennia for it to be awake, but it is. Even in a stone, deep down a soul is asleep, a possible consciousness is there, a potential consciousness is there. And even in you, it has come only to an awakening — it is there. Matter and mind are two states of one thing, of one phenomenon: asleep it is matter, awakened it is mind.
In ordinary life with the ordinary mind everything is divided into its opposites, and there is a great attraction for meeting with the opposite: the man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man – the yin-yang circle. In a religious man all search has stopped – the man has found the woman, the woman has found the man. In his innermost core the energy has come to a point where everything has dissolved into oneness, into non-duality, ADVAIT. All opposites become complementaries; all conflicts dissolve and become co-operation. Then you have come home, then there is no need to go anywhere, then there is nothing to be sought, nothing to be desired. This state is the state of God. God is a state, God is not an object. And God is not even a person, because God is neither objective nor subjective. God is transcendental.
Being is one, the world is many…and between the two is the divided mind, the dual mind. It is just like a big tree, an ancient oak: the trunk is one, then the tree divides into two main branches, the main bifurcation, from which a thousand and one bifurcations of branches grow. The being is just like the trunk of the tree – one, non-dual – and the mind is the first bifurcation where the tree divides into two, becomes dual, becomes dialectical: thesis and antithesis, man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, God and Devil, yoga and Zen. All the dualities of the world are basically in the duality of the mind – and below the duality is oneness of being. If you slip below, underneath the duality you will find one – call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like. If you go higher through the duality, you come to the many million-fold world. This is one of the most basic insights to be understood – that mind is not one. Hence, whatsoever you see through the mind becomes two. It is just like a white ray entering a prism; it is immediately divided into seven colors and the rainbow is created. Before it entered the prism it was one, through the prism it is divided. And the white color disappears into the seven colors of the rainbow. The world is a rainbow, the mind is a prism, and the being is the white ray.
Drop all duality, be non-dual. Drop all division. Just be individual.
The moment the mind disappears, you also disappear – because you exist in the struggle. The ego exists in the tension. For the ego, a duality is needed. It cannot exist with a non-dual reality. So just watch: whenever you are fighting, your ego becomes very sharp. Watch twenty-four hours and you will see many peaks and many valleys of your ego, and many times you will feel that it is not there. If you are not fighting with anything, it is not there. It depends on the fight. Hence people go on finding ways and means and excuses to fight, because without the fight they simply start disappearing.
Tags: Adwaita Authentic Religion Experience Of Silence Follow Silence Inner Tension World Is Dual
