Our relation with Reality
The universe has been existing since aeons and it is going to exist for many millions of years, whereas the perception of this world by individuals is varying. This apparently perpetual existence of the universe makes us believe that the spiritual being must be eternal. If it has a beginning and an end, it will be the basis of eternal experience. Brahman must be eternal. Then alone can there be justification for our eternal aspiration for perfection. We have a yearning to be perfect; nobody wishes to be imperfect in any way. There is a longing to become complete in every way, in knowledge, power and experience of happiness. Everybody wants to have the utmost possible knowledge, the greatest power and consequently, the greatest freedom and happiness.
We want to exist for ever. Who wants to die? There is a desire in every one to live for ever, eternally; all have a dread of death. One wants to be the most intelligent being, filled with cosmic consciousness, and wants to be fully free unrestricted by the things of this world. We want unlimited bliss. We have an aspiration for Satchidananda. We want to have an eternal experience of existence-absolute, an eternal experience and absolute knowledge, absolute bliss and absolute power. We want everything complete and infinite. And according to the analysis that we have made, infinite bliss or infinite knowledge would be impossible unless we intimately relate ourselves with the spiritual being, with the Infinite. In other words we must become the Infinite.
To know the Infinite is to become the Infinite, and we cannot know It through the senses. For the moment we look at it through the senses, it would appear like the world. After all what is this world? This world itself is God. God is not somewhere outside the world. But He is not seen, not recognised. He is recognised in a wrong way. We think He is the body, He is the matter, He is space, He is time, He is the gross world. No. This is not correct perception. Human perception does not correspond to Reality. Reality consists in the experience of Chit, knowledge uncontracted. This is the only thing that is eternal, and when it is objectified and looked at through the mind and the senses, it becomes the physical universe.
So, the purpose of Yoga is to withdraw the mind from objective perception and centre it in Chit. It is the resting of the seer in his own Self. Now, in this world the consciousness is in a state of tension. It is moving outside in search of pleasure. It has to be brought back from this fruitless quest and made to rest in itself. Only when it rests in itself there is experience of happiness. Happiness is not the result of contact of a person with an object. It is the result of the cessation of desire. As long as a desired object is not possessed, there is unrest, but when the desire is quenched, there is happiness. Happiness has not come from the object. It has come from the extinction of the particular form of the mind which was moving outside in search of peace. Therefore, bliss is in the heart of consciousness. It is everywhere, because without it no perception is possible.
Peace love harmony