"Let your thoughts flow past you calmly;
keep me near at every moment;
trust me with your life,
because I am you—
more than you yourself are."
(Lord Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita)
"Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment…
In the face of men and women I see God,
and in my own face in the glass…"
(Walt Whitman, Song of Myself)
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The nondual self has been a recurring theme for me for years. I have been drawn back to this topic as if it were a firm and demanding teacher who would not let me get distracted.
Although the idea of nonduality—no-self—is virtually universal among the mystics of all religions, it takes a particularly comprehensive and distinctive form in the Hindu tradition as Advaita Vedanta. The Sanskrit word Advaita means “non-dual; not two” and reflects "the philosophical doctrine that Ultimate Reality consists of one principle substance, or God" (1). Vedanta, translated as " 'Ultimate wisdom' or 'final conclusions of the Vedas' ", is the system of thought embodied in the Upanishads. Advaita Vedanta is, therefore, the primary philosophical stance of the Vedic Upanishads—and hence of Hinduism itself (2).
The eighth century Brahmin Shankara is generally considered Vedanta's greatest spokesman. His entire philosophy can be summed up in the following statement: "Brahman is real, the world is false, the self is not different from Brahman". Or, as a Sacramento Swami once told me, "Only God exists; everything else is illusion."
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Drawn ever back to the Hinduism’s realization of the nondual self, I wrote the following prose poem in the style of Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself," It is a description of God’s Presence as the "Song of My Self", expressing a stream of revelation flowing from the mystical experience of Consciousness and Being.
Song of My Self
I stand here as one who tastes the awakened consciousness of the Self, no longer imprisoned in the thought-world of identity, time and story. Now the pronoun "I", freed from the idea of John, is, instead, the doorway to eternity.
Such is the nature of awakened consciousness, which brings deep joy, relief and celebration. Only God exists, only God is known. All else is fantasy and imagination, God’s dream, dreamed to create the illusion of a dreamer who, upon awakening, is released from the tyranny of the dream, yet who loves it like a mother, harboring no resentment, loving its endless stream of illusions.
Never have I been born, nor will I die, for I exist beyond the world of illusions, peacefully watching as each passes by, attached to none of them. Even the thought of "me" or of the body's apparent existence holds no more reality than a fleeting fantasy, daydream or thought.
Not this, not that, I gladly release the habitual contraction of God’s Being that creates the illusion of me, and I laugh at the foolishness of my human drama. No longer a participant, I am all ages, all peoples, all nations, all sentient beings, all insentient forces, all matter, all time ... yet none of them. What ecstasy it is to wake up from the movie of me!
I am the Love that I have been looking for. I am the Joy I thought lay elsewhere. I am the One I have been seeking, holding all in Its infinite and unfathomable awareness. I do nothing and am not the doer; yet doing happens. Such is the nature of the dream of earthly existence. And when the wandering cursor of awareness returns to its Source, all dissolves back into the One. Then I am the taste of water, the sound of fire, the darkness of night, the tenderness of love, the One in all things.
Paradox, struggle, pain and suffering—creations of mind and its idea of self—disappear when consciousness withdraws into the heart-palace of bliss and eternity. As a movie film turns light into images, so projections of individual and collective mind create a drama that ends when the lights come on.
As the Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi would ask, "Who am I?" "Who lives?" "Who has these thoughts?"
Only light. Only love. Only God. Wake up!
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NOTES
(1) Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. (1997). Dancing with Siva. India: Himalayan Academy, p. 678.
(2) Subramuniyaswami, 1997, p. 852.
(3) Godman, David. (1985). Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi. London: Arkana.
