Essence of Vedanta - Part 19

Divyatman,

In the previous post we concluded that the God / Spirit / Consciousness within is like the continuum of energy that is found when we go subtler and subtler into observing a stone through various levels of a microscope, from a normal to the most powerful one.

At the end, we concluded that the stone never exists, all that exists is that energy. The stone structure gets imposed on the energy, stays for some time and then perishes. 

Similarly, there is the life energy or the soul or the spirit, whatever name we give to that, is the eternal energy / source within each one of us. Like the stone, our physical body, our mind, our intellect - all these are super impositions on that source / soul, exactly like the stone which is super imposed on the energy.

And, like the stone perishes after some time, our bodies perish, appear again, disappear again!!!

Before getting more deeper into this source / spirit and trying to express the same in as easier manner as possible, let us today read and contemplate on the exact scene, exact moment when one of the realized masters, Paramahamsa Yogananda, actually came face to face with the experience of THAT inner spirit.

The incident / moment later on narrated by the Master Himself is a real experience while being in flesh and blood and therefore, from this most convincing real experience, we will take clue and dive deep into THAT EXPERIENCE, which we call as GOD REALIZATION, which is the subject of the posts to follow, which have also been dealt throughout the posts in this blog, in various ways!!!

Now for the experience narrated / written by Yogananda himself!!

".................A few mornings later I made my way to Master’s empty sitting room. I planned to meditate, but my laudable purpose was unshared by disobedient thoughts. They scattered like birds before the hunter.

“Mukunda!” Sri Yukteswar’s voice sounded from a distant balcony.

“Sir, I am meditating,” I shouted protestingly.

“I know how you are meditating,” my Guru called out, “with your mind distributed like leaves in a storm! Come here to me.”

Thwarted and exposed, I made my way sadly to his side.

“Poor boy, mountains cannot give you what you want.”

Master spoke caressingly, comfortingly. His calm gaze was unfathomable. “Your heart’s desire shall be fulfilled.”

Sri Yukteswar seldom indulged in riddles; I was bewildered. He struck gently on my chest above the heart.

My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness.

I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap.

..........All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master’s, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. 

The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.

An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. 

The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. 

The dazzling light beyond the sharply etched global outlines faded slightly at the farthest edges; there I saw a mellow radiance, ever undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light.

The divine dispersion of rays poured from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. 

By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster, then fire became firmament.

I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. 

Blissful amrita, nector of immortality, pulsated through me with a quicksilver-like fluidity. The creative voice of God I heard resounding as Aum, the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.

...........When Sri Yukteswar and I set out later for a stroll, I was still entranced in unspeakable rapture. I saw our bodies as two astral pictures, moving over a road by the river whose essence was sheer light.

“It is the Spirit of God that actively sustains every form and force in the universe; yet He is transcendental and aloof in the blissful uncreated void beyond the worlds of vibratory phenomena,” Master explained. “Those that attain Self-realization on earth live a similar twofold existence. Conscientiously performing their work in the world, they are yet immersed in an inward beatitude…".

Dear Ones,

We will try and get deeper into the experience recorded by Sri Yogananda above and then to the secret of "what is there WITHIN, which the master experienced…ne... realized ", "How the master realized", "What is the faculty with which the master realized, if at all there was any faculty" etc., in the posts to follow.

Hari Aum Tatsat.