Sathya Sai Vahini - Post 58

Atma is eternal

 

One who is born cannot escape death, some time, somewhere. Every moment, many are born and many die. But one has to discover how to “avoid” death. Now, the Atma, which is the core of humanity, is not born; since it does not take birth, it does not meet death. Death happens to the body with which it is associated, with which it mixes. The delusion that the body is the core, that the body is real, that verily is the death. When one believes that the changing body is oneself and starts referring to it as “I”, that “I” dies, but the real “I” is deathless.

 

As intense elevating activity and fearless inquiry into one’s truth are practised more and more, the conscious ness that the “body is oneself” can be overcome and negated. Consider the fruit of the tamarind tree. When unripe, it is not easy to separate the rind, the pulp, and the seed. So too, those who have stuck to sensual desires and to fondling and feeding the body cannot earn the awareness of the Atma. When the tamarind fruit becomes ripe, the rind can be broken off, the pulp detached from the seed, and the seed isolated without effort. Inquiry and unselfish activity ripen the consciousness, and the Atma can be isolated from the body, clear and pure.

 

Five encasements of the body

 

The body has five encasements, which hide the Atma. These are grouped under three categories: the gross, subtle, and causal. The physical case (flesh, blood, bone, etc.) and the vital case (breath) form the gross (sthula) body. When these two sheaths — the gross body — fall or disintegrate, the body also falls and cannot rise.

 

The word sukshma, which is generally translated as “subtle”, means “small” in Sanskrit. But it has another meaning: that which expands. Air expands more than water; space is more expansive than air. Compared with the expanse of the liberated soul, even space has to be considered “gross”! Steam is more expansive (subtle) than water. Although a block of ice and a lump of camphor appear “gross”, they become subtle when heated or lit.

 

The rule of the world is that the seen causes the unseen, the manifested explains the unmanifested. But the rule in the realm of the spirit is different. The latent Atma causes the patent world. Being is behind becoming, and finally, becoming merges in being; the patent is absorbed into the latent. 

 

Like milk from the cow, the power of relativity (maya) flows from the supreme Person as the five-element constituted cosmos, the patent manifestation. The cosmos is cognized as a composite, just as milk is a composite of cream, curd, and butter, which can be got out of it by the action of heat and cold, the addition of sour drops, and the process of churning thereafter. Churning separates the butter from the milk. In the same manner, through cosmic processes and upheavals of heat and cold, the five fundamental elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) were separated and Earth, this ball of butter, emerged as the product of the churning.

 

Three character traits, five basic elements

 

If a person or thing has one of the three character traits (balanced, passionate, dull) predominant in the make- up, we denote the person as having that trait. So also the element that is predominant in any created entity gives its name to it. This is why the world on which we live is called the Earth (bhumi). The realms in space where the element of water predominates are known as the atmosphere (bhuvarloka) and the celestial plane (swarloka). The materials therein flow in currents and streams.

 

In short, what appears as the five element-constituted cosmos is only the superimposition on God of the non- real individual Self and the five elements. God seen in and through the non-real appears as nature. This is but a distorted picture of Reality, this ever-changing multiplicity. 

 

When God is reflected as nature, the reflection becomes illusion (maya). Just as milk curdles into yogurt, God becomes the world (jagath) of incessant transformation, the image (maya) of the unchanging Divine. His will causes this unreal multiplicity on the One that He is; by His will, He can end it. He is the Master of illusion.

 

God is omnipresent, omnipotent. God has no wants or wishes. He is the fullest and highest attainment. 

 

His words to Arjuna in the Gita are, “I have no duty to discharge, O Partha, in the three worlds.” He has created duties only to foster the consciousness of all living beings. He has no activity and no obligation. He brings about the result of every activity. Without Him, no activity can yield result! He decides which result should accrue from which act.

 

Love.