We have seen that everyone says “I” and “I am”, and thus far everyone is perfectly all right, everyone is in accord with all other beings upon earth. But then, from this second word onwards, man voices his ignorance. He proceeds with “I am an American”, “I am a Canadian”, “I am a Hindu”, “I am a Republican”. Whatever he adds to “I am”, immediately limits his consciousness. It at once vitiates the consciousness of oneness. Thus when you say “I am”, you are at one with all mankind; but when you say “I am So-and-so”, you separate yourself and create a barrier between yourself and every human being contrary to you. You immediately cut yourself off from the rest of the world and regard others as inimical to yourself, opposed to yourself, and what is worse, harmful to yourself. Herein lies colossal ignorance. Herein lies the necessity for the utmost clarity of thought. Here it is that you have to make use of your intelligence.
If your intellect is to be your friend and ally in this life, it is here that it may be used to render you a very great service—used in its highly purified form and not blinded by delusion or by personal like and dislike which involve and enmesh it in the appetites and attachments of the lower sense and desire nature. If your intellect, your pure reason and understanding, is entangled in the lower nature, if it is thus deprived of its freedom, then the pure consciousness of I am-ness becomes vitiated. The feeling of universal oneness with all life gets lost. The intellect starts chaining you to misery by binding you to attachment, selfishness, passion, hatred, anger, jealousy, envy, pettiness, meanness, hardness, harshness to others. Due to the perverted work of the intellect, these impure tendencies spring up and produce a separatist mentality and a confined consciousness of the individual personality.
Again, I am-ness makes you feel at one with the entire universe, but saying “I am a human being” at once circumscribes you into a particular species—the human species. You feel, “I am not that creature”. You say, “Kick that dog”, “Kill that rat”, “Crush that bug”, “Shoot that rabbit”. You thus separate yourself from all other species. And then, after saying, “I am a human being”, you say, “I am white”, and the whole world of the non-white races becomes something outside of you. You create a barrier and it does not end even there. You narrow your consciousness still further by saying, “I am a Frenchman” or “I am an American”, and then “I am a Parisian” or “I am a New Yorker”, until you are made less and less, so confined indeed that your heart, instead of expanding, becomes narrow and constricted. It means that you are in the process of stifling your spirit and choking up the universality of your true being, your pure consciousness and your natural spiritual essence. That is death. Confining your spirit into smaller and smaller rings is the same as going to the very root of life or the Fount of Life and there trying to choke it. The Fount of Life overflows and pervades the entire universe, but by confining yourself, you are withholding that fluent inner expression of peace, thwarting its natural and spontaneous outflow. By identifying yourself with passing aspects of your being such as the pigment of skin, faith, class or creed, etc., you are losing all the vastness and elation of the universal consciousness which is yours. You deprive yourself of the true and exalted experience of your Self. You no longer know your Self. You know but a pale, insufficient, false shadow of your true Self. You then weep, because you go against the very law of life.
Expansion is joy. Oneness is joy. Coming out of your little self is becoming fearless. The more you confine yourself to a narrow conception of individuality, the greater the limitation that results. There is bound to arise fear, differences, enmity and hatred; and peace, which is the essential nature of the being, is lost. When love is thus contradicted by the confinement of consciousness, how can there be happiness? It is love that brings light and happiness into the life of the human being. Love is the essential stuff of your being.
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Next: Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 7. You Are Existence-Consciousness-Bliss
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Sri Swami Sivananda The Path Beyond Sorrow
Chapter 5
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, If, for a moment, we cast our eyes upon the vibrant and dynamic life upon the surface of the globe today, immediately we see that tremendous advances have been made in the past couple of centuries. Man has progressed, tapped new resources, discovered more about things than ever was known before. By his ingenuity and scientific acumen, he has evolved such instruments that things which could not even be perceived are now laid bare before the gaze of the human eyeinstruments of such magnifying power that nearly invisible phenomena and cosmic phenomena alike are revealed to the penetrating eye of the scientist at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 1. The Basic Neglect of the Study of Man
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 1. The Basic Neglect of the Study of Man, There is a simple reason. Man is, ultimately, the most important unit in this universe. In his hands lies the key to the direction to be taken by human affairs. Over storms, tides, earthquakes, drought, whirlwinds, cyclonesover the universal elementsman has no control; but in so far as the life of the individual is concernedbe it in the family, in the community, in the civic centre, in the capital, in the nation, or in the worldin so far as this life, in all its various and ever-widening aspects is concernedthe control does lie in the hands of man. Man is the director of these affairs at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 2. Who Am I?The Great Enquiry
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 2. Who Am I?The Great Enquiry, The knowledge of oneself is the required knowledge. And the education in this knowledge has to start right from childhood. It is only when the art of right thinking is taught in childhood that true progress ensues in the life of the individual. We have, first of all, to understand what we are, and what are those factors in our personality that will increase its beauty, and what are those factors that will mar that beauty. How many people take time to think about themselves? at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 3. You Are Not the Body
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 3. You Are Not the Body, These have ever been the central questions of Hindu philosophy. Both the ancient sages and the modern Masters have ever tried to bring about an awakening in man so that this earth-life might be properly used to get an essential knowledge of the Self. The ignorant, the idiotic, the stupid or the foolish think that the body is ones own self. Mans idea of himself is: I am five feet, nine inches tall; I weigh so many pounds; I am so many years old, etc. What greater folly, what greater ignorance, what greater blindness or stupidity could there be than to identify oneself with this perishable cage of bones, this gross composition of flesh and muscles and skin! After all, what is this physical sheath if it is not wholly dependent upon perishable food? at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 4.You Are Not the Mind
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 4.You Are Not the Mind, Consciousness cannot be dependent upon the senses. Could the aggregate of the senses be yourselfthe sense of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing together with the sense-centres in the brain which make them work? If you do not hear, the loss of hearing does not make you lose your individuality; similarly, the loss of sight or smell does not make you lose your personality. And when you go into the deep-sleep state where all the ten senses are totally inoperative, and as it were dead, You are still there. You are able to posit your continuous existence. When you get up, you say, I am the one who went to sleep, and now, I am the awakener. I am able to say that I have enjoyed my sleep at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 5. The Universal Factors: I and I Am
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 5. The Universal Factors: I and I Am, When you go deep within yourself, it becomes apparent that this I, your very Self, is something that links you so very close to all humanity and to all life upon earth, that it is universal. Consider a vast group of people of different nationalities, races, religions, beliefs and casteseveryone totally different from everyone else in name and form, in language, in thought pattern, in colour, in creed, in dress, in manner of eating, drinking and sleeping, in short, in everything at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 6. Wrong Identifications Destroy Universality
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 6. Wrong Identifications Destroy Universality, We have seen that everyone says I and I am, and thus far everyone is perfectly all right, everyone is in accord with all other beings upon earth. But then, from this second word onwards, man voices his ignorance. He proceeds with I am an American, I am a Canadian, I am a Hindu, I am a Republican. Whatever he adds to I am, immediately limits his consciousness. It at once vitiates the consciousness of oneness. Thus when you say I am, you are at one with all mankind; but when you say I am So-and-so, you separate yourself and create a barrier between yourself and every human being contrary to you. You immediately cut yourself off from the rest of the world and regard others as inimical to yourself, opposed to yourself, and what is worse, harmful to yourself. Herein lies colossal ignorance. Herein lies the necessity for the utmost clarity of thought. Here it is that you have to make use of your intelligence at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 7. You Are Existence-Consciousness-Bliss
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 7. You Are Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, TNow, this much becomes clear. When you say I am, you assert your Existence. This Existence is your true nature, and this Existence is for ever. This Existence is indestructible, because it is not a created thing like the body of the five elements and because it is not identical with any of those non-essential factors of your being like the body, etc.; it is independent of them all. It is changeless. Mind constantly changes, takes on new ideas and sheds old ideas. There is constant flux in your mind. This mind, which is ever in a state of change and movement and flux, cannot be the eternal factor in you. The eternal factor is Existence. You are indestructible, imperishable Existence. Everlasting Life is your true and essential being. That is your nature at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 8. You Are God Even Now
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 8. You Are God Even Now, This is the nature of the highest illumined soul who knows this. It is the nature of the intelligent, thinking man who is often puzzled, who sometimes seems to know this and again seems not to know this. It is also the nature of the ignorant man who is unlettered and does not even know how to think. It is the nature of the fool and the idiot. No matter what state of evolution or what state of unfoldment or manifestation of the inner spiritual consciousness you find yourself in, essentially, inwardly, in truth and in fact, you are Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Even at this moment. Nothing can rob you of that at energyenhancement.org
- Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 9. Walk with God: Talk with God
Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 5: Know Thyself, 9. Walk with God: Talk with God, This is the view and the vision that man, both as an individual and as collective humanity, needs today. When Professor Einstein once was asked in a certain interview, What shall we do, Professor, in order to improve the world?, he said, We must have improved people. That means we must live in the consciousness of our true nature. Even if a few people, a handful of people, make it their firm resolution, their greatest aim and aspiration in life, not to live any longer as mere mundane creatures, but to feel themselves divine, to be always at one with the Divine Essence, then real progress will have been made. Live in this way every day at energyenhancement.org
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