Article for discussion Aug. 29th

Article for discussion: “We are children of the light”

by Asha Nayaswami

A friend of mine, who’s come to the brink of death on more than one occasion, told a mutual friend about the last time he thought he was going to die.

It had been a wonderful day – his grown children had visited him, and they had spent a joyful, loving time together. And then he was suddenly stricken with a very serious illness that took him to the brink. He thought he might actually be leaving the body this time. And he recalled how he reviewed the events of his life, many of which had been tumultuous and heartbreaking. He had led a successful life, but there had been dizzying heights and deep valleys.

When we pass through difficult times – when a cherished desire goes unfulfilled, a loved one is lost, or the people we’ve depended on fail to stand by us – it’s no use pretending that these things don’t affect us.

In my early years with Swami Kriyananda, there was a tendency to imagine that he didn’t feel things the way the rest of us did, because he was always so inwardly centered and free. But he told us that he did feel things deeply, with the difference that he didn’t identify himself with those feelings. He didn’t allow them to become him. And it didn’t mean that he didn’t feel the joys and sorrows of this life, but that he had become aware of how very small those events are, compared with infinity.

It’s not as if we need to pretend that these things have no reality for us. But if we could see them in their true perspective, we would understand that their significance is very small, in relation to a reality that is so much larger.

The mother of a friend of mine raised four children, and after decades of marriage, she discovered that her husband was having an affair. The marriage broke apart, and the woman was baffled that such a thing could happen. For years, no one was allowed to say the man’s name in her presence. But when she grew older and was living in a care facility, my friend visited her and was shocked to see a photo of her father on the shelf along with the others. Her mother explained, “With all these kids, there had to be a father.” And it was a way of reminding herself that this life is just an endless series of scenes coming and going.

Swami described several of his past lives that he’d been told about by the Bhrigu pundits in India and people of reputed psychic vision. They said that in a former life he had abandoned his wife to go off and seek God, and how he eventually realized what a terrible mistake he had made. When he tried to go back and make it up to her, he found that she had died of a broken heart, and then he died of a broken heart.

I’m sure that many of you have had this experience that I’ve had, where a great grief will come, and you feel, “I’m not just weeping for this.” You don’t know exactly what you’re crying about, but you seem to be weeping for the tragic experiences of many lives.

And then the scriptures come along and give us an entirely different picture of our experiences. They tell us that the only reality is the pure divine light of God, and that it is we who have lost sight of that light and become confused. They use the word “pure.” And “purity” is an interesting word.

Not long after Swamiji created the formal program for our Sunday services, I remember hearing someone come forward during the Purification Ceremony and say, “I seek verification by the grace of God.” And in the Festival of Light, where it says, “Replenish us in body, mind, and soul,” I remember one of our lightbearers saying, “Refurbish us…” And that word has stuck in my mind as a very interesting image. I can imagine how we might be changed by being “refurbished in body, mind and soul.” But the correct word is “purified.” Because, you see, as we become increasingly free, it’s not as if anything is being added to us; rather, that which doesn’t belong to us is taken away, and what’s left is the pure gold of Spirit.

When you purify the raw ore of your being, what you’re left with is the gold that was always there. And when we’re seeking freedom, we’re simply removing that which isn’t God in us, so that that only the pure divine gold remains.

The spiritual life is a process of purification. And it’s no use asking lots of questions about it that are essentially unanswerable – such as how we got into this mess in the first place, or what made God think it was a good idea to put us here. In the cosmic view of things, what we need to understand is that nothing has ever actually happened to us. And that’s what my friend was saying, as he lay dying.

Swamiji used to say, “Sooner or later, you have to hand in your dinner pail.” And it sounds like a comic line from a P.G. Wodehouse story. But it’s a lighthearted way of talking about death. Because sooner or later we’ll all have to hand in our lunch pail. And the question will be, how will we go?

My friend said that at the moment of death he could see that all of these lives are part of one seamless life that’s rising and falling, over and over. And although the moment of death seems so important to us, as he put it, “I was never touched, because what was being taken away from me was the ‘not-me.’”

Swami said, “That which is being taken away from us is that which causes us suffering.” And it’s strange that, even as it’s being taken away, we think we’re losing everything that will give us happiness, and we fear that its loss will bring us only pain and suffering. We are so confused. Somewhere along the line, we’ve gotten terribly mixed up, and the whole of the spiritual life is a process of helping us get straightened out again.

Patanjali says that the first step toward Self-realization is to stop doing the wrong things – stop telling untruths, stop coveting things that are not ours, and stop imagining ourselves to be something we’re not. You don’t have to achieve anything; you just have to stop doing the things that aren’t you. And the primary thing we’re doing that doesn’t define us is that we suffer. In a terrible sort of way, it’s amusing that the most regrettable thing we’re doing that isn’t us is that we suffer. We suffer because we’ve set up so many conditions on our happiness – convincing ourselves that we need to fulfill all of these desires, or else we will suffer.

Master said, “Spirit is center everywhere, circumference nowhere.” And Swami added, “People are very uncomfortable without boundaries.” We’re very uncomfortable not knowing exactly who we are and where we belong, and what we’re supposed to be doing, and what’s expected of us. I hear people say, “I’m looking forward to the day when I can let it all go.” We think, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” And it’s not as if we need to dread being where we are, but we need to know what a waste of time it is to imagine that any kind of freedom will come to us that we don’t have already.

We do get tired of this world. Swami Kriyananda certainly got tired of this world. But at the end he said, over and over, “It’s just all bliss. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s just all bliss.”

Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was a very popular book for a time, made a wonderful statement: “If you defend your limitations – guess what? You get to keep them.”

That’s pretty much what we spend our lives doing. We fight to defend our limitations. “I want to stay in my own point of view.”

And the fruit of it is that we get to keep it. But, more seriously, it’s the impurity that keeps us from knowing God. And as soon as we let go of it, whether in death or amid great tribulations, the circle dissolves and we find our center everywhere. And then life becomes so dear.

There’s that beautiful line in the Festival of Light that speaks of redemption. Redemption is where you get traded in for something better. Here you are, living your life, and you get to trade it in for the life that is really yours.

(Excerpt from Asha’s Sunday service talk, March 22, 2015.)