I mentioned earlier that in the face of the challenges that the Reval will bring, I’ve felt it necessary to surrender to God’s will rather than rely only on my own strength and insight.
I’ve felt inadequate to the task and half measures won’t produce the result I need.
I begin that work by studying what the masters have said on the subject so far.
I mentioned as well that I’m going to depart from my previous practice of drawing only on Company of Heaven sources and incorporate as well materials from among enlightened terrestrial masters and afterlife communicators. You therefore may see a few strange names.
In terms of wikis, I’ll be drawing on First Contact, New Maps of Heaven, and From Darkness Unto Light. (1)
God is the Only Doer
“God alone is the Doer,” Sri Ramakrishna tells us. (2) “It is only through his maya that the ego seems to be the doer.” (3) What can this mean?
To our Third/Fourth-Dimensional minds, we are the doers of any action. And seeing things any other way proves difficult for most of us. It does for me.
But think of us and God as being something like a fiberoptic lamp. God is the lamp and his light is carried along the fiberoptic element. But what we see is simply points of light.
Those points of light are us. But each and every one of them is really the main lamp of God, simply shining through a fiberoptic filament or, in our case, the human body.
Nonetheless, it’s very hard for us to see the truth of the situation, having grown up in a world where reality means what you can see, hear, feel, and touch. We have no experience of the lamp at the heart of the fiberoptic lamp.
In regards to doership, we have experience of our doership, but not of God’s.
A being enlightened to a certain level knows that he or she is not the doer, that God is, Sri Ramakrishna tells us:
“Do you know the attitude of one who has realized God? He feels: ‘I am the machine, and Thou, O Lord, art the Operator. I am the house and Thou art the Indweller. I am the chariot and Thou art the Driver. I move as Thou movest me; I speak as Thou makest me speak.'” (4)
If God is everything, then we are God and God must be the doer. But what’s lacking is our realization of that fact.
Ammachi counsels us:
“The thought that ‘I am the doer’ should go. God is the doer.” (5)
“Bondage is nothing but the feeling ‘I am doing.'” (6)
“I am doing” breeds egoism and egoism keeps us in the lower dimensions. Well, not all ego, Sri Ramakrishna hastens to add:
“I am not asking you to give up all of the ‘I.’ You should give up only the unripe ‘I.’ The unripe ‘I’ makes one feel: ‘I am the doer. These are my wife and children. I am a teacher.’ Renounce this unripe ‘I’ and keep the ripe ‘I,’ which will make you feel that you are the servant of God, His devotee, and that God is the Doer and you are His instrument.” (7)
He contends that, “if a man has the firm conviction that God alone is the Doer and he is His instrument, then he cannot do anything sinful. He who has learnt to dance correctly never makes a false step.” (8)
The key is in the “firm conviction.” Again on the ladder of dimensions of knowledged, a “firm conviction” is much higher than how we normally approach things.
In term so surrendering to Divine Will, the Paramahansa says:
“The feeling of ‘Thee and Thine’ is the outcome of Knowledge; ‘I and mine’ comes from ignorance.” (9)
Ignorance lived is what keeps us bound; the truth realized is what will set us free. So egoism – the unripe ‘I’ – is what we must transcend.
I believe we can discern stages in the realization of our true identity. Four of them are:
(1) The self-consciousness that would have us see that we are the doers of every action.
(2) The realization that only God is the doer of every action.
(3) The realization that we are God.
(4) And the realization that God has become not only us, but everything.
In my opinion, realizing that God alone exists and that God alone is the doer of all actions is basic preparation for surrendering to God’s will.
(To be continued after the weekend.)
Footnotes
(1) Here are their locations:
First Contact – https://goldengaiadb.com/First_Contact;
New Maps of Heaven – https://goldengaiadb.com/New_Maps_of_Heaven;
From Darkness to Light – https://goldengaiadb.com/From_Darkness_to_Light
(2) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 236. [Hereafter GSR.]
(3) GSR, 1013.
(4) Ibid., 211.
(5) Mata Amritanandamayi, Mata Amritanandamayi, Awaken, Children! Vallicakavu, India: Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust, I, 49-50. [Hereafter AC.]
(6) AC, I, 57.
(7) GSR, 269.
(8) Ibid., 220.
(9) Ibid., 265.