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Concerning The Journey

THE JOURNEY TO ENLIGHTENMENT

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 Concerning The Journey

PREFACE
An instant realization sees endless time
Endless time is as one moment
When one comprehends the endless moment
One realizes the person so seeing
(After Mumon)
Concerning the Journey
What is the world and why should you take it to be anything other than what you have been
taught? Namely, that what is outside of you is reality, the real world, as it is often called. In this
conception you may well have taken yourself to be a consciousness, a conscious being, a soul, an
entity able to conceive of itself as an identity encased within a body (arms, legs, head and so
forth). This identity, you may have thought of, as wandering around within a world that is truly
an externality, outside of yourself that is. Alternatively, you may indeed have been taught that
nothing exists outside of yourself and that even that is non-existent. Yet, to your innermost sense,
still the world appears as a solid externality.

This so-referenced exterior is also sometimes called the objective external. In short, the
“objective world” and your body (which is a part thereof) are actually one and the same thing.
This is so since the body is made up of the elements (the basic bits, fundamental particles, energy
states and so forth) which also make-up the so called external world. Thus, for convenience we
term the state described above as constituting the “objective world” viewpoint. This is the
viewpoint encouraged by the experience of childhood and the lessons generally projected onto
children by adults.

However, there is another way of looking at “things” but to see this we must first of all change at
least one of the terms we may or must use. Thus instead of saying that the outside world is “real”
we can say that it is merely “consistent”. That is to say, in its essence, and from time to time, it
continues to have much the same character as was previously the case. If you bump into a rock
today it will have much the same effect on your body as it will have if you bump into the same or
even a different rock in a week or so or indeed at any point in future-time. We may/will make
this switch in terms so that we can use the word “reality” to stand for something else entirely and
that is the force, the essence, the very foundation upon which the consistent world appears to be
built. Or, we may put it another way thus: reality is that from which, the world and indeed
everything, including ourselves, has emerged. This may be thought of as the foundation of
everything. It is “that from which all (ourselves, atoms, trees, atomic particles, space, electrical
energy states and so forth) emerges” and it is that to which all, everything, (ultimately) returns.
The term “God” may also be employed to address this state. At this point it may be useful to note
that we have now broken “everything” into three parts: 1) the personal self; 2) the world of
externality including the body and 3) reality i.e. that state from which the consistent externality

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(the world as well as the personal self) appear to have “emerged’. Nothing new here you may be
tempted to say. But, consider further and look very hard at the personal self or more properly at
its immediately apparent origin and cradle namely the mind. Without the mind there is no
externality, that is, there is no external world as such. This is because the so called external world
is merely a function, a very deep function to be sure, but a function only, of the Mind. It is
actually a creation of the mind. Without the mind, the external world does not exist and more
directly, the consistency that we call the external world arises only as the result of activity
expressed by the mind. The world thus takes its primary form from the self and in general,
merely through “agreement” reached between and among individual personal selves. You are
thus not a consciousness wandering round within an external objective world but indeed are the
container-consciousness within which the whole of so called externality arises. The great sage of
the 20th century (Sri Ramana Maharshi)1 phrased it thus2: the world and the mind arise as one but
of the two the world depends on mind alone. That alone is real within which this inseparable pair
have their rising and setting. The one Self Alone3.

There is only one “real” goal in life and understanding that will enable you to find the true reason
for being here in this world. Another way of putting this is to say that you are here to strive in
search of the consciousness which will enable you to see and experience the immediate
connection between your personal self and the One Self Alone. At its ultimate, such experience
can be described as the absolute identity of everything (including yourself), as One. This is just
one step short of the extreme of self-enlightenment. The term “Nirvana” (blown out) is another
word that is used to describe the state involved. If you replace the above specified ideal with any
alternative objective you will become progressively confused as you endeavor to understand who
you really are and why you came here in the first place. For such an alternative objective, the
result will be that you will become involved with a continuous scale of perception at the end of
which stand “the many”. This viewpoint can be readily appreciated as arising from the solitary
human consciousness wandering around within the so-called objective world of name and form.
That is, you will become lost or perhaps “frozen into” the world of plurality. Comprehension of
the way things really are can, in some senses, be likened to waking from a kind of dream or a
state of bemusement. In an ordinary dream things are only recognized to have been “unreal”
once you have woken up. Only then may you observe that things obviously did not exist in and
of them selves in the dream-state as indeed it had seemed at the time.

You may view the whole document on SCRIBD at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36034815/The-Mind-as-Source-of-All

1 Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), the Sage of Arunachala.

2 As formulated after a devotee of Sri Ramana, K. Lakshmana Sarma, writing under the pseudonym “Who”
in his book "Maha Yoga” (1st published 1937, many reprintings, currently available Amazon.com)
3 Note the use of capital S = higher Self instead of small s = personal self.

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