ALWAYS, ALREADY SO!

Real spiritual teachings do not give us anything anew. They only make us aware of a fact
that we are not currently aware ofa fact of always, already so. Yathartha avabhodhane
to cognize as such, as is, in our own experience the essential reality, the truth of our
being, our true nature. And this being-presence-experience is within the reach of every
human being. That I exist and that I am aware that I exist is a universal experience
that can never be negated or denied. This self, the perceiver/experiencer of everything is
the Brahman, the Ultimate Reality: Ayam atma brahma
sarvanubhuhuh: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 2.5.19.
What needs to be cognized in our own experience, anubhava?
That:
1. The Reality is One, without a second.
2. Since Reality is One, without a second, I am That Reality: Tat Tvam Asi
This is the teaching.
This fact has to be realized in ones own experience. This alone is the sadhana, spiritual
practice. It is not an intellectual or academic exercise.
However, this understanding cannot be gotten by reading a bookhowsoever hard and
long one may try! It has to be pointed out by a teacher, face-to-face, who
has cognized this fact in his/her own experience and lives this truth. It is with the
utmost Divine Grace that one comes across such a teacher.
Rumi has put it succinctly:
Whoever enters the way without a guide
Will take a hundred years to travel a two-day journey.
This is true even of learning of practical matters in our day-to-day life. Would you go to
a surgeon who learned surgery on its own by reading a book? How much more so when
we are dealing with subject-matter that is subtlest of the subtlest: Self-knowledge.

When through the operation of Divine Grace one comes face to face with such a teacher,
one needs genuine humility to surrender the false so that one learns the Truth at the feet
of the master. There is no other way!
And when such a realized teacher points out the fact that we are already what we are
seeking, we come to realize, for the first time, the wisdom behind Sri Ramana
Maharshi's words:
There is no greater mystery than the following: Ourselves being the
Reality, we seek to gain Reality. We think there is something hiding our
Reality, and that it must be destroyed before the Reality is gained. That is
ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past
efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also HERE and NOW.
May the Divinity reveal itself within our own hearts!