The Search for Self
Excerpt from ‘The Search for Self’
GURURAJ ANANDA YOGI: When we talk about the (Spiritual) Search, we might think of a lot of book titles: The Search for God; Search for the Inner Self; Search for Self-Realization; Search for God-Realization. But these titles, if you study them carefully, are meaningless. For example, when we think of the book title Search for God, we can ask ourselves, what is “search”? And what is “God”? Without knowing the definition of these terms, all subjectivity and all objectivity become meaningless. We have to have an idea of what the Search is all about. Why are we searching, and what the end or the goal of the search? You will always find yourself being influenced by your circumstances, and there are two forces at work that are pushing you in your circumstances.
First, you have to put yourself into motion. Then, you have to continue in your patterns until this momentum comes to a standstill and is at an end. So, at first, you have to create momentum. It’s like a spinning top. First, you spin the top, and then the top continues spinning until it unwinds itself and becomes still. Creating the momentum has to do with your free will; with your freedom of thought and with your powers of discrimination. These allow you to choose what you will follow. You might then ask if this (is what) constitutes the Search. And if so, why? Now, within the laws of nature, a person is forever searching for happiness. Consciously or unconsciously, a person is always striving to find the “peace that passeth all understanding”.
He is born of this peace; he is born of this stillness. He is the manifestation of the stillness that is the Manifestor. This is a magnetic pull that is drawing him back again all the time to the stillness. A person has the thinking ability, intellect, his mind, as an instrument to take him back to that stillness. But the mind is the most cunning animal you could ever find. Even though it is the instrument, it is also the greatest impediment. I’ve mentioned before the spiritual aphorism,
“God plus mind makes man; Man minus Mind makes God”. What stands between God and Man is the mind. To search for that peace or stillness is to “be still and know that I am God”.
But to search for this, you have to know what stillness is. To get a glimpse of this stillness, you need to be able to dive deep within oneself through meditation and spiritual practices. If you do this properly, you will have a glimpse; although a very temporary glimpse. The glimpse might only last a second, but that second is enough. If you touch two live electric wires together, you don’t need an hour to get a shock. Just a little touch, and you get the shock. This gives you an idea of what the stillness is all about. This innate, inborn force that is forever drawing you to this peace is what constitutes the search.
But people do it in the wrong way. Instead of trying to reach that peace, the inner core of one’s personality which is the heart, people take a devious path, the detour through the mind, which questions and questions and questions. That can also be a path, but a very difficult one. It is called the path of Jnana Yoga, which is said to be the path of heroes because it is very difficult. With all of these questions, when an answer comes it breeds six more questions. And then from these six questions come twelve more, until you get absolutely tired out. Then you start saying, Not This! Not This! Not This! In Sanskrit, it is called, Neti, Neti, Neti or not this, not this, not this. until you finally reach the stage in which ALL this is THIS.
So, what are you searching for in reality? You are searching for nothing. And you have found nothing. Because there’s nothing to find!
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