It is said in the Upanishads:
It’s not that you love your son because you want him, but you love your son because you want your own soul.
That is, whoever we love, in him we find our own soul in the highest sense. The final truth of our existence lies in this. Paramātmā, the supreme soul, is in me as well as in my son, and my joy for my son is the realization of this truth. It has become a commonplace fact, but lovely to think about, that the joys and sorrows of our loved ones are joys and sorrows for us – even more so. Why is that? Because in it we have grown bigger, in it we have touched great truths that encompass the entire universe.
Very often it happens that love for our children, friends, or loved ones, hinders us from further realization of our soul. On the one hand it expands the scope of our consciousness, but on the other hand it sets the limits for its freest expansion. However, this is the first step, and all the magic lies in the first step itself. It shows us the true nature of our souls.
From there we know, with certainty, that our highest joy is to lose our selfish selves and in union with others. This love gives us new strength and insight and beauty of the mind to the extent of the limits that we have set around it, but it stops doing so when those boundaries lose their elasticity, and are totally at odds with the spirit of love; then our friendships become exclusive, our families selfish and unfriendly, our countries closed off and aggressively opposed to other races. It is like placing a burning lamp in an enclosed space, shining brightly until the poisonous gases build up and extinguish the flames. Even so he proved his truth before he died, and expressed the joy of freedom from the grip of darkness, blind, empty and cold.
According to the Upanishads, the key to cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, is in the consciousness of the soul. Knowing that our soul is separate from self is the first step towards the highest Self Realization. We must know with absolute certainty that we are basically Jiva.
This we can do by winning mastery over ourselves, by overcoming pride and greed and fear above all else, knowing that worldly loss and physical death cannot take anything away from our righteousness and the greatness of our souls.
The doctrine of liberation is freedom from the Avidya kingdom. Avidyā is ignorance which darkens consciousness, and tends to confine it within the boundaries of the self. Avidya, this ignorance, the limitation of consciousness creates a violent separation of the ego, and is thus the source of all the arrogance and greed and cruelty associated with seeking the true Self. When a person sleeps, he is enclosed in the narrow activities of his physical life. He is alive, but he does not know the variation of his life’s relationship with his environment, therefore he does not know himself. So when one lives the life of Avidya he is trapped within himself. This is spiritual sleep; his consciousness is not yet fully awakened to the ultimate reality that surrounds him, therefore he does not know the reality of his own soul. When he attains Yogi, that is, awakening from self-sleep to perfection of consciousness.
Human poverty is so severe, his desires are limitless until he is truly conscious of his soul. Until then, the world was to him in an ever-changing state – a fantasy of both being and of not. For a person who has become aware of his soul, there is a decisive center of the universe where all the others can find the right place, and from it only he can draw and enjoy the blessings of a harmonious life.
The Upanishad says with great emphasis, “Know the One, the Soul. It is the bridge to the immortal.”
This is the ultimate goal, to find the One who is within him; which is the truth, namely his soul; the key by which he opens the gates of spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom. Their desires are many, and they crave crazily for the objects of the world, because in them they have life and contentment. But one in himself always seeks unity – unity in knowledge, unity in love, unity in the goal of the will; Its greatest joy is attaining the infinite in eternal unity. Hence the Upanishadic saying, for those with a calm mind, and nothing else, can attain everlasting joy, by realizing in their souls one essence in various forms.
Through all the diversity of the world that is one in us is walking its way to the one in all; this is its nature and this is the joy. The vision of the Supreme Being in our own souls is direct and instantaneous, not based on reason or demonstration. Our eyes naturally perceive an object as a whole, not by breaking it down into parts, but by putting all the parts together with ourselves.
With the intuitive consciousness of the Soul that is naturally and totally aware of its oneness in the One
Said the Upanishad: “This god who manifests himself in the activity of the universe always resides in the human heart as the supreme soul. Those who realize it through direct perception from the heart attain immortality”.
