A Centre Without Circumference Is Gyana (knowledge) – So Also Is God
Posted on March 4, 2008 - Filed Under Arts and Entertainment
Gyana is never sense-knowledge. We cannot know Brahman, but we are Brahman, the whole of It, not a piece. Just think, “Can the unextended be ever divided?” The apparent variety is but the reflection seen in time and space, as we see the sun reflected in a million dew-drops, though we know that the sun itself is one, and not many.
Here it can be asked, “If you say we are Brahman, but it cannot be known, then what it should be taken to mean?” It is more a question of knowing than of sense-knowledge. Knowledge is a bridge between the object and the subject. If they are not separate, the bridge cannot exist. To know something, the knower has to be separate; and yet again, to know something really, how can you know if you are separate? This is the basic problem that faces the true seeker of truth. We are one with Brahman, there is no space between us and Truth, and so we cannot be the knower. Truth is therefore known in one sense and not known in another.
In Gyana we have to lose sight of the variety and see only the Unity. Here there is no subject, no object, no knowing, no thou or he or I, only the one, absolute Unity. We are this all the time; once free, ever free. Man is not bound by the law of causation. Pain and misery are not in man, but they are as the passing cloud throwing its shadow over the sun, but the cloud passes, the sun is unchanged; and so it is with man. He is not born, he does not die, he is not in time and space. These ideas are mere reflections of the mind, but we mistake them for the reality and so lose sight of the glorious truth they obscure.
Time is but the method of our thinking, but we are the eternally present tense. Good and evil have existence only relation to us. One cannot be had without the other, because neither has meaning or existence apart from the other. As long as we realize duality, and separate God and man, so long we must see good and evil. Only by going to the centre, by unifying ourselves with God can we escape the delusions of the senses. When we let go the eternal fever of desire, the endless thirst that gives us no rest, when we have for ever quenched desire, we shall escape both good and evil, because we shall have transcended both. The satisfaction of desire only increases it, as oil poured on fire but makes it burn more fiercely.
The further from the centre, the faster goes the wheel, the less the rest. Draw near the centre, check desire, stamp it out, let the false self go, then our vision will clear and we shall see God. Only through renunciation of this life and of all life to come (heaven etc.), can we reach the point where we stand firmly on the true Self. While we hope for anything, desire still rules us. Be for one moment really “hopeless”, and all the mist will clear. For what to hope when one is the all of existence? The secret of Gyana is to give up all and be sufficient unto ourselves. Say “not”, and you will become “not”; say “is” and you will become “is”. Worship the Self within, naught else exists. All that binds us is Maya – delusion.
The moon is within me, and so is the sun
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me:
But my deaf ears cannot hear it.
(Kabir)
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