Developing Right Orientation to Cognize the Truth!
Inwardness of spirit, cultivated through self-control and contemplation, enables the student of the scriptures to grasp their subtle meaning, which otherwise remains hidden from the merely intelligent reader.
~Huston Smith, the great American scholar of comparative religion
Please note the telling phrase at the end: ‘the merely intelligent reader.’ It is not to decry the role of intellect in understanding things spiritual. It implies that we need to bring more than mere buddhi-kaushaltā (intellectual competence) to imbibe the deep truths of great wisdom texts.
We need inner eyes and inner ears to cognize and hear the truth, which is our true nature. We need both the sharp mind and the subtle intellect.
A student of astronomy will not get very far if s/he reads the manuals of astronomy with the commonly-held notion that earth is flat and stationary while the sun rises, moves, and sets. S/he has to acquire astronomy-drishti (vision) to intuit and unravel the truth of the heavenly bodies. Similarly, to a common person, the world is experienced in the form of multiple, discrete, solid objects. Whereas, for a physicist, at the sub-atomic level at least, there are no separate, solid objects.
Quantum physics tells us that separation is only an optical illusion. According to Bohm, Einstein’s colleague and successor at Princeton, this is the natural state of the human world—separation without separateness. It is all a play of cosmic energy in the form of quantum soup of particles vibrating at the speed of light. However, we continue to delight in differences and fail to see that which is essentially same in all of us. It is abundantly evident that divisions of race, religion, color, creed, and culture have contributed to the most heinous horrors of humankind. This will continue unabated, as history testifies, until we see the tyranny of our disempowering stance and become mindful of our hidden wholeness.
One can never understand the Vedāntic teachings of Oneness if one regards oneself as mere physical body (deha-buddhi). A seeker of Self-knowledge has to take his/her firm stand in Conscious-Principle that illumines the activities of the body, mind, and intellect. Otherwise, the subtle teachings of non-duality as described in the scriptures, shāstras, will always elude the seeker.
The Sanskrit word for scripture is “Shāstra:” Shāsti ca trayate ca iti shāstram: That which rules and protects is a shāstra. One has to approach the subject, under the guidance of a competent preceptor, with the shāstra-drishti (the eye of the Scriptures). What is the shāstra-drishti? That I am not the body-mind complex I normally take myself to be. I am the Change-less principle, the Witnessing Consciousness of the objective world (drisha-prapancha) that inheres and enlivens the body-mind complex. Only then one can arrive at the true knowledge of the boundless Ultimate Reality, which is nothing but our true Self.
May the Divinity reveal its svarupa, true nature, within your own heart!
It is inevitable that it will.
Otherwise, you will not be reading this post. J
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