The Superposition of World and God
Summary: In this beautiful morning teaching, Shunyamurti explains how we are living in two dimensions simultaneously – the relative and the Absolute – and that now is the moment to use our intelligence and free will to choose the highest reality, Liberation over illusion, in order to bring the light of the Real to the dark dimension of the unreal.
We live simultaneously in two dimensions that are superimposed: the relative and the Absolute. The ego is only aware of the relative, but it is the Absolute Self that is real, that governs, that determines, that reveals, and that liberates.
The ego identity is temporary and unreal, and the function of yoga is to enable us to leave the unreal for the Real, but to recognize that the unreal itself is part of the Real. And it gains its value through its surrender to the Real, through its willingness to be a reflection, a true model, a true incarnation, within the unreal, of the beauty and the goodness and the truthfulness, the nobility, the royalty, the purity, of the Absolute Self.
Each one of us is a manifestation of the Absolute Self. Each one of us—equally—has the opportunity through the realization of the Absolute Self and the shedding of the unreal identity, with all of its traumas, its suffering, its anger, its addictions, its attachments—all of the horror of the karma of the ego—all have the opportunity to shed it effortlessly, immediately, simply through surrender to your own Real Self.
But because there are two dimensions that function in superposition—even though they are ultimately one—you can go about the process of yoga either starting from the unreal and then going through a process of gradual purification and letting go, and overcoming resistances, and finally giving in to the truth of your Being after the ego is exhausted and the world has become so evil that you want out, and nothing else will do—you can do it that way, which is why the world is becoming evil, so that it will be much easier to choose God than to choose to remain in a world that is dying and that is destroying itself; you can do it that way, but it’s much easier to realize from the beginning that you are the Absolute Self, who has never been born, never suffered, never committed a sin, never had to undergo karma—and all you need to do is enter fully into that dimension of the unreal, and bring the light of the Real, the power of truth, the power of divine love, into that space that seems to exist within the dimension of time—all the while realizing the timeless and changeless presence of the absolute, uncreated Self that you are.
So you can do it either way—you can do it both ways—but the truth is you are liberated here and now, because only the liberated Absolute Self is Real. You can continue in the illusion for as long as you enjoy it, but that enjoyment comes with a price: if you believe the unreal to be real, then its suffering will be real to you, not just its enjoyments. And only when you are willing to sacrifice those crumbs of enjoyment in order to have the infinite bliss of the Absolute Self, then all of the karma of suffering will fade away, and the beauty and the joy that is immortal, eternal, infinite, and everlasting, will be yours again.
So you can choose to live as an ego, or you can choose to abide as the Self, beyond life and death, beyond the illusions that the ego has been captured by. You have the choice, because you have the intelligence to realize these two different levels of reality that you can choose to be in. It is entirely a matter of your own free will that you can apply either toward liberation or toward falling into the illusion in order to enjoy the intensity of the experience of being a bodily entity, and then having to deal with the fact that that comes with the price of pain and death.
Everything that is born, must die. That includes human beings, it includes your pets, it includes your loved ones, it includes the entire planet—planets die just as individuals do. If you believe in the reality of that, and not see that the entire cosmic appearance is an appearance in the consciousness that is trans-cosmic, that is timeless, that is beyond space, that is infinite and absolute in its nature—which means it is not an appearance and it does not disappear. It is that Absolute Self that is cosmic, that is who you are, that can be realized here and now, even while the body remains alive.
There is no need to wait until death to recognize that you were never the body, never in the body, never subject to the karma of the body. But that decision that must be made, to realize that you are the unborn Self, must be a decision that remains unbroken; you cannot be a part-time liberated being. It cannot be that you can sit in mediation and be in samadhi, and then go back into maya during the day. You won’t reach samadhi in the meditation if you say in maya during the day. And if you reach samadhi, you won’t want to be in maya during the day or during the night. But there has to be a choice of which you want: samadhi that never ends (we call it sahaja samadhi) or temporary glimpses of a peaceful state that the ego cannot sustain or retain, and that does not reach the level of liberation, but just enables you to continue going on, but just barely, because you retain some hope of being liberated at some point. You can do it that way, but it’s the hard way. And you can also do it the easy way, and if you do it the easy way then it’s already done, without having to struggle, without having to do a lot of sadhana, without having to polish the mind into silence, constantly, and overcome the tendencies to be thinking about all the maya you want to jump into.
It’s only when a decision has been made, once and for all—and absolutely, from every fragment of the ego, in coherent unity—that you want to know who you really are, and to live in that absolute consciousness that is free of suffering, and free of delusion, and free of a separate individual identity different from that of God, from that of the whole, from that of the Buddha-Nature, from that of the Dao—if you are willing to merge into That, and lose the individual identification as an ego, if you are willing to make that choice and exchange the particular for the universal, it will be given to you without struggle—that is the nature of grace.
But grace comes when you choose that that is all that you want. If the mind is split, and part of it still wants worldly enjoyments and all of the karma that comes with that, then you create a field of difficulties, of self-created obstacles, and there is no one to blame for those obstacles but your own choice.
So, if you are choosing to do it the gradual way, at least have the ethical and moral strength not to project on other people that they are to blame for your suffering, or that you didn’t know, or that “the world is the cause of my suffering”—no—you have chosen. And if you take full responsibility for yourself, you will very intelligently choose to be a liberated sage here and now, you won’t wait for the final bell to ring and tell you, “Sorry, now it’s too late.” But everyone has to make that decision for themselves, not wait for a lightning bolt of grace to hit. You have to realize the light within your own third eye, here and now—that is what creates the bolt of lightning, it emanates from within you, not coming to you from without. And it happens when you surrender totally in love to the Absolute Self that you are. Nothing could be simpler; nothing could be more urgent.
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David Wayne Goodwin
18 May 2021I have heard of people waking up, and laughing their heads off. Not literally, but knowing it is a movie we ( the formless timeless Soul ) get to watch from inside a human form would be enjoyable. If we could REMEMBER that, we would be at peace all the time. I believe this, but I don’t KNOW it. Any tips?