WHAT YOU ARE NOT
You are not your body. As long as you identify with your body, you can never be content. How can you be? The body is in a constant state of change so therefore is not one thing. Forever, until it perishes, it is many things happening all at once. It can't be pinned down.
Western religions believe that you ARE the body. This is among the reasons behind burial. You need your body in the resurrection. This, of course, is absurd, for when you die your body turns to dust. A lot of good dust will do you in the afterlife.
You body, if anything, is a possession. "I have a body," you say. We are aware of our body, as when we feel well and when we feel poorly.
A saying these days is, "we are not a physical person having a spiritual experience, but rather a spiritual being having a material experience." In Vedanta temples, students hear again and again, every day, "You are NOT the body, you are Spirit," a message that works its way into their consciousness until, in time and in some way, they know it to be true. This is where spiritual life really begins, actually.
After a person has heard this message enough and has absorbed it, then he must make it a living reality. He does this by consistently inquiring, "Am I this body? What is this 'I AM'?" One normally is fully aware OF his body, his senses, and his mind, but then he has to turn this awareness around to that which IS awareness. A person has to be Aware of Awareness itself, in other words. This is what Ramana Maharshi referred to as abiding in the Self, which is pure consciousness.
Our time here is limited. Not one moment of it can be bought back, not for millions, billions, or trillions of dollars. Why waste the time we have here in believing we are our body, and trying to satisfy our senses, which, after all, even the most common animal can do. Better to do that which only the human being (the homo sapien--man who knows he knows) can do. Don't be what you are not but what you are.
(Vedic priest Aja Thomas was the source in part of this posting.)
Western religions believe that you ARE the body. This is among the reasons behind burial. You need your body in the resurrection. This, of course, is absurd, for when you die your body turns to dust. A lot of good dust will do you in the afterlife.
You body, if anything, is a possession. "I have a body," you say. We are aware of our body, as when we feel well and when we feel poorly.
A saying these days is, "we are not a physical person having a spiritual experience, but rather a spiritual being having a material experience." In Vedanta temples, students hear again and again, every day, "You are NOT the body, you are Spirit," a message that works its way into their consciousness until, in time and in some way, they know it to be true. This is where spiritual life really begins, actually.
After a person has heard this message enough and has absorbed it, then he must make it a living reality. He does this by consistently inquiring, "Am I this body? What is this 'I AM'?" One normally is fully aware OF his body, his senses, and his mind, but then he has to turn this awareness around to that which IS awareness. A person has to be Aware of Awareness itself, in other words. This is what Ramana Maharshi referred to as abiding in the Self, which is pure consciousness.
Our time here is limited. Not one moment of it can be bought back, not for millions, billions, or trillions of dollars. Why waste the time we have here in believing we are our body, and trying to satisfy our senses, which, after all, even the most common animal can do. Better to do that which only the human being (the homo sapien--man who knows he knows) can do. Don't be what you are not but what you are.
(Vedic priest Aja Thomas was the source in part of this posting.)
posted by Donald L. Simons at
12:04 PM
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