The Isha Upanishad

I'm about to write a modest commentary on the holy words of the ancient masters of India. These words come from the lips of my dearest friends of yore, whom I love more than my brothers, more than my father. I've never seen them. I don't know their names. I've never touched their hands or their feet. They lived more than 2500 years ago. But in my dreams I dance and sing the whole day and night with these old friends. In my dreams I laugh for days and days non-stop. For what can one do if one has heard such a thing of immense beauty and truth?

Thank you, divine Masters, for showing us a way out of our misery! Your words prove there is a solution for us mortals. Before I came to you I had read piles of books. I had studied all the books of our Western culture. But no writer has ever given me so much joy. Your words and the tone of your words show me that bliss and happiness are within our reach, that perfection is possible, that man can be fearless.

The Holy Master of the Isha Upanishad has said with great compassion:

Happiness is to be aware, not just to be contemplative. Contemplation means that you remain an outsider. You look at the world in a remote and detached way. You are not one with the things you see. You only study them. This is the way science works. Science always stays aloof. It has to study the world objectively. It has to form objective theories about how the world works. And this is all right as science is concerned. It has given us valuable knowledge, that we can use for all sorts of practical means. It has sharpened our minds. It has reduced our fears about the working of nature. It has made an end to primitive and superstitious mythological thinking. Science is a great boon for mankind. Science is open and liberal. Everyone can participate in the progress of science. It seeks truth. It wants bad theories to be replaced by better ones, solely for the amplification of our knowledge.

But science can not make us happy. It can give us feelings of pleasure and contentment, it can give us feelings of power, that we have control over the world, but it can not make us happy. Because in order to be happy you have to become aware. And awareness comes when the spirit in you, the inner core of your innermost individuality, fuses together with the inner core of all the things around you. This is not science, because science says: 'don't get subjectively involved with the object of your study. Don't let all the modes of your own subjective observation blur the objectivity of your scientific research. Be an outsider. Be separate.'

Only religion can make you happy. Religion says that there is a inseparable bond between the It and the You. You cannot stay separate, because the It and the You share the same identity. The seeming separateness of things is just an illusion. The It and the You are one in the deepest layers of their foundation. Because all things come from the same source.

Religion is not another form of science. Surely it also has to do with experience. It also forms theories about these experiences. More and more all the experiences of religion are scientifically investigated and corroborated. One day science and religion will draw the same conclusions. But religion is not the same as theology. Religion is concerned with your whole being. Not only with your mind. Religion has a poetic level also, besides a scientific level. Religion makes you wonder about the world, makes you excited, makes you blissful and content in the deepest of your being.

So listen to the exact words of the Holy Master :
 

The basic force that makes us feel at one with the world, lives, creates, dances. It's not an abstraction, it's not a remote entity living in a blissful but far away abode. No, it lives, creates, rejoices in all you see. Here, now, at this very moment. Not only when Jesus, Buddha or Moses were alive. During your own life it happens. The Spirit is alive. It makes you dance and sing. Look at the very religious phrasing the Master uses. He doesn't use a scientific word. Otherwise he would have said something like: 'a quantum field is the substratum of everything organic and inorganic in the universe.' No he is full of poetry. He uses a grand, majestic almost epic word, full of nobleness. The Lord is enshrined. That means that everything around you is like a holy temple, like a shrine, because in it dwells the Lord. So we are surrounded by holy temples, full of beautiful music and poetry. If we become aware of this holiness in all things we see, happiness is there.

In these two opening verses of his Upanishad the Master has given us right at the start the epitome of all mystic knowledge: Brahman is both immanent and transcendental. The fundamental force of reality is both living in all things and at the same time it's the separate supreme Reality of it all. It's the snake biting its own tail.  It's the whole of the universe, both the cause and the effect of its own creativity. It's the all and the nothing. The Master started with this great religious paradox, because with it started the world. And with realising this paradoxical truth our spiritual world also starts: it dispels all our ignorance.  Firstly we have become to see godliness in all things around us. And now secondly we see that what we see is not the truth but only a dream, only a trick of our senses. Behind all things Brahman the All is the only Reality.

Your whole life you grow. Your intelligence grows. Your emotionality grows. And also your philosophic awareness of reality grows. It has been eloquently shown by the German philosopher Emmanuel Kant that the world is only as we perceive it to be. We can only form notions about reality in the modes of our thinking. So when we grow spiritually, when we become more centred in the kernel of our own being, perceived reality changes accordingly. We change, the world changes with us. Now when man comes to the full of his potential (which happens to most people only momentary, on sporadic occasions, but which can be an unalterable state if you'll devote your life to mysticism), then reality also becomes different. It becomes divine at all levels. And behind all the Lord is perceived. He is the supreme Reality behind all reality. There is nothing but the Lord.
 

The only thing we want to do is to rejoice. We want to be happy. We want to sing. We want to laugh. We want to be fulfilled. In order to be in this state of blissfulness, we first have to put first things first. We first have to see that the Lord is enshrined in the hearts of all. We first have to see that only godliness is the supreme Reality. When we have become to realise this, this notion and this feeling will give us so much joy, that everything else in the world will look pale in comparison. That's what renunciation is. It's not about giving things up. It's not about giving all to the poor and be a dirty hermit all of one's life. It's not about going to the mountains and live in cave the rest of one's life. That's absurd. Man is a social animal. A zoon politikon according to Aristotle, a living creature living in societies.

The Master has shown it very clearly when he put first things first. First he wrote the Lord is enshrined in the hearts of all. This is the basic mystic axiom from which all other thoughts must be deduced. When your whole life has been transformed by this axiom (and it must not only be a thought of your mind, but it must be an experience in all the layers of your soul), than renunciation is a natural consequence. It comes of its own accord.

For what does renunciation means? In mysticism renunciation is not about giving things up that you want very badly. If you are in need of sexuality or if you like to drink, do not forcibly give these things up. If sex is properly (and that means spiritually) made, than it can not only be a joy and a thrill, but it can even be a steppingstone towards enlightenment, towards self realisation. If drinking can give you all sorts of beautiful and spiritual insights and warm feelings towards your friends, than please take a beer now and then. If a beer makes you feel at ease, please take it. If you like to have a family and children, don't reject it. It's natural to want to be loved by dear ones. If you like to have meaningful work and a career, it's no shame. In fact it's a respectable thing to do, if you want to give drive and meaning to your life and to be of some service to other people. Don't ever force yourself to give up anything that you don't want to give up. Joy is all that counts. Make joy your goal.

But when you meditate and keep the basic axiom, which the first words of the holy Master indicate, in mind, then slowly a transformation will take place in you. When enlightenment dawns on you, you will notice a change of attitude in you. All the things you formerly praised high and were attached to, now become not so important any more. You will find so much completeness and happiness inside of you, that all things from the outside can't alter your inside satisfaction. Everything you longed for is provided from the inside. So why bother about sexuality? Why bother about food and drink? Wherefore to be afraid of losing your wife, your children or you career? Nothing will ever make you feel wanting anymore, because there you are: complete, at ease, centred in godliness.

This is what renunciation means. Don't start with renouncing things. Let renunciation happen of its own accord. Your soul only wants to be the Lord. The Lord only wants your soul to be his. So why bother? The only thing you'll have to do is to remain in close contact with the divine by opening up your heart to Love. Let happen what your soul itself wants to happen. Don't be in the way. Don't force yourself to quit joyful and exhilarating things. Life is meant to be ecstatic. But keep on meditating, keep on loving. Then wealth, power, ambition, control over your so called loved ones will be of no meaning at all. You will have started renouncing.

One morning you will wake up. You will go on a morning walk. You'll see the great beauty and splendour of nature. You'll be thrilled by all the colours and sounds you'll see and hear around you. You will be perplexed by the sheer intelligence of nature, producing such vast quantities of animal and vegetable species. How well they are equipped for living the way they do. How beautiful they build their nests. How beautiful the colours of the plants, who with their odours and colours lure the insects into their traps. How delicate and tender the little feathers on the bodies of the singing birds, who fly towards the highest trees to fill the world with their enchanting music.

Or if you live in the city and you experience the morning quietness of the town just before the excited life of a new working day starts. Think about all the people going to work in just an hour. Think about the homes they've just left. Think about their loved ones, maybe still fast asleep in the warmth of their comfortable beds. Think about the movies they've seen the night before. Think about the restaurants they've had their dinner or the pubs, where they've got drunk and danced the night away. Maybe they've quarrelled with their loved ones. Now on their way to work they feel sorry and want to change. Some are depressed, others are full of energy. Each one is taking his unique and wonderful life with him.

Suddenly you'll see all this in front of your eyes. You'll suddenly become aware of the oneness of all you see. How all nature comes forth from the One. How the life of so many people in the city is connected to One. When you realise this, then you'll feel fulfilled. You don't want anything anymore. Just this awareness in the quietness of the morning...

In this feeling the Master wrote covet nothing. He means: be in this mental condition. Then you don't want anything anymore. What is there to covet, if all inside of you is fulfilled? If there is love and warmth inside of you? Maybe you want wealth or happiness, a lover perhaps. You always want all sort of things. But they are not yours. Otherwise you would not want them. Because to want means to lack. But nobody really owns these things. Nobody owns wealth, because every minute it can be taken away by accident or by death. Nobody is happy all the time. The dynamics of life also offer bad times. Nobody owns a lover. One day he or she will go away. Please listen to the master: All belongs to the Lord. This is renunciation, to lay everything in the hands of the Lord. For reason commands us to conclude that we don't own a thing. This resignation will be our ecstasy. For what have I to long for, if the Lord does not want it for me?

Only in true renunciation can work be meaningful and worthwhile. Only when we don't cling to the fruits of our actions, will the karma of our deeds not come back upon us. We have to work for the joy of it, not for the results. Covet nothing in all that you do and your life and work will be divine. For identification with our work prevents us from seeing the Lord in all things.

Nowadays there is a tendency here in the Netherlands to work 24 hours a day. The economy of our small country is one of the best in the world. The Dutch are 'famous' for their work alcoholism. Every minute of the day profit must be made. It hasn't changed really since the so called Golden Age when the Dutch sailed around the world to make trade. The Dutch still want to strike a good bargain and get as rich as possible. But the problem with Holland is its smallness. It's too small actually to do good business. All the roads get stuck when all the Dutch want to be rich. There isn't space enough. So the economy slows down because there aren't roads enough to transport all the goods. So they've found this solution: don't go to bed at night! Work at night and you'll find all the roads empty. Why work from nine to five?

One day all the shops will be open 24 hours a day. Nobody will go to sleep anymore out of fear that all one's competitors will steal away all one's clients. Out of greed for the glittering gold will people destroy their whole biology. For sleep is part of your biology. Rest is needed on the appropriate biological time. You destroy your happiness if you don't rest well.

That's why the words of the Master are so wise and appropriate. Don't be a slave to your work. If you work with shrugging your shoulders, not identifying with what you do and not prevailing your profits above your contacts with the people you work with, than thus working may you live a hundred years. Always work for the joy of it, not concerned about results, the Master is suggesting.

Reincarnation is a wide spread belief in the East. We also find traces of this belief in the works of some Western philosophers like Plato, Pythagoras and some later thinkers, without a doubt influenced by Eastern sources in this respect. I don't support this belief. I am convinced from what I am experiencing that the pure, godlike Self, which is our innermost being and from which we originated, is immortal. It cannot die. It's the pulse of the whole cosmos. It stays alive after our body is dead. But this Self has no individuality. It is a great Void. It enters into another body when that's being born, but it does not take any traces of a former life with it. It cannot because it is not limited.

The Master is writing in the tradition of reincarnation. For him it is extremely difficult to question this belief. Even enlightened beings sometimes can not rid themselves of the beliefs of their culture. It's explainable. Because reincarnation is a solid hypothesis for an unsolvable question. For the Indians thought that everybody was entitled to become enlightened. It's something everybody strives at. It's something everybody will attain at the end. But for most people it takes more lives than one to actually reach this stage of evolution. Reincarnation solves the riddle why Buddha eg. became enlightened and a lot of his contemporaries did not. His wheel of lives was ready for it. The wheel of others still rotated in ignorance.

So the solution was this: only those who deny the Self are born again. The enlightened ones who had realised the Self weren't born again in this world. Their lives became one with the gods. They didn't need a life in this world anymore. The wheel of reincarnation stopped only when one attained the spiritual perfection of becoming one with the Self. Then there was no need for birth anymore. But this notion of reincarnation does not take into consideration the difference between the little self, our ego, and the all encompassing Self. The little self is relative. It exists only because of the unique life it lives. It's formed and nurtured according to our upbringing, our culture, the things we encounter during our lives, the places we live, our hereditary circumstances etc. All these things contribute to our unique self. In no way can this unique self go into an other body (let alone the question: how?), because it would soon loose its uniqueness and become the self of that other body. No, every child starts a fresh with a new tabula. If it has some traceable aspects in its character and ego, than these are hereditary. His self does not come from the life of a former person. Then not every one would be unique. And every one is, according to our experience.

But his Self (with a capital) does come from an other person. In fact his Self comes from everybody who died. It comes from everything in the world. Because there is nothing which has not the Self in it. His Self is the shared origin of all. So in a rather symbolic way can one support the notion of reincarnation. But literally it is a dead belief, I think. It's closely connected with the theory of karma, which is like the notion of heaven and hell in Christianity intended to adhort the sinner to do good. You'll keep coming back to this world if you don't behave properly. Never a place for you amongst the gods. You'll even have to assume the shape of a frog, if your conduct won't be acceptable in your life! This is all absurd nonsense.

But it is possible to give an interpretation of reincarnation which is more symbolic, more figurative and not less profound. If we deny the Self, if we live enveloped in darkness, utterly devoid of love for the Lord, then every time our life in misery starts all over again. We sometimes think that our old life of wretchedness has died, but if we keep on denying the Self, if we don't make the inner search for godliness our goal, than the crying of the new born baby starts all over again. Only when we affirm the Self, only when we love the Lord who lives in our hearts, only then is liberation of the chain of karma possible.

In the transcendental world of the Self their is no polarity between two extremes. All dualism ceases to be. Contradiction is annulled. That's why the truth of things is always hard to understand for us. Because truth is always a syncretism of polarities. To find the truth of things you must always find out greater nuances. When you think you have reached truth you will find that you are still stuck in a polarity. Think harder. You haven't considered all aspects of the problem. Truth is always further away. That's because truth is transcendental and the mechanics of our thinking are not. In a way our thinking is not compatible enough with the truth, because of the fact that our mind is immanent and truth is not. We can only find truth with the transcendental aspect of our self. Only when we have found it this way can our mind try to translate it verbally.

Our Master lives in his enlightenment at the transcendental level of existence. He can see the truth of the transcendent world. According to Western logics he is uttering paradoxical nonsense. How can A be B? How is it possible to be for ever still and at the same time be running swifter than the speed of light? How can you remain still and at the same time outrun all your pursuers? It doesn't sound logical. Our senses don't confirm this knowledge.

But the Self is transcendental. It lies beyond our senses, beyond the world as we experience it to be. There the Self is motionless, for ever at ease in its eternal tranquillity and blissfulness. It's like an unmoving and unmovable foundation. It has all conceivable qualities and all conceivable powers in it. It's like a gigantic volcano at rest, full of energy, full of life. Because of one eminent quality, creativity, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Self, it starts to create, ie. it starts to move. Then motion comes in. With motion the immanent world starts with its time, space and its cause and effect, which are all aspects of motion. So by creativity the Self gets a dual aspect: it is by now both motionless and in motion. But it remains the One. Motion and motionless are but aspects of its nature. There is only one Self. Without the Self, never could life exist. Because the Self is the life in all things.

God is not only transcendental. It lives in everything alive. It's the sum of your life. You are It. That's the reason why you are so blissful and perfect in your most inner being. It's the task of true religion to focus our attention on this immanence of godliness in all things, especially on the immanence of God in our soul. Without this awareness religion is false and can be very dangerous actually. Christianity has gone astray in making God into a transcendent father figure, totally separated from his creatures. He is a severe, wrathful God, punishing mankind for its trespasses. The distance between this all perfect God and an all fallible human is so great that it can't be bridged (only by intervention of another God who has become his Son, but who's life is not much of an example to us because it demands too much of the average man to imitate). This distance between the the very fountain of our being and our individuality creates hopelessness for us. You can never come into contact with this God, because he is too far away, he is too sublime. The differences are too great. He is goodness himself, you are only a lousy sinner. There are words in the bible which point to a more Eastern concept of God, as when Jesus said 'I am the kingdom of heaven' but these important words have been overlooked for centuries by orthodox Christianity.

No, listen to the words of the Master: your Self is your Lord. God is your true inner being. Make the God your only goal in life. Find It. Become It. Don't project all your ideals, all your hopes outside of you. Don't say to yourself that God can never be reached. It is the very centre of your being. What will happen if we find the God/Brahman in the very depth of our soul? The Master also has an answer on this point:

We fear and we grieve because we feel separate. That's what loneliness is, to be separate from other creatures. But when we feel connected to all, then loneliness ceases to be. Our soul melts with the soul of others. When we hurt others, then we hurt ourselves. When we love others, then we love ourselves. Because then the I and the Thou are only seemingly separate. Only in this consciousness can we truly feel responsible for others, can we truly feel responsible for nature and the environment. When we destroy others, we will be destroying ourselves. When we destroy nature, we also will be destroying ourselves.

But listen to the very impact of the words know no fear and know no grief. When has a writer or a spokesman ever dared to say to his audience: 'you will know no fear and grief'? Is not fear and grief the basic condition of a human being? Are these words not an exaggeration of some kind? Aren't we born with it and shall we not die with it? The answer of the Master is very clear and simple: no. Fear and grief are not our basic conditions. When we meditate and the whole of our centre becomes still and emptied of our past, than, together with all the souls from all around coming in to us, the fear and grief from our past also leaves us. We start living in the here and now. Then fear and grief become irrelevant. Because fear and grief only exists in connection with the past and the future.

I speak from my own experience that the words of the Master are true. Fear and grief have left me since I've devoted my life to mysticism and meditation. Life has become a song and a dance, a celebration. Even on moments when it seems that happiness is away and that a dark cloud of misery is hanging over my head, I have no fear and no grief. For I know that the cloud will make the sky look brighter afterwards and that the rays of the sun are the more overwhelming when they break the cloud. The stillness I have come to experience is always there. It has chased all fear and grief away from me. The Master gives the reason for this:

We feel unhappy when there is no unity in our lives, when we we don't see the connection and the relevance between all the things that happen to us. Sometimes we are stricken with terror when we are confronted by all the things we have to do during the day, by all the responsibilities with which we are confronted in our jobs, in our families and in our friendship relations. The multiplicity of life is sometimes so overwhelming that we lose control, that we can't cope anymore with the situation. We freak out. We feel lost and hopeless. We are swept away by the torrent of the stream of life. But this happens only when we aren't centred, when we don't see the underlying unity of all things.

Remember that, when we make mistakes, when we feel miserable, when we are sad and depressed, the Self is not affected by these deeds or these feelings. The Self is satchitananda, it is ever blissful consciousness. It is untouched by sin. Remember this. This is very important. Your innermost core is never, I repeat never, affected by all you do. All your destructive deeds can do is cloud your innermost Self. But it can never destroy the blissfulness of the Self. Bright is the Self. Your life may be a total fuck up, with all sorts of criminal acts from your part, with all sorts of miseries done to you, with incest, with child abuse, with violence etc. But your innermost self is always truly happy and intelligent deep down inside of you. It is untouched by sin, wise. All the wrong you do doesn't cling to the Self. The Self is like grease and your wrong deeds are like water. Never will water stick to grease. Wrong deeds are alien to it.

Just reading the words of my Master brings tears to my eyes out of compassion. How I deplore my fellow man and woman who have never tasted the comfort and the joy of the Self. Just picture yourself the utter misery of their groping around in the dark and never to have known this haven to sail into. Truly they live in a dark night. All they see is this world in which they live, with its anxieties and its grief, with its ambition and its competition, with its ephemeral pleasures and its talk of the day. They don't have any acquaintance with a world of stillness, of richness, of childlike innocence, of grinning certainty that all will end well if one remains sailing on this vast ocean of love. They sail the tide in dark night. They have no beacon to sail by. They have no map to bring them to their destination. Their captain and their steersman are blind. They have only their rationality and their mind to take them along, but these are poor steersmen. For their mind only shows them their life in fragments, in tiny points. It doesn't give an overall picture. It's like a radar that can only focus its beam at one point in time, leaving out the rest of reality in darkness. With deep fear the radar beam moves around, mistrusting the dark it cleaves.

But I also have tears for those who only live within themselves, for whom the world within alone is real. These are also ruled by fear. They fear the outside world and have become dropouts. They are embittered by a deep loathing of their fellow human beings. Their parting from society is a weakness, a cowardice. They are not able to confront the problems of the day to day world. Their stepping out is no sign of strength but of weakness. They are constantly judging other people, instead of helping them compassionately. They feel themselves superior because they have found and others have not. They are not willing to help. They don't have tears in their eyes.

Both the transcendental and the immanent world are real. They are one. Focusing on one world with disregard of the other leads to misery and a wrong view of existence. Your day to day life must be enriched by all your experiences in the transcendental world and also your religious life will be deepened by everything you are confronted with during the day. Remain centred in the transcendental world while working in the immanent. Then everything you do will have a godlike quality to it. Everything you'll touch will become divine. People will recognize the sublimity of your actions. You will not be enslaved by your desires. You will only act out of the sheer joy of acting alone. Because your stillness will be the more deeply felt when it's replaced by activity.

When you combine action with meditation, every act will be meditative, pure, innocent. You'll not act with egoistic motives, but you'll let nature act through you. When nature in all its pureness will act through you, all your actions will be spontanous, childlike, good. There is no agent interfering with the act but creator, creation and creativity have become one in the play of acting. Your act will become like the flowering of a plant, creating beauty out of its natural abundance.

Let's follow the Master in his theory of reincarnation. His culture was so convinced of the importance of combining action with meditation, that they thought death would be conquered if one could live in this way. Because every action would follow the laws of dharma, the righteous way of nature. This way the soul would not be stained with sins and when a soul was totally immaculate there was no need anymore for a new reincarnation. It did not have to enter the body anymore to give life a second try. Through meditation and the art of combining meditation with action the soul would become immortal.

Although we discard this theory, we still believe in the importance of combining action with meditation. In a way we become immortal, because when we act without being addicted to our actions and with a total relapse into calmness once we've stopped acting, then our life has become immortal at that very moment. Because then we live in the here and now completely without being afraid of death. For fear of death is created by our desires of unattained goals and the fear of leaving something unfinished, undone when we die. But when we are liberated from these desires and fears through meditation, than fear of death will leave us also. In this sense we will have become immortal.

But also in a more literal sense will we reach immortality. When meditation and action are combined in the right way, we will become the pure Atman of the Hindu's, the pure Void of the Buddhists. We will be totally freed from all our limiting peculiarities and we will cross the border of our seperateness. We will become the All. The All is eternal, for ever living and creating in its joyous play. So when we become the All, we will be immortal. During our life we will have stepped the border of this one limited life and entered the region where all lives are created.

I can still remember the religion of my youth. I was told about a God who guarded me like a benevolent father. He was imagined to be out there somewhere in space, controlling the world from some sort of golden palace where he was seated on a big throne, with his long great beard much resembling a monarch out of oriental antiquity, pictures of whom I had seen at school. He was the great Other, a kind of perfect version of the imperfect child I was supposed to be. We had to pray to him if we had to have some sort of success in all our endeavours. My little name was subscribed in his great book and he had counted all the hairs on my head, a feat I did not know in great bewilderment to account for. Thinking about this Father made me feel at ease, because I felt protected, but at the same time I was a bit scared because I was told that he was a wrathful father also, who would not condone all my little sins. If he could count all the hairs on my head, would he not be able to look inside my heart, where I knew there were some thoughts of which there was nothing to be proud of?

This God was too great, too perfect to be living in my sinful heart. Jesus, his son, was more like a friend to me. Him I loved more. I was not afraid of this Jesus. All the pictures in the children bible presented him as someone very lovable and a great friend of children. So I prayed to him to have a word with his father about me. That He must not be angry with me. That my little name must not be written in red in his great book, as if I still owed Him something. God was something to be feared. Jesus was my intercessor. Jesus had been a man like me also. He knew what it was like.

So the God of my youth was transcendent only and in dark night I lived. For this God was not the God of my own heart. This God did not provide the warmth like the Lord does who resides in the heart of All. This God was too far away. He was the Other, not the Self. O, how I pity all men who read about and believe in this One Far Away and have not found the God of all hearts, the One the most nearest. For godliness is not something far away. It is something very close at hands. It's your own self that's godlike.

But it must be remembered that the One is not only immanent either. For then it would be living in the phenomena only and not apart from it. It would then be subject to the laws of this world and would be temporal, fleeting. It would dependent on matter for its existence. It would not have all the characteristics of the Supreme like timeless being, indestructibility, unshakable bliss. God does not only live in our hearts or in our world. It is everywhere. It's the space, the void, the consciousness and all matter of this universe.

In the darkness of night we come to see the light. When all is silent around you, when you feel lonely, when you are afraid of the dense black that surrounds you, when everything seems deserted, than suddenly, when you expect it the least, you begin to see the light in the depth of your being. In the darkness of despair, when death seems close at hand, when there seems to be no comfort left, when all is forsaken in utter misery, the Self starts presenting itself and begins to shine its illuminating brigthness. To become aware of the religious reality hidden behind the everyday reality you need to face the darkness first. Only in suffering will you feel life at the deepest level. You have to go into the dark night first. Only there will you find God. For when everything is light around you, when you are beautiful and young, when success clings to your shoulder as the wings of an angel, when you foster the illusion that the world will shower its blessings unto you, then the Self stays hidden. For the face of truth is hidden by your orb of gold, o sun, as our beloved Master tells us. You can not see the King of Kings, the great Restorer, with your mortal eyes but you can see it only when you close them in pain. Only in darkness will it been known.

But when it is known, after the crisis, after the darkness, after the pain and the sorrow, then a light will enter your life that is far more brighter than all the light you have ever seen in your life. First the suffering must come. Because first you have to become utterly serious, utterly aware of all the suffering in the world, utterly convinced of the vanity of all 'worldly goods'. The bias of your life must make a shift first. First your heart must cry out for the One. First the darkness must come.

But it is not a coincidence that here in the Upanishad the most beautiful exclamation is found. Once the Light brighter than light is found an astonishing revelation will happen. With a cry of joy, with tears rolling down on your cheeks you will suddenly realise: even that very Self am I! That's the meaning of the words written here in the Upanishad. Our Master asks for spiritual darkness that he may come to see the Self in all its dazzling splendour, a splendour which is nothing in comparison to the splendour of the sun.

But not only in the darkness of suffering will the Self present itself. Also in meditation and in the darkness of death, when the soul enters its immortal rest, will the Self be realised. First the ego and all its thoughts must be reduced to a mere nothingness, which can only happen in suffering, meditation or death. First surrender must come. So now the Upanishad will speak of meditation and death:

Perhaps you have seen it once. It's always a wonderful thing to behold. I have seen it once and it has never left me since. Every day it keeps coming back from my memory. For I once attended the deathbed of someone dear to me. After a long sickness and after much suffering and pain, the moment of deliverance was nigh for him. My friend had felt great pain and it had made the traits on his face look harsh and distorted. But when the hour of death came, his face softened and began to radiate a beauty and a gladness it had never shown during his lifetime. Finally his soul was freed from life's burdens, finally the fight for life was ended. Suddenly my friend realised that it was no use anymore to resist the course of nature. Death conquers all. But instead of great anxiety and panic about the loss of his life, he was bewildered about what happened to him. He whispered in my ear: "This is extraordinary! I have never felt anything like it. In a moment I am going to die, and look at me! Look at my face! What a stillness! What a deep calmness enters my body! I never thought dying would be like this. I have always had my fears. But this is the greatest bliss I have ever felt. I'm not worried anymore. Everything will work out just fine for me."

So you don't have to wish it's going to happen. It will happen of its own accord. Your life will merge in the Immortal when your body is reduced to ashes. When your life ends, you will have the bliss of the Immortal. Then you will relapse again into your primordial happiness. Death is nothing to be afraid of. Every face of every dying person will show it.

But listen to the words of the Master. He is so wise and full of understanding. His words must not be overlooked. Look at how he juxtaposes another mean of deliverance besides death. And it is perhaps a more glorious way of redemption, because it can make you have the same sensations as my friend had on his deathbed, it can give you the same ecstasy and the same joy. But you will have the advantage to have them during your lifetime. You will have longer time to be aware of the same bliss he had.

For meditation is like death. It also delivers you from all your worries and anxieties. It also makes an end to all battles. It's the great relieve. All you have to do is relax yourself in the eternal Brahman. Fight no more. Trust the way things are for you. Lay aside all fear and hope. Let the past be stored away for good and only take a look at the treasures now and then, but don't carry them with you. Don't project your thoughts to the future. It's not up to you to influence the course of things. Be a part of it, but don't try to master it. Be a meditator in the present. Have joy in the present.

Keep in mind the deeds of your past, when your life was ruled by the laws of karma. Remember the deeds of the past. Do you remember how miserable you were? How all your decisions seemed to be in vain? How you tried to control your life, but how you never seemed to manage it completely. Remember the deeds of the past. Did they ever contribute to anything? Were all the deeds from your past not like the chasing of shadows? Always within reach, but always escaping your clutch. Were your deeds not like the dreams you had in the night? All promising and a great enchantment, but in the morning you woke up all sobered up. It was just a dream. So don't stick to the deeds of the past. Leave them. It was good when you performed them, because they had a reason in their time. They showed you the vanity of all things. But now you are in the arms of the great Beloved.

The good path is only the path of meditation. The good life is not a question of morality. It's not about 'do this ...' and 'do that....' or 'I ought to....'. Morality is always very superficial. It's on the surface level of things. You can do all sorts of good things but your heart can remain black, full of hatred, full of revenge and egoistic traits. First your heart must become become tranquil and pure again. Then good deeds will follow of their own accord. Don't reverse the order. Don't foster the illusion that by performing good deeds your heart will become free of its hatred and its misery. For it will not. You can never make yourself innocent by deeds alone. You'll have to make contact with the source of all goodness. Be a meditator and good deeds will flow spontaneously out of you, without you interfering. For the you can only be selfish. Your deeds can only be selfish. Let your deeds be the deeds of God. That can only happen when you become God.

Let our meditation be our prayer, full of surrender to the mighty All. Let our meditation be a prayer of thankfulness, for the wisdom and the happiness that grows in our heart. Let our meditation be a total stillness where all our insufficient words cease to pronounce themselves. Let the light of our lives, the sun, o god of fire, be the one who will free us of our misery and not the dark star of death. For already in this life we can attain that blissful state which we surely will enter when this life is over. In this life we can be delivered of our evil, which is nothing but our misery. This life is the only paradise we can be aware of. It's up to us to play the game of life this way.

In wonder about the universe, with jubilation in our hearts we bow and pray again and again.

O M shanti shanti shanti  

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