a danger to my self.

the simple truth can be dangerous. it’s quite simple really, but not very popular, apparently kinda hard to swallow. i’m simply saying that nobody really knows ‘the answer’, and that’s the truth. 
   
probably the dangerous part is that i don’t believe anybody has ever known ‘the answer’. and that includes jesus, moses, buddha, shivananda, muktananda, the pope, mooji, mohammad, tholle, nanak, chopra, yogananda, certainly not me and almost certainly not you. and whether the great teachers, masters, gurus, saints and sages past and present have come straight out and said they know or they simply inferred it, i think they’re full of rotten tomatoes or tomaatos. and any way you slice it that’s hard to swallow.

leaving aside the great religions of the world for the moment, we come to the so-called contemporary new-age movement. and we observe how it too has devolved into a kind of religion. with the belief in an all-permeating self, an underlying eternal reality, we fall straight into the trap. the guarantee was that dhyaan, meditation, would be the direct portal to that self, that reality, when in fact it may well have been the very trap itself. i believe in an all-permeating self. i believe in an underlying eternal reality. what i don’t believe is that’s ‘the answer.’ in other words: where did that self, that reality come from? 

after a lifetime of meditation with a dedication most could not fathom, i know about samadhi, kundalini, kaivalya, moksha. but, i won’t lie. what i still don’t know is where we come from or where we go. i don’t know who was the first mother. i haven’t seen the beginning or end of creation. i don’t know god.

of course, at that point you’d hear ‘it’s’ beyond words, beyond intellect. you’d be told the human mind can’t reach there: it’s beyond the beyond, it just is. the truth, in my less-than-humble opinion, is that’s a kinda colossal cop-out at best, a manipulation at worst. 

my beliefs come from meditation, intuition and logic. only, as a yogi one is not supposed to accept what one hears or reads as gospel. a yogi is to rely on his or her own personal direct knowledge, hence the use of the word ‘belief’. however, even if one accepts the direct experience or cessation of all experience, the conscious dissolving of ones individual identity into the whole, the self of all, the question still remains. and it’s important, as a yogi, to bloody-well be honest about it. otherwise it’s not different from any religion: faith in an all-permeating, eternal life is not different than having faith in a god. which is fine, but it’s a faith, a belief. it’s not knowledge. 

ramana maharshi allegedly encouraged people to keep asking: ‘who am i?’ i certainly don’t know who i am in deep sleep, deep samadhi, when unconscious or dead. so, yeah, it’s a valid question. and perhaps we should include the question: ‘and where did that come from?’ we may never really get ‘the answer’, but we probably should never stop asking. 

and, by the way, not having ‘the answer’ in no way minimizes the meditative tradition. it may minimize the guru tradition, but the value and profundity, the beauty and majesty of meditation remains. that i do know.