Other Teachings
Spiritual life, in this day and age, comes to us as a sword against ignorance, a way to keep awake in order to save our spiritual life. Actually, spiritual life should be a matter of celebration, but, alas! Such is the predicament we have gotten ourselves into in this age.
The true individual Self is the Purusha. Is it the Atman? Or is there an intermediary station? Coming down from Samadhi, the luminary needs a station. It cannot take up the unripe ego. So we call it the Purusha – the real individual Self. Thus, Ahamkara (ego), Purusha, and Atman are the same, only appearing at different levels of our consciousness.
Even great souls, from Krishna to Sri Ramakrishna, are powerful imaginations of mass collective mental dreaming. The masses have put their highest aspirations into these Forms. In other words, you get to the Father through the Son.
The Personal God, Ishvara, is real as long as your individuality seems real. When you merge in nondual Reality, where are forms? But in the meantime, and as is often said, “It helps to have Friends in high places.”
With regard to Saviors, one should use them as doorways, not doormats.
QUESTION: The mind is the problem and the problem-solver. How does it come about?
BABAJI: Mind (manas) comes out of cosmic Ego (Ahamkara) and Intelligence. The ego is like a balloon blown up in a house. It keeps everything out, but the room is empty. The ego keeps out the Light of indivisibility.
QUESTION: So the mind comes out of ego?
BABAJI: Yes, if you are speaking about the human mind, or ordinary mind. With the Cosmic Mind it is a different case. For this, study the teachings on the fourfold mind, the Antahkarana, which includes manas (dual mind), buddhi (intellect), ahamkara (individual ego), and chitta (thoughts of the mind).
The recent Japan tsunami, with its aftereffects full of the flotsam and jetsam of our material civilization, reminds one of what is ultimately going to happen to all of us who are attached to matter, objects, and Nature.
Fire, in Vedic terms, refers to knowledge, intelligence, revelation. It reveals things, burns away all the overlays, superimpositions, and reveals the Truth. In this connection, the Upanisads reveal at least six kinds of “fire,” each leading to the next – like the fire of suffering, fire of aspiration, fire of worship, fire of transformation, fire of yoga, and the fire of Shakti.