FINDING ONE'S IDENTITY

There comes a time in one's life where he or she starts to question various happenings taking place in their lives. It could be a result of or after a series of tragedies. It could be a sudden urge to know one's purpose in life and in taking birth. It could be a thirst for knowledge of the world beyond us. It could be an interest in the mystical sciences. It could be the golden question "Who Am I?" 

He then begins to knock on the doors of establishments, monasteries or homes of Gurus for an answer to life's questions hoping to gain an answer. He seeks to know his identity elsewhere, wishing that the gurus or establishments would reflect or portray his Self. But sadly he does not see his true Self here but instead is shown the faces of others. He gets involved with the Guru and the establishment forgetting his true purpose in coming there that is to know "Thy Self." We are so engrossed with what goes on around us that we fail to watch within, listen to the Self speak, gain Self-Realization. After seeking the answers in these places or seeking his identity hoping to see himself in the mirror, he comes to realize that the answers are not out there but hidden well within him. The paths of Sariyai, Kriyai, Yogam were drafted to lead us from external to within. Once we go within, the path of Jnana dawns. All is answered. One comes to know the Self. 

Neale Donald Walsch in his "Conversations with God, Book One", Hodder and Stoughton, 1995, pens down God's conversation with him beginning with an answer to a question of his and many others: How does God talk and to whom?

God answers: "I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to who do I talk, but who listens?" God tells Walsch he is not talking but rather communicating with him. "I do not communicate with words alone. My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. I also communicate with thought. I also use the vehicle of experience as a grand communicator."

God tells him that when feelings, thoughts, and experience fail, finally God uses words - and belief me his words can be quite stern and harsh. We have gone through that because we ignored all the signs he gave through feelings, thoughts and our experiences.

God tells Walsch: "Words may help you understand something. Experience allows you to know. Yet there are some things you cannot experience. So I have given you other tools of knowing. And these are called feelings. And so too thoughts."

"Now the supreme irony here is that you have all placed so much importance on the word of God, and so little on the experience."

God chides us for placing little value on experience. He gets through an important message to us.

"Many words have been uttered by others in my name. Many thoughts and many feelings have been sponsored by causes, not of my direct creation. Many experiences result from these."

Hence we learn that we should not blame God for everything.

"The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the differences between messages from God and data from other sources."

God questions whether his messages are heeded?  "Most of my messages are not. Some because they seem too good to be true. Others because they seem difficult to follow. Many because they are simply misunderstood. Most because they are not received. My most powerful messenger is experience and even this you ignore. Especially this you ignore."

God seems to be quite sore with us, "Your world would not be in its present condition were you to have simply listened to your experience."

God asks us to listen to our experience. "The result of you not listening to your experience is that you keep reliving it over and over again."

He says he will neither force nor coerce us for we have been given a free will - the power to do as we choose - and he assures us that he will never take that away from us.

But the reminder here for us is to use it wisely or be prepared to come back again and again to correct the wrongs.

God gives Walsch a surety. "My messages will come in a hundred forms at thousand moments across a million years. You cannot miss them if you truly listen. You cannot ignore them once truly heard. Thus will our communication begin in earnest. For in the past you have only talked to me, praying to me, interceding with me, beseeching me. Yet now I talk back to you, even as I am doing here."

The soul is here to gain experiences that come about from hidden desires and vasanas. In "The Little Soul and the Sun", a children's parable adapted from "Conversations with God", Hampton Roads Publishing Company Ins, 1998, Neale walks us through another conversation between a Little Soul and God.

"The Little Soul knew itself to be the Light but it wanted to experience itself as Light. And God said that if it wanted to know the Light it must also know the Darkness. For how else can one know Up without Down, Hot without Cold, Fast without Slow? Then the Little Soul understood that in getting to know Who It Really Is, it would have to know the opposite. And so the Little Soul embarked upon an adventure very much like that we all share on Earth."

Knowing who it was was not enough. The Little Soul wanted to be who it was. God ask him, "You mean you want to be Who You Already Are?" The Little Soul replies that it wanted to feel what it is like to be the Light.

God goes on to explain. "Well, there is nothing else but the Light." But as the Little Soul wanted to know itself as the Light amidst the Light, God tells him, "Since you cannot see yourself as the Light when you are in the Light, we will surround you with darkness which is that which you are not." God explains that in order to experience anything at all, the exact opposite of it will appear, reminding the soul for instance, not to shake his fist and raise his voice and curse the darkness when he is surrounded with it. "Rather be a Light unto the darkness and do not be mad about it. Let your Light so shine that everyone will know how special you are."

The story goes on to narrate how the young soul who knew he was Light but wanted to experience it, chose to pick a desired act that he would like to do, from a list of many, once he is on earth. He chooses the act of forgiving. Another soul immediately steps up to join the soul in fulfilling its wish by being the perpetrator so that the young soul can then forgive him. They both come down to earth to live out their desires. This desire triggers a chain of events, a learning process takes place and several experiences are recorded, whereby the soul becomes enriched through these experiences. We, being Light in essence, for want of experiencing it, had darkness and all opposites created for us. As all the souls are perfect, many wanted and volunteered to come down to help us gain the experience. Thus we had all known each other earlier. We had planned to be together here. Those who needed a particular experience chose to come early while others remained behind to join later. We have worked out all things at the level of the soul and wait for it to take shape and happen or act it out on the physical plane - earth. We create the situation and the scenario allowing all our wishes to take shape. What we are going through is what we had asked for. We had asked for this experience and hence are enacting the role and taking on the experiences. Hence when we begin to understand that everything comes to take its respective form and place according to the wishes of the souls and the divine law of nature (God), we can settle down and accept all that is seen.

Similarly, Annie Besant in "Avatara-s", The Theosophical Publishing House, 2002, wrote,

How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How would you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognize the Light if there were no Darkness? How would you move if there were no resistance? The forces that are dark, the forces of the rakshasas, of the asuras, of all that seems to be working against Isvara, these are the forces that call out the inner strength of the self in man, by struggling with which the forces of Atma within the man are developed and without which he would remain in Pralaya forevermore. Isvara must draw out men's forces by pulling against their strength making them struggle in order to attain and so vivifying into outer manifestation the life that otherwise would remain enfolded in itself.

In this universe there is no evil; all is good that comes to us from Isvara but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that by opposing it we may draw out our strength. Then we begin to understand that these forces are necessary and that they are within the plan of Isvara. There is only one will in the universe the will of Isvara and all must conform itself to that will, all is conditioned by that will, all must move according to that will.  

Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das in their "Sanatana Dharma" wrote,

The Upadhis are only brought into existence to serve the purpose of the Jivatman moved by desire to taste these worlds. The wish to experience is said to lead the Atman to form organs for receiving and transmitting to himself the experience. His wish lies at the root of each and matter obeys his impulse and obediently molds itself into a form suitable for the exercise of the life function. The jivatman is a conscious being and that consciousness seeking external experience fashions sense and sense organs for contact with the outer worlds. 

Today I understand why Agathiyar said in the Nadi that there were many wrongs I had done but it was also his will that it should take place and that I needed the experience too. Ma and Aiya too have mentioned that one's experience gain from the lessons in life that comes as learning to us will indefinitely become wisdom or jnana for others. Later Agathiyar tells us that our experiences will answer the questions we hold, asking us not to question.

Betty J Eadie in her book "Embraced by the Light" understood the earth to be a place where we schooled, adds that whatever we become of here is meaningless unless it has brought benefit to others. In serving others we grow spiritually. If Betty says that we are here to school, Neale says that we are already well equipped with sufficient knowledge and have only to apply it here, giving life a purpose and making it holy. And so Agathiyar gave us the five tenets to uphold and live for a purposeful and enlightening life.

Why is having experiences so important? Bringing oneself to spiritual practices, the Tava Kanal or as Agathiyar says, "The radiant heat [tejas tapah] of these spiritual experiences, also greatly expand the holding sack of causal body [karanam sharira], making it possible for a quick release [mukti] of the bound soul [bandhit atama]."