New doubts cleared:
How can one help the world?
Before helping the world one must understand what the world is. One cannot help if he does not know the nature of the world. The world is a residual manifestation of the Power of the Self. In the case of a limited person, the world appears as displayed by his ordinary senses and mind. In the case of a liberated person, the world appears such as it really is, as expansion of his own Self. People who consider the world to be an aggregate of people, animals, plants, rocks, etc. are still in bondage. As they only perceive the world through their ordinary senses and mind, they see it that way. On the other hand, people who have attained spiritual enlightenment behold the world as a manifestation of the Power of the Self and not as something independent of the Self.
So, it means that only liberated people can change the world, right?
Yes and no. “Yes”, because someone who is backed up by the Power of the Self is extremely powerful, beyond human imagination. “No”, because such person feels no need for that change. A liberated one considers the world as a Play of the Self and not as something to be changed. When the false notion that the world is different and separate from the Self is gone, the necessity of changing it is also gone. That is why a person who is completely immersed in the Self alone cannot teach other people about Final Liberation. In order to teach them, he needs to come down a little from his Supreme State as the Self so that he can see people in bondage. If he continues to see everybody and everything as expansion of himself (of the Self), he will not feel the necessity to help other people. In order to fully understand this teaching one must be a liberated first, obviously.
What is the way to improve the world then?
It is always about oneself. It is never about other people, countries, etc. One has to accomplish the mission of removing the association between the Self and his mind/body. When one becomes deserving enough and the Power of the Self removes that association in him, the world is automatically improved for him. As he becomes identified with the Self such as He really is, he sees no world to be changed or improved at all. This is difficult to understand if one does not have the experience.
Materialistic people think that improving the world has to do with improving comfort, economy, military power and such. Accordingly, they are constantly involved in materialistic processes. In the end, it is obvious that the problems continue and continue despite all their efforts. To give a simple example:
Let’s say a person is hungry. So, some materialistic person will give him food. The next day, the same person will be hungry again. More food is given to him then. This process will continue for the rest of his life. In the end, nobody would be able to solve the hunger-related problem for good because the physical body is a machine that needs fuel every day. Now, another materialistic person might come and say that the hungry person needs to work to buy food instead of receiving it for free. Well, the person is given a job. He works, makes money, buys food, and eats it every day till his body dies and that is it. Still, every day of his lifetime he would have to run into the hunger problem!
Of course, I am not saying that one should not eat or work every day, because this would make no sense. It was just an example to show how a materialistic person thinks and acts. He is always solving problems, but as he does not solve the root of all problems, he keeps running into more and more problems every day. Besides, his solutions will bring known or unknown problems in the future. In this way, the world continues existing as a bundle of old and new problems. This is not exactly the course of action wise people would follow. Wise people want to cut the roots of this huge tree known as spiritual ignorance, and not merely keep cutting its branches as materialistic people do.
The roots of this tree called spiritual ignorance lie in the association between the Self and the mind/body (I repeat it over and over again). Cut it and all problems are solved at once. Therefore, all efforts should go to cutting those roots and not to cutting endless branches that keep appearing. The wise will follow the wise path, while the unwise will follow the unwise path. If one acts unwisely, he will keep making efforts in the wrong direction till his death. After death, he will take another body in order to keep cutting branches. This never-ending course of action is not recommended by the wise.
People that see the world only from a materialistic viewpoint can never solve the root problem: spiritual ignorance. They spend their entire lives solving old and new problems but in the end their hands will be empty. They accumulate matter every day in the form of money, clothes, objects of all kind, etc., but as the Power of the Self is the real Owner of all that, they are robbed of all that sooner or later. They are even robbed of their minds and bodies, because their minds and bodies were created and maintained by the Power of the Self.
The Power of the Self is the only Controller. If one wants to improve the world, he must first cut the roots of this huge tree called spiritual ignorance. To do so, the Power of the Self must remove the association between himself (the Self) and his mind/body. Once a person is no more identified with his mind and body, all his problems are gone forever and the world is automatically improved to the maximum. Why? Because the world is realized such as it really is, i.e. as expansion of the Power of the Self.
How to accomplish that?
Most spiritual aspirants will have to resort to a human guru (spiritual preceptor) first. As most of them are rookies or middle level, not advanced aspirants, they need to be taught the right way to cut the root cause of all their troubles. They cannot do it by themselves; they need someone who is Self-realized. That’s a guru. Without a genuine spiritual teacher, the aspirants will go nowhere. For example, in order to build a long bridge over a river it is necessary to resort to expert engineers and qualified workers. The bridge will not appear magically even if all those qualified workers meet on the banks of the river and start to pray together. NO. They need to be guided by skillful engineers or no bridge will appear. In the same way, if the aspirants don’t have a skillful spiritual teacher, no Final Liberation will magically occur.
A spiritual aspirant who thinks that he will remove his spiritual ignorance on his own (without the help of a genuine guru) is either an advanced aspirant or someone full of false illusions. Most people are like that… full of false illusions; they think they are the “doers”, they think they are able to “love”, they think they are able to “make decisions”, etc. Next, Mother Nature merely moves her big toe and all those illusions prove to be false. Mother Nature is one of the aspects assumed by the Power of the Self, of course. The Power of the Self, the real Doer and Controller, appears in multiple ways all the time. Ancient “uncivilized” tribes worshipped Mother Nature like a goddess and feared her devastating power. A lot of “civilized” people have given such worship up because they consider it to be too primitive and childish for a modern person. Still, they cannot get rid of Mother Nature and her devastating power. They pray and pray but Mother Nature hits them over and over again. If someone is wise enough, he will notice that maybe ancient people were not so primitive after all. Worshipping Mother Nature does make sense somehow.
Of course, I am not encouraging worship of Mother Nature, but only showing a fact related to most people. They believe that there is no God or else they want to worship the Greatest Lord. Nonetheless, they cannot cope with the movement of Mother Nature’s big toe. Imagine if the Sun were to move its big toe! My point is that the vast majority of spiritual aspirants will need proper guidance in order to deal with the omnipotent Power of the Self adequately. They need to understand their “real” position on this stage known as “the world”. And the truth is that most spiritual aspirants cannot attain Final Liberation on their own. If they want to accomplish that extremely difficult mission on their own, they will fail in the end, there is no doubt about it. As they don’t know secret procedures, the right way of worshipping and meditating on the Self, and the proper method to please His Power and so on, they cannot ever succeed. First, they need to learn all that from a skillful spiritual teacher.
I have noticed that many people, plunged into deep despair, invent new methods to escape from bondage. These methods are generally useless because they either disregard the role of a true spiritual teacher or they place too much emphasis on the presence of a true spiritual teacher. A human guru is only necessary in the rookie and middle stages. Advanced aspirants do not need one because they are about to attain spiritual enlightenment. Anyway, if an advanced aspirant wishes to stay with his human guru, he can if the guru agrees. But the importance of the human guru becomes secondary, since that aspirant, being advanced, is in contact with the inner Guru (the very Power of the Self). Rookies and intermediate aspirants cannot understand the inner Guru and this is why they need a human guru to translate His messages for them. An advanced aspirant has finally accomplished the difficult mission of understanding the words of the inner Guru. Thus, he is guided by the inner Guru directly, and the importance of the human guru becomes secondary. This point must be fully understood by aspirants or they will not be able to advance adequately.
Obviously, false guru-s will say that the human guru is indispensable forever although this is not true in the case of advanced spiritual aspirants. The false spiritual teachers say that because they need to keep taking the money of their pupils forever. This type of teachers will never lead an aspirant to Final Liberation, as it is obvious. Only a true spiritual teacher will do that. In the end, when the aspirant gets in full touch with the Power of the Self Itself (the inner Guru), the role of the human guru moves to a secondary position.
I suppose that all the elementary doubts about spiritual enlightenment have been cleared by now. In my next posts I will explain how the Power of the Self manifests the entire universe. The aspirants are desirous to escape from this jail, but first they must understand the structure of the prison. Once my explanation about the structure of all that is manifested by the Power of the Self is over, I will start teaching methods to attain Final Liberation. If I were to give methods directly without explaining all that about the universal manifestation first, the aspirants will not understand me properly and there will be more confusion as a result.
See you on my next post!