BRAHMAN, part II

 BRAHMAN, part II - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

The knowledge of Brahman transforms man into God. By the fact of revealing his true divine nature, he is lost in the Infinite vision; and the illusion of separateness, from which are born all the weaknesses and imperfections disappear. Since Brahman is the last and only Reality, nothing can remove or add to his Being. Brahman reveals itself when ignorance disappears - just as a rope is revealed as rope, when the illusion that it is a snake disappeared.

 

 

The doctrine of the Upanishads not only consist in Brahmavidya, knowledge of Brahman, but also Atmavidya, knowledge of the Self. Brahman and Atman are in reality, one. Brahman is the transcendent aspect of the single and unchanging Reality; Atman is the immanent aspect of that same reality. Paul Deussen wrote in one of his books that is the eternal glory of the Upanishads to have discovered that Atman, the intimate spiritual reality of man, is identical to the Supreme Reality and cause of the Universe.

 

 

Now, if in our intimate Being we are identical to the very foundation of the Universe, then surely our efforts to become one with Him cannot help to create and maintain in us the gloomy illusion of separation and distance. Sri Ramana Maharishi the great sage always stressed that it would be easy to get the revelation of the Self, if our own belief in the Reality of the world was not an obstacle to our pilgrimage. The most amazing thing, he said, consist in the fact that we, who are forever that Self, seek constantly the identification with it. There will come a day when we shall laugh at all our efforts: for we have not become that Self, we are that Self.

 

 

This knowledge is expressed in the words: "I am Brahman" (properly I, Brahman, Am), that is, the individual soul and Brahman are identical and this identity is not simple fantasy or imagination; in other words: the soul knows itself as been God in God. For this reason we must never relate Brahman or the knowledge of Brahman with some kind of activity, because Brahman can never be object, nor of our activities, or as our knowledge. It is true that in the Vedas we read often that the sun is Brahman, or that we must meditate on the Spirit. Phrases such as these do not contain true knowledge, are only recommendations and worship (upasa-na). Brahman itself can never be the object of devotion, worship or meditation, because Brahman is not an entity that man should worship, says the Kena Upanishad.

 

 

Therefore one can never say that Brahman is this or that; Brahman is known by the denying of any differentiation and multiplicity. Who instead sees multiplicity, goes from "death to death" (Katha Upanishad) - Brahman is the inner core of our Self, the element of Being within us, by virtue of which we are; no activity, no purification ceremony can approach Him, because what we are we cannot revert to be, we can only BE.

 

 

"It is not about achieving perfection. We are already free and perfect" said Vivekananda. After much searching and researching we finally got back to the starting point, we turn to our own soul, and here we find the one that we were looking worldwide, in churches and temples, by which we cry and pray everywhere: "He is not hidden in the clouds, He is the closest of the close, He is our own Self, the Reality of our life, of our body, of our soul".

 

 

The knowledge of Brahman does not depend in any way of man, that is, of his concepts and his ideologies, which ultimately are nothing else but images of something existent; knowledge awakens the moment that man diverts his mind from the things of the phenomenal world and directs it to his inner self, when he ceases to perceive the "voices" and immerse himself in silence, in whose depth is revealed the identity of Being.

 

 

 

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