Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
14
'It Is Not My Fire That Burn You Here'
BENARES, 1992
In the beginning the Divine Will arose.
This was the first seed from the Creator's mind.
Those who can see deeper by putting their mind and heart together as one
Found the underlying essence of all existence was deep beyond all that exists,
Found the non-existent existing in the existent.
- From the
Rig Veda
(10.129.4)
Here you have the quintessence of classical Indian philosophy.
Thinking with your heart; loving with your mind. All yoga and
meditation aim to attain this one goal. Anything else is delusion, or
worse. And when the heart sees, it sees the unknowable, nameless,
formless, limitless, supreme God. He is called nonexistent because
he is eternal, beyond existence. God manifest is the fabric of creation
itself. They are one. The heart that learns to think realises this truth
and merges into the eternal oneness. As William Blake put it, 'If the
doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it is,
infinite.'
This merging with the Eternal, this inner transformation, this
direct experience of Truth - these are the goals of which the Vedic
sages speak. They explain the nature of the universe, of life, while
admitting that Creation itself is the one unknowable mystery.
As it did to the ancient Egyptians, to the priest-kings of the Vedic
age, Creation indicated that point before which there was no Creator,
the line between indefinable nothingness and something delineated
by attributes and function, at least. Like the moment before the Big
Bang. These concepts preoccupy high wisdom, the truth far removed
from mere religion.
Recent research and scholarship makes it increasingly possible
to believe that the Vedic era was the lost civilisation whose legacy
the Egyptians and the Indians inherited. There must have been
