Crucial

Crucial

Different spiritual teachers emphasize different things. I find your clarity most helpful. What you would say are the most important teachings for the seeker? As a consequence of my talks with scores of people, only two points have proven to be crucial. The seeker must comprehend (and when she does, the seeking is definitely finished) that what is being sought, the Absolute is not something which we eventually come to encounter—because, due to its very nature, it is always inescapable. All spiritual traditions refer to sacred, or divine, Being as infinite, eternal, without limitation. Obviously, such an actuality has to be present where and when you are, regardless of your location in time and space. The seeker cannot under any circumstances be apart from what is sought. The second element of the teachings, which instill the awareness out of which we then live our lives in complete Oneness, relates to the major question that arises: “If the Absolute is present here now, why don’t I feel it?” Infinite, eternal, formless Beingness is present not only where every form is, material or immaterial; it permeates all that exists: “Nowhere is it not,” as the Vedas put it. Your very Being is whatever you happen to be feeling, thinking, or doing. The infinite, eternal, unbounded Absolute is the doer, the source, of all that is ever being done. When this principle is clearly recognized, it is seen that the Absolute is the fundamental, universal identity of all that exists. In other words, as the Vedas state, you and

the Ultimate Reality are not two different things. This realization of Oneness is the ending of division—duality, as one’s basic, conditioned perspective—and thus of conflict. Out of this Absolute awareness, then, one lives the balance of one’s life; confusions about the nature of life and how to live it have been utterly clarified. What is regarded as the self is no longer viewed to be anything other than ultimate Being, present in material form.