the next section you will see some of your assumptions, and the things you take to be true, come under fire. I only hope that you can open your mind a little; just enough to follow this reasoning to its end.
I don’t want you to become a master logician. I just want you to take a peek right into your own being. Don’t accept this on faith. Rather read it with an open, but questioning mind. Ask, “Is there a possibility that this could be true, and if so, how is this true?”
Then what am I not?
This is the very reasoning used in Vedanta by such sages as Shankara, Krishna, and Ramana Maharshi. Vedanta means the end of the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures. They are the books on Self-Knowledge found at the end of each of the Vedas. The Vedanta teaches you how to wake up and become free. These books eliminate the need for the ritualistic part of the Vedas, which describe rituals used to help a person get what he or she wants, like sons or wealth etc.
Vadanta on the other hand, takes you directly to the source of the happiness that you hope to get by fulfilling other desires, and thus eliminates the need for the rest of the Vedas; in this way too, the Vedanta means the end of the Vedas.
“Now then who am I?”, you might think. “For starters, I feel like one person, not like many, don’t I? Also, I obviously don’t mistake myself for my mother or father, or for you. Why, because I’m the seer, and you are the one that I see. I am not the objects that I see, and therefore I can summarily conclude that I am not you, am I?”
We are going to use this reasoning as the fuel that eliminates the coverings that seem to hide infinity. In this way we are going to expose you directly to your infinite self.
Now here’s where this line of reasoning takes a surprising twist. In the same way that you see your parents, in the same way that they are an object of your senses, and not you, in that very way, you see your own body, right? You’re the seer and your body is the seen. You feel your body; you smell your body; you hear your heartbeat, and you can taste your sweat.
You don’t have to get out of your body or run from it. Just take a moment and feel how you’re aware of the body, and in that way you are greater than the body. From here it becomes a valid question — the body dies but do I die? My body comes and goes, but do I?
Remember, nowhere in this line of reasoning have we told you to get out of the body (to do astral travel), to ignore the body, to try to get rid of the body, or to float above the body. We just want you to take a look and see what the case is now. Without you doing anything, by just taking a direct look you can see that you are much greater than the physical body. This is an example of how on the path of Self-Knowledge your reason points to your direct experience.
It might be instructive if I tell the story of how I first discovered that I was greater than the body. You have to know that I had been intensively studying the martial art, Aikido. I studied it for enough years that I could practically do it in my sleep. One of my favorite exercises was the wrist stretch.
One day I was at a meeting where the teacher was talking about how you are greater than the body. Many of the students were deep in meditation in the dimly lit room, surrounded by pictures of various saints, illuminated by candle light. The smell of incense wafted through the air and there was a feeling of deep peace. Right in the middle of his talk on the body I looked down and noticed that I was pressing on my wrist and doing the Aikido stretches.
Before I had a chance to get embarrassed, I thought, “If I am truly greater than the body, then even now, in the middle of these wrist exercises, I must be greater than this body.” So without stopping the wrist stretches, I closed my eyes and asked, “Do I feel like a body.” To my surprise I discovered that which was free of physical limitations. It also turned out to be very blissful. In the middle of my wrist stretches I had the best meditation that I had ever had up to that time.
So here’s a chance for you to experiment a little and see for yourself. Everybody knows that when you sit down and close your eyes, the world and the body are there but you don’t see them, right? But why don’t you verify this. When you try this simple experiment of closing your eyes, what do you actually experience? Is it what you are supposed to experience?
When you are not looking is there actually a body and a world in your experience? You may feel a sore back, a pain in the shoulder, or your heart beating. But does that add up to a body? Is your experience that the body is there but you don’t see it? Maybe you don’t really experience a body at all. Find out for yourself, don’t rely on my word, and be ready for some surprises.
If you can even get a little sense for this, you will begin to discover what the greatest sages of all time like Christ and Buddha knew. Your actual experience is a lot richer than it is cracked up to be. Just because you assume limitation, doesn’t mean that you are really limited.
Imagine that when these great sages talked about, “The kingdom of heaven within you,” or “Freedom from old age, disease, and death,” they were actually talking about what you experience even now.
When you start to look at your experience from this new and fresh perspective, you will know how this is true. Furthermore, your life will change and expand in ways that you never could have imagined.
So in the same way that you see your friend and therefore know that you are not your friend, you see your body. You are the seer and your body is an object in your awareness. What that proves is that you are more than a body. The limitations of the body such as old age, disease, and death, are not your limitations. This points to how free you really are.
Now let’s get back to examining the limitations that you see, so that you can step beyond them, and into the limitless Awareness that is your natural state. If you are not limited to a body, are you limited to the forces that enliven the body such as breath? In the next chapter, “The Forces that Enliven the Body,” we will find out.
The Forces that Enliven the Body
Now lets look a little deeper. What about the subtle powers that enliven the body such as the breath, the digestion, the elimination, and the procreation? The ancient Indian masters saw that these were the functions that moved in waves, and called them the pranas. Even thought waves are considered to be part of the pranas.
You know whether you are breathing freely or if you have asthma. You know whether your digestion and elimination are working well or if they are all clogged up. In the same way that you are greater than the body — because you are aware of it (you see it) — in that very same way, you are greater than the pranas because you are aware of them.
One advantage of this path of Knowledge is that it doesn’t depend on the condition of your body or breathing. Whatever their condition, you just notice that you are the subject, free from their condition. On your deathbed your body and breath will probably not be in good condition, but you will still be able to meditate right from the source, unaffected by their condition. This is the advantage of a meditation where you meditate as the source, a position that is unaffected by the condition of the body or the pranas.
On the other hand, if you use your breath to calm your mind or keep it under control, then if the breath starts to malfunction, what will you do? If meditation depended on the breath, then a person with asthma or even a bad cold would be in trouble. So here we meditate from our innate freedom and not from the limitations that we see.
When we talk about the pranas it is also a good idea to talk about desire, especially what I call biological desires. These are the desire for food, sleep, and the desire to reproduce, for sex. These are very powerful desires
