Then one stumbles into the query: Who am I? A deeper level
of enquiry transcends the personality and settles on the body and mind. Body is
the gross mind and mind is the subtle body and both are conditioned genetically
and environmentally. Over in childhood, the conditioning is thereafter
reinforced with age. One realizes that thoughts are not one's own, that they
arise in a random, unpredictable, uncontrollable pattern. They do not even
arise in the brain, which is mere hardware, but through some unseen power
creating electrical impulses that trigger the neurons, which activate our
muscles into action.
What one considers 'his will' is only a thought and so the arising and sustaining of 'his will' is unpredictable—the effect of his conditioning and circumstances which are beyond his control. One realizes that the moment-by-moment unfolding of events in one's life is also unpredictable, and the future only reveals itself in the moment.
The new poser: "If I had no say in my conditioning, in the arising of my thoughts and no say in the unfolding of events in my life, if all I am is a programmed organism with no will, no choice of my own, just a mere puppet, how can I be held responsible for anything in life?"
One has now entered the fourth level of consciousness: Nobody is responsible. Everything
is Divine Will and whether one accepts or rejects this concept is also the will
of Consciousness. One realizes that the individual is one of the entities
amongst billions from a species called humanity and there are millions of other
species cohabiting the earth. The Source, Consciousness, God, Universal Energy
or whatever it is called is playing this game—this Lila or Cosmic
Dance—according to its own agenda. The individual entities are mere pawns on
the chessboard called existence.What one considers 'his will' is only a thought and so the arising and sustaining of 'his will' is unpredictable—the effect of his conditioning and circumstances which are beyond his control. One realizes that the moment-by-moment unfolding of events in one's life is also unpredictable, and the future only reveals itself in the moment.
The new poser: "If I had no say in my conditioning, in the arising of my thoughts and no say in the unfolding of events in my life, if all I am is a programmed organism with no will, no choice of my own, just a mere puppet, how can I be held responsible for anything in life?"
The individual now realizes there is 'no free choice'—which was the foundation of the third level of consciousness. How can a puppet have a choice? Up to the third level there is 'ego', which is a separation from the Source. In that separation, lacking in personal recognition, the ego creates the personality and within the illusions of that creation, the personality assumes: "I have a choice."
In that choice arise personal wants, expectations, agendas and personal doership giving rise to pride in accomplishment or guilt and frustration in failure.
In the fourth level of consciousness, in accomplishment there is no aggression to stamp one's personal authority on an event, and in failure there is no escapism through blame or vanity. Here, the individual is not responsible—there's just no one left to be responsible. All events become a happening through and around an individual. The individual becomes a 'witness' of the events in the outer world and the occurrence of thoughts, emotions and sensations in the inner world, witnessing the actions automatically happening through the mind-body organism.
Manifestation is the spontaneous arising of two interconnected opposites from the same Source. Therefore, there cannot be a saint without a sinner, no beauty without ugliness, no good without bad, no light without dark. Up to the third level of consciousness, the individual believes he has a choice. In the fourth level, he realizes that the moment you chose beauty, you've also chosen ugliness and the moment you deny ugliness, you also deny beauty because both are interconnected opposites. It's just that one is in the foreground and the other in the background, awaiting an opportunity to come to the forefront.
Now there's a realization that "nothing happens unless it is the Will of God". One becomes a spectator of happenings. There is also the realization that the personality is merely an illusion—and an illusion can never know the Source. Ram can never know God, the personality can never be enlightened, the ego can never be at peace. The ego is the illusion that there is a thinker, a doer, a seeker.
The Universal Truth is 'I Am'. In meditation, one experiences I Am as 'the presence', 'the consciousness', which makes one conscious of one's presence. One can deny the existence of God, but nobody can deny he exists. This awareness of existence, not the personal presence of I Am Ram, but just the existence of presence, the impersonal I Am is the only truth. Up to the third level of consciousness, one says 'I Am Ram', and that's when the problem arises. Ram says I like the saint, not the criminal. I want the beautiful, not the ugly. Ram chooses.
God has created ego or separation through Maya or Divine Hypnosis. The basis of Maya is everybody thinks 'he' is separate and all actions are 'his' actions. Maya means false identification with the body-mind organism as a separate individual. Unhappiness arises in trying to control our ego. When we accept the ego and surrender ourselves to the Source that created the ego, we surrender the ego itself.
When one accepts that no individual does anything, that actions happen through each body-mind organism according to the way it is programmed by God, then four beautiful things happen: no guilt, no pride, no hate, no envy. Life becomes simple. But even this acceptance, this surrender is not in our control and will happen only when God wills it.
Consciousness in rest is the Source or the Unmanifest. Consciousness in movement is the Manifest of I Am. The I Am is expressed through billions of mind-body organisms according to the script, gives appropriate thoughts and unfolds the events in line with the script and brings forth the reactions which becomes the cause for the script moving into the next frame.
In time, I Am becomes I Am Ram. A separation from the personal to the impersonal happens, ego or mind-intellect is born and claims personal ownership of all thoughts, desires and actions.
Ram says: "My thoughts, my desires, my actions." This is Lila—the movement of the Unmanifest to Manifest to Personality—held in place by Maya or Divine Hypnosis and sustained by Duality, the spontaneous arising of two interconnected opposites. When there is no ego, the I Am shines forth through a body-mind organism without personal identification. When the body-mind organism dies, I Am continues as I Am and expresses itself through another mind-body organism
- by Pradip Mukherji