Circular Letter February 2009

Villa Sophia

circular letter

February 2009

‘It is I’

The great Indian philosopher and reformer Shankara (about 800 AD) had a disciple who served him over many years without receiving any formal instruction from the master. One day Shankara heard somebody walking behind him and he asked ‘who is it?’ The disciple answered enthusiastically ‘it is I’. The master said: if you are so fond of that ‘I’ make sure it becomes limitless or else forget about it and make sure it disappears altogether.

We find it rather difficult to letting go our cherished conviction that we are someone or somebody. All of us want to be recognized and for that purpose we carry a name and other identity marks such as the sound of our voice. So the least we would accept is: I am Peter or I am Deborah or – if the sound of our voice is known – It is I. Peter and Deborah and the sound of our voice identify us with our physical appearance and in that way they are an major limitation over the Self which is limitless and beyond time and space. We assume that this limitless Self is now limited – as ‘I’ - to a physical appearance in a living embodiment of flesh and blood of about eight foot high and weighing a few stones. When the body is born, it counts as the beginning and when it passes away it counts as the end. Looking any further is deemed to be speculative and unscientific. In this way we have enclosed ourselves in the world of sense-perception. Our mind is focused on the drifting sands of our senses and the endless alternation of pleasure and pain.

But there is much more than just a world of sense perception. Take for instance love and devotion. In love we have no difficulty to look behind the physical appearance and to value many qualities that may only find a partial expression in the physical world. In love we fully know the value and importance of patience, of forgiveness, meekness, vigour, courage, faithfulness, loyalty, stability and many more subtle qualities. Even further behind this world of subtle qualities there is the stillness of clear and transparent consciousness where things are known as they are and where the seed-forms of our actions and tendencies are safely stored away. Finally there is the limitless Self as substratum of all and everything. Everything returns to it to become, once more, universal and beyond form.

Someone prayed at a religious service: ‘O God, may we all sink and disappear into the river of devotion and love’. When the service was over a wise man said to him: ‘look here. How can you disappear altogether in the river of love and devotion? If you do, what will happen to those around you and who depend on you? Just do one thing: sink now and then, and come back again to dry land to continue your journey and take a drop of that love and devotion with you….

Paul G. van Oyen

www.villasophia.org

www.pvanoyen.nl