Self-Realization Fellowship Blog

The following post is an excerpt from the talk “Self-realization: Knowing Your Infinite Nature,” which can be read in full in Solving the Mystery of Life, Volume IV of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Collected Talks and Essays — to be released by Self-Realization Fellowship on June 22 and available now for pre-order. 

Peace fall upon you, peace abide with you, joy permeate your being within and without!

An ocean of eternal power is around you and within you. Just as a corked bottle floats in the ocean, so you are surrounded by God and peace. Wherever you float in the ocean of life, you will always be immersed in that Great Power and Life. Realize that!

As you become more and more aware of God and the eternal power within you, the focus of life becomes reversed. Instead of constantly feeling the processes of the body, you feel the Eternal Silence behind the flesh….

You are concentrated on the isolated wave of your body and its finite life; thus you forget that infinite omnipresence of God. But when you realize that the life in all bodies, and in all manifestations in nature, is nothing but outbursts of God’s consciousness, then you are in His eternal presence.

God is ever in the stars, and in the clods of the earth, and in our thoughts, feelings, and will; and when you perceive this, then you realize your connection with Infinity. That is Self-realization: You feel yourself no longer as a little wavelet of life, but as the Ocean itself.

Throughout the day, you are constantly working through the body, and so you become identified with it. But every night God removes from you that imprisoning delusion. Last night in deep dreamless sleep, were you a woman or a man or an American or Hindu or rich or poor? No. You were pure Spirit.

In the daytime you are conscious of being so many pounds of flesh and bones, a bundle of nerves and muscles; but in the semi-superconscious freedom of deep sleep God takes away all your mortal titles and makes you feel that you are apart from the body and all its limitations — pure consciousness, resting in space.

That vastness is your real Self. Meditation is the process by which you become fully conscious of the freedom of that forgotten Self.

Why do I ask you to be silent, to meditate? To compare that vastness and freedom with the confining consciousness of being tied to the body. With eyes shut in meditation, you do not see your body; you are gazing into the sphere of darkness behind closed eyes. As you become calm and your meditation deepens, the sensations and awareness of the little body recede. You feel an expansion of your being beyond the boundaries of the mortal form.

The vast inner space becomes bigger and bigger; you begin to feel that you are this space, boundless consciousness pervaded with ever-increasing happiness and peace. It is then that you realize you are something much greater than the body.

If you can retain this consciousness of joyous vastness instead of losing it again in the delusion of the body, you will realize your true Self.

Isn’t it strange that you do not know who you are? that you do not know your own Self? You define yourself by so many different titles applicable to your body and mortal roles. But are you the body? No, because you can exist without the body. Every night you do it. Though you are not aware of the body in deep sleep, still you know you exist.

Anything that you can subtract from your consciousness without losing your sense of “I-ness,” you are not that. You must peel off these titles from the soul. “I think, but I am not the thought. I feel, but I am not the feeling. I will, but I am not the will.” What is left? The you that knows you exist; the you that feels you exist — through the proof given by intuition, the soul’s unconditioned knowing of its own existence.

That is what I learned in India: to be centralized in the Self and constantly remain in that unbounded attitude. Always the great masters that I knew there never identified themselves with the body.

In the divine man the body is just a manifested finite part of his infinite being. He doesn’t feel for the body as ordinary persons do. When you are walking you do not feel identified with any particular part — your hair, your fingers. You have a general feeling that you are carrying a body. So it is with me. I am aware that I have a body, but I know I am the soul.

Such is the change the great masters wrought in me. Now there is one consciousness alone: I am conscious of my real Self. The vastness of my soul has spread wings into everything and I am conscious of all things....

If only you could see what I see, and feel the joy I feel! You can, if you meditate.

We invite you to learn more about Solving the Mystery of Life by Paramahansaji, the fourth volume in the Collected Talks and Essays on Realizing God in Daily Life. This beautiful work of timeless wisdom is now available for pre-order (and will be released by SRF on June 22).