Enlightenment - Yudhishtara

Some people get a lot out of inquiry. They somehow determine what they are without ever being able to fully explain it to themselves or to anybody else. They try to find some wordswhat I am is the breath between two breaths, what I am is silence. And they get very comfortable and say, “This is itperiod.”

Then these same beings get up in the morning and have a day facing them. Some of those who are very, very comfortable in this position knowing they are the breath between two breaths can have wonderful days, day after day. And some other beings who also know the same thing get lost in some of the miserable days.

Some of these beautiful beings acknowledge that they are having a miserable day and they begin to wonder if being the breath between two breaths was maybe just some mental image that they had. They say to themselves, “Maybe I didn’t really get it because if I truly understood it I would not be having a miserable day today.” Then they get into all the definitions of what enlightenment is. And it becomes an agonizingly vicious cycle.

So we have to make some adjustments

in our in our daily life of relative truth,

to put absolute truth into context.

And these adjustments will vary with different beings.

So what am I? This inquiry is a question that has to be asked in confidence within one’s own self.

When we ask “What am I?”

we end up eventually with a clear

no-answer.

Coming up with a clear no answer may be satisfactory for some of us. But it may not be satisfactory for others of us.

This clear no answer means

the final answer is mysteryperiod.

Yet in between

there are many, many aspects

in this mystery.

I remember very clearly there was a satsang that I attended with Poonja-ji. He was contemplating this idea. And the thing with Poonja-ji is that we also have to set his history straight. Even though he knew that the mystery was a mystery and he knew who he was, until his last gasp he did not stop inquiring into the depths of the mystery. How could he stop inquiring if he was in love with the mystery? He could not. We cannot. It’s impossible!

In his writings, on his scratch pad, until the time he left his form he would write down different things about what he thought the mystery was. And he made tremendous explorations. Poonja-ji was a master traveler of dreams. Not too much is known about it, but he was a great student of the Toltec and Olmec teachings. He spent years in Venezuela and Brazil learning these things. So he was very, very interested in the details of the mystery.

He used to sayimagine yourself to be a water droplet. You are traveling down a river as a drop of water. You see a lot of other water droplets around you and you are having conversations with these other water droplets. Everybody looks slightly different and you’re talking back and forth. I’ve done this and you’ve done that. You’ve got your own ideas and thoughts and you move on.

Soon you hear this big gigantic thunder that you have never heard before in your whole life and you get scared. You are getting close to where the river discharges into the ocean and you are going to disappear into that big sound. You get scared and say, “Oh my god, this is the end!” Then you get into the ocean and you say, “Gosh, this is still water. I haven’t disappeared. Water is water.”

So you start traveling in this great ocean and pretty soon you get into the deeper part of the ocean. You go deeper and deeper. You get to the bottom and you are exploring the depths of the ocean. You see many different things as you explore the depths of this new mystery.

Then you start moving to the top of the water and the sun heats you up and you become very light. You evaporate. You go into the sky and travel around having adventures in clouds but you are still water. Eventually you condense and become rain and you come back down. It’s all a huge gigantic circle of things.

It is very, very important to see

how these things interrelate with each other

and to put them into perspective.

Dear Beloved,

Help me to be kind to myself

and to be forgiving to myself

especially because I know so much about myself.

Help me to be loving.

I rest in you.

I love you.

I don’t ask for anything

except to see you,

and someday

not to see

any difference between us.

Inquiry