There is but One Infinite Reality in this fleeting alternation of life and death; there is but One Imperishable Substrate in this perpetual evolution and disintegration of countless solar Systems; there is but One Eternal Truth in the immensities of the universe. It is the Omnipresent Spirit.
What is meant by Omnipresence? It is meant that should you travel even with the inconceivable rapidity of light and thought, throughout endless time in the shoreless ocean of space, at every point of your unthinkable journey there would be “He at whose command the wind blows, fire burns, flowers bloom, stars shine, and Death stalks upon the earth.” He is the soul of your soul and my soul, and the soul of all Existence. “He is infinitely larger than the largest, and infinitely smaller than the smallest. He pervades the infinite space and also resides in the minutest atom of atom. He also dwells in the innermost sanctuary of the soul of every man and woman. Whosoever realizes that Divine Omnipresence, whose image the individual soul is, unto him comes eternal peace and perpetual bliss, unto none else, unto none else.” Stretch forth your hand He is there; gaze into the immeasurable expanse of the heavens, He, the Lord, is present. “That immortal Spirit is before, that Spirit is behind, that Spirit is right and left. It has gone forth below and above. Spirit alone is all this. It is the best.”
Such has been the teachings of our orthodox churches; the teachings of the sages of the East and West. Like many other great truths it has merely passed the surface of the life of man immersed in the pleasures of the senses and occupied with the perishable and the transitory. Should it visit the depths of the heart it would instantly transform the human into the Divine.
Omnipresence implies omniscience, for as He is everywhere, He knows All. Omnipresence implies even a still greater truth, extremely difficult to comprehend, and a truth which has caused more theorizing and misunderstanding than any other. It is this: Omnipresence means omni-existence, for if the Lord is everywhere there can be no room for any other existence. Should anything have any existence beside Him, it would immediately render Him finite. The Lord is everything the intellect can know or imagine. He is the Knowable and the Unknowable; He is both Being and Non-Being; He is the Universe and what is not this Universe; He is both Light and Darkness, and as He Himself says in the Scriptures, He is both Good and Evil. For he is the poison of the snake, the viciousness of vicious things, the destroying power in nature as well as its vivifying principle. Realizing this, many nations have adopted in their mythology a god personifying that aspect of Spirit, as well as a god from whom all blessings flow.
The Lord is all the various permutations of Being; He is our body, mind and soul; He is the matter, intelligence and soul of this universe. He is Spirit. These thoughts of course do away with our little personal, selfish self. But for it is substituted an Infinite Self. This is the dizzy acme of philosophical speculation and necessitates the deepest concentration. Sometime or other, either in this or a future existence, these things will have to be realized, and the sooner the better. Some fear that these things involve loss of individuality. To them the scientist says, “Your dream of bodily individuality is absurd. The substance of which the farthest sun is composed and the substance of which your body is composed is the same. Forms are simply so many aggregations of particles, differentiated only by Space. Into One Imperishable Essence, and into One All-Permeating Life all forms and forces are reducible.” To them the psychologist will say, “All differentiations of consciousness, all modification of thought and emotion are simply so many manifestations of One Infinite Background of Intelligence and Consciousness through which this universe exists, and exists as differentiated, and as many.” Thus individuality of body, of life, of consciousness, of intelligence, as understood by many of us, is unreal.
Through scientific ignorance many of us fail to realize the Unity of Life and the Unity of Matter. It exists however, as certainly as the rotation of the earth and the ether which presses against the surface of the earth millions of pounds to the square inch. We do not sense these things in daily life, but science and mathematics have proved them for us. As certainly as these things are true is the declaration of the Spirit true that the Substance, the Force, the Life and the Intelligence of the scientists are simply so many modifications of One, Beginningless, Causeless, Endless Essence. It is of neither gender.
As It is the Self of All, the thinkers of India have called it Self or Brahman. In referring to It they use the pronouns “It” and “That.” For the sake of simplicity, however, they frequently use the masculine pronouns. They say that this is the Impersonal Spirit which has been personalized and worshiped under such names as Jehovah, Father, Jupiter, Ahuramazda, Ra, Gitchee Manito, and so forth. To the mystics of the world even this universe is that Self. They say that Spirit is the cause, and world is the effect. They say that therefore they are the same. Karya-karanabheda. They illustrate this for instance by saying that if we do not view the thing called cloth as such, but only as it is composed of its cause—threads running lengthwise and crosswise—it can be seen that the Reality even of cloth is Spirit. For the threads are composed of threads still finer, and these, in turn, of still finer threads, and so on and so on until finally we come to the most infinitesimal part of threads perceptible. These they say, are identical with their ultimate essence, color vibrations, these with the air, the air with the ether, the ether with Brahman or Spirit. When asked what is real in this world, they invariably reply Spirit, because everything can be ultimately identified with It.
These ideas were the meaning of Jesus the Christ’s words when he said: “I and my Father are One.” He saw but One Individual. “Thou art That,” say the Vedas. Try and grasp these thoughts. Your life will be changed. When you realize them, your lower nature, purified from Desire and Worldliness, will merge with the ecstasy of perfected sages into that One Infinite Self—the Divine within—which is the Self of all living Beings. “He is our mother; He is our father; He is our beloved friend; He is our wealth and learning; He is also the shadow darkening our path.” Whom then shall we hate; whom shall we fear? Everything is Self, our Self. Everything seen, everything heard, everything felt and imagined become transformed by our vision of Self. Through soul ignorance we divide the One Self into many. When the veils of ignorance and separateness are removed “by the grace of the Creator, then the mortal becomes Immortal, all doubts vanish,” and the soul finds that through its indefinite incarnations and changing personalities, there has at all times dwelt in its innermost sanctuary the Self.
This eternal Self knows no separateness. It is above all limitations. Through His own power of Maya (illusion), and for His own inscrutable reasons, the Lord from time to time projects Himself in this universe with its seeming difference, separateness and manifoldness. He likewise causes it to involve and become only potential. Similar to the fire which has a potential existence in every piece of wood, so when the “night of Brahma” arrives, when the cosmic force which has projected these universes has been spent, they will merge into a potential existence in the All-absorbing Spirit. This is the great cosmic rest, the equilibrium of Science.
These things about us which our senses tell us are so real and solid, will then gradually fade into states less solid, becoming disintegrated and invisible in the expanse of the ether. Forms, forces, space, ether, time, the law of cause and effect, all these worlds will have vanquished. We are prepared for this dissolution of objective reality by the dissolution we daily witness about us. From the invisible, bodies are projected and into the invisible they disappear. It would be hard therefore, to logically call this world of constant change, of passing things, of illusion, real. The Spirit of it is eternally the same. It is with us now, interpenetrating every atom. It does not only permeate every atom, but It is likewise the reality, the manifesting power of every atom, the reality of our thoughts, the reality of our senses and their experiences, nay even of our very souls. There is nothing but It. It is Self Universal. When we have realized That, for us there is no death, no coming and going, no subjection to this desire and that—for what should we want having That which is all? There will then be no reincarnation, for the Spirit in the man will then shine forth. It knows Itself as Spirit, as Unborn, Ancient, Everlasting, free from birth and death. The body is born and dies; the mind changes perpetually. But the Spirit is not born, neither does it die. It has no need for incarnation, for what should It desire; what should It become? It is all in all. It is the worshiper and what is worshiped. Where is the place It is not? What is there beside It? It is the lowest and the highest. Nothing exists outside of Its All-embracing Existence. It knows nothing of the distinctions man makes through ignorance, through fear, through passion, through envy, through selfishness, through lack of discrimination between the real and the unreal. It can see no difference between the highest God and the most miserable creature. It sees only a difference of manifestation for It is the Spirit, the Reality of that God and that creature. It knows Itself, only as Itself.
It—the Spirit—is unsearchable by any methods. It is imperceptible by the senses. The mind cannot grasp It; it can only reason the necessity of Its absolute existence. It is the unthinkable. It is Spencer’s Unknowable. No argument will avail. How then can It be realized? “He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self is gained,” the Vedas declare. The Spirit in us realizes external, objective knowledge through the senses and through the intellect. But these means of knowledge are included in this universal net of illusion. How then can the Imperishable Spirit be discerned? The third means of knowledge possessed by the Spirit is the illumination It manifests when the heart is pure, when the senses through self-control are dormant, when the intellect has ceased to wander in vain argument—in other words when Raja Yoga, union with the Divine Self, has been effected. It realizes that what the senses and the mind had perceived as different is one in Essence with Itself. It sees that It is both Subject and Object; that Infinite Knowledge and Infinite Being are One. It knows Itself as that Brahman, that Spirit, that Divine Being, that Unconditioned Self, that World-Soul which is Existence, Knowledge, Bliss Absolute. Its essence is Immeasurable Love.
The paths which lead to this Supreme Goal are numerous. Do not think the Lord has enclosed His infinite love and mercies within the narrow boundaries of any one system of thought, ethics or religion. Away from “the oldness of the letter,” as St. Paul says. The Lord permeates all religions. The form, the doxology, the symbology of a religion, its liturgy, and so forth, are the outgrowth of religious need varying at different periods of the race’s development. The Lord has given the nations of antiquity, the Chinese, the pre-Aryan races, a chance for realization even as He has given us teachings in His representatives. This fact should make us impartial when dealing with the spirit of a religion. Objectionable forms of religion perish along the line of least resistance, while the survival of the fittest is obtained. Evolution works here similarly as it does everywhere, in displacements and readjustments. We should always remember that the form of a religion is nothing, and that its Spirit is everything. All forms vanish when the Spirit has been attained. They are only a means to an end—realization of Self. This is the goal of religion. It is religion in the highest sense. For souls such as the Christ, the Buddha, St. Francis of Assissi, St. Theresa, and other great souls who have realized Self and communed with the Divine, what use is there for rituals, particular places of worship, prescribed rules, bibles, and so forth?
The first and indispensable requisite for realization is a sincere desire. This desire should not be the haphazard result of a passing emotion. It should be real. Sri Ramakrishna, India’s latest incarnation of the Supreme, telling his followers of this desire, likened it to the desire of the drowning man to be rescued from imminent death. When the desire is that sincere then you will see the Lord; you will know, “I and My Father are One”; you will attain realization.