There is a fundamental difference between knowing and understanding.
If you have not experienced yourself, how can you appreciate the experience of another?
…there is unchallenged hatred imbedded in our psyche for other religions, which I was taught as a child.
Once a disciple asked his Master, ‘what is real’? The Master said, ‘that is real which never changes’. This is an important answer. We can all agree that everything we can see and touch, changes. The only thing that can never change is that which notices the change. This is to be realised, and this realisation and experience is the reality itself!
Once a philosopher said, ‘we cannot live in a world that is not our own’. A world interpreted for us by others is not our home. Part of the journey is to use our own listening and see our own light. At the Oneness Gatherings, the most common utterance we hear is‘formless’. How can we view this formless? What concept can we build around it? As His Holiness Satguru Babaji once said, ‘drop the words; catch the meaning’. When we catch the words and not the meaning, we make a lot of mistakes. My own experience in the past, where I caught the words and not the meaning, is a painful one.
I used to go to Church every-day and I read the Bible on a daily basis too. Once, my sister fell in love with a Nigerian – a man from another caste – which was traditionally forbidden. My father and I did not approve and we rejected her. My sister often looked up to me, as I was the eldest brother, and seen to be very religious. This is because I went to Church every day and I read the Bible every day. She was totally dependent on me to save her, but I completely let her down. When the time came, and I was put to the test as a man who claims to stand for boundless God, I was not able to put my narrow-minded attitude away. I took my father’s side and his perspective. All this was only because I took Scriptural knowledge from a limited perspective. This All-pervading knows how to give us a reality check!
The years of Scriptural knowledge did not amount to God knowledge, but just turned to man knowledge, which offers brutish discrimination. Bookish knowledge is not the same as Sacred knowledge. How can any man learn to swim by reading a swimming manual? We learn by having a swimming instructor nearby, who can tell us as well as show us how to swim. We have to be in the water, to develop our experience.
Just so, we have to see with our own inner eye. We have to feel the Sacred. It has to be our own experience. Otherwise, we are subject to errors alone. At this moment in time, I cannot tell my sister anything about God because of my previous inhumane behaviour. What possibly can be said about God when the actions of a man are far from being kind?
When we pray and meditate, what exactly are we meditating on? The question should not only be what we are meditating on, but who or what is meditating? Who is praying? When we say formless, are we only talking about the outside air? Where is prayer coming from and how can we identify with it? As you are reading this, who is listening to the voice in your mind? Is it the body that is listening, if it is the body then who knows it is the body that is listening? Is it the mind, if it’s the mind then who knows, it is the mind? Do not speak because of what others have said or what you have read. Only speak of your experience! Experience the abode of the Living God, the one you are searching for. God lives in the heart of man. It has no name, no form, no content, but it is not empty; it is full.
When I first walked into the Centre for Oneness, I did not know anything about the Oneness Gatherings (Satsangs). I only knew about meditation. When I walked into the reception area, a man pointed to Babaji’s photo and said, ‘he knows how to help people drop their egos’. At that moment I dismissed what he said, thinking to myself I didn’t have any ego. Then when I attended the Oneness Gatherings, I realised the meaning of dropping the ego. I have not stopped attending since. Ego is so sutble and it can easily creep into the mind.
Before attending the Centre for Oneness, I visited Africa. I used to say to my friends, you have to see God in everything. God has to be seen in a dog, cat and a tree. But I didn’t know how to see God in a dog. The dog I was looking at in Africa happened to be a very ugly one! But I knew in my heart I have to see God even in an ugly dog, because it is God who is beautiful when everything else loses its own separate beauty. What we are looking for is not far. God is near at hand. This is something we all know, even a 3-year old can say this, but very few understand what it means. There is a fundamental difference between knowing and understanding. Just as you know God is in a dog, cat and tree, but to understand what that means is entirely different.
When I attended the sessions at the Centre for Oneness, I was reminded that if I wanted to go further, I simply had to ask. One month went by and I thought, “Ok, I will ask to know God”. I also made the decision that if I didn’t like what I saw, I would just walk away, not being bound to any particular place. Then the moment came of receiving the Gyan, “you are This’. All of a sudden, all the things prior to that were things I thought I knew, but I did not understand. There needs to be total clarity in understanding that you are one with everyone. Not just saying it, but truly understanding what it means. If you have not experienced yourself, how can you appreciate the experience of another? It is not just words, but being.
This is what I have experienced at the Centre for Oneness. I have come, attended and experienced. In Christianity, there is the holy trinity, which represents ‘know, experience and be’. I am so grateful that I have found you, or did you find me! I am immensely grateful to live life without strife or trouble, and to truly see everyone as one with humility in the heart. Every religion teaches the same and we can all agree, but under the surface layer of the mind there is unchallenged hatred imbedded in our psyche for other religions, which I was taught as a child. The thought of being pure consciousness, without the other, is an entirely different matter.
The Centre for Oneness has eradicated my outspoken anger and life-long, self-imposed hatred for other classes, races and nationalities. To erase the hatred of the other and to completely go beyond the idea of the other is to embrace oneness, which is freedom. Each soul has a choice to make – to go towards divinity or towards doubt. Which one we take determines our life experience.
-Albert Winners, Birmingham UK
