Spiritual Freedom...

If we wish to attain spiritual freedom, and be released from
the wheel of karma and reincarnation, that is another thing
altogether. The quest for spiritual freedom is really a quest for
soul-knowledge and God-realization, a quest to know ourselves in our
ultimate, core spiritual essence, and to directly experience God of
Itself. This may seem like a tall order; but every major spiritual
teacher has taught that soul-realization and God-realization are the
only goals worth pursuing. Paul Twitchell stated this very clearly
when he wrote:

"It is a spiritual law that we must first seek the Kingdom of God,
which is God-realization. There is little need to seek His
attributes, like love, wisdom and understanding, for they are
secondary causes and will be attained provided we have first the
enlightenment of Divine Reality . . . It was during His great Sermon
on the Mount that (Christ) urged all, Seek first the Kingdom of
Heaven and all else will be added unto you! Thereafter, He
reemphasized the spiritual law of God-realization as the primary goal
of one's life in practically every public speech."

This postulate, of itself, raises three basic questions: What is the
true nature of the Self? What is God? And how do I attain their
respective states of realization?

I. The Nature of The Self

Simply put, our true identity is Soul (also known as Surat, Jiva,
Atma or Tuza) an eternal spark of Divine Love in the Body of God.
As the 15th Century mystic poet Kabir put so succinctly:

"O Kabir, the soul is a particle of the Lord."

Kirpal Singh, a 20th Century Satguru, reiterated:


"...Soul is a conscious entity, a drop of the Ocean of All
consciousness, and in its miniature capacity carries all the divine
attributes of Godhood. Since it is environed by mind and matter, it
has lost its heritage and forgotten its origin, the True Home of the
Father. The Masters come to our help, to awaken us from this long
slumber of ignorance. All the past Masters including Christ have
been stressing the importance of this inner development of soul."
Soul is a timeless unit of pure awareness. It is not the mental
body, or the causal body, the emotional body or the physical body.
These are all protective sheaths it wears in order to function and
communicate within the harsher vibration levels of duality, psychic
energy, space, time and matter. They may be compared to a car used
for locomotion, or a deep sea diving suit used to protect the
physical body from the pressures of oceanic depths.

An important extension of this principle to understand is that, while
we are atoms in the body of God (or drops in the Ocean of All
Consciousness), we are also individuals who will continue to exist
throughout eternity. There is no point along the path to
enlightenment wherein we lose our individual consciousness and merge
back into the Universal Mind or Great Void of the Unconscious. We
are Souls. We are eternal. And we simply become points of attention
in the great wave of
Divine Love.


II. The Nature of God

The second question is, "What is God?" The Supreme One has been known
by as many names as there are languages. The closest I can come to
describing God is: an incomprehensibly vast vortex of pure,
conscious, golden Love.

It is neither an old man on a throne in the sky as seen by
traditional patriarchal religions, nor the maternal earth goddess
favored by wiccan, neo-pagan and some Hindi schools of thought.
These, and all other stated attributes, are mere reflections of the
One. Neither male nor female, Brahma nor Kali, Jehovah nor Gaia, God
nor Goddess, IT is beyond all duality. IT JUST IS!
One of the best descriptions of the indescribable - the Supreme One -
was written by Guru Nanak in the late 16th Century. In the prologue
to his classic Jap Ji, Nanak declared:

"There is one Reality, the Unmanifest-Manifested
Ever-Existent, He is Naam (Conscious Spirit)
The Creator; pervading all
Without fear, without enmity;
The Timeless, the Unborn and the Self-existent;
Complete within Itself.
Through the favor of His true Servant, the Guru,
He may be realized.
He was when there was nothing;
He was before all ages began;
He existeth now, O Nanak,
and shall exist forevermore." 6

While it is natural to be interested in the attributes/reflections of
God, they of themselves will not lead to God-realization.