Lesson 1 - Self Realization is the Goal
Never have there been so many people living on the planet wondering,
"What is the real goal, the final purpose of life?" However, man is
blinded by his ignorance and his concern with the externalities of the
world. He is caught, enthralled, bound by karma. The ultimate
realizations available are beyond his understanding and remain to him
obscure, even intellectually. Man's ultimate quest, the final
evolutionary frontier, is within man himself. It is the Truth spoken by
Vedic rishis as the Self within man, attainable through control of the
mind and purification. It is karma that keeps us from knowing of and
reaching life's final goal, yet it is wrong to even call it a goal. It
is what is, known by the knower to have always existed. It is not a
matter of becoming the Self, but of realizing that you never were not
the Self.
And what is that Self? It is Parashiva. It is God. It is That which is
beyond the mind, beyond thought, feeling and emotion, beyond time, form
and space. That is what all men are seeking, looking for, longing for.
When karma is controlled through yoga and dharma well performed, and the
energies are transmuted to their ultimate state, the Vedic Truth of life
discovered by the rishis so long ago becomes obvious. That goal is to
realize God Siva in His absolute or transcendent state, which when
realized is your own ultimate state--timeless, formless, spaceless
Truth. That Truth lies beyond the thinking mind, beyond the feeling
nature, beyond action or any movement of the vrittis, the waves of the
mind. Being, seeing, this Truth then gives the correct perspective,
brings the external realities into perspective. They then are seen as
truly unrealities, yet not discarded as such. This intimate experience
must be experienced while in the physical body. One comes back and back
again into flesh simply to realize Parashiva. Nothing more. Yet, the
Self, or Parashiva, is an experience only after it has been experienced.
Yet, it is not an experience at all, but the only possible
nonexperience, which registers in its aftermath upon the mind of man.
Prior to that, it is a goal. After realization, one thing is lost, the
desire for the Self.