The main truth about Truth is that if you don’t reach it on your own, it will never become your truth.
If we objectively analyze human convictions and views, we shall come across a whole spectrum of mutually overruling truths. Some people are certain that there is eternal life after death, some believe they have a soul, while others claim there is only matter.
To avoid dogmatism, we would have to consider the possibility that all existential questions are posed out of fear of death, anxiety towards the unknown. So maybe not love, but fear is the driving force which makes us set out on the long way to the great reality, the liberation from illusion and fear.
One thing differentiates man from all other living creatures on Earth. Only man may discover the being which invigorates him, and can consciously reunite with the one who has always walked at his side. Only man can recognize and connect with him.
The path lays hidden in each one of us, regardless of the worldview and knowledge we possess. One could say: Truth is so close, while we look for it in the most remote places. We are like someone who dies of thirst while standing in water.
If you are departing on the most important journey of your life, in order to find your true being, then you first of all have to leave behind everything personal, everything you know, everything you trust, everything you think, everything you are! In this way, ‘naked’, helpless, as if exiled from the heaven of your personal life, you have to set out on an unknown journey.
However, the inner voice still speaks:
Start to look for Truth without a single conclusion, without any a priori assumption. Only in this way will you become a true seeker. A biased eye is blind, a heart full of conclusions is dead.
If you reach the condition of freedom from your convictions, only then will you reach the core of the problem, with which every man seeking for liberation has to be confronted. You will then face three gates. Our passing through them opens the way to eternal freedom.
Passing the three gates
The first of the gates bears the inscription: ‘Bondage and the related desires and cravings’.
On the second one it is written: ‘Illusion of personal existence’, and on the third gate that provides access to eternal freedom, we read: ‘Desire of life, desire of existence’.
The path to liberation must have but one goal: to make seekers conscious that they have to cross these three gates, and provide them with keys, so that they can open them and pass through. When we really start to think about the nature of life and want to understand our motives and actions, then we approach the first gate. We begin to clearly see that all our deeds are motivated by bondage. The mind is bound almost to everything. It can be a positive bond, when there are benefits, or a negative bond, when there is an urge to escape a given thing. In both cases, there is a question of mental ties with the specific thing, being or situation.
The human mind is of a conservative kind. At all times, it tries to retain what it has once achieved. It is not eager to change. Each change causes movement, which the mind resists. And, thus, the ego ends up fighting against the reality of change.
However, the universe is one great transformation process, where it is impossible to stop the movement.
The only solution to pass through this gate is the complete consent and acceptance of energy moving in the universe and a total accord with all changes.
The second gate makes man aware that the thing which sustains our suffering is the delusion of separation, delusion of being a separate being. When we think of ourselves as an autonomous entity, provided with its own will, we can only move from one mistake to another, fighting with the entire surrounding universe.
Learn how to see yourself as a unity with everything in the Cosmos. Find a way out of the dreams of life to Life itself. Just be present, always wherever you are. Do not create anything: return to the zero point. This zero point is pure consciousness, original, absolute, perfect, it is the Truth above existence and non-existence.
There is the spiritual sun, which always keeps shining. There are also clouds – it is our illusion of personal existence. These clouds are equipped with intelligence and individualism. Sometimes very dense, they may be very bad, malicious, thunder-casting clouds, which trigger flood, hail or fog. Yet also, they may take the form of mild, pleasant clouds, through which rays of sun are shining. The personality is then meek and friendly. But the cloud is not an autonomous being!
Atmospheric clouds are made of billions of tiny drops of water and ice crystals. Drops, initially tiny ones, are grouped around specks of dust and other microscopic particles. In order to form a cloud, there must be a point of condensation around which the drops of water are gathered. These specks are our thoughts, concepts, our imagination. When you clean this ‘dust’, the clouds of illusion cannot be formed.
The passage through the third gate is the most difficult one because it touches the most basic instinct of any living and feeling creature. The desire to exist can be compared to a flame. The only way to find reality and be liberated from the wheel of birth and death is to extinguish the propelling forces of life – cravings and all kinds of polarizations.
Arrival
Much is being said about the abandonment of the ego. However, it cannot be done just like that. It is like staying in darkness – you cannot abandon darkness, when you are in a dark room. You can only bring light into it. Darkness as such is non-existent, instead there can be a lack of light.
You cannot influence darkness itself. You can only use light. Entering into oneself and a true spiritual meditation acts as the light that disperses the darkness. When you become light, the ego will disappear.
True meditation is life and the experience of life without words, beyond words. Entering into such a meditation is an extraordinary spiritual link with everything that surrounds us – objects, plants, animals, people. Completely without words. It means sensing their deepest being, without a word.
Then you will notice that there is a place which cannot be named. There is a space where life and death do not follow each other. There is a place where there is no birth and no death. This place is in each one of us. It is a place beyond life and death. Awakening to this reality, to this space, is the great illumination, the great liberation.
