Advaita Post #22-06
Appeared in OHM-Vani 13 no. 1 (Jan./March 2007), p. 21-23 part 2; Part 1
Brotherly love and Advaita (Part 2)
You withdraw and open up
There are a few more comments about withdrawing from the day-to-day social world.
When you have a notion about That which precedes the world of forms and you consider its realization important, then it’s obvious that you focus on that and not on the myriad forms of the sense-experienced world. For the highest realization it’s probably inevitable that there is such a phase of detachment and relativization of the everyday world.
This is the stage of breaking free from the particular attachments to the world, not in order to completely free yourself from others, but to become free for others. The withdrawal means a surrender to Something that transcends and assimilates opposites and divisions. That is Openness. In practical terms, it’s a surrender to the situation, because Openness is not different from the situation. So there is a surrender to the situation, to the other – at work, in society, on the whole earth; there is surrender to everything. Then you hand yourself over; you don’t remain positioned at an ‘I’-center, but you are the standpoint of the other, too. There’s no longer a separate ‘I’, with an ‘I’-interest. You are no longer anything [particular], you are everything and everyone.
Allowing this to happen requires a clarity of consciousness concerning one’s own situation, a reflexive attitude, because otherwise the old habit-structures are [either] going to reassert or continue to maintain themselves. So, there must be a focus on the highest. When the essence is the most important, it will have to be given particular attention. This doesn’t mean that the value of charity isn’t honoured, but it’s understood that precisely through the realization of the highest that the ‘lower’ is purified. You certainly can continue to fight as a person against egocentricity and the lack of brotherly love, but that’s a difficult undertaking.
The problem is solved when there is the realization of the Highest. The fulfillment of the first commandment (love for God) is not for nothing the first and greatest commandment. Then the second commandment of brotherly love is similar to it. It’s just a question of how far the reverse path will go. In the wish to fulfill the commandments or dharma there is an ‘I’-will. Then the problems remain. Without neglecting the worldly dharma, it [still] applies: the highest dharma is moksa (liberation from the ego). Therefore, in every situation there must be an awareness of one’s own situation from the notion of the highest: to what extent is there openness, in consciousness and in feeling, to what extent is there non-duality? There will have to be a realization ‘I am That’. [And] That goes beyond any commandment, duty, or morality.
In the radical recognition that non-duality is the natural state which has always, already been and will remain, the commandment of open love is fulfilled, one is established in God/Brahman.
thegroundlessopenness 