Faith

Trusting the Unseen
by Kosi

Faith is trust in the unseen omniscience of God. The teaching of Sri Sri Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi is the supreme faith—direct realization of the unseen intelligence of God. It releases you from the endless cycles of birth and death—the karmic wheel of saṃsāra—the suffering of the great wandering that has continued for lifetimes upon lifetimes. His teaching is simple, powerful, and endlessly deep. He was crystal clear there are only two methods that lead you to the bliss of eternal salvation known as moksha or liberation. The first is self-inquiry or vichara and the second is complete and total surrender to God—either approach requires an intense desire for liberation and perseverance. But what is the purpose for these two approaches? How does it liberate you from the ancient karmic wheel of suffering?

The inquiry into the Self, or omniscience of God, within you is the nature of self-inquiry. It is the direct discovery of the sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss) of your true nature. This process is simple, direct, and potent. It is also an extremely challenging—it directly confronts your ego and everything you think you are. Surrender to God simply means to let go of every single thought and desire you have for you and your life and emphatically trust the unseen intelligence of God to guide your life instead. This is also a great challenge.

The root of reincarnation is ego. Unresolved egoic karma must be resolved in the next physical incarnation. The ego is the source and substance of complex thought. It is how you perceive yourself and your life. The gazillions of thoughts you have had since the moment you were born all arose from ego. Everything you have learned, experienced, and remember is the conditioned experience of your life arising from ego. The core nature of ego is identification with your body and all that entails—fear, sadness, pain, anxiety, stress as well as thoughts of your past, present, and future is the complexity that arises from your ego.

This is amplified by the feeling nature of your physical form infused with your five senses of sight, sound, feeling, smell, and taste. It is the feeling nature of ego that makes your ego viscerally real. It is the visceral sense and feeling of ego or the ‘me’ you think you are that must be overcome entirely for liberation or moksha. If there is ego, even a subtle feeling of ego, than liberation has not yet occurred. The purpose of surrender or self-inquiry is to destroy your ego entirely. The mind, which also emerges from your ego, can strongly object to your core identity being destroyed. How can you survive without ego? Who would you be without ego?

This can generate intense fear—death of the ego is the death of you and everything you think you are. This fear is natural. The ego has a strong survival instinct infused with your genetics and the mind or the genetic mind. Its primary purpose is to keep you and everything it thinks that you are alive. It is the survival instinct associated with ego that makes the process of liberation extremely tricky. The mind, ego, and senses will reject any confrontation or process that attempts to destroy the ego. The brain and body are simply wired for survival.

The genetic mind and ego is a huge force of nature. It is a tsunami of biological idiosyncrasies or the ecology of the human form. It is no simple task to overcome this force of nature. The body is designed to live and will put up a huge fight to stay alive. Confronting the ego either with surrender or self-inquiry generates friction—the natural resistance to annihilation. Both the practice of self-inquiry in the three forms recommended by Bhagavan (meditation, mantra, vichara—all as vichara or self-inquiry) naturally destroys the substance of your ego. But what is the substance of ego? What is the ego really?

The ego is reflective consciousness. This is one of the most astonishing revelations of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. The ego is like a double sided mirror—on one side it reflects the five senses of the your body on the other it reflects that eternal flame of pure conscious awareness—the Self. It is the eternal flame of the Self that that generates the deep feeling that you are invincible. The combination of the five senses and the Self is what makes the ego feel very real, but in reality the ego is an illusion or mirage. It feels real, but on close examination it can be directly experienced as non-existent.

This means that you do not need the ego to live—the vast intelligence of the Self is the life that animates your body. But simply knowing this does nothing to eradicate the deep feeling of ego. To completely see through the mirage of your ego requires the process of purification of the genetic mind, karma, and destiny. This is the purpose of total surrender and self-inquiry. It generates the essential friction or sacred fire that enables you to see through the mirage of reflective consciousness. It seeing through the mirage of your ego that begins the process that leads to moksha.

Moksha is unending bliss—but not as a feeling of bliss that comes and goes, but rather, the direct realization that you are the unchanging bliss of the Self or life force in the core of your being. The presence that is always here and now. Naturally, you can have a glimpse of this or a taste of bliss or what Ramana described as the turiya state—the fourth state of consciousness that is always constant, steady, still, and always present regardless of what you are doing or thinking. It is the direct discovery of this stateless state of consciousness within you that sets you free of the complexity of your mind and feeling nature of your body.

This taste is usually fleeting. The mind and ego will arise to reclaim your attention and it will seem as though you lost the bliss—but in actuality the bliss is still present but hidden again by your ego and mind. The taste of bliss and the eventual feeling that you lost bliss is simply because your mind is full of false concepts of who you are. Your brain is literally wired for suffering. For the experience of the bliss to become the constant experience requires the purification of your mind, which naturally re-wires your brain—practice and surrender are practices that physically change your brain. This purification and re-wiring requires continuous practice—the clear recommendation of Bhagavan.

The ego cannot be overcome with ego and mind. If you think you are the one who is practicing it creates a loop of consciousness that will generate momentary experiences of bliss followed by much longer periods of continued suffering—the reason is simply that your ego is left in charge. Both self-inquiry and surrender confronts the ego—until it seen through as non-existent.

This is not just a thought. In other words, you cannot simply know that ego is the illusion generated by reflective consciousness. No. It is a ruthless direct confrontation that annihilates the powerful tentacles of suffering—attachment, desire, and the pursuit of pleasure.

This purification is a process of learning to trust the unseen omniscience within you and all around you that in actuality is not in or out—the omniscience is everything perceived. Trust in the unseen grace of omniscience is essential to see through the grand illusion of your ego.

Trusting the unseen is the practice of both self-inquiry and surrender. Moksha is simply not possible without the power of the unseen presence.

It is total trust in the unseen that annihilates the source of all suffering—ego.

This is not an instant process—it takes time and effort.

Tat Sat
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