Volume 18 Number 1 Page 26

So much has been said and written about the "Highest Consciousness" and God-realization that people are bewildered as to the right process and immediate possibility of attainment. The philosophical mind wading laboriously through such literature only ends by learning a few intellectual gymnastics. The Highest State of Consciousness is latent in all. The Son of God is in every man, but requires to be manifested. The method of attaining this great Consciousness must be very practical and must be adapted to the existing mental and material conditions of the world.

Rituals and ceremonies instituted by the priest-ridden churches have made the process of attainment too dry; and that accounts for the lack of interest felt all over the world towards religious things in general. India, in spite of its high state of spirituality, at the present moment is very caste-ridden because of the enforcement by various cults of a plethora of rituals and ceremonies which maintain the form but kill the spirit. Forms and ceremonies, instead of diminishing the ego, strengthen it. The stronger the ego, the more aggressive it becomes. In the anxiety to become conscious of a separate self through thinking thoughts such as "I am in the right", "I am the favored one", "I only have the right to live", one becomes destructive. The furious race for armaments by the Christian world, evincing an utter disregard for the Commandment of Jesus that if one cheek is smitten, the other should be offered, shows clearly what I mean by the ego. In the evolutionary ascent from the mineral, vegetable and animal life, the latent mind gradually expands and develops till full consciousness is reached in the human form. To create this very consciousness, the universe emanated from the Infinite Ocean of Knowledge end Bliss, i.e., God the Absolute. In the human form, however, a difficulty is confronted, to remove which, prophets, and spiritual Masters have periodically visited this earthly plane. Besides full consciousness in the human form, as a result of previous conditions of life, the ego, the 'I', is evolved.

The ego is composed of fulfilled and unfulfilled desires and creates the illusion of feeling finite, weak and unhappy. Henceforth, the soul can only progress through the gradual suppression of this finite ego and its transformation into the Divine Ego, the One Infinite Self, but retaining in full the consciousness of the human form. When man realizes this state of Divine Consciousness, he finds himself in everyone and sees all phenomena as forms of his own Real Self. The best and also the easiest process of overcoming the ego and attaining the Divine Consciousness is to develop love and render selfless service to humanity in whatever circumstances we are placed. All ethics and religious practices ultimately lead to this. The more we live for others and less for ourselves, the more the low desires are eliminated, and this, in turn, reacts upon the ego, suppressing and transforming it proportionately. The ego persists to the last. Not till all the six, out of the seven, principal stages on the Path, culminating into one God-conscious state, are traversed, is the ego completely eliminated to reappear on the seventh plan as the Divine "I", the state of Christ Consciousness to which Jesus referred when he said, "I and my Father are one" and which corresponds to the state of living in the Infinite and finite at one and the same time.

The above is the normal procedure for one who works on his own initiative without having come across a living Master. With the help of a Perfect Master, the whole affair, however, is greatly simplified.