NOEMAYA

To lead a spiritual life is to live in vicinity to God, or Jnani’s Supreme Principle, and constantly moving upward toward the realization and establishment of the Supreme Identity, that man is essentially divine: “Thou Art That.”

God, the supreme principle, is Satchidananda, that is, pure Being-Consciousness-Bliss. It is not that God is that which exists or is in possession of consciousness. Instead, God is Being itself; it is consciousness itself; its nature is bliss. Thus, to lead a spiritual life is to become closer and closer to Satchidananda, namely dwelling in pure Being and Pure consciousness and pure Bliss. These three aspects, which are not attributes of God but its very essence, should be the focus of spiritual life.

Being, however, has its highest intensity in the present, in the now. A memory has Being but its Being is not only less vivid than the Being of now but also depends for its existence on the Being of the now. Where the consciousness of the now is absent everything else is absent, such as the dreamless state. The further we move from the now, the less the intensity of Being becomes. The Being of that which is far from now is lesser than the Being of that which is in the now. Now, hence, is the criterion for the degrees of Being; it is the center in which God’s essence dwells, the center toward which one must aim. The same holds for consciousness and its intensity.

With above considerations we can say that the core of spiritual life is nothing but to move toward the now and to dwell in it, namely to become one with the current of Being and Becoming, and hence detached from the whatness of that which is; to bring all attention and cognition to the now. In our natural state our consciousness is constantly leaking outside the now; it tends to be thrown outwardly due to the centrifugal effect of The Fall, The Fall being nothing but the forgetfulness of present and presence. Spiritual life is the becoming one with the present, that is, to have only presence. In this sense the now, the presence, is indeed the divine present, for it is pure Being and Consciousness and Bliss. Therefore, the now is a present in two senses, both as divine Being and also as divine present to man. To live spiritually is to accept this divine present, and to accept the divine present is nothing but to be fully present, to realize that man has no business going outside the now, the divine kingdom living in the heart. This is the movement toward God, the facing toward God and its present instead of toward absence, the not-now, and hence constantly rejecting the present as God’s present. There is a rope, thrown by God for us, hanging down from the now so we can hold onto it and move upward toward the now, saving ourselves from the deep well of ignorance. This rope is none but the sacred formula, the Mantra. By virtue of the mantra man can climb up toward God and liberate himself, this being the symbolic reason that a rosary looks like a rope to be held onto during japa.

The goal of spiritual life is not to be this or that but rather to Be without having to be something: This is pure Being which is identical with pure consciousness of the now followed by pure bliss, bliss being the natural consequence of liberation from all that is not now and not in the now. Living a spiritual life is to constantly face toward the now instead of away from it, toward the center, the Kaaba, toward the center rather than away from it, toward the present moment which is pure Being and Consciousness and Bliss. The goal is to become one with the now, to be fully absorbed in the now and oblivious to what is outside it, for to remember God is to forget ourselves; it is to become pure Being rather than Being human which by its nature dwells outside the now; the goal is to realize the nothingness of human being and consequently the fullness of our identity with Satchidananda.