Religion is architecture in time; but what is seen with the eye of form, that is, the forms that constitute the exterior of religion, is in fact an image reflected in time, a mere shadow of the cathedral of truth. Every human work is a design in time; it is extended between its generation and degeneration, from its generation as an idea to its manifestation in the world, and then to its natural degeneration.
My friends, religion is no human work though humans have to do the work to manifest it. The outward form of the saint is a mere instrument at the service of his inward reality which is essentially identical with God. Unlike human work which is extended in and through time, religion is monument only whose base is in time; it is a monument that shoots from earth to heaven, from time to eternity. It is erected vertically out of every time and every place into the no-place and the no-time. Oh, religion is the alchemy of the soul. But this inner dimension of religion, the hidden cathedral with whose shadow we have busied ourselves, this Sacred Geometry, is concealed to the eye of form, to the vulgar and superficial demands of the servants.
Who is the saint? The saint has become the axis of the world; he is the bridge, the word through whom transcendent meanings are reflected on earth. The saint has a foot in existence and another foot in non-existence, one eye fixed on the veil and another eye seeing through the veil; he slips in and out of existence, for he is the master of both worlds.
Don’t try to make the world a heaven; first find the heaven inside yourself. Know that you are already in heaven only dreaming the world. Don’t change anything yet; first wake up. World is a stream of forms that proves your constancy, your other-worldliness. Let this current polish your soul since that can only make you stronger and more constant. A stream cannot exist without a groove or an unchanging bedrock. Know that you are that unchanging bedrock. Lay down and let the world walk all over you. My child, fear not, for you are only the witness of this passing.
The witness is not really someone or something that is witnessing as if it were one of His faculties; the Witness is witnessing itself and witnessing Itself. The Real is the very act of witnessing; and was He not pure act! But as the whole of Reality is the act of witnessing, and that there is nothing apart from this reality, then that witnessing is witnessing no one and nothing but Itself. Reality is the witnessing of witnessing, i.e. Self-contemplation. Everything that is known to you, even in the depths of your minds and hearts, is really His knowledge; it is in His light that you see and know things. Oh brother, this sight of yours is a borrowed sight; your life is a borrowed life. Drop your stories and find the hidden story-teller. Find Him who tells without telling, He whose telling is Silence and whose face is The Void.
Your telling has concealed His telling; your being has concealed His face. Your reality is a veil over His Reality. Be silent and tell nothing; be no one and nothing. We rather slip in and out of our deaths with every blow. After all, life is nothing but a perpetual slipping in and out of death. We are created anew in every instant. Man is God in revolution: I am because He blows existence into my face, my essence.
Before He turns you toward Himself He turns you toward yourself, so that with His light you see the ugly and the beautiful together. But know that all beauty is His; the ugly!? The ugly is not.
Hey you, who dwell on the other side of existence sitting in the shared heart of all beings, can you hear me?! And He says, “Your voice is the echo of my voice; your seeking me is my seeking you.” Oh Sun, oh Shankara, that faceless Face, I have missed You so much. You have marked me with an eternal wound, that sweet death in Your Face. We cannot stay in this house of existence, for we have our roots in non-existence. The tale of our existence is a wave in the ocean of non-existence. Lift up your head and see the face of He whose shadow, your ego, you have been chasing. Suffer no more of this confusion; confusion and madness lead to His presence, to eternal sobriety. The master said: “Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.” Yes, suffering is only an attitude toward pain.
This world is but a make up on His face. Behold not the collyrium but that annihilating glance, that return Home. Long, long, and long, for longing is the universal currency. Oh God, gather me toward yourself, for my non-existence is scattered into existence.
To perceive His reality one must shut the eye of form and see only with the eye of the heart. The reality of things comes from their meaning and not from their form.
There is really only one thing man can do by himself, which is to annihilate himself, whether physically or spiritually. The rest is His play. As long as you are you see only the play, but when you are annihilated and are no more you will see only the Face. “Everything is annihilated but His face.”
NOEMAYA 
longing.
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Suffering is optional indeed, gnanis say suffering is in the mind, and indeed it is said just act as a witness to your sufferings, do not act or react, observe it, witness it and do not become a part of it. Suffering is in the mind (except maybe, the physical pain, but again gnanis say when you ‘Know’, you just become inert to the physical pain as well). I do not know if you believe in Karma, but I strongly do. If suffering is in the mind, and when I earn that grace to this wisdom, does that mean that my Karma is vanquished? I do know that for the rest of us here, it is easily said than done, (and my personal opinion is this ‘witnessing’ itself is a yogam, not a mean task !) What is the significance of karma , if I am just a witness, performing the witnessing? Would love to read your opinion on this.
(off-topic: When I visited Rila monastery this weekend, I saw a Fresco at its entrance which seemed very familiar,I thought I have seen it somewhere already. Few minutes passed and I indeed realized I saw it in this blog, weeks back. I asked my guide about the significance of the picture, the triangle as the Aura of the God, the dove underneath, he said something quite fast that I really could not grasp. Fascinating Fresco, fascinating coincidence !
offtopic 2: I posted a link to your last blog on quora on Turia, I quoted your answer to my question while posting a response to a question. If you are Not ok, I will remove that post, pls do let me know)
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RamG thanks for your comment. And thanks for sharing my blog and reply; I have absolutely no problem with that 🙂 and indeed it is a fascinating fresco. I love it too.
I do believe you are very right on the Karma issue; my personal opinion too comes from scriptural authorities and I try not to read into them my own speculations. So I do believe in Karma and think it is really a statement of fact about Maya. Karma too is a more general notion of causality, that actions have reactions and consequences. This is true both for physical and spiritual realities. But also Karma belongs to Maya; it is the inner dynamics of the gunas that connect everything together, and hence causality. But we humans have a body-mind complex and also a third element, our spiritual reality which is Atman. We are truly that spiritual reality, the Atman; the body-mind complex is only a vehicle of action for the Atman; or maybe I can say they are Atman’s lense. While the body-mind complex is located within Maya, Atman or the true self is beyond the bounds of Maya and hence unaffected by it. Therefore, Karma which operates only within Maya applies only to the body-mind complex and not to the true self or Atman which is the witness of Maya. It only appears to us to be subject to Karma because Atman is identified with the body-mind complex, and as long as we are not conscious of the illusory nature of this identification we feel as if subject to Karma. We are subject to Karma because we believe we are 🙂
Atman is never affected by anything since it is beyond the gunas and Karma. So for the Jnani who has realized the Self Karma is seen only as a play that involved the body-mind and not the real person, the Atman; so he is in a way free from it though the body is always subject to decay and the laws of nature. The sage has gone beyond Karma, so Karma in a way vanquished. But he also knows that He as Atman was never truly subject to Karma, ever free.
The idea is that the body-mind complex since it lies in the domain of Maya is always subject to impermanence and decay; there is no exception for the sage. But the sage has realized that he is independent of all this change and decay, that he is Atman, a reality beyond all change.
Karmas are really attached to us as a result of wrong identification of the Atman with the body-mind. Once you realize that you are not the mind, then the impressions in the mind from past experiences which determine your future actions, i.e. Karma, lose their effect and strength on you, and in every moment you are a new person and can make choice independently of your past fears and history.
This is what I so far have understood on this subject. Hope it is clear.
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Thanks for this insightful explanation..the obscurity in my perception stems from the fact that when the Divine wills that you must reap the harvests of what you have sown, it also at the same time advises you at the same time to remain inert to shock-absorb yourself from the effects of the same. Karma, though in the realms of Maya, is the Divine will of the supreme ultimate, don’t you think? The Master who thinks and wills you must be rewarded (or punished) is the same Master who asks you to do nothing about it when he doles out his reward. I am just perturbed by this contrasting polarity 🙂 Everything is a divine Will then, there is no free will, don’t you think? I used to think that mankind is maybe endowed with a circle of free-will, within a larger circle of His Divine will. But Holy Men say all thoughts, actions and expressions arise from Him, nothing, not even a single bit of thought, act or expression, is ever truly yours. Even in your write-ups you use a recurring expression, we are all puppets dancing to the tunes of The Cosmic Master. If this is true, and nothing ever truly belongs to me why stage a play at all. Why should I forget my divinity, only to remember it later for eternity? Does that mean that with a True Realisation, freeing myself from all the shackles of bondage and the tenterhooks of Karma, all willed by the Divine, I am truly free-willed atlast? So does the statement that I have no free will really means that ,I do have it, but I am simply restrained by the forgetfulness of my divinity, that I seek it in Maya, when infact I have infinite free-will and only merely fail to recognise it ?
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RamG you put it exactly as it is. The source of life and the source of will, i.e. source of consciousness and intelligence, are both the Supreme One. The individual human being, when isolated from its Atman principle, is as inert as a stone; and on this point even science agrees with metaphysics. What is visible in a man is inert matter; the invisible man, the Atman, transcends the empirical order. We seem to experience Karma as a result of being ignorant of our true nature. Everything arises from Him because there is nothing but Him. As you said it beautifully, we only need to recognize this truth.
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Narayana Pranam. I could locate difference between meanings it gave earlier and now.
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