Self Realization
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Ramana Devi teaches The Science of Self Realization -
The time has come for people to live lives of even higher dedication than that which inspired monks and nuns in the past. Those dedicated souls lived lives that were focused on God, but theirs was also a spirit of negative denial of this world, which God made. The time has come now for people to direct their spiritual awareness also downward into matter . . . to everything they do: to their work, to education, to family life, to friendship, to their communications with strangers, to the way they build their homes — to all the most mundane, practical aspects of daily, human life. People need now to become God-centered from within, and from that center to see God everywhere, in everything. The yogi must learn also how to direct this energy down and out in a strong flow, while retaining complete control over it, so that he can act as an instrument of divine blessing in God’s creation. “Negative denial of the world,” implies that complete yoga-union has still not been attained, for it is a denial of God in his aspect as the Cosmic Creator. Yoga enables the devotee to switch off or on, at will, life current from the five sense telephones of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Attaining this power of sense-disconnection, the yogi finds it simple to unite his mind at will with divine realms or with the world of matter. Yoga mastery is thus not one sided, teaching us only to withdraw into deep meditation. The obverse holds as well: we learn how to function perfectly in this world, created by God, being 100% “in” it but not “of” it. Self Realization is not the path of world-rejecting meditation. Instead the Shiva-like path of Self-realization: daily deep meditation to raise the consciousness inward and upward, and then also to bring that high consciousness down in a strong, creative flow that spiritualizes all our activities and uplifts our fellow beings. This yoga training is complete, for it helps us overcome the final duality — between the God perceived in meditation and God as manifest in His Creation — thus making us completely free.
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