Getting on the ‘Innernet’: Connecting with the Self

For many Hindus, Self-realization is God-realization. “The air inside an empty jar is the same as the air outside the jar,” wrote the sage Shankarcharya. “In exactly the same way, your Inner Self is identical with the Self of all. Smash the jar and the air inside it will merge seamlessly with the air outside. Smash the illusion that you exist apart from God and you will merge with that Divine reality.”

The jars we are locked into are the physical, subtle and causal bodies. The physical body is smashed at death. The subtle body is smashed at rebirth. However, the causal body, the subtlest vortex of energy with which our Inner Self reincarnates, is smashed only at the moment of final liberation, when the Inner Self merges with the Divine Self.

Just as your five fingers are not really separate because they are linked to the same hand, so the Self in you and the Self in me and the Self in the person ahead of you in line at the bank are not really separate because they are linked through the Supreme Self, the Consciousness of God.

When you harm someone else, you are literally harming your own Self. When you love someone else, you are loving your own Self. At the innermost level of our being we are all intimately linked. Apollonius of Tyana was amazed when he arrived in Kashmir and found yogis who knew everything about him. “How can you possibly know me?” he demanded. “We began by knowing ourselves,” was their reply.

By Pt. Vasistha Persad