The Witness and Divine Love

God dwells in each and every one of us. Do not criticize anybody, you will accumulate sin. Do not hate anyone. Never deride anyone’s action or ridicule them on the grounds of caste, race, gender, religion or community. There is only one caste, the caste of humanity. There is only one religion, the religion of love. There is only one language, the language of the heart. All of you must understand and internalize this. Become an ideal person from today. Develop faith in the ‘Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God’. Do not worry about the past, forget it. This will lead you to real bliss. Thus I bless you!

In the beginning with Baba it felt like only ‘love, love, love’ and it made me go into the feeling and there it ended, it felt like I couldn’t think anymore. We didn’t know where to begin and how to be able to get that experience of love.

It was present during the time in the ashram as we had every day two Baba Darshans, but when back in our Western world I tried in vain to find it and why it felt like gone. It could not be possibly just go away and what was it?

When I first met with other Baba devotees we were three people singing together with a tape recorder, and I went to India because I wanted to know more.

But I was also already for years into witnessing and therefore, it was also witnessing and at the same time difficult, because the mind didn’t understand it.

I was ready to watch whatever strange things would happen and there were strange things happening. Witnessing was my only practice first, only I didn’t understand it how I was able to be aware in my dream that someone planned to commit suicide. It was a shock and even if the witnessing went on, it took me a long time to understand how and why that insight had been present.

Whatever thoughts arise as obstacles to one's sadhana (spiritual discipline), the mind should not be allowed to go in their direction, but should be made to rest in one's self which is the Atman; one should remain as witness to whatever happens, adopting the attitude “Let whatever strange things happen, happen; let us see!” This should be one's practice. In other words, one should not identify oneself with appearances; one should never relinquish one's self. This is the proper means for destruction of the mind (manonasa) which is of the nature of seeing the body as self, and which is the cause of all the aforesaid obstacles. (Ramana Maharshi)

Witnessing was one thing, but understanding the insights was finally much more difficult, because we had to get the big picture to be able to understand the insights and that was not at all present in the beginning. The question was how to get to the big picture and Baba said, 1/5 is meditation and 4/5 is self-enquiry, but how should we begin with that self-enquiry.

I went in a relationship with another devotee, because he thought it was Baba giving us that opportunity, but as it turned out he had no idea about witnessing, nor about Baba’s teaching and instead of going into enquiry, he turned it into ridicule.

That didn’t work and that is when Baba said in the dream, ‘you didn’t listen, you have to get a divorce’. But how and why we didn’t listen. It was still not answered, it just felt like it added up to it, but nothing at all seemed to make sense yet.

After a long time witnessing it seemed the self was present in the dream as bright white light and I knew that was it, but I didn’t know how it happened and why and how to go on and how to find answers, because we had to understand it.

I went into meditation to hopefully get closer and faster to that higher self, but whatever happened, it didn’t just get clear.

And Baba said in the interview room, ‘follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game’ and that is when I realized that lots of happening in the past were different in the inner master than it seemed to be outside and I began to question it to get a right answer.

That is how I got more into self-enquiry.

It was not only theoretical knowledge and knowing the difference between the ‘I’ and the mind level, it was also in my life and it had to be understand and mostly when it went wrong and what was wrong.  And only after doing I got aware of it that Baba said that Tapas is first that we have to discriminate and second to see it in our own life and to go on no matter what obstacles are there. That means it was Tapas, spiritual work and I was not even aware of it, but I got surprising answers in the inner view.

But it was not a direct answer, it was always an indirect answer in the inner master. It began with the inner master putting something in question and with the self-enquiry things got clearer and in the end until in the end they made sense.

He also said also to use his words, therefore, usually I take a thought for the day and in thinking it over I get aware of the background by seeing it in my own life. And I did it only when it was present in the dream and therefore, it was the inner master I followed and not my own mind and it began to make sense.

God dwells in each and every one of us. Do not criticize anybody, you will accumulate sin. Do not hate anyone. Never deride anyone’s action or ridicule them on the grounds of caste, race, gender, religion or community.

After I decided to witness I was listening to the heart, because I thought if he was really in each and every one of us, there had to be a way to get aware of it. If he was present, why were we not aware of it? And we were not at all aware of it.

I didn’t grow up in a religious family or background, not at all, they would have laughed at me if I would have said that God dwells in us.

To think that God was an old man on a cloud was the worst of it, more or less there was no believe at all and my mother she believed in nature, she said she preferred to look at the beauty in nature and it was closer to God than the church and in a sense she was right, but there was also part of it not right at all.

Therefore, I tried to find why there was such a gap between the inner feeling of divinity present and the religion and Baba was the answer, he talked about the unity of all religions. I was really happy after I went to him, but I was not happy when coming back, because it felt like my life had evaporated.

But that was also because of TM, I had been a TM-teacher and after coming back that was gone and no more possible and the question was why a meditation technique which claimed to only do good, could have such an impact that I didn’t find my old self and my life again and I went back to India as soon as possible hoping to find another way to get back into a normal life, whatever a normal life was. From that first experience of the higher self, what made me feel from the inside okay to the result with TM that was a huge gap in between.

And I went for some years into dynamic meditation and dancing and that was again a different experience, it was very grounding and I felt that good in my present life, like it never would have been different, but it was also not the answer to understanding the inner view and the insights present in the witness.

But writing it down and thinking it over and looking at the experiences in the light of Baba’s words that is how it began to make sense and we began to see it in our own life and it has changed.

One should remain as witness to whatever happens, adopting the attitude “Let whatever strange things happen, happen; let us see!” This should be one's practice. (Ramana Maharshi)

We still go on and are a witness to whatever happens, only now it begins to make sense and that is the result of self-enquiry.