One Source in All Life

The One Source in all Life Shrikant Vasudeo

Based on Isha Upanishad, Verses 1 – 3 Shrikant Soman


Verse 1
The Supreme Creator is the inhabitant of all the Universe. The individual universe of movement is part of the Universal Motion. By renouncing the concept of the individual universe as separate from the One, man should truly enjoy his life. Keeping this divine principle in mind, he should not crave for the excessive accumulation of wealth for his self alone.

Verse 2
By living life to the full extent in this material world, man should have a very long and healthy life. Renouncing the life is not the way. The action in life does not bind man if it is done in the light of the knowledge of the One as the source of it All.

Verse 3
If one does not live as per this true knowledge of the One and dwells in his egoistic world, then his life is full of darkness. He goes down into a state of blind gloom.

Free Translation

Everything in this Universe is in a flux. There is nothing ‘fixed’. It is the dynamic of motion. Even the objects which appear to be stationery (like stone for example) are inherently in motion only appearing to be fixed to our senses. Ever item in the Universe has the Full Universe contained in it. It is like (actually much more than that) a holographic reality. What we perceive in a material object is only a particular manifested point of the Universe. The microcosm is one with the macrocosm.

A human being who stays in this Universe is subject to its laws. He can not escape them. He is part of the Cosmic Nature. His source of activity is contained in the Universal Activity. It is not separate from it.

Behind this manifested Universe of dynamic motion, is an immutable One Source. This One Source is stable, unmoving, eternal and unaffected by the movement in the Universe of his creation. This varied creations in the Universe with its diverse movements has been created by this One Source to provide for his inhabitation. The Creator who dwells in the multitudinous parts of the Universe is the same – though he appears differently to our perception. This is the play of the cosmic consciousness. In its essence, every human being has a ‘divine spark’ which is the same as the ‘divine spark’ contained in every other human being. He is essentially himself the One Source. Every human being is the One Source. Therefore, it is more proper to call every human being of this Universe as in themselves One Source rather than to call them as ‘brothers and sisters’. Calling brothers and sisters has some element of differentiation even with common parentage. We are not just the children of God, we ARE GOD ! Each one of us. We are essentially free, divine and One.

Inspite of our divine origin, man is engulfed in every kind of sorrow and misery. We see ourselves as separate from every other human being. We are trapped in the vicious circle of Samsara – death, sorrow, ignorance. We do not feel our ‘connection’ with the One Source. We feel ourselves as an independent entity. The essential true and divine objective of our birth is possession and enjoyment of the world. However, we are not able to accomplish this objective. Instead, we are mired in miserable life situations. This is due the Avidya – the ‘memory lapse’ of our origin in One Source and the false feeling of our separativeness from every other object of manifestation. This is the origin of Ego.

Vidya (knowledge of One Source of All) and Avidya (ignorance or forgetfulness of this knowledge) are the twin ‘powers’ of the Creator. They are both essential for the divine play. With these powers, the Creator has the possibility of double existence at the same time. He dwells in the world of multiplicity and relativity with the power of Avidya and at the same time is also in the consciousness of unity and identity of One with the power of Vidya. With the power of Vidya, he is not ‘bound’ by this world of multiplicity. With the power of Avidya, he gets into the play of separative mentality. He identifies himself with the object in movement. He fully ‘absorbs’ himself passionately in this play of Nature. He appears to become ‘forgetful’ of the Vidya – the knowledge of One. And above all, at the background of his mentality, he is having Vidya as his source of activity. This is the double movement of Vidya and Avidya running simultaneously – apparently in the mutually exclusive way, but in reality in a complimentary way.

The Mind in man is the cause of Avidya or shall we say the instrument of Avidya. The action of the mind creates the impression of the visible world as the sole reality with all its limitations. The Lord gets ‘caged’ in our mental definitions and descriptions. It forgets the ultimate reality of the object being the particular ‘front’ of the Whole Universe. Instead, it treats individual object as a distinct and separate sole reality separate from every other object in the Universe. This is the Maya – the illusion – the false appearance – the Mirage. It is created by ‘ahamkara’ the sense of separative ego, the ‘I’ ness of our existence. This ahamkara, though itself of divine origin, creates the illusion of our separative individual existence.

This creates the dichotomy of our existence with the loss of harmony and oneness with the whole of the Universe. This defeats the essential objective of our birth – to possess and to enjoy life. We do take birth anyway, but instead of having ‘possession’ and ‘enjoyment’ we have exactly its opposite effect. We feel the ‘lacking’ and ‘sorrow’ in place of ‘abundance’ and ‘Joy’. However, the basic impulse of our Ego is still to ‘possess’ and to ‘enjoy’. Inwards, this separative is faintly aware of its one origin in Supreme Creator. However because his thinking faculty of mind is obscured by Avidya, he is not able to realise this inner reality in his outward life. It is like loss of transparency of water with the dilution due to impurities being added to it. This is the real cause of our misery. it results in discord with oneself and with others, dissatisfaction with life in general, mental and physical suffering, disease, weakness and inability, sense of obscuration and limitation, lack of power, lack of self confidence. It then results in the wastage of our energy in the false and futile pursuit of passion and craving for self-fulfilment. It leads ultimately to the recoil of energy in itself, fully exhausted and frustrated. The final result is death and disintegration.

The root cause of our suffering is our ‘craving’ towards objects of enjoyment. When one realises his true identity with the Supreme Source of All, he need not crave, because he is already in possession of the Universe, one with it and in full and true enjoyment of all that it contains.

Object of the Divine Life
The essential divine objective of our life is to possess the whole Universe and to Enjoy it. Possession and Enjoyment is NOT contrary to the divine principles. On the contrary, they are the only and main divine principles of our existence. We need to renounce our ‘craving’, which arises our of our separative sense of existence. Then only we will be able to truly and freely enjoy our life.

It should be noted that we are not talking of the moral constraint of self denial. Physical rejection of the world or any of its objects is not demanded. What is desired is the complete liberation of our spirit from any form of craving after the apparent and outward form of things.
What is needed is the liberation from the idea of ego sense. With the liberation from the idea of ego sense, we get the freedom from the craving after material objects. We need to clear ourselves from any of the false sense of the ownership of an object by oneself or by any other person or the sense that any object is absolutely essential for our happiness or the feeling of greediness in our heart. One can have a ‘preference’ or ‘desirableness’ of any object for the purpose of possession and enjoyment. This is in accordance with the divine law. What is to be abandoned is the sense of ‘absolute requirement’, of ‘critical necessity’, of ‘non-violable condition’ of the possession of any particular object. We should not make the mistake of mixing these two separate feelings. One enables us to have full enjoyment, the other leads us towards total misery – though both are essentially derived from the one source.

The cardinal principle behind this rule is the reality of Unity of all existence. The Supreme Creator dwells in each soul. The separative appearance is only an illusion. We need to transcend our Ego and realise the true Self in us. When we do this, we become the Lord of this Universe and have one cosmic consciousness – transcending the limitations of our individual mind. The physical possession of our object of desire becomes a secondary objective. The common man may have the need to prove his ownership of an object, the Emperor has no need to give this proof. He is the owner of his entire empire.

The craving after sense enjoyments also vanishes when we arrive at the stage of infinite delight of existence after we identify with the One Source of All. We possess the cosmic consciousness. We live in this Ananda as our essential principle of existence. We achieve the duel objective of transcendent existence as well as this manifested individualised world of ours. We become inwardly free in our soul while at the same time live in this world of duality with full force.

The freedom of the soul which we are talking here is NOT that of the silent inactive soul. We are dealing with the soul which is fully active and passionately absorbed in this manifested world. This is the most important principle emphasised in these verses. The freedom from the action is NOT to be understood as INACTION. Freedom from action means while doing our action with full force, zeal and passion, inwardly we should be aware of the One Reality of All. Outwardly, we are absorbed in action, while inwardly, we are absorbed in the One Source of All – and therefore liberated from the Karmic effect of our action. Thus it should be noted that the culprit is not the action itself, but our attitude towards it. The Upanishad is absolutely and explicitly clear on this point.

Similarly, the enjoyment of the worldly objects is not by the inactive soul who only ‘witnesses’ the process of enjoyment. The enjoyment is of the active soul who participates in the very process of enjoyment.

On the other hand, it is an absolute condition for the purpose of the completeness and wholeness of our life that we do get fully engaged in this material world by our actions and have a full and joyful acceptance of the terms of the physical life. This world is not to be considered as a necessary evil or a prison of the soul. This world is our opportunity for possession and enjoyment thereby making our life whole and complete. Only then the original Plan of Life by the Supreme Creator gets fulfilled.

The very notion of inaction as a means of keeping oneself free from the entrapment of Karma, by renouncing the world, going in the mountains etc is itself an illusion. This is due to the cosmic principle of vibration. Even our inertia is an action and creates vibration in the cosmic waters. Our inertia itself can create our Karma and bind us down. When we take birth in this body, it is an illusion to even think of escaping from life by any means whatsoever. The very idea which prompts us to refrain from action and find ways and means to escape from life is itself founded from ignorance – Avidya because it treats the manifested universe which itself is a form of Brahman as separate from the Soul. If the manifested Universe and the Brahman are the same, then to escape from this life is like escaping from oneself – which is absurdity. We can not escape life. We have to lovingly and joyfully embrace life.

It is our ill-conceived notion that action is to be abandoned because it is inconsistent with freedom. This notion derives from the understanding that behind every action is desire. It is subjection to the formal energy which drives this action. This makes the soul ‘entangled’ in the action. However, this is not true in the true system of the cosmic law. It is only the superficial understanding of the cosmic principle which falsely makes us believe in this way. Let us see how.

Craving is only a mode of the emotional mind. This mind under the spell of Avidya, falsely believes that the enjoyment is generated by the object of enjoyment. When we live in Vidya, we realise that the enjoyment is generated by the Brahman which resides in the object of the enjoyment. When we crave for Icecream, in ignorance we believe that it is the icecream itself which is the ultimate cause of enjoyment. However when we are enlightened in Vidya, we realise that the real source of our enjoyment is the Brahman dwelling in the icecream. Icecream may be a desirable object for our enjoyment. It is acceptable feeling in our true scheme of cosmic existence. However, craving for icecream as being an absolutely and seriously necessary thing in itself for our enjoyment is contrary to the cosmic principle.

The Energy in Motion is essentially a form of Brahman. He expresses himself through Energy in Motion with perfect freedom. We need to get behind the veil of Nature and arrive at the Lord of Nature. We need to merge our individual into the Cosmic Will. Then we can do all our worldly actions in perfect freedom with divine presence. Our actions are offered to the Lord thereby our personal responsibility for the actions get merged with him and we act in true liberty.

The movement of Nature generate the cycle of Karma and is bound by it. The soul indwelling in us with full awareness of Vidya, the knowledge and identity with One Source of All, is ever free – he is even free from the outward appearance of the binding effect. He is free inside as well as outside in our actions.

To sum up, the true freedom lies not in inaction but in non-identification of self with the movement of Nature and realising our true identity with the Brahman

The event of death does not din-integrate our individual existence. We are still in the wheel of movement. The state of our consciousness is changed to a state other than the physical consciousness. These states are either obscure or illuminated. It may be full of sunlight or ‘sunless’.

When we persistently get absorbed in the gross form of ignorance, crave after material enjoyments in the obscurity of Avidya, get merged in the movement by losing our identity with Brahman, one enters in a state of blind darkness. On the other hand, when we live in the movement with the true knowledge of Brahman as explained above, we enter into the worlds of light, get liberated and have a blissful living after death.