Once again....I was too quick to judge

I couldn't go to bed last night until I finished this book by Paul Brunton. It's hard to describe the urgency I felt to read and finish that book. After I had finished writing my blog last night I thought about the strong reaction there was in my body when he didn't remain with the Maharishee but returned to stay for a month with Meher Baba with whom I felt nothing. When he failed to see the greatness of the Maharishee something at a deep level in me recognised the power of this sage of Arunachala and I felt unexplained distress. This was very interesting to me and I wondered what it all meant.

But I should not have been so hasty to judge because in the end he did spend time with the Maharishi. However the process Paul went through before he chose the Maharishee in the final pages of the book was interesting and is typical of the path as I have experienced it. First the ego came into play when he had the thought of 'there's no-one here who can give me the realizations I am seeking' and then the quieter inner voice saying 'are you sure, that out of everyone you have met while you have been travelling, there is nobody here who can be the Master you seek'. It was then that the memory of the Maharishee and the power he had felt when he sat with him returned to him.

This is typical of the spiritual path, the ego fearing for its own survival puts the consciousness off at every turn. But if we are strong enough to act on the small inner voice of intuition then the merits and fruits of this path are as real today as they were in Paul Brunton's day. He returned to the Maharishee and the final pages of the book are filled with the profound realizations he had. These experiences are told as though they are being watched by a 3rd party. This makes them very powerful for me.

What is admirable is that he then didn't end his days as a devotee but returned to Switzerland to leave the copious amount of writings bridging the gap between east and west which he did. This to me was real service to humankind. He didn't put his own desire for realizations and experiences above what he felt was his duty to bring what he knew to the world. To do this he had to take on a witness mentality. He was an observer of his own experiences rather than getting lost in them. But there is a cost to being a witness. I understand this because this is how I treat the spiritual path.

In the early stages of the experiences it would have been so easy for me to become ungrounded with the immensity of the experience. To become totally absorbed instead of standing apart and watching. It is the witness mentality that gives the realization that we have thoughts but we are not just thoughts. It is watching the thoughts without getting involved, watching them like one would watch a show which gave me the realization that I am more than my thoughts, feelings, habits. I attribute this witnessing to the way I can write about the spiritual path in the way that I do.

Yet I know there is a cost to this witnessing and that is always to watch and never to merge. I yearn to merge and yet I am afraid. This is my main purpose in keeping an eye out for a Master of the calibre of the Maharishee but I don't hold out much hope. The funny thing is that I woke up this morning deeply contented. I meditated for an hour and as my meditations go it wasn't full of the usual conflict. At times during the day at work for no reason I felt waves of peace and happiness well up from deep within me. What is the meaning of all this. I have been looking at the photograph of the Maharishee and his eyes seem to stare intently into mine. Is this the connection with the Master I have been denying myself. Does a Master have to be a living, breathing being or is it enough for me to take his teaching and his method of self-enquiry and go it alone...... ..