Sri Sri Ravi Shankar asked: “Who wakes up first? You or God?” He said when the “I” is asleep, there is no experience. It seems this week life imitated art, since my iMac computer randomly went to “sleep” after turning it on. The display went black, although the hardware was still running in the background. It turns out there’s a dozen reasons for this problem with dozens of suggestions on what to do about it. Is there a bigger lesson here? Is God ever asleep or not?
Is God ever asleep?
After posting Sri Sri Ravi Shankar 10-27-14…”Who Wakes Up First? You Or God?” – Big Picture Questions.com and later reading the different comments to his post, I decided to ask Guy Needler for his take on whether God is asleep or not? This is what Needler had to say:
“As you wake up, so does a small part of God, simply because you are a small individualized unit of God’s sentient energy. Therefore, in this small part of God’s awakeness God is awake. God cannot be both awake and asleep, so no matter how “small” that part of God is that is awake means that God “is” awake. God is never asleep.”
That means God Itself is really not asleep at all, because if any small part of God is awake (i.e. any aspect in this or any other event space), then God/Source Entity One is awake all along. It’s just a matter of us – as incarnate humans – waking up to that realization.
What is meant by self-realization vs. God-realization?
Needler also explained the meaning of these terms in more modern terms:
- Self-realized is when one is aware that the human body is not all we are. This leads to Christ Consciousness, which is when one is accessing and experiencing the information that is one’s True Energetic Self (Oversoul/Overall Soul/Godhead/Monad/Higher Self).
- God-realized is when one is in communion with one’s creator. This leads to Cosmic consciousness, which is when one is accessing and experiencing the information that is beyond the TES – that which is the Source and even the Origin.
What does self-realization mean at the soul level?
In his blog post, “Self-Realization Is In Every Moment,” Nirmala reflected on what his teacher and friend (Neelam) had said: “The soul is the sum total of all of our experiences.” He said:
“It struck me how this meant that every experience adds to our soul, and there is no experience that can detract from it. Since we share experiences with many other souls, that would mean that our souls overlap.
Anywhere our experience overlaps, our souls would also overlap. And since we overlap with so many other souls, ultimately all souls are connected through this sharing of experience.
So whenever a particular soul has a profound experience of awakened consciousness, or self realization, their experience of the totality of consciousness by definition includes all experiences and all the apparent souls out there.”
This agrees with what Needler has explained to us. Our True Energetic Self is the sum total of all the individualized soul aspects it sends out to experience, learn and evolve.
- Each aspect (no matter how awake or aware it is in a given event space) gives its unique experience and different perspective as evolutionary content that adds to the whole.
- All contributions are equal in value and in reality shared by all aspects within the TES.
- That means you are just as valuable as a hybrid child born into a higher frequency vehicle, who will help others ascend in frequency simply by association with them. In fact, the aspect animating that hybrid child may even come from your own TES.
What is the method for enlightenment?
Swami Rama (“The Art of Joyful Living”) told a story about enlightenment:
“There was once a swami who used to teach students every day. One of the students listened attentively and heard the swami speaking about vairagya, the philosophy of non-attachment, and the student took off for a forest dwelling and there, he was enlightened.
After dwelling there for twelve years, he wondered what had happened and what had been the fate of his friends, with whom he used to learn. So he returned to that place, and everyone was still sitting there exactly like before, and the swami was still lecturing. What a waste of time!”
He said the point is that you don’t need much external information. You already have true knowledge within. You just need to learn how to apply the knowledge you have.
“There is only one real book to study and learn from — the greatest of all books — and that is the very manuscript that you, yourself, are.
I am telling you to face this reality: the path to enlightenment and unfoldment is not really so austere, abstruse, or difficult—it’s actually very easy. The easiest way to make progress is just to “know thyself”— to accept and understand yourself on all levels.” — Swami Rama
As we now know, there are plenty of levels at which to “know thyself.” This week my computer problem served as an analogy for the “sleep” mode in our human life, which can be remedied with a little effort, ingenuity, introspection and a lot of patience. 😉
