Self-realization: yoga, enlightenment and the present

Self-realization is pursued through yoga practice, and it equally involves a truthful understanding of the human task on this earth. The other holistic disciplines and practices united by spiritual search move towards the same result.

And yet today's world, the product of an inherited anthropological and social past, is still marked by suffering. This means that every religious model has failed too.

In this article I'll explain the causes, and what every being can do to find themselves again and take their destiny back into their own hands.

1. What we mean by the Self

The Self is also a synonym for wholeness, fullness, belonging, the interpenetration of subject and object. God for believers, or faith, or ascesis.

In yoga practice the emphasis is precisely on transcending one's ego during the exercises, as well as in meditation, in order to reach universal awareness step by step.

For Eastern disciplines, and for shamanic rites in general, this means that the human mind is not just a tool confined to the thinking individual, but something vaster, connected to the manifest universe.

My personal thoughts and my acts, or the actions that follow from them, are in dialogue with the infinite. Think, for example, of any religious ritual.

But in our everyday lives too, everything we think and do has direct consequences on reality, at least on the most immediate one. It can't be something that concerns only ourselves as subjects, since we are immersed in all kinds of relationships.

It's clear, for example, that if we want to improve our health we have to eat in a certain way, just as if we want to improve our relationships with others we have to develop our consciousness.

The Self, however, cuts across every category…

It is a totally revolutionary and radical way of being in the world, because whoever realizes it (it's no accident we speak of enlightenment) embodies the ultimate meaning of existence.

2. What enlightenment means

In ancient India the term moksha was used for liberation from pain and individual chaos, the perfect state of eternal bliss reached in a life devoted to spiritual search.

The question each of us should ask, even within our own context, is whether this concerns us directly or not.

Reducing human beings to a mechanism drawn only towards their goals has brought us to the edge of a terrifying abyss: is there still something we can do?

The answer is certainly yes, if we step outside the borders of our ego and recognise that our true nature is to seek truth, love and understanding in every moment.

Nothing happens by chance and we are all immersed in the Self, even without knowing it, and we must answer for the inevitable mechanisms of cause and effect, even when the effect is not immediately before us.

The enlightened one is the one who has unmasked and laid bare every illusory appearance, and feels in their very flesh, in all their cells, in every thought, action and in their spirit, a harmonious continuous flow, a dancing interdependence with the moment as it happens.

3. Why we can't live in the present moment

First of all because our psyche and most of our behaviours are rarely spontaneous: they are driven by the fear of losing everything we believe we own.

Human intelligence seems to be built in a twisted way: if it doesn't control reality, each of us feels as if we don't exist. But if you found yourself helpless in front of death, caused by an unavoidable threat, where would that determination go? It would vanish in an instant.

You would surely think of your end with horror, perhaps your thoughts would go to everything you might soon lose: loved ones, a deep sense of yourself, or even material possessions, for some. And at the very instant the end appears certain, despite yourself, you would decide to let go of everything at once in the name of the eternal, divine Self!

The conclusion is that only when we have staked everything and lost everything are we able to inhabit the present moment.

And it is just as true that joy doesn't come without this surrender.

In short, without noticing anything, we trample on our own essence every day!

4. The art of living while dying

Many books have been written and many authors have taken on this subject. The great poets sang of it too.

But what can we do once we have recognised the importance of the Self, given that there are no longer points of reference, social realities or collective institutions that concretely support the innate search for happiness?

In short, with good reason, all that's left is a lot of empty chatter.

I say that first of all we should learn to be very wary…

Of science, of culture, of philosophy itself and of all knowledge in general. Let's openly doubt the rules, the endless customs that have in fact made us slaves.

Let's start asking ourselves questions on our own:

• Am I this?
• Is this what I want?
• What does it mean to know, and what does it mean to be?

Salvation and ultimate knowledge, together with the well-being of all classes, lie in a kind of simulated collective suicide!

I wish everyone an immediate and complete realization!

Ariele

You can find me on my Wanderer profile. If you'd like to take this search onto the mat, discover yoga events.

This article was originally published in Italian on Kensho Yoga, Ariele Pittalà's website.