Finding Our True Identity

In 1990 when the NASA spacecraft Voyager1 was heading into space, it pointed its camera back to Earth and photographed our planet from a distance of approximately six billion kilometers away. This image showed Earth as a tiny blue dot amid the vast blackness of deep space. Astronomers called the photograph the Pale Blue Dot.

If Earth is so tiny compared to the whole known universe, then each of us living on that tiny pale blue dot must be less than the size of a pinprick compared to the indescribable vastness of the universe. In spite of knowing this, we imagine ourselves to be so important.

What makes us think that? Mystics tell us it is our false self, the ego. They also say it is the ego that is blocking us from finding our way back to God, the Creator. This is how Maharaj Charan Singh once described it:

Ego is a block between us and God. It is a definite block and a very solid block. Without elimination of ego, the question of meeting the Lord doesn’t arise at all.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I}

The soul was once part of the blissful oneness of the Creator. However, because of its association with the mind it became trapped in the creation. Now, after many incarnations, the mind has developed an identity as the ego, through which it has dominated the soul, thereby creating a perception that the soul is a separate being from God.

If we want to escape from this entrapment, we must learn that we are something very different from this mind-created image that we have of ourselves. The Master comes to awaken the soul and make us aware that the soul is our true self and dwells within this physical body, and to teach us a practical method to discover who we really are.

But what do we even know about our souls? Every now and then we may have a small insight that our real being is not this physical body in which we live. Our real being is different – it’s the eternal soul. Now and then we may get a flash of realization that our Master is far greater than what he appears to be – a human like us. Maharaj Ji tells us in Die to Live:

Your real self is not this body. Master’s real self is also not the body. Your real self is the soul, and the real self of your Master is the Shabd, the Word.… Ultimately the Radiant Form becomes the Shabd and you become pure soul, without form and shape, and the soul just merges into the Shabd.

But if we are honest, we still function as egotistical individuals who have no real concept of the fact that we are spirit, and capable of becoming one with our Master in his Shabd form. The ego and its vices are blocking us from that knowledge. Maharaj Jagat Singh described ego as “a malignant kind of selfishness”, its fundamental assumption being its own infallibility.

The Masters tell us that the only way to diminish the ego is by meditation. In line with our promise at initiation, every morning we sit and try to still our overactive mind, while striving to focus our attention at the eye centre. We may do this for many years, possibly without any evident degree of success. But that apparent ineffectual meditation is not going to waste. The Master wants our efforts – he values our obedience, and he urges us not to give up the struggle.

Perhaps it’s a blessing that our meditation eventually comes down to a simple test of obedience and perseverance. Imagine how our ego would be boosted if we became aware of the success of our meditation every morning. That would be very dangerous – a real ego builder. If we really want to go back to our real home, an inflated ego is the last thing we need.

The fact is, we can’t get rid of our ego by our own effort. This can happen only through our meditation, and perhaps, especially, through our perceived ‘failed’ meditation. As human beings we’re very limited. Maharaj Ji has said that everything happens by grace.

The Master is the one who is pulling us back home – we are simply instruments in his hands. If we could understand and accept this, it would make us feel wonderfully light and free. There would be no room for despair or guilt because we would realize that everything belongs to him, and he is directing it all. Acceptance of this would free us from self-blame, self-condemnation and expectations.

Maharaj Ji tells us that the only difference between a realized soul and an unrealized soul is that the realized soul knows he’s a puppet – nothing is in his hands. The unrealized soul thinks he is doing everything himself.

There was a time when we were consciously part of the Creator, sharing in his light, love and perfection. Maharaj Sawan Singh explains what man has lost by acquiring his layer of ego:

Man is much like a covered lantern. There is light in him. There is the spark of pure existence, knowledge, and bliss in him; but the envelopes of mind and matter dim his light and he gropes in darkness. Real existence has degenerated and appears in him as reason, intellect, and instinct. Bliss has degenerated into fleeting experiences of pleasure and pain.
_{Spiritual Gems}

Working towards removing the coverings that have kept us trapped in the creation is the very purpose of this life. Our goal now is to rid ourselves of the limitations that have held us imprisoned in this physical realm for so many lives – it is to realize our limitless, boundless self. This is a very high degree of spiritual awakening that, once achieved, indicates that the battle is won. That’s why we were initiated – to realize our true spiritual nature.

We are told that after self-realization it’s just a short step to God-realization. This signifies the end of an ages-long journey, so that our soul can return to its source, knowing that the ego has been crushed.

But the ego is a stubborn and persistent thing, and it doesn’t want to sign its own death warrant. If it were up to us, we would never be able to eliminate the ego. With the passage of time, coupled with experience, we start to realize this, and increasingly we place ourselves in the hands of our Master. We start to accept his will and desire nothing more. In Maharaj Ji’s own words:

Elimination of ego is submission to the master. As long as the ego is there, we are not submitting at all. The mind is ruling us. But when we are able to eliminate the ego, then we are submitting. Then everything is the master.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}

Only love can make us want to submit to someone else and serve them rather than ourselves. In loving the Master, he tells us, all ego-driven qualities will be simply driven out of us. Then automatically there will be obedience and submission.

Love for the Master is another one of those mysteries and miracles of our path. Maharaj Ji has told us that this inexplicably great love is a gift from the Lord and flows from the Master’s grace. He said meditation creates and strengthens love, which takes hold of us and pulls us towards our Master.

Until now, the longing of the soul to return to the Father has been suppressed by mind and matter, and our sense of individuality. But now it’s rising to the surface. Our soul is crying for the bliss and joy that it once knew. Maharaj Ji inspires us with these words:

The bliss of merging into the supreme being cannot be expressed in mortal language. There is no thought of individuality, consciousness, or anything else. It is all love, all bliss, for in merging we become the supreme being, and he is all, he is everything.
_{Spiritual Perspectives}, Vol. I