Part 1
The Wide and the Narrow Path
For us who follow or try to follow a specific spiritual path we most probably have chosen some path that already exists and is known to us. I’ve heard someone saying quite correctly in my opinion that the majority of people don’t actually follow any path consciously. Even so, life has its ways to put us on some path sooner or later. In this sense life itself is our teacher.
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But some of us who start questioning the meaning of all of this and even more so, “Who are we?”, who seem to exist in the first place. We need an answer and that encourages us to find some path, some teachings to follow that might give us the answers we are looking for. I think most of us seekers in the West are a bit disappointed because we don’t easily find real answers from our traditional backgrounds.
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Yes, we have our religion and great philosophers who can nurture our minds and keep our brains active. And we can talk and argue about the different views and defend what we feel is the only truth.
Religion, and especially Christianity in my case, has left many questions open and unanswered. They say believing in enough and that’s all you need to know. Living in our modern times this doesn’t satisfy most of us. We need to know the truth ourselves. We want to have the experience of what is real ourselves and believing is not enough to gratify our thirst. If we can’t find the answers from our homebase and culture, we start looking somewhere else. This has happened to many of us, including myself.
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So, we abandon, in our minds, the useless teachings of the West and head towards the East. India is awaiting and She will give us what we really need. And this is true in a way, because of India’s amazing spiritual culture and respect for spiritual knowledge during many millennia. And we certainly find many paths to follow. Now it’s just a question of which path to choose.
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Typically, we get interested in yoga practices and when we hear about meditation, that gets us even more excited to begin our practices. And what is remarkable about all of these colorful paths to choose from is, that they actually give results, and they really work. This is the ancient way and it’s been proven to bring about awakenings and we can read about people who have found the truth and got enlightened. This give us hope and courage to keep on track having the wonderful goal in mind that one day I too can see the truth and be enlightened and find the answer, to “Who am I?”
This path of practicing yoga exercises, meditation and other traditions paths, we could call “The Wide path”. Why so? Because although all of these paths have their advantages and are helpful to us, they also don’t necessarily end the cycle of births and deaths, called samsara. They might do that, depending on the student’s maturity and hunger for the truth. If this is the so-called “Wide path” then what is the Narrow one? You’ve heard about it, I’m sure. It's called the direct path or the straight path. Also called Jnana Marga, the path of knowledge.
Of course, this path has also existed always, but it has been only for the few and rare seekers one cannot find any other way and who want to know the truth as fast as possible. But is this path totally abcent in our Westers tradition, in Christianity for example? I claim it has been among us all along the 2000 years of Christianity, but somehow hidden in plain sight.
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I’m referring to Christ’s teachings. He spoke and taught different aspects of his teachings according to the level of the listener. The crowds were taught the simple way to get in harmony with life and society. But his closest students received a more profound and deeper teachings. We could call it the “Narrow path” in some parts from the New Testament. For example, the parable of the rich man who kept all the basic commandments but was not willing or able to give up his ownership with his possessions.
He couldn’t give up the idea of “I” and “my”. That’s the problem for all of us I believe. We can in some extent give up some of our bad qualities or habits but surrendering our “I” seems to be a too big of a sacrifice to do. What will happen to “me” if I give away myself? And how to give away myself?
Because we take our body to be real so the world and everything included seems to be real. But how is it in our dreams? According to Sri Ramana this so-called waking state is no more different than any other dream. We take a form, a body, to be our self and imagine that inside this body there is an individual person who is born and who will die one day. This separation and duality continues in our spiritual journey, and we cannot but accept that we are using this body-form as a tool or instrument to proceed with our practices.
Both Christ and Sri Ramana emphasized the importance of knowing who we are, what is this “I” we are constantly referring to? Who am I? is the only valuable question and solving it solves everything.
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So, why not go straight ahead to the final question and solve the mystery of who we truly are. That’s the narrow path, the straight way to freedom if we just have the will to let go or our present state of attachments to forms and ideas and memories that so quickly vanish into the air. The first step is enough. Then we already are on the journey to our own self which we always have been.
The Kingdom of Christ
John 18: “Jesus answered, My Kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”
His kingdom is not from this world of duality, but it is non-dual, only one. What is this kingdom Christ means? Our kingdom is the world of duality, but Christ was talking form non-dualistic point of view, from oneness, which is our true nature.
Christ and Sri Ramana Maharshi
John 11:25:
Jesus said unto her, “I AM (is) the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”. So be perfect, as your heavenly Father (Brahman) is perfect.
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Christ’s commandment 1:
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Love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind." What does Christ mean by "your God"? For the Jews, God's name is "I am," so loving "your God" means loving ourselves. What could be closer to us than ourself. God is thus always known. Nobody loves someone or something that one doesn’t know. (John 10:34 Jesus answered them: "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods’?”)
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"Love your God with all your heart, soul and mind.”
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What does Christ mean by "your God"? For Jews, God's name is "I am". Everyone is always aware of their own being (I am), even if they doubt everything else. So, loving "your God" means loving our own self. What could be closer to us than our own self? When our love towards God becomes total, we lose our separate, individual identity, ego. Then we also understand by being one conscious-bliss that we naturally love our neighbor as ourself.
The problem is that we don't know our true self, our nature. Our concept of 'I' is currently limited to being this body or a separate soul. We have no proof that there are two 'I', a lower and higher. It is enough to know this one soul, and we know everything, as it is said on the wall of the ancient temple of Apollo, 'Man, know thyself.' Then how to know ourselves? In accordance with Jesus' instructions, by focusing all our attention, that is, our love on ourselves, on our God 'I'. It leads to the fact that gradually the individual and separate concept of me disappears and there is only God (I am).
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Christ says, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” When we know our true self, we will find it’s the one self in all. Bhagavan also loved everybody as himself.
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John 10:34: "Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods'?"
Christ: “Ye are the Light of this world.” Meaning, the world has no light of its own but is dependent of the seer.
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Bhagavan Ulladu Narpadu verse 26:
“If ego comes into existence, everything comes into existence; if ego does not exist, everything does not exist. Ego itself is everything. Therefore, know that investigating what this is alone is giving up everything.”
The One 'I'
One typical concept in many spiritual paths is that we should connect or re-unite (religio) our individual ‘I’ or self to some bigger ‘I’, namely Brahman of God or some other entity which we take to be separate from ourself. The main effort is to get rid of our individuality, or ego, and surrender to the real ‘I’.
But if we’re being honest and look carefully, the only ’I’ we know is ourself. We don’t have any proof of any another ‘I’. To think that there is another “big” ‘I’ with which we should connect to is just a mere imagination. The same can be said about any other ‘I: s’ that we believe to exist as people or other sentient beings.
Because we don’t know who we are and take this bodily form to be ‘I’, we naturally assume everybody else to have their own ‘I’ which is also related firmly to a form, a specific body with a name. This confusion results in having a certain love/hate relationship with our body-mind existence from the spiritual point of view. Thus we have a continuing fight or conflict with our counterpart, as Jesus said with which we should make means with before it takes us to a seemingly endless cycle of births and deaths.
This actually is the case for us at the moment. We are so strongly attached to this body-mind combination as our self that it has become natural, although it’s absolutely the opposite. Our natural state is ‘I am’, as one existence-conscious-being.
So, if in reality there is only one ‘I’, we should focus our attention on ourself and find out who we truly are. What else is there to do in life? Will we then as individuals melt away and connect to a bigger ‘I’ or not is left to be seen.
Let’s start from the assumption of an individual self that we now seem to be and find out what this ‘I’ is and where it arises. Then we’ll see where it takes us when we dive deeper to the mystery of the ‘I’, which we now and always call ourself, ‘I’.