Ways to Self-Realization

A Modern Evaluation of Occultism and Spiritual Paths

Mouni Sadhu

• Editore: Borodino Books
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787207530
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Buddhism

First published in 1962, this book is the follow-up to author Mouni Sadhu's three previous works: "In Days of Great Peace", "Concentration" and "Samadhi."A noted Occultist and Mystic of the first half of the Twentieth Century, Sadhu tried many paths on the route to self-realization, and is thus uniquely qualified to relate the truths in this book. Steeped in the Hermetic schools which abounded at the turn of the 19th century, then embracing the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi and Vichara—yet never forgetting his Catholic faith—Mouni Sadhu successfully advances our mental synthesis and leads us to the door of True Self."The occultist who seeks to find answers to everything by means of mental understanding may find some assistance on this path in the following chapters. On the other hand, spiritually minded persons may discover confirmation of their own inner longings, when they read about the reality and possibility of the Ultimate Realization and about the necessary steps toward it."It is in this hope that I have collected here a number of essays that have been partly published during the past seven years, rounding them out with some new chapters especially written for the purpose of the present book."It is essentially a series of essays on various aspects of occultism and the spiritual experience."

PART ONE—Chapters I-XIII

I—An Unsolved Problem

There are two kinds of people on the earth. The first kind pass through life without any or very little thought about the reason for their existence.

The patterns of such lives are more or less identical. They lead an instinctive life, rejoicing in the pleasures and suffering over the setbacks and difficulties. Their aim is to obtain the former and avoid the latter. Their origin and their goal are for them covered in stygian darkness, but the very cause of that darkness is rooted in the fact that they do not seek light. They have no time for such endeavors. Their nature cannot be changed immediately. For them are the numerous institutions that attempt to teach what sins to avoid in order to escape suffering. Also, there are the philosophical systems expounding what was only theoretical truth for their founders. At the same time, we cannot but recognize that such persons often do really good service for humanity.

It is also true that on the material plane of living we have reached peaks of ingenuity about which our grandfathers could not even dream. In an instant we can hear from all over the whole world. We can see almost instantaneously what is happening on the other side of the earth. We can fly through the air and explore the depths of the ocean. Once incurable diseases are now curable and modern surgical operations would have been miracles to our grandparents. We are justifiably proud of our social institutions and our inventions.

On the other side of the ledger, we have invented means of mass extermination undreamed of by Genghis Khan, Caesar, or Napoleon, and so on. The slavery of individuals, accepted by the Ancients, we have brought to a perfection unknown to them; millions of our fellow men have been put into concentration camps of such horror and destruction that the chances of survival were nil. The knowledge of torture has kept pace with our highly developed sciences of medicine and psychology. During the so-called bloody wars of Napoleon and Bismarck, nobody thought of torturing or killing prisoners or persecuting their families. War was limited almost to the battlefield and when it was over, prisoners were permitted to go back to their countries.

Travel was unrestricted before the advent of radio and the atom bomb. Surely men were not less happy then than we are today. So the advance of civilization is not always to the benefit of mankind. And the future?

To read some of the articles in modern periodicals by thoughtful authors is sufficient evidence of the worries tormenting them. We have not yet found the solution of social life which, from time immemorial, has been solved by the ants and bees.

However, there is another type of human being. They are few in number but their influence is great. Of all the millions of Britons living at the same time, it was given to Newton alone to conceive and propound the fundamental laws of our present-day physics. Only he was equal to such a task.

It was Christ alone who revolutionized the ethics of the ancient world, not the Jews or their conquerors, the Romans.

So the masses are not always right. Progress is maintained by the fearless and clear-thinking few. The others follow later.

To some men, the question of human existence and its problems is of the greatest importance. They want to know the causes of suffering and wherein lies true happiness. They know that it is not sufficient just mentally to understand the words of the Great Teachers of humanity; the scriptures and evangels of these leaders are like food put before a hungry man. They must become a part of his being if they are to satisfy his hunger. To read of the fascinating country of the Amazon River is not the same as exploring it for oneself. Experience is always the source of all wisdom.

If we ask the average man who he is, we get many different answers, but most of them are lacking in philosophy, logic, or both. Maybe later we shall unearth a hidden fundamental truth. The average intelligent individual would say: “I am made up of body, mind, and soul,” and so on. In other words, he would agree that he possesses a body, mind, and soul.

But WHO is this that possesses all these parts? We can expect no satisfactory answer from the average man for he does not know, and the answer to this question is the only thing that counts.

When a hungry man stands before a table laden with food, he MUST eat the food if he wishes to live, and not just think about its nutritive qualities. Otherwise he will die.

Similarly, every teaching must be put into practice. Recognizing its truth in theory will not help us.

Life with all its attributes will forever be an unsolved problem to the man who cannot realize to WHOM belongs what we call life.

The science of mathematics implies a mathematician, otherwise the formulas and equations would be meaningless. So is life, unless the source of life is known. There is a cardinal difference between action and he who is witness of it. What meaning has a picture without a seer? Life passes before our eyes like a moving picture. Does the seer cease to exist when the picture is over?

These are only similes, but they give rise to a conception difficult to convey otherwise. Their meaning is: “the true Self is the consciousness of the seer of the picture.”

Of what use is it to describe the taste of a new fruit? The words soul, Spirit, and God are used with so many different and ignorant meanings that they are almost useless to convey the true conception of the above-mentioned expression. Our minds have a strange and harmful faculty of replacing experience by definitions. You may think of water or pronounce the very word as long as you wish, but that will not quench your thirst.

Therefore it is clear why dogmas and creeds imposed on us from without cannot give us anything as satisfactory as an experience of Truth. The immaterial permanent principle that we call the true or real Self of man has no affinity with the conceptions of the mind. For example, we cannot paint a picture with musical notes instead of paints, as they are not the right medium. Our mind gathers its experiences from earthly things limited in time and space.

Its language is inadequate to express what it does not know and cannot experience. Nevertheless, the immanent Truth has its reflections everywhere, even as the great life-giving sun has its reflections in a pool or jar of water. The danger of using the mind as a guide to the knowledge of our true Self lies in the fact that we are liable to mistake the reflection for the subject itself, and find ourselves still no nearer the end of our search.

The mind is a tool and a means, but not the goal. We are not mind. We know we can cultivate our minds and make them more useful tools, reflecting more and more subtle and complicated thought. How can something that is under a higher control be the true Self?

The mind can reflect the Truth but cannot experience it. So in our search for the true Self, the mind is only an instrument to put us on the way, if the unsolved problem of our being is ever to be solved.

And the very urge in us, to search for that solution, is nothing else but the voice of our forgotten true Self.

If it were not tragic, it would really be funny to see how, in our time, the so-called sciences lead humanity to its own annihilation, together with all the discoveries that it cannot properly use.

On the other hand, some discoveries in medical science have reached a degree of considerable effectiveness. But here comes the blow: instead of conquering all disease, new and more terrible ones appear, against which medical science feels itself helpless.

The initiated disciple of a true Master knows that this is only natural: the mere fact of finding new means for combating physical suffering is not conclusive. As long as men still have to pay their debts in the form of sufferings, the advancement of any science would not put it in a position to eradicate those sufferings. The root cause that generates them must be found.

The solution is very simple, but by no means an easy one. If all men would cease to inflict suffering in all its forms on their neighbors, and on every other form of life round them, then their own suffering would disappear in due time, after the past had been paid in full.

We laugh when we hear of persons who refuse to harm any living being, even an insect, but we feel far from laughing when we get a fatal disease transmitted to us by an insect that we were unable to kill soon enough. Against all such accidents we are virtually helpless.

II—Two Principles in Man

Creeds in themselves are inadequate to lead us to our first and ultimate aim, the knowledge of our true Self; but that does not mean that they are altogether useless. To go to any distant place, we have to make use of a definite route. All routes lead somewhere, but in order to reach a specific place we have to travel by the most appropriate path. Not only must we choose the proper way but we must take the necessary steps to get there. The perusal of guidebooks will not bring us to our destination unless we do what is necessary. All religions, for example, are such roads on what is truly a pilgrimage. The makers of these roads knew the Truth. They also knew the limited conditions of humanity as a whole. Their labor and pain prepared the way for us.

How mankind can get lost even on the well-defined roads can easily be seen. This very thought should keep us humble, but strangely it does not.

Very often made roads are not the shortest way to a given destination. There are paths that cut across; moreover, the roads do not always necessarily lead one to the very peak of a high mountain. They usually stop at a certain level and then the traveler must continue on foot, alone but for the guide. At certain places on the ascent, the traveler gains a view of the plains and the route by which he came.

Every religion teaches us to do good and avoid evil, that is, to create good causes, which will in turn bring more propitious conditions for our future lives. This has to do with material conditions, which are temporary and subject to change. Perfection has no limitations nor is it temporary or changeable. Pleasure and suffering are conditions of material existence. To rise out of them, man has to seek perfection: the permanent, the unchangeable. Few are those seekers, but that does not mean that they are wrong or deluded. Theirs is the true sanity.

Such a seeker discovers in due course that there are two principles in himself, a temporary conditioned one and the perfect, unconditioned, and eternal. What choice has he?

Every human being has an innate desire for happiness but that desire changes with the degree of his understanding. The average person wants pleasure irrespective of its consequences and its impermanence. He does not know what lies before him. He snatches at every opportunity of pleasure. If it is connected with the suffering of others, as often happens, then it is itself the cause of his own suffering. The vicious circle has no end.

He who recognizes the unchanging principle in himself strives after a different kind of happiness. He seeks it above and beyond the temporary and limited world. He knows that every material benefit that can come to him is as a hailstone in his hand. His illusions of pleasure are dispelled.

In his actions, he always puts the question to himself: “Am I doing this for reality or illusion?” This scrutiny of his motives is his safeguard against error. He seeks not to create causes of suffering, and is therefore free of pain himself. In that freedom lies the happiness unattainable the other way. Only one who has experienced it can realize this supreme “joy of living,” which goes beyond the grave and rebirth.

The eternal principle in man is exclusive of evil, for evil arises only from the conviction that man is the body, separate from others, and the body demands more and more the satisfaction of its desires, irrespective of whether or not wrong is done to others in the process. The limited and conditioned ego-body wants possessions. So do other egos. Thence proceeds the struggle for so-called existence with all its disastrous consequences.

The realization that man’s true being is not the shell he inhabits puts an end to his troubles. His body is then not the most important thing and what happens to it is relatively unimportant. His consciousness has been transferred to a plane where troubles do not exist.

If mankind only realized how simple is the case! He who has accepted this standard of values is not then greatly upset by adversity or loss of material things. If his body is damaged, sick, or wounded, why worry too much about that? Its inevitable end is des...

Indice dei contenuti

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• FOREWORD
• PART ONE-Chapters I-XIII
• PART TWO-Chapters XIV-XX
• PART THREE-Chapters XXI-XXIX
• PART FOUR-Chapters XXX-XXXVI
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER