Oasis.
Credit: DH Illustration
Wisdom alone is eternal, and so are you. But all that which you know as ‘you’, keeps changing; you cannot say for sure who you are. Though you keep participating your whole life in various activities and you don’t disown all those activities as being part of you yet, you feel that you surely are not limited to being just those. There is a voice from deep within that quietly but firmly keeps repeating that you are definitely more than all that you know about your continuously changing self. Yet, that real you is unknown to you.
Realised people have been saying it from the time immemorial that it is in wisdom alone that you exist as you really are. And you can see that only when you become wise/real. Doesn’t that make eternity, you and the wisdom one? You may have begun to reason by now.
How can three things be one thing? But, that is the mystery that yogis unravel in the course of their spiritual journey. In yoga-saadhnaa, while going deeper, crossing the accumulated layers of impressions and identities, yogis keep discovering the finer aspects of one’s own existence; that there lies a finer oneness beneath, which is more intense than what one knew at the previous step. This keeps happening until the seeker/yogi arrives at the final stage of eternal oneness called wisdom.
For your own reference, you may imagine it as the process of connecting your dots incessantly in attaining higher and higher levels of consciousness. For example, when you are a child you see only your immediate family members as Kutumb (family), but when you evolve spiritually, then you begin to see the whole world as family, so what does really change? Your dots get connected in your consciousness in much more Udaar-Bhaav (liberal attitude) and all earthlings you begin to see as family members. Thus, vasudhaiv kutumbakam becomes the reality for you.
Discovering the reality that, you are ‘an eternal existence’ is the beginning of wisdom. And that’s why, until and unless, as individuals, each one of us figures out one’s eternal existence, wisdom doesn’t dawn upon us. So which came first: wisdom or eternity or existence or consciousness? If such questions grab your attention, know for sure you are in search of your real self. Welcome to sat-sang.