There really are no others

by Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment

Hindu scholar Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami wrote, “The Hindu looks at nothing as intrinsically evil. To him the ground is sacred. The sky is sacred. The sun is sacred. His wife is a Goddess. Her husband is a God. Their children are devas. Their home is a shrine. Life is a pilgrimage to mukti, or liberation from rebirth, which once attained is the end to reincarnation in a physical body. When on a holy pilgrimage, one would not want to hurt anyone along the way, knowing full well the experiences on this path are of one’s own creation, though maybe acted out through others.”

Subramuniyaswami’s statement speaks of an ideal situation, because of course not all Hindus have this insight. But what is most curious about his teaching is this last part — “…knowing full well the experiences on this path are of one’s own creation, though maybe acted out through others.”

Who are “the others”?
To the awakened mind, which is to say one who is said to be enlightened, there really are no “others.” This is because all is one singular and total existence as consciousness. It is only the limited mind that conceives of an “other,” because it fragments the world into pieces — you, me, he, she, it, them, and so on. All of these pieces are perceived as being separate from the perceiver. The conditioned mind that we call “I” or “me” is ignorant of the totality of consciousness, which is why it believes it is made up of independent parts.

Anthony Paul Moo-Young said, “If there were no concepts, would there be an ‘I’ or ‘other’? Who are you apart from the sense of a personal, conditioned self? You can find out right now. Just don’t touch any belief or concept, including the sense ‘I’ or ‘me’. What does it mean, ‘don’t touch’? It means do not combine or identify yourself with any phenomenon, real or imagined. Therefore, discard the belief, ‘I am my body, mind and personality’. Avoiding these, what remains? Observe. Is there any disharmony felt? Where is the place for even enlightenment or ignorance, bondage or freedom, heaven or hell? One transcends all states of mind and is freed from the grip of delusion even without denying the phenomenal world.”