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The journey of the Divine
Roshani Shenazz  analyses the organic process of spiritual awakening in man which is nothing else but the Divine awakening to His own Divinity

Once, in a spiritual gathering, way at the onset of my inward journey, I heard someone say, “I think I have come a long way, and I am slightly enlightened.” This statement made me wonder: “What exactly is this elusive butterfly called ‘enlightenment’ that perches on the shoulders of a few chosen ones? How is it possible to attract this butterfly to come your way? What exactly does this journey comprise?”   

Through our limited minds, we can never fathom the fathomless, and trying to dig the mountain of universal secrets and concepts in my little life seemed to me like a Herculean task. In the first year of my journey, several events and channelling sessions gave me a tiny peek into the difference between awareness and what we felt was enlightenment.

What flowed initially were beautiful explanations with analogies to simplify them. It was shared that the growing or expanding of the latent divine consciousness present in each one of us is actually the process of awareness that grows from zero to Z. This Z being the point of enlightenment.  

How it happens
As awareness grows, consciousness becomes uncluttered and expands. It goes through events, circumstances, and several births. Eventually, there comes a time when, in a particular incarnation, it grows till its zenith, and one fine day—boooom! It explodes, illuminating everything within and without itself. The point where the enlightened, the light within and beyond all become one, with no separation whatsoever. The point where all darkness is dispelled and only light exists. This point where all duality ceases to occur and illusion dissolves into oblivion, allows the enlightened to exist in a state of supreme oneness with the cosmos. In this state, all the planes and levels of consciousness disappear as they were only illusory paths to the destination called enlightenment. This is true Self-actualisation and leaves the one touched by this moment, enlightened, God-realised, or Self-realised thereafter. This enlightened state is also known as Aham Brahmasmi, which is the central essence of the Advaita philosophy founded by Adi Shankaracharya. Advaita means non-dualism. It states that the Creator and His creation are not two (dual) things but are one. Therefore, simply put, Aham Brahmasmi means ‘I am God.’ The synonymous term ‘Anal-al-Haq’ also means ‘I am the Truth’—the Truth being God. It means, there is no difference between God and me; God is me, I am God.

Awareness versus enlightenment
Here is an interesting analogy that was channelled way back in 2012 regarding growing awareness versus enlightenment. Enlightenment is like that destination of consciousness which is controlled by the dimmer of awareness. Slowly, through inner work, the aspirant turns up the regulator of awareness to increase the light of consciousness in them. At each level, it may take as much time as is ordained by the soul of the aspirant. This depends on the working out of its sanskaras (impressions caused in the mind through thoughts, words, and actions) during the various stages. It may happen through one or many lifetimes, but the moment the aspirant starts making conscious efforts to increase this light of consciousness in them, the dimmer starts turning up from the point where the aspirant last left it at. This dimmer can never be turned backwards or regressed.

As time goes by, the aspirant in one particular lifetime reaches the zenith of the dimmer, and in that instant, turns the knob of awareness towards its last point—the point of readiness to receive the final grace from a Perfect Master. At this stage, consciousness attains the final point of blinding luminance that illuminates everything within and without itself. After this moment, the work of the dimmer is over, and the light burns in its full glory for all times. This final illumination remains so for eternity.

Meher Baba explains
So, in our daily lives, any inner work that we do is actually our awareness that is cultivating and maturing from strength to strength.

But that isn’t enough. The finer aspects of this unfathomable state of consciousness and its various levels are far more convoluted and beyond our limited minds and measures. The intricacies started unfolding when I got wrapped in the love of God through my beloved Avatar Meher Baba.

Through his living ministry and the 44 years of complete silence (maun), Avatar Meher Baba shared an immense treasure of gnosis (divine knowledge). He also gave a treasury of practical ways to humanity to attain liberation, which means freedom from the cycles of birth and death. His work covers every aspect of life, the key ones being on the theme of Creation, 10 states of God, levels of consciousness, the processes of Creation, evolution, reincarnation, involution, and finally, realisation. He emphasised that God is the only reality, and this phenomenal world that we live in is one big illusion. He gifted us with the knowledge about perfect masters, the Avatar and His advents, and those on the various stages of the spiritual path that he called involution. 

Through the rest of the article below, I shall share the words of Avatar Meher Baba through poignant extracts from God Speaks, Discourses, and other important literature gifted by him during his lifetime.

The opening of the book God Speaks states:

  “Those souls who are liberated have their egoistic minds annihilated. Those who take birth again retain their minds. And those souls who, after liberation, return to normal consciousness, have Universal minds. Most God-Realised souls leave the body at once and forever, and remain eternally merged in the unmanifest aspect of God. They are conscious only of the bliss of union. Creation no longer exists for them. Their constant round of births and deaths is ended. This is known as Mukti or Liberation.” 

“Although it appears as the most fantastic imagination, it is a fact that the very life of man is the veil that shrouds the reality of the eternal existence of God. It is the irony of divine fate that God gets lost in man to find Himself, and the instant that man gets lost in God, God realises His reality as existence, eternal and infinite.”

“Thus, God in the man state, at first realising Himself as man, asserted His limited aspects through the limited self or the limited ego, the limited mind, the limited energy and the finite gross body. Then eventually and ultimately realising Himself as God, He manifests His unlimited, unbounded, infinite trio-nature of infinite knowledge, infinite power and infinite bliss through His divine unlimited Self.”

“The whole process of evolution was an absolutely spontaneous outcome of the original, infinite whim surging in the unconscious God to become conscious of His eternal and infinite existence.”

Meher Baba divides the process of divine awakening in man in seven stages. These  seven stages are expanded in greater detail in Part 8 of the book God Speaks. Below is its abridged version.

 First Stage
“Visualise a man with eyes completely shut and in sound sleep. This man is completely unconscious and is oblivious of all that surrounds him. Now picture at the same time the original divine sound sleep state of God as He is in the original absolute vacuum of the God-Is state.” 

Second Stage
“Visualise the next state of the man as being still asleep but beginning to open his eyes very, very slightly, because he is just bestirred from his sound sleep state…..”

“… God, now in the initial stage of the divine semi-conscious state, just begins to identify Himself with the creatures of His own Creation…..”

Third Stage
“Visualise the third state of the man as still asleep, but with half-open eyes, because a man in this state now completely experiences the semi-conscious state.”

“… Picture as a parallel that state of God in the divine dream state where God is experiencing a semi-conscious state.” “….. This gives rise to infinite experiences of a more forceful nature, in the divine dream of God, when God actually finds Himself as the creatures of His Creation.”

Fourth Stage
“Visualise the fourth state of the man as that in which he is still asleep but trying gradually to open wider his already half-opened eyes…..” “Here the man is not only in a semi-conscious state but is verging on being fully conscious, and is about to realise his awake state.
Now paralleling this, picture also that state of God in the fourth stage of His divine dream state.” “…. Thus at this stage in the divine dream state, God the Creator is about to identify Himself with a human form after innumerable identifications with all and everything that is in His Creation including inanimate and animate objects.” 

Fifth Stage
“Visualise the fifth state of the man as being still asleep but with eyes now almost open. The man in this state is still in the semiconscious or semi-awake state, experiencing the dreams at their height in their final stage, in which the impressions are projected through his sub-consciousness with the greatest intensity.”

“…. While visualising the fifth state of the man, side by side with it picture that state of God in His divine dream state where God is experiencing the completely matured state of the divine, infinite semi-conscious state and is almost about to gain full consciousness.”

Sixth Stage
“Visualise the sixth state of the man as having completely awakened from his sleep and having his eyes completely wide open.” 

“……..While visualising the sixth state of the man, make a parallel of it by picturing in the same way that state of God as of that instant when God has just identified Himself with a human form and has just gained full consciousness.”

Seventh Stage
“Visualise the seventh state of the man where he has his eyes wide open and is completely and fully awake in the sense that he now asserts his limited self or ego, and is conscious of his human form or the gross body, of his surroundings and of the gross world.” “…But, the instant the full consciousness thus gained ceases to identify God with the infinite reflection of His infinitely perfect image, this image vanishes from the consciousness of God, and God spontaneously and automatically and consciously realises His own identity as God, the infinite Existence, and finds that He alone ever was, always is and eternally will remain the Only Reality.”

My limited knowingness has been happy to not try to even understand any of this. But I am happy that my soul decided to turn on the dimmer of awareness higher in this incarnation in the hope of reaching its point of zenith through divine grace. But why this birth? When I wonder about this visible avalanche of spirituality in the world, in the last 20 to 30 years approximately (although energetically it began about 50 years back), these words of Meher Baba explained the reason why:

“Avataric periods are like the spring-tide of creation. They bring a new release of power, a new awakening of consciousness, a new experience of life—not merely for a few, but for all. Qualities of energy and awareness, which had been used and enjoyed by only a few advanced souls, are made available for all humanity. Life, as a whole, is stepped up to a higher level of consciousness, is geared to a new rate of energy. The transition from sensation to reason was one such step; the transition from reason to intuition will be another. This new influx of the creative impulse takes, through the medium of a divine personality, an incarnation of God in a special sense—the Avatar. . .  Through him, periodically, God consciously becomes man for the liberation of mankind.” 

These words above gave me a deep sense of conviction that it is indeed possible for each one of us to move towards this final goal to merge with that one consciousness that we call God. The goal of final enlightenment through the journey of our aware consciousness. It gave me the power and joy to know that it wasn’t a privilege reserved for just a few of us but the birthright of all of humanity. Especially during these times when we can have grace smiling upon us to achieve our final destiny.

But we must be alert that knowing all about the finer threads of the fabric of life and consciousness is not to be mistaken for enlightenment. For enlightenment is a destination that we arrive at after the complete annihilation of the ego mind, which happens through strenuous journeying through lifetimes. The journey from unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, of reaching the ‘I am God’ state eternally thereafter.