even as I was, I think you will be amazed at how detailed the path of knowledge is and how reason can point so clearly to the experience of infinity. Yes, that’s right, infinity, for when you see a path that can propel you to infinity, you can clearly see if there are any limitations to other paths.
You can even follow other paths, or use other techniques, but you will see clearly where these paths will take you and where they won’t. You won’t step on a crocodile to cross a river, or attempt to drink water from a mirage, or attempt to take a hot shower by turning on the cold water. This is the beauty of setting a benchmark of infinity for your meditation practice.
If you set your sights on that which is free from limitation and suffering, you will not stop short. You will continue your climb until you reach the summit. The sign of the summit is in the freedom that you feel.
But how can you ever get to infinity? In the next chapter, “How can I ever get to infinity?” we will show you the surprising answer to this question.
How can I ever get to infinity?
With that being said let’s get to the heart of this thing. What can you do to get to infinity? The answer is that you can’t do anything. There is no way that a person limited by time and space taking limited actions can ever get to infinity. Limitation plus limitation never adds up to infinity.
Then maybe you can stop doing something? A limited person who stops doing any number of actions will also not get to infinity. Why, because limitation minus limitation cannot add up to, or subtract down to infinity. Well then, since you can’t do anything or not do anything, how can you get to infinity?
Can you think something or stop thinking something? No, this still won’t work. A limited person thinking anything, no matter how expansive the thoughts may be, will not get him or her to infinity. Similarly, stopping your thinking can only last for a limited time, so it won’t take you to infinity either.
Fortunately there is a way out of this quandary. If you are already infinity, if infinity is your very core, then you could reach infinity, not by doing anything or thinking anything in particular but by knowing yourself. There is no energy strong enough to blast you into infinity. You cannot concentrate yourself into infinity, or purify yourself into infinity. The only option you have is to discover what’s right before your eyes, your own Consciousness.
Right now we are like a drunken person who was looking for his keys under a street lamp. When an old man came by and asked, “Where did you lose your keys?” he said, “Over there on the sidewalk.” “Then why are you looking for them here?” the old man asked. “Because it’s too dark to see them over there on the sidewalk,” the drunken man said. If you hope to find infinity, you have to look right where you lost it, and you will see that’s right where you actually experience it.
But are you sure of this? Remember this is a path for doubters, so the obvious question is “How can I possibly be infinity?” I am glad that you asked. In the next chapter, “Then who am I anyway” we will show you.
Then who am I?
Here’s the problem: How can you be infinity when you feel like a regular person; a person who goes to work where you’re the teacher or the engineer. You come home where you’re the father or mother to your children. When you visit your mother you’re a son or daughter to your mother. You sit down tired after a hard day and read the newspaper, eat dinner, watch a little TV, do some work, kiss your spouse good night and then go to bed. After work, three days a week you go to various classes where you are a student. In all of this how can you say that you are infinity?
Yes, in the morning you might try to meditate only to end up thinking about what you have to do today. So maybe you try watching your breath, and then you forget after a few minutes. Where in all this could you possibly be infinite?
Right here is the starting point for the person of Knowledge. Without puffing themselves up or putting themselves down they can take an honest look at where they stand. That’s why I think it is said that the ordinary mind is the Tao. Without the need for any special image, you have the potential to stand free without any image at all. I know for sure that without any image to uphold and maintain, life gets very relaxing and you get very free.
I mention this because this investigation is supposed to be experiential. How can it be experiential if you don’t start with what you experience? After a thorough investigation, you get excited as you see that you are in a deeper place than you had ever imagined. Then your experience of life changes, right from the core. Indeed, the amazing thing about Self-Knowledge is that it will change your experience in ways that you never thought possible. Know yourself in a deeper way, and your experience of life changes.
I point out how vast and experiential this meditation is so you don’t take these pointers as intellectual exercises. Rather once you are satisfied that Self-Knowledge is a worthwhile goal, put in the energy to see fully where these words point. This is not physical energy or even mental energy, but the energy to question the things you take to be just normal, and the energy to stick to it until you come to deeper answers.
In the next section you will see some of your assumptions, and the things you take to be true, come under fire. I only hope that you can open your mind a little; just enough to follow this reasoning to its end.
I don’t want you to become a master logician. I just want you to take a peek right into your own being. Don’t accept this on faith. Rather read it with an open, but questioning mind. Ask, “Is there a possibility that this could be true, and if so, how is this true?”
Then what am I not?
This is the very reasoning used in Vedanta by such sages as Shankara, Krishna, and Ramana Maharshi. Vedanta means the end of the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures. They are the books on Self-Knowledge found at the end of each of the Vedas. The Vedanta teaches you how to wake up and become free. These books eliminate the need for the ritualistic part of the Vedas, which describe rituals used to help a person get what he or she wants, like sons or wealth etc.
Vadanta on the other hand, takes you directly to the source of the happiness that you hope to get by fulfilling other desires, and thus eliminates the need for the rest of the Vedas; in this way too, the Vedanta means the end of the Vedas.
“Now then who am I?”, you might think. “For starters, I feel like one person, not like many, don’t I? Also, I obviously don’t mistake myself for my mother or father, or for you. Why, because I’m the seer, and you are the one that I see. I am not the objects that I see, and therefore I can summarily conclude that I am not you, am I?”
We are going to use this reasoning as the fuel that eliminates the coverings that seem to hide infinity. In this way we are going to expose you directly to your infinite self.
Now here’s where this line of reasoning takes a surprising twist. In the same way that you see your parents, in the same way that they are an object of your senses, and not you, in that very way, you see your own body, right? You’re the seer and your body is the seen. You feel your body; you smell your body; you hear your heartbeat, and you can taste your sweat.
You don’t have to get out of your body or run from it. Just take a moment and feel how you’re aware of the body, and in that way you are greater than the body. From here it becomes a valid question — the body dies but do I die? My body comes and goes, but do I?
Remember, nowhere in this line of reasoning have we told you to get out of the body (to do astral travel), to ignore the body, to try to get rid of the body, or to float above the body. We just want you to take a look and see what the case is now. Without you doing anything, by just taking a direct look you can see that you are much greater than the physical body. This is an example of how on the path of Self-Knowledge your reason points to your direct experience.
It might be instructive if I tell the story of how I first discovered that I was greater than the body. You have to know that I had been intensively studying the martial art, Aikido. I studied it for enough years that I could practically do it in my sleep. One of my favorite