The One Consciousness

Robert A. Ashworth 

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the God men of all ages and traditions.  It is especially dedicated to His Holiness Sri Swami Rama (Ramchandra Ghirnikar), who by His grace, allowed me to see the simple meaning of life.  Rama called no one disciple; he called him or her friend and indeed He is the best friend we ever had or will ever hope to have.  Rama said, "Once I have made contact with a man or woman, whether saint or sinner, I will never leave them."  My wife, Sharon and I can attest to the truthfulness of this statement.  His picture is shown below.  

H.H. Sri Swami Rama

Here is a wonderful mystical poem by Rama that is overflowing with Truth and Love for us all.  It was sent to me recently by Betty Treadwell, an ardent devotee of Rama and rightfully so.  It sets the stage for the discussion of the One Consciousness that follows:

"EVERFLOWING STREAM OF OMNIPRESENT LIFE " 

Not an iota of doubt I have

of who I am and what is to be done.

The realms and mysteries of living and dying

knoweth them I fully, all and one.

Listen my dears, KNOW YOU ARE LIFE.

So respect it, regard it and pay it tribute.

Then the immortal stream of life will flow on

Flawless, clean and pure absolute!

If you ask me " Does one Die?"

I will say " Never. Oh, Never. No one. Nowhere ".

Nature's nature is changing garbs

and she loves doing it ever - forever !

This everflowing lifestream is a treasure and a wonder.

With fun and laughter and joy it swells

A refreshing sprinkle of the nectar of HIS LOVE,

Here Rama Rests and here Rama Dwells.

Swami Rama.

Ramnagar Palace, Jammu.

8th March 1936.

Introduction 

I would like to say that I read Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination thirty to forty years ago when I earnestly started on my quest to understand what life is all about.  I read that little book and accepted what it said but I really didn't get the deep meaning of it.  After all of those years, I finally get it and what is amazing is that it is so simple and was staring me in the face all of that time.  He said exactly what life was all about.  The same things I discuss here.  It is completely straightforward and understandable but the deep meaning of it did not register until recently.

The reason I am writing this book is for those who have wondered what life is all about and would like to know from their own personal experiences without having to listen to the various religious dogma that is espoused to try to find the answers.  There is one simple answer and you can recognize it as I have.  Some people have told me, "What you say is just your opinion, nobody really knows!"  To this I must say, I have nothing to do with it.  It is not an opinion; it is just the way it is.  The proof of it is staring every one of us in the face.  It is like looking up and seeing the sun and the clouds; we all recognize that they are there.  No one asks you, "Is it your opinion the sun and clouds are there!" The reason they don't ask is that they see them too! Recognizing what God is, why we are here and the purpose of life is not much more difficult than observing the sun and the clouds.

There are many things that are simple and staring us in the face that we do not see. Here is an example.  My wife to be Sharon showed me the man in the moon when I was in my early twenties.  It was very strange that I had never seen it on my own.  I lived on a small farm in West Virginia and when I was a boy, many evenings I would lay on the grass and look at the moon and stars pondering the question, "How can the universe go on and on forever and yet how could it stop for if it stops, what stops it and what is on the other side?" Many years later I found the answer to this question.  However all of that time pondering the universe I never saw the man in the moon.  Once Sharon pointed it out to me, I have seen it ever since.  A few years ago, I asked some men I worked with if they ever saw the man in the moon.  Most said no.  On a clear night when the moon was full, I took them outside and showed them the man in the moon. They saw it and will do so for the rest of their lives, see pictures below.

Man in Moon

Naked eye type picture, look for him here with his skewed mouth.

All I will try to do in this little book is to explain certain simple things to you. Then, if you think deeply about them, you will recognize the simplicity of life as I have.  Hopefully by seeing it yourself, not having to accept the meaning of life on blind faith, your life will become more happy and serene.  You will also easily realize why the Great Ones, whom have blessed this earth with their presence, have taught us the things they did.

My mother died when I was 28 years old, and after that happened, life didn't make sense to me anymore.  The only person who loved me unconditionally was gone!  After her death, I started diligently searching to find out what this life was all about. If not in the front of my mind, this question was always in the back of my mind.  I studied the world's scriptures, practiced Yoga, meditated and kept analyzing everything ad nauseum.  It took me some thirty years to finally realize the simplicity of life.  And even so, this only happened after I met Rama whom I know was God Incarnate and Darshan Singh who I only met briefly, if he was not One with God when I met him was very close to it.  It is also a fact of life that if you have a strong desire to know something, God Himself will come to you if you cannot find the answer elsewhere.  Even with their help it took many years after these Great Ones had left the earth for the simplicity of life finally to sink in.

Every time a new aspect of life became obvious to me I would tell my lovely wife Sharon that I am as dumb as a brick.  Why didn't I realize that long ago when I first read it in the scriptures?  Strangely, even by not recognizing it, I was taught something.  It let me realize why we do not really get what the God men are saying.  Although we may not question what is said, we hear or read it and it zooms through our heads at the speed of sound or light, is not absorbed, and has no real meaning to us.  It is like the man in the moon, it is right there before us, but is not seen.  I always tell Sharon that God dumbed all of us down before we came here.  The truth is that every question we have about life has a simple answer.  Another truth I have uncovered is that if you cannot explain something in simple terms, even something you consider yourself to be an expert in, you do not understand it.  A great philosopher once said, "Simplicity and profundity are one!"  This statement indeed is one of the great Truths of Life.

Chapter 1.

What is this called God?

You will be amazed how simple this is and it isn't something mysterious that you cannot understand.  I am not the first to write about this, Shankara talked about it in detail over 1300 years ago.  I will try to put it in our everyday words so you can hopefully grasp it.  Simply put, God is the One Consciousness (Awareness).  Further, there is only this One Consciousness of which, you, me and all of creation is a part.  That Consciousness is both within and without. As a matter of fact there is no place you can point where it is not.  No thing has its own separate consciousness; all of creation is wired for the portion (with man our intellect) of that One Infinite Consciousness that is allotted to it by the One called God.  Still further, we do not carry this consciousness around with us; rather, it is everywhere we go, like the air we breathe.  In essence we are like fish swimming in the Ocean of that One Consciousness and we have no existence separate and apart from it.  Ramakrishna, a nineteenth century Godman, called it the Ocean of Satchitananda (Ocean of Existence, Knowledge and Bliss).  Since there is only One isn't it now easy to see why Jesus taught us, "Love your neighbor as yourself!" and why Krishna when asked by Arjuna, "Who is the highest", replied, "He who suffers the bliss and sorrow of every living creature, taking each bliss and sorrow as his own, Him I call the highest!"  

Okay now what is the basis for my saying there is only One Consciousness?  How do I know it is true?  First, let me say this, by observing nature one can get to know the One who created it.  You can see the truth of this in your everyday life.   For example, by observing something that is man made, one can get insight into the character of the man who made it.  If you see a piece of exquisite hand made furniture, the man who made it, you would recognize is an artist that pays a lot of attention to details.  He has to have a lot of patience for it had to take him a long time to complete it.  You would also see that he is a good worker and has a great passion to make something as beautiful as he can.  Therefore when you later meet this man you will already know a lot about his character just from observing that which he made.

The same is true with God, by observing nature you get insight into the One who made it.  The easiest quality to see is that the One who created the universe loves variety.  This can be realized by observing the many types of plants, insects and animals that exist on earth, the billion stars of different sizes and brightness and the diverse types of galaxies that exist.  Even with the species we call man, one sees many people of different hues but it is a rarity that two look exactly alike, even though all men have the same body parts, as do all women.  Further, with each of us as we grow older we start to look different than we did when we were young.

The One Consciousness has no opposite, but you see clearly in His creation that it is made up of many many pairs of opposites, Yin and Yang, man and woman, left and right, up and down, etc. etc. etc. I get the feeling that the One Consciousness created, because it wondered if there is something better.  Is this better or is its opposite better. It is also easily seen that God doesn't like to be alone.  Look how many different types of animals there are and how many animals there are within each type.  There are some 6 billion people in the world.  There are also millions of families who spend much of their lives in each other's company and beyond this each has friends that they like to commiserate with.  Look how many birds of one type flock together and stay together for most of their lives - they like company!  After I had experienced the dread loneliness of God in meditation, we met Darshan Singh, the Mystic Urdu poet who never slept and the first words he spoke to my wife and me were, "Everyone knows that God created the Universe because He was lonely!"  I knew that but I didn't know everyone did but in his saying that I knew he was in tune with God and he made that statement so I would know who he was.  Like Rama he treated all equally.  We went to hear him talk at a church and he was late.  He was at the church beforehand but a person met him in the parking lot and wanted to ask him some questions.  He graciously answered all of the person's questions before entering the church.  To Darshan Singh everyone was equally important, one in the parking lot or a hundred in the church..

God is a great artist.  One can see this by the unlimited sunsets He paints. God loves beauty.  If you ever saw a rose or a beautiful sunset you should surely recognize this.  God loves the laws He created that govern life.  The laws of physics that apply on earth are the same laws that apply throughout this universe.  For some reason, and probably for variety again, God also loves spinning.  Electrons spin on their axes and also spin around the nucleus of the atom just as the earth spins on its axis and at the same time spins around the sun.  The Sufi whirling dervishes have realized this.

God loves compassion, selflessness and unconditional love.  You can see it in the eyes and actions of a loving mother.  It was there in abundance in my mother.  But then you say there are a lot of demonic selfish acts performed, does God love that too.  If you believe what I say is true, God could not love selfish acts because all that exists is Him.  If one part of Him is terrorizing another part of Him what joy or love could there be in that?  You would not purposely start carving on your arm, which is an integral part of you; you would feel an excruciating sharp pain.  Yes, but it still happens, if He doesn't like selfishness in all of its embodied forms (anger, lust and greed etc.), then why does He let it happen?

It is part of His play of good versus evil.  It seems to be His consistent theme of life.  It seems like each entity He created must come to the realization that good is better than evil and that realization comes through life experiences.  Older souls that have been in the physical world more times have become less selfish than younger souls going through this.  The younger ones do more selfish (evil) things.  The Truth is that selfishness separates us from God, for as long as we think we are a separate entity we can never see that we are One with all of creation.  Unselfishness must conquer selfishness so that each part of God (in us and all of creation) can realize what it is, and that is - we are one with Him who is the Only One!  I know I have not answered why I know there is only One Consciousness yet.  By giving the above examples I just wanted you to start thinking about the things you observe and not just blindly watch them flitter by.

Now here is the answer concerning One Consciousness.  If there were more than One Consciousness, that is, if we all had our own independent consciousness then each of us would be in different realities.  It would be like it is when we are asleep; there each of us can experience our own separate dream worlds.  There are many realms that were created by the One consciousness and at night, we venture to them to get a taste of each of us having our own separate consciousness.  Back when I meditated a lot, my mind became so strong that many times if I were having a dream I didn't like I would stop it.  Unlike a dream, when we are physically awake, we all see the same things, the same sun, moon and stars, etc.  Is it not logical then that we all have to be within One Consciousness, at least when we are physically awake?  Each of us having a separate consciousness makes absolutely no sense for we all see the same things.  We are all in the same great movie so to speak, but within that great one movie there are separate little dramas being played out like in a soap opera.  One time Buddha was asked, not who are you, but what are you?  His reply, "I am awake!"  As we awaken from the dream state, He awakened from the physical state to the true reality and that was that he was One with all of creation.  Like the dreams at night we feel are not real when we wake up, Buddha recognized that this physical existence is also not real when he woke up.  The one who wrote the children's song, "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream was very wise.  Life is God's dream and we are all part of Him so be gentle to one another and be happy.  Buddha was called the Compassionate One for this reason.   As I have gotten older, although not like the Godmen, I am more convinced of God' existence than my own existence!

Ramakrishna said this, "God alone is real, the world is an illusion!"  Shankara said for us to think," I am Brahman (God); I am not the individual soul and reject everything that is non-Atman (God).  The Atman within you is the Atman in all.  Strive thus to destroy this illusion, even to its last traces.  "Ramakrishna knew what Shankara knew, what Buddha knew, what Jesus knew, what Rama knew, what Krishna knew, what Lao Tzu knew, etc., etc.  Why do they tell us this about the world? They want us to be happy.  When Rama became God realized he said, " …. and now you see I am just this whole abode of bliss and nothing else!"  These Great Ones know there is no lasting happiness found in the objects of the senses.  They learned this and so far we haven't, so they come back from time to time to help us.  The objects of the senses are like flowers.  When you pick them they seem so beautiful and smell so sweet, but after awhile they rot, turn ugly and give off a rotten smell.

Chapter 2.

Who are We and Why are We here?

We are all part of the One and each of us was created with our own unique characteristics so we could commiserate with other souls that were put here because the One was lonely.  If everyone were created with the same characteristics and thoughts, there would be no need to converse with one another; we would all say the same things.  I am not exactly sure how this works but I believe that each soul evolves from mineral to plant to animal to man and in doing so layers of ignorance are removed and we have more degrees of freedom.  A rock has no degrees of freedom; a plant has three-dimensional freedom but cannot move from place to place like animals or man.  The Great Ones tell us that when a soul becomes man, He/She can then become perfect and become one with the Creator.  Having said that, Shankara, who achieved God Realization at the age of 10 or 11, said that to become perfect one had to go through 100 billion lifetimes. Buddha, in concert with Shankara said, if you were to pile the bones from all of your transmigrations (reincarnations) on top of one another they would be mountain high!  So you can see from this why you don't see many perfect souls wandering around here on earth.  God takes Himself from Himself and then slowly brings Himself back to Himself over and over and over again.  Vivekananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna, in his last life said, "I am happy for all the lives I have lived and am now happy that they have come to an end!"  If you think about it, one lifetime makes absolutely no sense, for why would one get to be born as Jesus and another Hitler.  Also how do you explain a two-year-old boy sitting at a piano for the first time and playing a melody?  A friend of mine said his brother did this.

Chapter 3.

The Illusion called Time

Are there other illusions in this physical reality that we can recognize?  Yes, time is one and it is fairly easy to recognize if you think about it a little.  It is a sequence of events we experience that only exists because we have a memory and an imagination.  It is easy to see that all that exists is the Eternal Now?  Past and future exist only in our mind.  Time is also funny because it seems to change depending on the situation.  When we are young it seems like it goes ever so slow and when we get old it moves very fast.  I figured this one out.  The reason it goes slow when we are young is because we are looking forward to things coming in the future.  For instance, if we have brothers or sisters in school we just can't wait to start school and then later we just can't wait until we get out of school.  You could have other I just can't wait things you are looking ahead for, like getting married, having children, etc.  After we stop looking forward to something in the future, time gets off the peddled scooter it has been riding with us at its side, then hops onto a motorcycle and finally hops onto a jet plane.  Even when you are old it can slow down at times.  Do you notice how long it takes to drive somewhere when going on vacation and how short the vacation seemed as you were driving back home.  All that really exists is now and as soon as I say it, what I say is gone. This is why the God Realized Ones tell us to live in the present because that is all there is.  The past is just memory and the future is just imagination; neither one exists separate from our mind thinking they exist.  In your dreams at night there are sequences of events also but when you wake up you negate that whole dream as being real.  The Creator is very tricky and life is a wonderful illusion, but you can see through the illusion if you think a little about what you see and experience.