Jivanmukta
(Medhananda:) “The Jivanmukta, the liberated human being, is no longer subject to karma. He is also freed from all programmes, all prescriptions, from anything he ought to be or do. He creates his own programme at every instant.
Karma, in its highest sense, represents the conditions one has imposed upon oneself – that the One has imposed upon itself.
It is like when a ball is thrown against a wall: it comes back to us. That is how it normally happens. But it is possible to turn it into something like a dream from which you must awaken. You wake up and then the ball that was thrown no longer exists. It has become pure illusion.
In this way the Truth-Consciousness can change the conditions and avoid the ball coming back to you, if that is what you really want. The consequence of having thrown the ball does not reach you.”[1]
- “Although consenting here to a mortal body,
- He is the Undying; limit and bond he knows not;
- For him the aeons are a playground,
- Life and its deeds are his splendid shadow.
- For him the aeons are a playground,
- Only to bring God’s forces to waiting Nature,
- To help with wide-winged Peace her tormented labour
- And heal with joy her ancient sorrow,
- Casting down light on the inconscient darkness,
- And heal with joy her ancient sorrow,
- He acts and lives. Vain things are mind’s smaller motives
- To one whose soul enjoys for its high possession
- Infinity and the sempiternal
- All is his guide and beloved and refuge.”[2]
- Infinity and the sempiternal
“Silence, Light, Power, Ananda, these are the four pillars of the Jivanmukta consciousness.”[3]
- “A Splendour is here, refused to the earthward sight,
- That floods some deep flame-covered all-seeing eye;
- Revealed it wakens when God’s stillness
- Heavens the ocean of moveless Nature.
- Revealed it wakens when God’s stillness
- A Power descends no Fate can perturb or vanquish,
- Calmer than mountains, wider than marching waters,
- A single might of luminous quiet
- Tirelessly bearing the worlds and ages.”[4]
- A single might of luminous quiet
“This Jivanmukta is not merely a poem, but a transcript of a spiritual condition, one of the highest in the inner Overmind experience. To express it at all is not easy.”[5]
“While the ideas, impressions, impulsions that lead to action in an ordinary man rise from the chitta, those that rise in the Jivanmukta come straight from the sattva — from the essential consciousness of the being — in other words they are not mental but spiritual formations. As one might say, instead of cittavṛtti they are sattvapreraṇā, direct indications from the inner being of what is to be thought, felt or done. When the chitta is no longer active and the mind silent — which happens when the mukti comes and no one can be Jivanmukta without that — then what remains and perceives and does things is felt as an essential consciousness, the consciousness of the true self or true being.”[6]
“The existence of the Jivanmukta proves that one can thus exceed ego and division and yet live and act, so that life in the Divine is not an imagination or a fable.
The ascension above ego and division is no doubt only a first step achieved in rare individuals, but in evolution it is the first step which counts and makes all the rest possible.”[7]
- ↑ On the threshold of a new age with Medhananda, p. 110
- ↑ Collected Poems, p.552, “Jivanmukta”
- ↑ Letters on Poetry and Art, p.249
- ↑ Collected Poems, p.551, “Jivanmukta”
- ↑ Letters on Poetry and Art, p.250
- ↑ Letters on Yoga – I, p.172
- ↑ Ibid., p.263
See also