In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose,Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from the Chandogya Upanishad entitled “This Is the Self.” I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.
Merging with All
The Self, who can be realized by the pure in heart, who
is life, light, truth, space, who gives rise to all works, all
desires, all odors, all tastes, who is beyond words, who
is joy abiding—this is the Self dwelling in my heart.
—The Chandogya Upanishad
There is nothing without the Self, nothing.
No puppies, no kittens, no babies, no lambs,
no light, no dark, no shadows, no secrets,
no space, no time, no truth, no life,
no taste, no touch, no scent, no sound, no sight,
no joy, no love, no peace, no hope, no gratitude.
There is nothing without the Self.
In the beginning there was the Self and
there was nothing else.
The Self was pure consciousness,
out of which everything is made.
Now the Self dwells in the atom,
in the electron, in the positron.
Now the Self dwells in the center
of every cell.
The Self is my divinity, your divinity.
The Self is our connection to source;
it is source.
The Self is pure being, the core knowing
that we long to return to.
We dwell in the Self, and the Self dwells in us.
The Self completes us. The Self makes us whole.
We cannot act without the Self.
Without the Self, we have no will.
Without the Self, we have no desire.
Why don’t we realize the Self, if it is all that is,
if it is the beginning and the end?
There is a part of us that springs from the Self,
but is not the Self. There is a part of us
that is not real, that is not true.
We call that part of us the ego,
and the ego believes in the illusion we are in.
The ego is a shadow consciousness,
who helps us differentiate between
ourselves and others, between one thing
and another. The ego believes
in separation, the ego wants us to believe
that it is us. The ego wants to rule
our thoughts, it wants to build itself up,
and put itself down. More than anything,
the ego wants to exist.
But it is the illusion that keeps us
from the truth. It is the illusion
that prevents us from knowing
our Oneness with the Self.
It is not evil. It is just a shadow
consciousness that longs to
replace true consciousness,
that longs to rule.
We do not have to believe the ego’s lies.
We can release the ego.
We can transcend the ego.
We can let it die.
This will take time.
It will be over in an instant.
One moment we will be concerned
with our identity. The next moment
we will identify with the Self.
We will see the truth within the illusion.
We will be absorbed by the light.
We will know what’s real.
The ego will dissipate like a cloud
of smoke, forgotten.
And our love will merge with all.
