Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

In contrast to this misplaced and misproportioned sense of ego identity, the ancients considered even the gods, the rishis, the Buddhas, along with everything in this universe,

as simply the periodic potencies of infinite space. Space in the ultimate sense is both infinite expansion and all pervasiveness.

infinite growth and infinite preservation. The ancients did not conceive of this universe as something which could expand perpetually or be totally annihilated. For them, expansion, preservation and annihilation

were relative to a location or plane of existence. Anything which disappears or appears on one plane emerges from or is absorbed into another plane. Beginnings and endings are not final.

They simply exist relative to an observer. Given the postulate of absolute abstract space, however, no set of instruments could exhaust the possibilities of growth.

or of absorption and annihilation. As soon as one begins to view this entire universe as a limitation of potential existence, one of myriad possibilities potential within infinite space,

it becomes clear that there must be an illusion about egoity. It is an illusion of indefinite preservation. In the worst and saddest cases, this amounts to an identification with a body.

Given the cosmic nature of craving and the thirst for existence, it is a long and difficult evolutionary process to elevate consciousness beyond the realm of maya.

Even human beings who have successfully generated a sense of selfhood, independent of the body, have attachments still to the mind through concepts, expectations and images. Even if they have gone beyond the latent tendencies,

and have begun to inhabit a realm of higher ideation, they have still, out of their love of meditation, or their desire to help the human race, an inherence in form.

Thus, owing to the universal tendency towards an illusory inheritance of consciousness in form, every human being attempting to contact the stream of pure, unmodified consciousness is bound to discover certain barriers that are extremely difficult to cross.

and which cannot ultimately be wholly dissolved while the capacity for incarnation still exists. Owing to the habitual eye-making at the level of physical name and form,

Human beings are typically terrified of death. They should instead learn to expand their consciousness and consider the myriad human beings that they once knew or did not know who must have been their ancestors. Where are they?

Can one imagine a consciousness after the moment of death? Can one imagine a consciousness that is capable of including innumerable human beings who have disappeared as bodies and forms?

One might imagine entering a gallery of ancestral photographs and understanding that none of the human beings represented there still resemble the images that portray them because their forms have all been buried or burnt. That particular form has disintegrated.

Yet, if one concentrates on the pinpoints of light in their eyes, one can come to see these as a kind of collective veil upon the eternal sentient rays of light that are their true natures.

dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, was not spoken of that light, it was spoken of the body, not the soul. There is, after all, nothing to be afraid of,

because whatever the object of one's fears, it will eventually be dissolved. Secondly, there is nothing to depend on, because whatever the crutch of one's weaknesses, it will sometime be reabsorbed.

Instead of placing one's reliance upon ultimately ephemeral forms, no matter how abstract, one should awaken and strengthen a sense of spiritual solidarity with the Great Breath.

To begin to become one with a great breath in consciousness means re-educating all aspects of one's being. This demands much time and hard work because of the vast numbers of miseducated life atoms in one's vestiges.