You are not a Creation but a Creator
Overview
The identity that one feels is selfcreated and disappears when one locates the source of the project.
The downside of believing in God is that you become a child and want to be looked after by the father, forgetting that if there was a creator of this world, the force of that creator did not create you from material outside of itself. You are a holographic projection of God’s own self and retain all the potentialities and have no separate identity of your own. The identity that one feels is self-created and disappears when one locates the source of the projection.
The identity that one feels is self-created and disappears when one locates the source of the projection.
The downside of believing in God is that you become a child and want to be looked after by the father, forgetting that if there was a creator of this world, the force of that creator did not create you from material outside of itself. You are a holographic projection of God’s own self and retain all the potentialities and have no separate identity of your own. The identity that one feels is self-created and disappears when one locates the source of the projection.
Religion makes us believe that we are here for a purpose, and it is our job to figure out that purpose or our calling in life, assuming there was an essence (a plan/blueprint) that preceded our existence in this world. Whereas Existentialism teaches us that existence precedes essence. There is no father watching over us all the time, taking care of us, and protecting us. The energies of creation are non-interventionist, and they are also governed by certain laws of the universe. We exist first as free beings and, in that freedom, create whatever essence we want to create. We are the authors of our life. Realizing this basic truth would be the first step toward our awakening.
This awakening can happen at any stage in one’s life including in childhood, and those of us who have experienced that, even in a miniaturized form, will not allow our circumstances to mold us but will understand that it is our responsibility to mold our circumstances and create a path we can walk on, without treading on other’s toes.
There have always been people in all cultures who can be called stubborn, determined, detached, enthusiastic, driven, etc who did not tread a well-trodden path but created their own paths. This resulted in a lot of hardships and prolonged periods of struggle for them. Perhaps what kept them going was an awareness of an inner direction and a conviction about what was right for them, and they eventually reached their destination. They were able to see that people who were opposing them were not fully knowledgeable about their affairs and therefore were able to resist outside pressures.
A few names that come to my mind are:
Ramana Maharishi
He left home when he was sixteen, a few weeks after he had a profound spiritual awakening, although painful, which made him realize that he was not who he thought he was, and that there was a whole new universe inside of him which had to be explored. He did not want to be a householder. He knew that his family would not let him leave the house, so he left home without informing anyone and traveled on a train for two days without having sufficient money on him and reached Tiruvannamalai, a small village in India, where he stayed for the rest of his life, did not leave that place ever. A few years later his uncle came to Tiruvannamalai to take him back, but he will not go. His mother came to fetch him, but he refused to return to his village, eventually, his mother and his brother came to live with him and became renunciates. His teaching was to keep asking yourself, “Who am I.”
Henry David Thoreau
He died young at the age of forty-four of tuberculosis but left behind a large volume of writings. He was labeled an anarchist for refusing to agree with and follow the country’s laws and traditions of the time.
He refused to pay five dollars for his diploma from Harvard and declined to purchase his master’s degree as it was written on sheepskin vellum. Later, he was arrested for not paying the taxes on moral grounds and was kept in prison, but his mother arranged to pay the taxes and got him out.
He was the first proponent of civil disobedience which inspired Mahatma Gandhi to start the non-violent quit India movement against the British Empire. He also left home to live in a forest in very rudimentary and basic conditions to experience life without the trappings of everyday comforts. According to him, the comforts are not only not dispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of humanity.
Paramhansa Yogananda
In 1920 at the age of twenty-seven, he got a vision during his meditation in which he saw multitudes of Americans passing in front of his mind’s eye. This prompted him to plan to go to America although he knew no one there and fought with his father who was vehemently opposed to his going to America. His father refused to give him the money needed to travel to America, and Yogananda had no clue from where he will get the money, but he was determined to go. His father eventually yielded and gave him the money to travel.
When in high school, he would travel long distances in trains looking for a spiritual teacher against the wishes of his father. His father used to work in the railways, and he managed to get him back with the help of railway employees and the police from distant railway stations.
Elon Musk
Elon has not followed a trodden path but has created new paths – not in terms of creating innovative ideas but extending them and putting them into practice. He started his journey by creating systems of collecting payments online (it became PayPal after the sale) and then moved on to developing tesla cars, and solar energy systems, and planning a move to Mars so that people can live there in the future. He is also putting his money into researching the use of brain implants for curing illnesses and developing human potential. He is a good example of taking extreme financial risks as he did not have enough money even to pay salaries to his employees at Tesla Cars and SpaceX projects for one week, and now he is the richest man in the world.
Salman Rushdie
He lived with his parents in England until the age of ten, when they decided to move back to India, the young Salman decided to continue living in England although there were no means for him to stay. His parents yielded to his request and asked a distant relative to let him stay with them. Salman struggled a lot professionally as a writer and success eluded him for most of his youth, and he felt envious of other less talented writers who were making millions and he was getting nowhere. But writing was a compulsion for him, and he kept writing, he used to say, “I am not writing for any rewards, it is not a choice but a compulsion and a way of release.” Writing for him was like being pregnant and he had to give birth as it cannot be like this forever.”
Kailash Kher
An Indian singer who left home at the tender age of thirteen against the wishes of his parents who did not want him to become a singer. He said he wanted to learn classical music. He had nowhere to go and survived on the street doing menial jobs for musicians and drum players who never taught him anything and used his services. He has a small physical structure and had suffered from low self-esteem. He attempted suicide by drowning himself in the Ganges River but could not succeed, and eventually thought there must be a purpose to his life otherwise God would not have saved him. He failed miserably in business and finally got his break at the age of thirty when he sang a song – Tuta Tuta Ek Parinda. After that, there was no turning back.
He sings Sufi and Nirgun Bhakti (worshipping formless – having no desire to seek objects with a form and not being attached to forms) songs. His songs are romantic like most Sufi songs are addressed to God in the form of a beloved or a friend, but there are spiritual undertones. The expression of love is totally consuming, single-pointed, and with full devotion, transcending all human qualities. Sufi songs were popular in Sindh and Punjab. Sufism originated from Islam, but Sufis are non-conformists and do not strictly adhere to Islamic laws, hence they come into conflict with traditional Muslims. The purpose of their spiritual practices is to seek higher levels of consciousness, akin to Hinduism and Buddhism.
Kailash Kher never learned classical music but there is classical music in his lyrics, music, and singing. He says, “it was perhaps learned in my past lives.” He does not follow the standard methods of singing but his lyrics and singing are exceptionally good.
Conclusion
The core features of these individuals are that:
The opinions of others do not matter to them when it comes to their passions.
Repeated failures have no impact on their convictions, and they keep making further attempts.
Deep down they have the feeling that they are right, and the rest of the world is wrong. And the universe bows to their wishes.
The downside of believing in God is that you become a child and want to be looked after by the father, forgetting that if there was a creator of this world, the force of that creator did not create you from material outside of itself. You are a holographic projection of God’s own self and retain all the potentialities and have no separate identity of your own. The identity that one feels is self-created and disappears when one locates the source of the projection.
Religion makes us believe that we are here for a purpose, and it is our job to figure out that purpose or our calling in life, assuming there was an essence (a plan/blueprint) that preceded our existence in this world. Whereas Existentialism teaches us that existence precedes essence. There is no father watching over us all the time, taking care of us, and protecting us. The energies of creation are non-interventionist, and they are also governed by certain laws of the universe. We exist first as free beings and, in that freedom, create whatever essence we want to create. We are the authors of our life. Realizing this basic truth would be the first step toward our awakening.
This awakening can happen at any stage in one’s life including in childhood, and those of us who have experienced that, even in a miniaturized form, will not allow our circumstances to mold us but will understand that it is our responsibility to mold our circumstances and create a path we can walk on, without treading on other’s toes.
There have always been people in all cultures who can be called stubborn, determined, detached, enthusiastic, driven, etc who did not tread a well-trodden path but created their own paths. This resulted in a lot of hardships and prolonged periods of struggle for them. Perhaps what kept them going was an awareness of an inner direction and a conviction about what was right for them, and they eventually reached their destination. They were able to see that people who were opposing them were not fully knowledgeable about their affairs and therefore were able to resist outside pressures.
A few names that come to my mind are:
Ramana Maharishi
He left home when he was sixteen, a few weeks after he had a profound spiritual awakening, although painful, which made him realize that he was not who he thought he was, and that there was a whole new universe inside of him which had to be explored. He did not want to be a householder. He knew that his family would not let him leave the house, so he left home without informing anyone and traveled on a train for two days without having sufficient money on him and reached Tiruvannamalai, a small village in India, where he stayed for the rest of his life, did not leave that place ever. A few years later his uncle came to Tiruvannamalai to take him back, but he will not go. His mother came to fetch him, but he refused to return to his village, eventually, his mother and his brother came to live with him and became renunciates. His teaching was to keep asking yourself, “Who am I.”
Henry David Thoreau
He died young at the age of forty-four of tuberculosis but left behind a large volume of writings. He was labeled an anarchist for refusing to agree with and follow the country’s laws and traditions of the time.
He refused to pay five dollars for his diploma from Harvard and declined to purchase his master’s degree as it was written on sheepskin vellum. Later, he was arrested for not paying the taxes on moral grounds and was kept in prison, but his mother arranged to pay the taxes and got him out.
He was the first proponent of civil disobedience which inspired Mahatma Gandhi to start the non-violent quit India movement against the British Empire. He also left home to live in a forest in very rudimentary and basic conditions to experience life without the trappings of everyday comforts. According to him, the comforts are not only not dispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of humanity.
Paramhansa Yogananda
In 1920 at the age of twenty-seven, he got a vision during his meditation in which he saw multitudes of Americans passing in front of his mind’s eye. This prompted him to plan to go to America although he knew no one there and fought with his father who was vehemently opposed to his going to America. His father refused to give him the money needed to travel to America, and Yogananda had no clue from where he will get the money, but he was determined to go. His father eventually yielded and gave him the money to travel.
When in high school, he would travel long distances in trains looking for a spiritual teacher against the wishes of his father. His father used to work in the railways, and he managed to get him back with the help of railway employees and the police from distant railway stations.
Elon Musk
Elon has not followed a trodden path but has created new paths – not in terms of creating innovative ideas but extending them and putting them into practice. He started his journey by creating systems of collecting payments online (it became PayPal after the sale) and then moved on to developing tesla cars, and solar energy systems, and planning a move to Mars so that people can live there in the future. He is also putting his money into researching the use of brain implants for curing illnesses and developing human potential. He is a good example of taking extreme financial risks as he did not have enough money even to pay salaries to his employees at Tesla Cars and SpaceX projects for one week, and now he is the richest man in the world.
Salman Rushdie
He lived with his parents in England until the age of ten, when they decided to move back to India, the young Salman decided to continue living in England although there were no means for him to stay. His parents yielded to his request and asked a distant relative to let him stay with them. Salman struggled a lot professionally as a writer and success eluded him for most of his youth, and he felt envious of other less talented writers who were making millions and he was getting nowhere. But writing was a compulsion for him, and he kept writing, he used to say, “I am not writing for any rewards, it is not a choice but a compulsion and a way of release.” Writing for him was like being pregnant and he had to give birth as it cannot be like this forever.”
Kailash Kher
An Indian singer who left home at the tender age of thirteen against the wishes of his parents who did not want him to become a singer. He said he wanted to learn classical music. He had nowhere to go and survived on the street doing menial jobs for musicians and drum players who never taught him anything and used his services. He has a small physical structure and had suffered from low self-esteem. He attempted suicide by drowning himself in the Ganges River but could not succeed, and eventually thought there must be a purpose to his life otherwise God would not have saved him. He failed miserably in business and finally got his break at the age of thirty when he sang a song – Tuta Tuta Ek Parinda. After that, there was no turning back.
He sings Sufi and Nirgun Bhakti (worshipping formless – having no desire to seek objects with a form and not being attached to forms) songs. His songs are romantic like most Sufi songs are addressed to God in the form of a beloved or a friend, but there are spiritual undertones. The expression of love is totally consuming, single-pointed, and with full devotion, transcending all human qualities. Sufi songs were popular in Sindh and Punjab. Sufism originated from Islam, but Sufis are non-conformists and do not strictly adhere to Islamic laws, hence they come into conflict with traditional Muslims. The purpose of their spiritual practices is to seek higher levels of consciousness, akin to Hinduism and Buddhism.
Kailash Kher never learned classical music but there is classical music in his lyrics, music, and singing. He says, “it was perhaps learned in my past lives.” He does not follow the standard methods of singing but his lyrics and singing are exceptionally good.
Conclusion
The core features of these individuals are that:
The opinions of others do not matter to them when it comes to their passions.
Repeated failures have no impact on their convictions, and they keep making further attempts.
Deep down they have the feeling that they are right, and the rest of the world is wrong. And the universe bows to their wishes.
