Now coming to consciousness. Naturally when consciousness has turned into something, it has limited itself. Although in comparison with trees and plants and rocks and mountains the consciousness of man is fully wakened, yet every human being is not wakened, he is still in captivity. As Rumi says in the Masnavi that “man is captive in an imprisonment,” and his every effort, his every desire is to break through in order to realize inspiration, greatness, beauty, happiness, peace, independent of all things of this world.

One comes to this sooner or later, but there is a continual yearning; wise and foolish, everyone is striving for it consciously or unconsciously. There is one person who is perhaps very interested in himself, his health or mind, or thoughts or feelings, or affairs; his consciousness does not go any further than that little horizon. It does not mean that in that way he is not right. He occupies that much space in the sphere of consciousness.

There is another person, he has forgotten himself, he says, ‘There is my family, my friends, I love them,” and then his consciousness is larger. Or “For my citizens, for my country, for the education of the children of my country, for the good health of the people in my town,”—his consciousness is larger still. It means, not that his consciousness is larger, but he occupies a larger horizon in the sphere of consciousness. And so do not be surprised if a poet like Nizam says, “If the heart is large enough, it can contain the whole universe.” That is a consciousness such that the universe is too small compared to that consciousness. The sphere of that consciousness is the Absolute.

There is no piece of consciousness cut out for man, but man occupies a certain horizon, as far as he can expand; for him the Absolute can be his consciousness. Therefore on the outside he is individual, but in reality you cannot say what he is. It is this idea that is hinted at in the Bible when it is said, “Be ye perfect as your father in Heaven.” What does it mean? That the Absolute Consciousness is the sign of perfection, and you are not put out of it. All move and live in it. Only we occupy so much horizon, as much as [is] within our consciousness, or as much as we are conscious of.

This shows to us that every individual has his own world, and the world of one individual is as tiny as a grain of lentil and of another as large as the whole world. And yet on the outside all human beings are more or less equal in size, one somewhat taller than the other; in size every man is about the same; but in his world there is no comparison how different one person can be from another. There can be as many varieties of the difference of worlds in human beings as there are creatures from ant to elephant.

There is a question about what has been called in the scriptures heaven and hell. What is it? It is our world, our consciousness. What we have, in which we live day after day and year after year, and what continues in another world is heaven or the other place. Whatever we have made it, it is this we are experiencing today. And what is said by the prophets, that after death all will be brought to evidence, only means that in this earthly plane we are so little conscious of our world, so absorbed in the outer world, that we do not know what world we have created within ourselves. We are so much occupied in the outer world, in our desires, ambitions and striving, that we hardly know our own world—like the man who works in the factory, he is tired at night, when he comes home he reads his newspaper. The same it is with every person. In every person’s life there is so much of the outside world all day long, from outside, everything to attract him, thousands of advertisements, shops sparkling in electricity. There will come a time when his eyes are closed to the outside world which occupies all his mind, to become conscious of the world within. That is what is said in the scriptures as: “One will find what one has made.” One need not say, “What will become tomorrow of me?” If one can put one’s mind into oneself, one can see what is within the consciousness, what it is composed of, what it contains; then one will know the hereafter today.

To be continued…