Eternity—knowledge—bliss: these are the qualities of the divine in both God and in every realised soul. How do we advance toward this realisation?
Spiritual practice begins with observation, as both idea and as exercise. It starts with the idea that the foundation of life is spiritual, and that realising this foundation requires observation, self-observation, attention to our interior life, to the life of the mind and the of the soul. This means nurturing techniques and habits for recognising our interior life as it unfolds, then increasing awareness of it.
By asking the simple question ‘who am I? we stand already before the extraordinary realisation that someone is directing a question to someone else.
The very idea of our self, and even the most simple questions we might want to ask about it, produces the strange realisation that we are two. There is one who asks, and there is another who answers. There is a mind-ego and there is a soul.
In other words our first, most basic experience of ourselves is as an other. When we speak to ourselves we speak to an other, to something more, something, different, something greater, more intrinsic than the talking-head from which we seem to see the world. This other is our soul.
And still, there are two sides to this blessed discovery. On the one hand, it is life-changing in the sense that it is proof that there is something more to us than this material ego and its material pursuits. But on the other there side, it is the bitter realisation that we have a path to walk in order to become the spiritual self we truly are. In other words, It is the birth of both faith and desire.
The mind and ego that govern our everyday lives are in constant relation to an other, our soul. And as we do not exist in isolation, they must function in relation to other others, other souls and the other souls that they subsist in relation to. Spiritual life is life in relation.
The relation we have to our own soul mirrors the relation we have to other souls, to other jīvās. What is more, the experience we have of our own souls increases in relation to other souls.
The connection, the attraction, the attachment, the engagement, indeed all the feelings we have for others brings us to discover our own soul as much as we discover other souls.
In this sense, true relation is soul relation. Authentic relation is communication between authentic souls, souls that are self-present, that know themselves fully as souls, uncluttered by ego, unpolluted by material attachments.
In Vedic thought ll souls hold the same in qualities God, because they are a part of God (paramātma). Like God, all souls are in their essence sat-cit-ananda, the splendid sacred tryptic.
sat — eternal being: the soul has always existed and will always existed
cit — knowledge: the soul holds awareness of itself as soul
ananda — bliss, happiness, joy, pleasure, love.
How to these divine elements unfold together in the course of the world?
This is sat-cit-ananda: the essence of the divine is bliss (ananda), the highest form of love, but there is also an experience (cit) of the love, on-going and eternal (sat).
Sat-cit-ananda says: love is nothing if it is not is experienced, not felt, not given.
This is the very essence of Bhakti-yoga.
The infinite ocean love of that is Kṛṣṇa (ananda) is brought to life, given meaning, and depth by the force of its eternal (sat) experience (cit), by the energy of loving experience embodied by Rādhārānī.
Is there love if it is not felt, not lived? Without the love-giving energy of Rādhārānī, the endless ocean of Kṛṣṇa’s love would remain an endless ocean surface, a flatness without depth. It would be a infinite pool of calm without the flowing currents of feeling and the rushing waves of emotion.
By realising that all relations between jīvās, are relations of feeling, channeling Kṛṣṇa’s endless reservoir of love through emotional potency of Rādhārānī, we deepen our awareness of the presence of Rādhārānī. By cultivating Rādhā-consciousness in both mundane and sacred service, we increase her power, release the love she carries, and increase the pleasure of God.