THE SUN AND THE MOON
(or: "Initiation")

Gaura Krishna
(14th August, 1996 - delivered in France)

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Dear brothers and sisters, every religion is a human creation, a human invention born from the human mind, and it is therefore limited. It is noteworthy that no real sage has created any religion, whether Shankaracharya or Buddha or Jesus. It is men who, after the departure of these sages from this world, have seized the teachings of some to try to systematize them and to create in this way what we are obliged to call a sect that, afterwards, has spread out more or less. Creations of religions and sects are common in the present time and the fact that a man creates a religion or a sect is a very indication of his great limitation and great ego, when we speak of Mohammed, Moon, or Ron Hubbard for scientology; it is presently possible to find hundreds, if not thousands.


Every religion is a limitation, and therefore a limitation of the truth, as is every philosophical system, whether it is born from the mind of Descartes, Kant, or even Spinoza. On the contrary, sages like Socrates or, closer to us, Master Eckhart, or higher Sri Ramakrishna, have never created any system. Actually, each religion is a correspondence of a certain state of inner evolution, and some sages have even said that it was not good to be born in a religion and to die in the same, this actually indicating a non-evolution, a lack of passage to a higher state of consciousness.


True religion cannot be a system, whatever it is. Religion is what links the created to the creating, the being to his Creator, the effect to the Cause. From the beginning of Manifestation, there is religion; for there is the link between the creator and the created. Thus, religion is not a system, but a state of being. Religion exists at every moment of life. From the beginning, from the initial Aum, from the Word, there is Religion.


Thus, religion is in the nature of things, it exists from time immemorial. Religion is an Eternal Law, this Law about which Jesus said that not an iota would pass away, while men limited in the religions they have created in his name still imagine that He was speaking of Moses' law. Therefore this religion, this Eternal Law, is what links the creation to the creator, and this in all spheres. It is for me the only Religion I acknowledge, the Eternal Law, in Sanskrit Sanatana Dharma, today miscalled Hinduism, and of which all subsequent religions born from human mind were born.


Eternal Law has no beginning, it has no end. It is my only and sole religion, the Religion of Nature, Nature being Manifestation, the Created, linked from all eternity to the creator whose immanence is found is the slightest blade of grass.


Religion in a second sense therefore consists in becoming aware of this link and, further, of the laws that link Nature to Universal Consciousness, One and Indivisible. Religion touches all spheres, scientific included. Religion is Science by excellence. The scientists who tries to know how such things works is actually a religious person, the one who searches for the link, for the law. He does a religious act; he looks for the truth, for the law, for the link. While the one who goes to confession and thinks that all his wrong doings vanish as miraculously is a deep antireligious, whatever he may think of it, imagining that the effects of causes may know the spontaneous disappearing.


So, man is facing Nature and lives the link, the religion, without being aware of this most of the time. The real initiation is the awareness of this link with the will to obtain the knowledge of it. Man must make a clean sweep of all existing systems if he is a real initiate. Actually, the real initiate is in a continuous state of Religion, he is in a continuous connection with the Cause. The one whom, here, we call initiate, who starts on the path, must destroy the temple of his systematic, hide-bond learning, mental or other, take off the old clothes made of all this mental and pseudo-religious pseudo-knowledge and make again a new start in everything from scratch.


Then he leaves town, home, the sphere of men and he goes into direct contact with Nature. There is no help, either religious or other. He has his heart and his reason only, he has his meditation only. There is nothing, but Nature, he is alone, there are no houses, no towns neither villages. There is only Nature and he, who is part of It. He wants to understand, Initiation will begin.


He realizes that, without the sun, there cannot be any light and everything is darkness. He realizes that, without the sun, nothing grows, there is no photosynthesis; he realizes that, without the sun, even rain cannot exist. He realizes that, without the sun, there even cannot be any life, strictly nothing can be, his very body could not exist, neither live, neither anything. He realizes that the Sun is the creator of all that exists on earth and even in the intermediary world of the atmosphere. He realizes that the Sun is Fire and therefore light, that it lights and warms. He realizes, suddenly, that, without the Sun, there is nothing. This is the result of his meditation, very simple, really very simple, on the Sun. The Sun is the creator. The sun is the only creator and the source of all life. The sun is God. The sun is the only God. He becomes aware of his extremely innermost connection with the Sun. Without It, he just does not exist; and he just came to understand that this same Sun is within him. He even realizes, at the same time, that all that Mr So and So says is quite idiotic. He also realizes that this sun could be good by allowing him for instance, a soft warmness, but also so terrible with the fires that it is able to start up. Like this, he understands that there is neither good nor evil, that these things that are called like this are only facets of the same Reality. It is creator, preserver and destroyer.


The sun is the Only God. And the one who just received the Initiation sees his consciousness enlarging again and again, his understanding, his knowledge becoming vaster and vaster, merely by letting the flow of his simple, so simple meditation, evolve. First he understands the madness of human mind that leads to totally stupid ideas. He also becomes aware of a thing that is characteristic enough. This God, this Sun, which does so many things since actually It does everything, seems static, it does not move, it does not change, and however it is the real actor of everything. It is there above, imperturbable, in no way touched by its creation, and however its creation is in it and emanates from it and is eternally connected to it. It does not want any harm to anybody, it does not want any good to anybody, it does not obey the injunctions of men. It is Witness, Witness outside the Manifestation, and however without It no Manifestation exists. Man being conscious, this Source is therefore the Consciousness Itself. Oh what a wonder! Which present scientist could explain this mystery? Then the step is done. He knows, in the deepest of himself, that the One whom men name God is Eternally Itself, beyond any description, creator, conservator and destroyer of all things while remaining beyond. He has understood that himself, this little being, was an emanation of this Supreme and indescribable Truth and that the Life of the Divine was within him. What a beautiful Religion! Then he turns to the Sun and says:


OM BUH BUVAH SVAHAH !
TAT SAVITUR VARENYAM,
BHARGO DEVASYA DIMAHI,
DIYO YO NAH PRACHODAYAT !


Let us meditate on the God Sun and Its Glory, which is destroyer of all the mistakes due to ignorance! May he enlighten our intellects!


Yes, such is my Religion. Every morning, at the rising sun, let us turn towards Him for this invocation. The Sun is the Supreme Guru, the Instructor, first present in the heart of man as the "voice of Consciousness".


The initiate has understood that, in the Nature that surrounds him, the greatest symbol of Consciousness was the Sun. Yes, the Sun is Consciousness, Existence, Bliss. He is the Universal Consciousness, the Existence within which are all existences.


But now, as the evening comes, the Sun disappears. He knows that, actually, the Sun remains identical to itself but that, by its doing and without seeming being implicated, days and nights go in succession. And now, a heavenly body is rising, the Moon; large and cold in Darkness.


Already, his meditation has led him far away on the path. He is sad, for he sees so many of his brothers and sisters who don't become aware of this so simple truth that he has got just by watching and meditating on Nature and by turning to the Sun that, precisely, brings light. He sees them losing their way in books, in preposterous systems of thought, in sulfurous philosophies where one is obliged to read seven times the same sentence to try to understand its meaning, and this in torturing one's brains. He tells to himself: how this can be, when the Sun is precisely here to enlighten us?


And it is then that he turns toward the one that rises in the inky black night. Initiation continues.


The sun has disappeared and the other one takes profit of this to take some importance. The more the sun disappears, the more, she, she appears. The sky is clear. As nights go by, he realizes that the Moon is not exactly the same and that, sometimes, she is complete and round, and sometimes it is nearly impossible to see her or sometimes a thin streak that has the shape of a circle, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. He understands! Very simply, it is because the Moon in herself does not emit any light, she is cold and dead; however she reflects the light of the Sun of this Sun-God. She also seems to turn eternally around Him. He has in view to study more deeply, for he feels this as a pressing duty: to understand. Now he realizes that the same images than these splendid lunar images recur every 28 days. Well, this is amazing, his girl friends are disturbed, precisely, at intervals that are almost the same; even he has realized that, generally at this time, they were not in a very good mood, they even were rather badly 'moon-ed' (this is the French expression). Now he becomes aware of an entire indirect life due to the Moon, in other words to the Sun but in an indirect manner. Tides, and all the life ruled by the said tides, up to the mud worms. And even vegetation, depending on whether one plants when the moon increases or decreases, the hair, well, a lot of things. Then his thoughts lead him towards the heavenly body of nights and his meditation becomes deeper. Now he is completely 'in the moon' (French expression for 'being in the clouds').


In the newspapers, he has read some statistics concerning some phenomena that are linked to the Moon, for instance crimes, which are more numerous during the full moon.


So, here is the Sun, creator of everything, even of the Moon, that, through the Moon, gives Nature a kind of secondary life, parallel life, but however relatively dark. If God is the Sun, what is this Moon, this demigod that only exists through the Only God, and through which all this life often non enlightened is created? And precisely, tonight is the Full Moon and it is difficult for him to concentrate well, his mind is more restless than usually. He also has noticed this phenomenon. Even his mind seems in relation with the phases of the moon, like the mind of his girlfriends and, as it seems, up to the mind of murderers. From this, he infers that it must be the same for everybody and he tells himself that those who believe in astrology may not be totally wrong. Not totally. Because, here, really, there are a lot of relations between this heavenly body and what happens on Earth!


And, suddenly, he understands. Those who believe they are gods on earth have their mind particularly deranged. They think being full of light, of knowledge, but this knowledge, actually, is a knowledge, a life like the one that the Moon gives, a secondary, parallel knowledge. They think they know, but they only have the indirect light of the Sun-God, the light that is reflected by the cold body that the Moon is. Yes, if the Sun is God, then the Moon is the human mind. As Consciousness is directly linked to the sun, the mind is directly linked to the moon, and the mind in but a pale reflection of the sun, and, actually, men take the light of the moon to be the solar light; their mental knowledge to be the universal truth. The more the sun, Consciousness, appears, the more the Moon, the mind, disappears, and reciprocally, the more the mind disappears, the more Consciousness appears. Then he understood that the more the moon was rising, the more the mind was restless, and he was no more surprised by certain facts and events, like those he had read about somewhere, that the number of crimes was more important during the nights of full moon…


Ô Sun, through your heat, burn my books. Sun, I don't want to think anymore, I want to be!


It's funny, he told to himself, how language takes this truth into account. To say: " he is badly 'mooned'" (French expression), how this is actually truthful. It's funny too: "Man" in Sanskrit, is "Manu", and it is from there that 'Adam' has come, which means 'the first man': adi-manu. That man is the creation of the mind is very well expressed by this divine language, for the mind is: " manas ". And this " manas " has given the English " man " or the German " Mann ", etc... while, in both the languages, the Moon comes from the same Sanskrit root " man-" and has given " Moon " in English and " Mond " in German. Thus, even in some languages, moon and mind are directly linked, there also. The moon, the mind, is the star darkness. However, it gives the light of the sun, coldly reflected, but it is indispensable to go out of darkness. It indicates that, through its reflected light, the true light comes from the sun. So then, one must renounce the Moon, on must g beyond the Moon and darkness and discover the Sun and the Light.


He also tells himself that they are funny, those Westerners who believe in astrology, for they take the solar astrology when it is obvious, from what his meditation has just made him discover, that lunar astrology must be taken, since it is the Moon that influences the mind. Well, this, he told himself, is really quite secondary.


What men called the steps of initiation continued to be climbed. He understood that the Sun was Consciousness, the masculine side, while the Moon was Nature, the feminine side. Man, mistaken by his senses, picks up the indirect light emanating from the Moon, from Nature. The mind is the receptor of the waves caught by the senses and it is therefore directly linked to the Moon. It is the reflection of the light of the Sun through Nature that the mind perceives and that it interprets. As it interprets the indirect light, it is even not conscious that this light is, actually, the light of the Sun and it does not manage to see this truth. It remains in a quite relative truth and remains mistaken.


Then something happened that was beyond the sphere of understanding. It was beyond, it was a direct knowledge. He experienced that he was one with all this, the Sun, the Moon, that everything was only one thing, his very essence, his very Being, Himself.


He had understood that, actually, it was the Sun that did everything, that gave birth to everything, that It created, preserved and destroyed everything. Actually, It was the only actor and he, the so-called initiate, the so-called individual, was only living through It and in It. He understood that he, who believed to be an actor, actually did not do anything and did not exist as an individual, that it was only the illusion that made him believe to exist as an individual and that he was doing something. It was the Sun that did everything. Is it the blade of grass that makes itself grow, or is it the Sun by the play of the rain, of the photosynthesis, etc…. the blade of grass, actually, has no individuality, and it was the same for him also, the so-called initiate. He saw the direct light of the sun, and no more the light that reached him through the moon through the mind. Was the blade of grass free, did it have a free will, or was it obeying determinism? It was the great question that men asked themselves. He began to smile at this question that comes for the mind to ask the question of knowing why he was born or knowing when the universe had appeared. Stupid question for the mind since being beyond his understanding. It was mistaken the Sun for the Moon, once more. There were so many variables for the blade of grass, men said, the wind, the sun, the quality of the ground, and everything and everything. Of course, but it is the Sun and only He that creates all these things. Actually, He is the only actor. The human mind refuses this, for it believes that, there, it loses its so-called freedom. It refuses what it calls determinism. He wants, absolutely, to be free. Because he believes that he is free to think, to act, etc… Always deluded by his mind. But, always, he mistakes the Moon for the Sun. Actually, it is his mental imprisonment that makes him create concepts like the concept of determinism and others. It is because he is not free that he creates the notion of freedom. This pseudo-freedom is conceivable only for an individual. As long as the being remains at the level of the individual, that is to say, actually, at the level of the ego, he has this notion of freedom. Freedom conceives for a given individual in relation to something. If the individual and the something are melting in each other, where freedom is? The individual and the something become the very Freedom. There is neither determinism nor free will, which are lunar and mental concepts.


He was understanding that the so-called individual, the ego, was nothing but, like the light of the Moon, a reflection of the One and Indivisible Consciousness. He was understanding that he ever was, from all times, without knowing it, in a perfect harmony with the Natural Law. That the blade of grass, like himself, were but images in the mirror, clothes, like disguises.

He comes back home, his heart enlightened. In this day, the moon is growing and, when he comes back, he has not yet passed the door that his partner asks him to offer her a new dress. He tells himself that it is better to bring her to the sun for her to go brown a little bit, all the more that, by doing so, she will sleep and therefore will not think.


He thinks again of the religion in which men " believe ". He smiles and, however, he is sad at the same time. But what could he say? Nothing. To tell them that Light is within the blade of grass, that it is there that the true Religion lies? The moon would make them answer anything and they would mock him a lot! Religions, these creations of human mind, which have been and remain the source of so many crimes? Religion is the Eternal Law, the Cosmic Law, the Music of the spheres, it runs in my veins, at every moment. It is Life Itself. Everything obeys religion, Eternal Law; of her, not a iota will pass away.
And the new initiate has understood, simply through his meditation on the Sun and the Moon, that he had received all the necessary teachings and that all the rest was completely useless. He was facing the only Truth: only God exists, everything that his senses were perceiving was born from Him, all was son of God, and beyond the senses, only God exists, and the words of his Master came to vibrate at his ears: "Only my Father exists, in everything, everywhere, past, present, future, there is only my Father."

 

OM SRI RAM JAI RAM JAI JAI RAM.
YOGI RAMSURATKUMAR JAYA GURU RAYA
OM TAT SAT