Science of Identity Foundation

Insights from Tusta Krishna das' booklet "Varuna" | Science of Identity Foundation

There is an old Zen saying that if you want to cook perfectly, you have to be the perfect cook outside the kitchen too. In my own life I have found this to be true.

Being sensitive means having the ability to feel or perceive the force or energy beneath all things, and to avoid conflicting with it. A sensitive person is subservient to that Energy. His life complements it.

A sensitive person sees the Essence of all things. He feels himself to be a part of that Essence. The insensitive person sees the external only and does not realize the Essence in himself and all things.
…… the most sensitive person is one who knows himself. He understands he is not the body or the mind, but the sustaining energy, the spark of life force within them. Though he is still of course limited by being in the body, his deeper insight helps him to stretch that limitation, to work around it.

……There is a simple meditation I sometimes practice; you can try it if you like. Say to yourself, ‘I am not the body. I am the silent witness within the body. I sit here quietly and watch my body act, but I do not act. I am the witness to the body and the mind.’ Then go about your activities, but watch yourself do them. Be aware of yourself doing them. For instance, when you are walking, watch yourself walk. Say to yourself, ‘I am aware that I am walking.’ Gradually you will experience more and more the separation between you and your body, and your awareness will naturally expand,”

By nature the soul is friendly. That’s why you feel happy when you’re being kind to someone, and angry or on a bummer when you’re being unkind. When people act according to their nature, then they’re happy, and when they don’t, they’re not.

(Well, I’m coming to realize that) pleasure is something internal. It’s not an attribute of any gross material thing. Take a wave, for instance. If nobody is there to watch it or ride it, then where is the question of pleasure? For there to be pleasure, the presence of a pleasure-experiencing personality is required. Pleasure itself is not inherent in waves or in anything of this world, for that matter. A wave cannot reciprocate pleasure with a living being, but the effort of the living being is required to generate the pleasure experience. The pleasure doesn’t come from the wave; it comes from within the person experiencing it.”

“But what about the dolphins?” Michael asked. “They seemed to be enjoying the waves too.”

“That’s just it,” Varuna replied. “The dolphins are also pleasure- experiencing entities, and, like us, they too are busy using the resources of this world to try and bring that pleasure to the surface. Of course, I can’t really say that there is anything wrong with all that,” added Varuna after a momentary pause. “But is it really necessary or in our best interest? I mean to say, such pleasure is within us; why do we have to draw it to the surface with something outside us? What if a man could pursue the pleasure potency without having to depend on any crutch made of matter? Then he would be a free man. If he could tap that pleasure reservoir residing in his own soul, he could transcend the whole world.”

Don’t feel that life is like a mountain and that you can conquer it by climbing to the ‘top.’ That is not perfection. In actuality life is such that the deeper a person goes into its beauty, the more he realizes he has just begun to scratch the surface. It is only the folly of fools to think ‘Now I’m perfect, there is no need for improvement.’