Soul is Pure Consciousness

 

Photo Credit: Free Press Journal

Soul is Pure Consciousness

‘I am that’ – Nisargdatta Maharaj. This quote is what defines us human beings. I am the soul, minus my mind and body. We are all souls in our current state of existence, but we are not aware of this reality. To find the soul or to attain soul-realisation or self-realisation one has to become free from ignorance and delusion about oneself and only then can we know our own true nature. We can only become aware of ourselves by gaining knowledge about ourselves.

Liberation truly means becoming free from our ignorance and delusion and returning to our original state of freedom and pure consciousness. This happens once we realise that the mask and the costume represented by our ego and body are not who we are. Birth after birth we keep changing our costumes, our roles, our masks. While enacting numerous roles and living them, experimenting with numerous choices and preferences, likes and dislikes, we temporarily forget who we are.

You are nothing but the eternal soul, never doubt that. In your purest state you are the deity in the temple of your body. Even though you do not truly feel it or believe in it, you should think like one, live like one and act like one. If a person lives like a pious man for a long time in word and deed, even if he is not, he will eventually end up becoming one.

Therefore, instead of considering yourself a mortal being, live and act like an eternal soul, identifying yourself with the purest consciousness in you. Make that consciousness purer, brighter and stable with discipline and yoga. Through transformative practices make yourself wiser, gentler, peaceful, and virtuous, just as a sculptor chisels a rock and creates a beautiful form out of it.

If you continue the effort, eventually you will peel off all the layers of impurities which surround your consciousness, silence your craving for things, and wake up into the highest reality of yourself. In that state you will realise that the Self is not anything which is different from you, and self-realisation is a state of self-awakening in which you will not find anything other than you, but your very core consciousness which is all knowing, all pervading, eternal and indivisible. It is as if you wake up from a long sleep and suddenly remember who you are.

Your soul or Self is not a different entity. It is you, in your purest and pristine state. One way to enter that state is by withdrawing your senses into your mind and your mind into the self, and engaging your mind in the contemplation of the Self. To practice this, you have to spare time for regular meditation.