Immortal Now

Rising above the senses and the mind
And renouncing separate existence,
The wise realize the deathless Self.

                                                                               Kena Upanishad.

It is not something new. We all search for happiness. Right from the poorest person on earth to the richest person, right from a materialistic to the most spiritual all are searching , seeking only one thing and that is happiness. The place where we search changes. For many it is in people, wealth, possessions, relations, ambitions, enlightenment and so on. There is an innate tendency to seek. Each task that we do, each thought that comes up, emotions , feelings, sensations are all directly or indirectly linked with this seeking. We wonder why doesn't this end?. Why should a rich person search for happiness?. What do spiritual people seek?.

The source of happiness has an essential quality. We need to find something that doesn't come and go.  Remember this simple fact when we are searching. Search by all means but always have this in mind. And we need to find it ourselves, not get what others have found. This is the crux of the matter. We cannot get this something from anywhere or from anybody. It is not a thing. It needs to be realized by the seeker.. As we hear the guru say in the upanishads 

" It is neither in you , nor outside you, it is YOU."

It is strange that we come to this. We seek happiness everywhere, through effort, through longing and finally find that we were not at all searching where we should have. In fact any search is guaranteed to fail as it is the seeker herself who is the source. 

The self image that we have of ourselves, is hardly something that is permanent. We feel that we are fragile , week and mentally pathetic. How can we be the source of happiness?. We all know we would die one day. We go through different stages of life, we age , we get sick and so on. How can this meek thing be the source of happiness?.  This is exactly the problem. The self image that we have is wrong!!!. we have mistaken ourselves to be something we ARE NOT. Here lies the whole problem of life. Life is nothing but a story of mistaken identity. In fact we are lamenting for something that does not even exist. 

If the source of happiness doesn't come and go, it should be present now. If we look at the past it has already vanished so it can never be that source. Future too is absent and it may appear only as a now. So the only thing that exists and doesn't come and go is the now. Combining the fact that YOU are the source of happiness(as upanishad says), we get the brilliant conclusion, YOU are nothing but the NOW( which is always there). What exactly we mean by the fact that statement ?." Now" doesn't exactly mean the present moment in time. Present moment say 10:00 o clock is only a convenient time stamp. Now is something that is the real snapshot of all that exists in its full glory without any imagination, or without any memory. We can only define it as real existence taken together,  which includes the body and mind that you know, all things living and non living without any exclusions. So you are that . How is this permanent?, You can see that even though local changes happen , the totality is always there. It is always present in the now. The body or bodies may die, things may explode or evolve , but doesn't existence just continue?. What is dying  are not identities, they are just parts of YOU. Now is always eternal or immortal.

An essential aspect of the NOW is this. It knows all existence. If you look at your sensations, feelings , thoughts your own concept or self image, you can see that even though all of them change, there is something that knows them that doesn't change at all. It is through these changeless knowing , you are perceiving all the existence. In order to know change , you need a changeless platform. While you stand on a railway  platform you can observe trains moving. In a moving train you cannot know whether your train is moving , or the other train is moving. Sometimes both may be moving. But from a non moving platform , you can always see trains move when they actually move. So something that is noticing all these changes should itself be changeless. And this changeless presence is what is you are and that is what the NOW is. You are independent of all changes and you are prior to all of the changes. You never come and go, but you notice things come and go. 

There is also an automaticity to this Now. Whether anybody wants it or not it is happening. When now comes in contact with a feeling we are drawn to it . When a self image pops up we are drawn to it . However the mind which cannot grasp this  awareness, creates  a small "me" as an added layer on top of all this noticing . So we get the feeling that a small "me" is noticing our mind , the worries the pains etc. When we undo this "me" and understand there is no layer on top of experiencing now, our mind expands to the NOW completely. When that happens , there is a feeling of un-limitedness, which is the source of true bliss. A full stomach is hardly craving.

The mind is hardly an instrument worth noticing the reality. It is nothing but a tool for the survival of the body. It creates an insulation of the body by creating fears , apprehensions and limitations so that the body is defended all the time. Unfortunately we invest a lot in these story lines and spend our life in hot pursuit of body preservation. This is the reason why we are hardly interested in the now. We are more concerned about the future and spend time by thinking constantly about the past. The now is hardly of concern as it is deemed uninteresting , dull and not worth the time

.Kena upanishad says you need to be wise enough to rise above the sensations as experienced by the body, the thoughts by the mind , and its desires to see what is true and permanent. The real you is the source of everything. So we need to rediscover ourselves for immortal happiness.