Nearsighted

For the true mystic, or even—if I understand Swami Prabhavananda correctly—your average follower of Hinduism, belief in God is not a matter—as it often construed of in the West—of being convinced by some argument or another. Rather, it comes as a result of direct perception, just as my belief that I’m sitting here in my apartment typing on my computer follows straightforwardly from the sensory data I’m receiving through my eyes, ears, nose, and body, in general.

Here’s Prabhavananda quoting Ramakrishna describing his first vision of the divine: “House, walls, doors, the temple—all disappeared into nothingness. Then I saw an ocean of light, limitless, living, conscious, blissful. From all sides waves of light, with a roaring sound, rushed towards me and engulfed and drowned me, and I lost all awareness of outward things.”

Prabhvananda goes on to say that later in his life, Ramakrishna passed six months in a state without any consciousness of body or of external surroundings, remaining, as he put it, “continuously in the bliss of union with Brahman.”

I suppose if something like that happened to me—even for six seconds rather than half a year—I’d have to believe in the supernatural, too. As it is, though, in spite of over a decade of serious yoga practice and what I hope is at least a somewhat open mind to the possibility that everyday reality isn’t all there is, I remain unconvinced by my own experience, anyway, that there is a Higher Power behind the awe-inspiring majesty that is the natural Universe.

I like the idea of it, and conceptually it makes sense that the natural world is merely a manifestation of something more essential, but so far, it remains merely conceptual. And while I certainly cry inwardly, “Oh God, Oh God” at any number of the difficult poses during asana practice, I’ve yet to truly experience the divine either while doing yoga or in reflective meditation upon the practice.

This, of course, may be merely a perceptual failing on my part, no different than my inability to read the big “E” on the eyechart without my glasses.

Maybe I have something like God myopia and won’t ever really experience the Divine without the help of some sort of corrective lenses. In a way, I think that’s sort of what yoga is, which is why, in part, I typically practice without wearing my spectacles.