STUDY GUIDE FOR

study guide for
Finding Immortality Within

How to Use This Course

This video is part of an ongoing monthly series in the teachings of Sri Eknath Easwaran. The talks on this tape, like all of Easwaran’s talks, are rich and deep in content. They shed light on many aspects of life, but their true value emerges as we try to apply their teachings in our daily lives. The Guide is meant to be used in conjunction with a daily practice of Easwaran’s Eight Point Program, based on passage meditation. We do not recommend following the Practical Exercises if you are not practicing this program according to the instructions given in Easwaran’s book Meditation, which can be found on our Web site, www.nilgiri.org. A brief list of those points can be found at the back of this Guide.

The Practical Exercises are suggestions for you to explore as they seem appropriate in your life. If you are already familiar with Easwaran’s books, you will have seen some of these exercises before. But we suggest that you take this opportunity to really put them into practice, and discover their great power to deepen your spiritual life. Try them in moderation, exercising your common sense and not taking them to extreme lengths. Easwaran always emphasized the importance of the middle path.

Before or after watching each talk, we suggest that you read through the notes and the Practical Exercise. Then, after watching the talk, try to put the exercise into action in your life. A week or so later, you may find it interesting to watch the talk again, with the experience of the exercise fresh in your mind. You may want to note the results in a journal.

A week-by-week curriculum for studying this tape, in coordination with readings from Easwaran’s books, is available for use by Blue Mountain Center Satsangs, and other interested individuals. Please see the Videos section of our Web site, under Video of the Month. A full listing of our Satsang groups is also available on our Web site. For more information about this series, other publications of Sri Easwaran and Nilgiri Press, and a schedule of retreats based on the Eight Point Program, please contact

The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation
Post Office Box 256
Tomales, CA 94971
800 475 2369
www.nilgiri.org

You Are That

Introduction

The talks on this videotape have been selected from a series on the Chandogya Upanishad, given by Sri Eknath Easwaran in October and November, 1990. His theme is the discovery of the immortal, infinite element in human nature, which is hidden by conditioning but can be revealed through the practice of spiritual disciplines.

The first talk, “You Are That,” draws its title from the spiritual teaching which a young man named Shvetaketu receives from his father: “There is nothing that does not come from God. Of everything he is the inmost self. He is the truth. He is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu, you are that.”

In Sri Easwaran’s presentation, this dialogue between father and son offers an ideal to which all parents can aspire – to become so firmly established in the spiritual life that they can attract their children to it, and give them practical instruction based on personal experience.

In our study of this talk, we will try to awaken in ourselves an understanding and longing for the unity of life which is illustrated so vividly in this episode.

^{Outline of
the Talk}

Sri Easwaran introduces the Upanishads as the cradle of ancient Indian civilization. Though India (and the world) has strayed from this spiritual direction many times in its history, when millions of people deeply long for a restoration of direction, certain rare individuals get inspired to realize the unity of life and become instruments in God’s hands “to bring people back so that they can again keep their eyes on the goal of life.”

Next, Easwaran begins reading his translation of the Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter vi. The father tells his son, “Nobody in our family is a stranger to the spiritual life.” This gives the secret of India’s ancient civilization –spiritual ideals were more important than material possessions, and a family wasn’t complete until at least one member took to the spiritual life. Such people are a gift to society, because they act as stabilizing influences when waves of agitation and turmoil sweep over the country.

To illustrate, Easwaran describes his visit to a local redwood grove, where the evening silence recalls the silence of a mind that has found rest in the Self. Around the huge trees, smaller trees were growing, just as young banana “calves” grow up around a mature banana tree. Similarly, when parents meditate regularly and sincerely, their children and grandchildren will follow their lead to become beneficial influences in the world.

In the next scene, the young man returns from his studies, but is surprised to discover that he has not acquired the spiritual knowledge his father asks about: “Did you ask your teacher for that spiritual wisdom which enables you to hear the unheard, think the unthought, and know the unknown?”

The father, Uddalaka, then begins his teaching, using a series of illustrations to impart the awareness that all life has at its core a single immortal Self. Clay vessels differ in form, but not in substance. Gold ornaments differ in form but not in substance. So all people and living things differ outwardly, but are one inwardly. “In all countries,” says Sri Easwaran, “families love to live long; in all countries parents don’t want their young people to die; in all countries everybody wants to have food, everybody wants to have medical care.” This insight frees us from any desire to exploit others or to wage war.

Uddalaka then recounts an allegory of the spiritual journey: As a man from Gandhara, blindfolded, led away and left in a lonely place, turns to the east and west and north and south and shouts, ‘I am left here and cannot see!’ until one removes his blindfold and says,‘There lies Gandhara; follow that path,’ and thus informed, able to see for himself, the man inquires from village to village and reaches his homeland at last – just so, my son, one who finds an illumined teacher attains to spiritual wisdom in the Self.

Sri Easwaran comments on this story line by line, offering it as a kind yet penetrating diagnosis of our civilization’s ills, as well as a remedy which can restore society to health.

^{Practical
Exercise}

This talk emphasizes the importance of becoming aware of the unity underlying our separate existence. In our exercise, we will try to increase that awareness through the practice known in the Christian tradition as lectio divina (“sacred reading”)– the slow, attentive, contemplative perusal of sacred words for the purpose of drinking in the meaning and applying it to our particular needs.

In Sri Easwaran’s collection, God Makes the Rivers to Flow, find the passage “You Are That,” from the Chandogya Upanishad. (This passage is also available on the Nilgiri Press Web site in the “Learn to Meditate” section.)

Sit down in a quiet place where you can concentrate fully. Read the passage slowly. Close your eyes and reflect on what you have read. Are there any words or phrases that seem especially significant to you? Read the passage through again. You may proceed a stanza at a time, or even line by line. If you wish, you might jot down a few notes about how the words, if they take root in your deepest consciousness, might transform your relationships with others. You may want to start using this passage for meditation as well.

(For more on lectio divina, see the new third edition of God Makes the Rivers to Flow.)

Further Reading

Introduction from The Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaran.

Passage for Meditation

“You Are That” in God Makes the Rivers to Flow.

The City of Brahman

Introduction

In this talk Sri Easwaran continues his exploration of the infinite, immortal core of human nature, as it is described in the Chandogya Upanishad. In “The City of Brahman,” the Upanishad portrays our divine core as a small dwelling in a city which we can enter and dwell in through a long process of spiritual growth.

This talk is extraordinary for its vivid account of the process of self-discovery. It is also one of Easwaran’s most eloquent statements of a familiar theme in his teachings: the urgent need to find immortality before death claims our body.

At the time he gave this talk, Easwaran was nearly eighty years old, and his confident, deeply secure tone bears witness that in the depths of consciousness there is a “little house” which old age and death cannot enter. “When I began to understand these words,” he says, “my hair used to stand on end. I wanted it with all my heart, with every desire in my heart.” And his goal here is to rouse a similar desire in our hearts.

^{Outline of
the Talk}

Easwaran begins with a simile to explain how the world forgets its unity and falls into separateness, exploitation, and warfare. Just as he mistook his reflection in a restaurant window for reality, we are misled by the entrancing variety of life to believe that we are individual creatures in a world of separate fragments. As we wake up to the true nature of life, we see that these fragments are just partial reflections of one divine Self. We feel compassion and understanding for those still subject to this misunderstanding and help them overcome it.

At the same time, when we find the divine Self within, we discover our essential immortality, and are prepared “to meet the last change we call death with peace in our mind, faith in our heart, and hope in our future.”

Next, he reads his translation of “The City of Brahman,” Chapter viii of the Chandogya Upanishad, and comments on the passage word by word, referring to the Sanskrit text.

Throughout the talk, Easwaran uses illustrations from the external world to shed light on the invisible internal world described in the Upanishad: Our urge for travel can only be satisfied when we discover “the vast world within”; the attraction we feel for vast landscapes like the American prairie is meant to draw us toward a vast inner world which is not limited by self-will and separateness, in which there is infinite room for spiritual growth; and the desires we feel for sense experiences and possessions can find complete fulfillment only in meeting the Self within, who occupies this small house in the City of God.

In the original Sanskrit, this portion of the Upanishad is a dialogue between a teacher and his students. Easwaran now dramatizes that dialogue through a series of questions and answers: Is every desire fulfilled there? Yes, because all desires have become unified. What happens when the body gets old? Old age cannot enter this city. What happens when the body dies? Death cannot enter this city. The person who lives in that city cannot be touched by any change or affliction that may overtake the body.

Then, Easwaran touches on the continuing evolution of the soul from lifetime to lifetime, according to the theory of reincarnation. From this viewpoint, the normal satisfactions of life cannot bring us the lasting fulfillment we seek. But the person who dedicates himself or herself wholeheartedly to the search for the immortal Self attains to the climactic experience of self-knowledge.

Such people have complete freedom both in this world and in the next. They are free from selfish desires and are no longer tied to fragmentary existence. But, out of compassion, they may return to be born again (in the tradition of the bodhisattva) to work for the peace and welfare of the world.

^{Practical
Exercise}

Once again, our exercise is to practice lectio divina of the passage on which Easwaran is commenting. Find “The City of Brahman” in God Makes the Rivers to Flow or on the Nilgiri Press Web site and read it according to the instructions given in the previous exercise. This time, pay special attention to how the passage can affect or even transform your attitude toward aging and mortality. How can you use the Eight Points to attune your mind to the changeless freedom described in this passage?