Once the Body Touches Oneness…

Poem 830, from Mystical Poems of Jnaneshwar

Once the body touches oneness,

the whole world appears as Brahman,

an infinite expanse of the unstruck sound.

You see Him, 

and in that union, He expands into the universe.

All is me, all is mine.

Jnandev says, Muktabai holds this in the palm of her hand.

our thoughts

As Greg Goode would say it, once you take your stand as awareness, everything else also appears as awareness. Abhinavagupta, commenting on the verse chitihi pratyavamarshaatmaa… from Utpaladeva’s Ishwar Pratyabhijna, discusses how awareness, pratyavamarasha, is of the nature of unbroken chamatkara, unbroken bliss, one long miracle. It is the ground from which arise all our thoughts and perceptions. It is the inner expression on which all is based. Hence it is speech, or sound, even before it is voiced. It is fully reposed in itself in the form of Self-awareness. Nothing can hide it. It needs nothing else to be it, and hence it is completely free. All elements of our universe are born out of this gift of awareness. It is exactly the opposite of jada, inert, which, even to confirm its own existence, needs another, the conscious.

This is what we must make our own. This is where Jnandev firmly stood, as did his sister Muktabai, and countless others who dared to question the obvious or the apparent and follow their heart’s answer to the core.