BACK TO BASICS
We’ve titled this section with a borrowed phrase, but one chosen with full intent. “Back to Basics” not only defines the content you’ll find here; it’s also a suggestive, appealing, and slightly challenging invitation to rediscover knowledge that is sure to leave an impression on you.
Uses and meanings: What does “back to basics” entail?
Although its meaning varies depending on the context, in general this concept invites us to simplify, clarify, and focus on the essentials to improve our understanding and performance. It is an ideal approach for regaining perspective, rebuilding a solid foundation, and bringing clarity to the crucial aspects of life.
In the philosophical and spiritual realm at hand, the Cambridge Dictionary defines it perfectly:
- Basics: The central and most important principles of something.
- Back to Basics: Turning one’s attention to the simplest and most important matters after having ignored them for a time.
“What comes to mind when you hear ‘Back to Basics’? It means that the fundamental concepts for understanding any subject must be clear. It implies having a clear vision of how things fundamentally work.”
Section Structure
This proposal is divided into 4 key sections for understanding human existence:
- The Basic “I”
- Back to the Original Source
- Time’s work: A basic element.
- “Basics”: Other fundamental issues for a full understanding. (Explore the 17 “Basics” below).
1. The basic “I”
Paul Brunton, in one of his notes:
“That element in his consciousness which enables him to understand that he exists, which causes him to pronounce the words, ‘I Am,’ is the spiritual element, here called Overself. It is really his basic self for the three activities of thinking feeling and willing are derived from it, are ripples spreading out of it, are attributes and functions which belong to it. But as we ordinarily think feel and act, these activities do not express the Overself because they are under the control of a different entity, the personal ego.”
It goes without saying that it is imperative for all people without exception to actively attend to the myriad worldly affairs and responsibilities demanded by today’s fast-paced world, as well as to the basic needs that pertain to ordinary material life. Yes, we must do so, and with diligence and determination. However, this attentive and proper management of daily life, even when carried out with maximum efficiency, will not be sufficient on its own to achieve a soundly balanced life. We will also need to pay attention to the “basics” of our passage through life if we really want to live in such a solid balance. And the basics, from this latter perspective and in the first place, is to become aware of our true identity, our basic “I”, the Higher Self. It was Ramana Maharshi who insisted on the method of Self-enquiry “Who am I?” as the most reliable and fruitful way to achieve this initial awareness, as the first step towards the “admission” of this basic “I” as the “real” identity of the individual. More PB notes in this regard:
“The final ‘I’ is not the ‘I’ of the senses nor of the desires but a deeper entity, free and unattached, serene and self-sufficient.”
“The personal pronoun ‘I’ really represents the Overself, the divine part of man. What people usually refer to as ‘I’—the body or the intellect or the emotions—is not the basic ‘I’ at all.”
“Is it true that most men suffer from mistaken identity? Normal experience leads a man to identify with his body but he fails to go farther and deeper to ask himself: ‘Who is present in the body?’.”
“Man as scientist has put under observation countless objects on earth, in sea and sky. He has thoroughly examined them. But man as man has put himself under a shallower observation. He has limited his scrutiny first to the body, second to what thinking can find. Yet a deeper level exists, where a deeper hidden self can be found.”
“You have a body but the real you is not physical. You have an intellect but the real you is not intellectual. You have emotions but the real you is not emotional. What then are you? You are the infinite consciousness of the Overself.”
“Every verbal explanation really fails to explain the Overself unless and until we know it for ourselves within ourselves and as ourselves.”
“It is now and not in some future time of achievement that he should, in this exercise, regard only his best self as his Identity.”
“It is all the difference between living at the still centre and on the bustling circumference, at the mysterious core and on the prosaic surface.”
“This is what he has to learn—and it can be learned only by personal practice, not from any book—how to keep in beautiful equipoise receptivity to his sacred Centre and efficiency in attending to the world’s demands. This is answering Jesus’ call to be in the world but not of it. This is the union of busy actuality with central tranquillity.”
“In the last reckoning life is really a process whereby the individual becomes conscious of his own true identity. The spiritual nature of man does not exist potentially, but actually. The discovery of his own identity is simply man’s destruction of the hypnotic illusions of Ego, Time, Space, Matter, and Cause—his moment of release from untruth.”
“He will know what both the fullness and the fulfilment of life mean only when the consciousness that the Spirit is his own very self comes to life within him.”
2. Back to the Original Source
The following excerpts from PB notes give us a fairly accurate idea of this concept:
“Man is what he is. Nothing can alter that. Out of the immortal, benign, eternal Mind he came, to It he shall return. Meanwhile It is their very essence, that is, It is life.”
“A better balanced view is provided by philosophy and that is that consciousness, real consciousness, cannot die, but only returns to its ultimate source.”
“Go back to the hidden Ground of everything, the passive Mind or pure Being, the First, the unconditioned Origin of all. This is utterly inconceivable and unknowable. The very concept of it, this infinite mystery of mysteries, is so awesome that the little mind of man hesitates and trembles when it even approaches it in the deepest meditation. It is beyond the capacity of that mind to penetrate the reality behind the concept. A mediating principle is necessary here. This exists in the Overself, which is nothing more than a germ of that same infinite MIND, although to the adventurous mystic it seems the unlimited End of all.” If this were not present in man, not only would mystical experience be impossible for him, but all religious intuition would be mythical to him. This is the divinity within him, but it is only a spark. The fullness of the flame is with the Godhead alone.”
Return to our Source. Go back to the hidden Ground. Back to the basic “I”, to our origin. To regain the consciousness of our pure and timeless being. We can say it in many ways, but why have we lost this consciousness, and why do we have to regain it? In reality, we have never lost it; all that the facts show is that this apparent loss exists only transitorily, that there is only, so to speak, a temporary neglect of this our true Self, and that this is temporary because the inescapable destiny of every creature is the full self-awareness of its Higher Self and its safe return to the Original Source, to its primal state. The clarity and insight shown in some of Paul Brunton’s notes on this question is priceless…
“For if we are divine and timeless beings now (and who can gainsay it that has had a glimpse of that starry state memorably vouchsafed to him?) then we have always been such. How can we evolve who are already self-existent, perfect beings? Does it not seem more probable that something alien has accreted around us, covering up the sublimer consciousness; that Time’s work is not to raise us but to free us; that our search is not for a loftier state but for our pristine state, to recover our former grandeur? What we need is not to grow but to know. Evolution cannot help us, but self-knowledge can.”
Self-knowledge is vital. We need to know our true nature. Just as we need to free ourselves from the dominance of that something alien that has “accreted” around us, “that something alien” that we usually call the ego…
“My reference to not clinging to the ego simply means that the aspirant must learn the art of releasing what is transitory in himself and in his existence—that which can survive only temporarily. The Real Individuality—the sense and feeling of simply Being—can never perish, and is the true immortality. No one is asked to sacrifice all interest and appreciation in “things”: one may continue to appreciate them—provided their transiency is understood and one does not deceive himself into overvaluing them. The prophets merely say that the eternal life cannot be found in such things.”
“There are two kinds of immortality (so long as the lower self dominates consciousness): first, the “endless” evolution of the ego, gradually developing through all its many manifestations; and, secondly, the true immortality of the everlasting, unchanging Real Self—or Overself—which forever underlies and sustains the former.”
“The ego is after all only an idea. It derives its seeming actuality from a higher source. If we make the inner effort to search for its origin, we shall eventually find the Mind in which this idea originated. That mind is the Overself. This search is the Quest. The self-separation of the idea (the ego) from the mind which makes its existence possible (the Overself), is egoism.”
“The ego cannot, indeed, be destroyed so long as we need its services while in the flesh; but it can be subjugated and turned into a servant instead of permitting it to remain a master. When this is understood, the philosophical ideal of a fully developed, mastered, and richly rounded ego acting as a channel for the inspiration and guidance of the Higher Self will be better appreciated. A poverty-stricken ego will naturally form a more limited channel for the expression of the Higher Self than would a more evolved one. The real enemy to be overcome is not the entity ego, but the function of egoism.”
“The ego is not asked to destroy itself but to discipline itself. The personal in a man must live, but only as a slave to the impersonal. These two identities make up his self.”
“The ego which gets a man into his troubles is unlikely to get him out of them—unless it reforms, learns, or lets some wisdom in.”
3. Time’s work: A basic element.
And we know that this Quest, this effort for “liberation from the ego”, that is, from egoism, is not achieved in the course of a single incarnation. We must return again and again to this earth. It is only through these innumerable returns to the physical world, through the intense and profound experiences there, that we finally understand Reality as it is, and complete our “return to the pristine state.”
Several of Paul Brunton’s notes speak of this involvement of Time in our development through human existence. Here are some of the most representative:
“If it were true that a bad man must always remain bad, where would the hope be for mankind? But in the perfect wisdom of the Infinite Mind, human lives are so arranged that the bad man will go on garnering the untoward results of his deeds until his mind, first subconsciously but later consciously, perceives the logical and causal connection between his act and his suffering and begins the attempt to control his evil tendencies. Both this education and this effort will continue through many births for a single one would be too short in time, too poor in opportunity, for such a total reformation to be achieved.”
“The awful fact of innate evil, the hideous mystery of innate sin, must be recognized and faced. We cannot make bad men into good men; but Nature, Life, with millions of years at her disposal, can.”
“At the present stage of human existence, there is no other way to durable spiritual development than through physical embodiments. The total sum of its varied experiences offer us the chance at first to learn and thus to progress, and later to overcome ourselves and thus to attain spiritual awareness.”
“We have to become in actuality what we are in potentiality; all our rebirths are engaged in this process.”
“The life that is in us goes at death into the life that is in the universe. It is as secure there as it was in us. It is not lost. Thereafter it reappears in another form, another body.”
“We travel from one body to another, with suitable and necessary rest-periods in between them.”
“All men come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind’s bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable.”
“The sense of time between incarnations varies. Five minutes to one is a hundred years to another.”
“The difference between life as we ordinarily know it and as it appears between incarnations is that here we have an apparent mixture of two worlds, the mental and the phenomenal, whereas there only the former exists.”
“Every person maintains his or her individuality during and after the perishing of the body-thought.”
“Heredity can answer for a man’s face and form and nervous type but it cannot answer for his genius. Here it is necessary to bring in something quite different—the development of his talent through repeated earth lives.”
“You must remember that everyone without exception stands in life just where the evolutionary flow has brought him and that his outward life is the result of all those previous experiences in many, many incarnations.”
“How old is the series of experiences through which we moved unknowingly towards our present evolutionary position! How lofty is the level toward which we have yet to climb!”
“If he does not forget the final purpose of all this worldly activity, that through the body’s life and the mind’s existence he may seek and find his true self, the Overself, the inner failure and superficiality of so many lives will be avoided.”
“The clinging to the ‘I’ or the aggressive assertion of it, is something which will yield only to the intermittent batterings of constant frustrations, repeated disappointments, and frequent misfortunes—that is to say, to the experience of hundreds, if not thousands, of earthly incarnations.”
“If we have all had many many previous lives on earth, we have also had many many previous deaths on earth. The actual experience of dying must leave some residual lesson or meaning or message behind in the subconscious.”
“Only when the lessons of birth after birth etch themselves deeply and unmistakably into his conscious mind through dreadful repetition can he accept them co-operatively, resignedly, and thus put a stop to the needless sufferings of desire, passion, and attachment.”
“The experiences of life will in the end overcome these inner resistances. The silent instruction multiplied during the re-embodiments will defeat the psychological defense mechanisms set up against unpalatable truths or new ideas. It is the repetition and deepening of all these lessons through the accumulating rebirths that enables wisdom to penetrate consciousness completely and effectively.”
“The actual finding of Truth, which is the same as Nirvana, Self-Knowledge, Liberation, is really a work of brief duration—perhaps a matter of minutes—whereas the preparation and equipment of oneself to find it must take many incarnations…”
“Coaxed by pleasure in some incarnations and driven by pain in others, man slowly learns to use his faculties and powers aright.”
“To become Man as evolution intends him to be, he must draw out all his latent resources, fill out a wide experience. This is why so many reincarnations on earth are needed. Until then, his realization as Man will be an incomplete one.”
“If man is inwardly already godlike, pure Spirit, only the development and evolution which are gained from experience—that is, time—can bring him to conscious realization of the fact.”
“The ripe wisdom of a sage could not possibly be the fruit of a single lifetime, but only of many lifetimes.”
4. “Basics”: Other fundamental issues for a full understanding.
There are many basic issues involved in our personal and spiritual progress, and to study and analyze them thoroughly is a necessary and fundamental task for anyone who wishes to move towards a successful understanding of human reality. In this last section we explore, in a particular way, some of them, which we have simply called “Basics” and whose content is, once again, a selection of Paul Brunton’s inspiring notes which, appropriately arranged, form an ideal medium for the in-depth study of these issues. Brunton’s keen reflections, more precise considerations and more practical advice are extraordinarily useful and ultimately a key source of knowledge, both for a deeper development of our inner life and for a wiser management of our outer life. Knowledge that, as we noted at the outset, will move us without delay towards a sound understanding of human life as a whole.
Paul Brunton:
“We may begin by asking what this philosophy offers us. It offers those who pursue it to the end a deep understanding of the world and a satisfying explanation of the significance of human experience. It offers them the power to penetrate appearances and to discover the genuinely real from the mere appearance of reality; it offers satisfaction of that desire which everyone, everywhere, holds somewhere in his heart—the desire to be free.”
Many of the BASICS, though divided thematically, are intrinsically related, just as many of Brunton’s notes fit into more than one of these Basics. In the end, both the division and the assignment of the notes, although following a purely personal criterion, has been done seeking to represent, complement and focus as best as possible each idea, theme, or basic question individually, but it will undoubtedly be the whole that, in the end, will give us the true perspective on the constant flow of the human adventure. Here are the 17 BASICS available:
BASICS 1: Brief notes on 40 topics: an overall vision for an ideal start… Explore Basics 1
BASICS 2: Here is a teaching, a Universal Knowledge: the genuine philosophy… of PB. Explore Basics 2
BASICS 3: Sift all teachings. All must be tested by experience! Explore Basics 3
BASICS 4: Undertaking the Quest… of the Overself. Explore Basics 4
BASICS 5: A courageous person: The Quester (Seeker) of Spiritual Truth. Explore Basics 5
BASICS 6: Our own way and path is Unique. Explore Basics 6
BASICS 7: Is a spiritual teacher necessary? or a Master or Guru? Explore Basics 7
BASICS 8: The spiritual and the physical: A sounder balance is required. Explore Basics 8
BASICS 9: Nature and inspired art: pathways to intuitive feeling and action. Explore Basics 9
BASICS 10: Impersonal love: the true beloved is not a person but a presence. Explore Basics 10
BASICS 11: Jesus’ inspiring message… by PB (1st part) Explore Basics 11
BASICS 12: Jesus’ inspiring message… by PB (2nd part) Explore Basics 12
BASICS 13: No one can be blamed… in the broadest sense of the phrase. Explore Basics 13
BASICS 14: All of us need forgiveness. Explore Basics 14
BASICS 15: The physical world is our school for spiritual discovery. Explore Basics 15
BASICS 16: The presence of Evil in the world. Explore Basics 16
BASICS 17: Suffering and its place in the divine scheme of things. Explore Basics 17
“Because we have lost our way, these truths are once again as fresh and significant and important as if they had never before been known to humanity.”
“The effect of a full and proper absorption of these ideas is to strengthen a man and invigorate his purpose, to make him feel that what is behind the universe is behind him too.”