#102 All are Same
From knowing that God completely fills everything, one is the same towards enemy and friend, in honor and dishonor. With this attitude, one obtains joy.Verse 125, Vigyan Bhairava Tantra
Kashmir master, Abhinava gupta, used to teach his pupils that if you hate anybody you hate God, because God is in everybody. He would then quote this verse from the Vigyan Bhairava. This is a very high level of understanding, and a beautiful way of explaining Ultimate Reality.
If you met God tomorrow in the street, in human form, wouldn’t you be really happy? Would you not treat God with love and respect? Well, open your eyes and look around you. Everyone and everything you see is God. Now try and treat them that way. We normally have difficulty treating everyone as God, because sometimes ‘ people behave in ungodly ways. This is because they have forgotten who they really are.
We see a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Pol Pot, all of whom butchered millions of innocent people, and we wonder how these people can be divine. Yet people like them and many others, have forgotten their true identity. The fastest way to make them remember is to treat them for who they really are. Not to judge them for their past misdeeds, or to judge by appearances. But to recognize their real nature and to treat them with love. When you recognize someone for their real nature, and treat them accordingly, there is a greater chance that they will recognize themselves and their true identity. The beauty about tantra is that it changes your behavior by first changing you. This is the only way that the change in your behavior becomes permanent. Religions, on the other hand, try and change your behavior with a carrot and stick policy. If you are good, you go to heaven. Otherwise, you go to hell. Fear is not the best way to induce permanent change in a person. Tantra changes your perception. When you perceive everyone as divine, you treat them that way. When you perceive that you are divine, you behave in a Godly way. When you perceive everyone is a part of you (we are all one with God and each other), you treat others the way you treat yourself. Religions teach us that we are born in sin. No good can come from such a teaching. If we feel bad about ourselves or guilty about ourselves, we lessen the chance of doing something good to ourselves or to others. On the other hand, when we know that God fills us completely, and that we are divine, we start behaving in a divine manner. We practice this verse by changing our perception. We normally perceive individuals as separate entities. Therefore, we respond to them depending on how they treat us. We love a friend and hate an enemy. If we now perceive everyone is God (God fills everything completely), we will treat everyone the way we treat God. We will treat everyone with love and respect, and we will treat them this way irrespective of how they treat us. Love or joy is our real nature. The more we love, the faster we return to our highest state. Everything is a part of God. When we realize that God fills us completely, we understand that we have Everything within us. All the love and happiness we desire, we have within us. It does not matter what part of Everything shows up in our external life. Whether it is honor or dishonor, pleasure or pain, we remain unaffected by it all, knowing that all we need, we have within us. We then accept life fully, and remain peaceful and joyful through all the moments of our life. When we accept life fully, our ego dissolves and we realize our true nature.