Guilt and Obliviousness

The Birth of the Lion- Part II - Suffering 

Abridged Version (28 % of the integral text)

Source: This is the abridged version of the book from OM C. Parkin ‘The Birth of the Lion’. The complete book can be ordered at advaitaMedia online shop. 

What does guilt consist of?

Guilt consists of your belief that you are an individual separate from oneness. You are so-and-so, a separate personality. Guilt is the belief that the wave is something different from the ocean. It’s as if a wave separates from the ocean and then tries to give itself importance, wants to be considered and acknowledged as a wave. Then, as a wave, it fights against other waves and even against the water, against itself.

The guilt of separation is deeply hidden, and certain layers appear only when you are ready to go deeper. It is the story of the fall of man from which the whole of humanity has emerged. Every birth, the whole existence of the world, is based on the belief in separation. Every birth of a mind is the birth of guilt. There is no process for dissolving guilt. One speaks of paying off guilt, but the idea of paying off guilt is based on the assumption that guilt is real, that separation is real. There is nothing to pay off. It is simply a matter of recognising that guilt is a concept. What kind of delusion makes you believe you are something different from pure Consciousness?

Does guilt arise from my belief that I am separate? Or am I really separate and this is my guilt? If it isn’t a process of liberating myself from the guilt of separation or the illusion of separation, what then is it?

It is the moment of recognising who you really are. The guilt consists of the ignorance of man. It is sheer ignorance, and this ignorance keeps recreating the guilt. Ignorance literally means ignoring knowledge. Ignorance is the belief that you either know something or you don’t know anything. When you neither know nor not know, and you are simply still in That which is; when you relax totally into Being itSelf without any intentions, without any motivations, without any unfulfilled desires, that is the moment of innocence. When you touch innocence, you touch the sweetness of being and you touch knowledge itself. Impersonal knowledge. This is the paradox. And that is the moment in which the whole burden, the whole fight, the whole toil of life falls away. It doesn’t really even fall away, for it is simply revealed not to exist. Even falling away is too much effort. It doesn’t exist—full stop. …