The thrust of all of humanity is to gain liberation, although most of humanity is not aware of this. They are like children in school caught up in play who have not yet learned that the purpose of going to school is to be educated. Most people in the world are totally unaware of the real purpose of life, or even if there is a purpose. It is only when they reach a higher state of consciousness and become aware of the real purpose of life that they become earnest seekers. It is then that they strive to reach liberation. At this point their life takes on real meaning and they start their spiritual journey.

It was Plotinus who long ago said that the spiritual journey is, "a flight of the alone to the alone." There are three things in life that have no second; reality, truth and God. That which cannot be compared with anything else, that which has no second, must be the alone or the Absolute. It is the Absolute that stands alone and it is the relative that can be compared and contrasted to everything. The Absolute is not opposite to the relative. Therefore, it cannot be compared with the relative. It is the relative that is a mental projection of the Absolute.

The term "aloneness" worries many because aloneness seems to imply an end result of lonliness. But, nothing is farther from the truth. Lonliness is an external condition, whereas aloneness is an inner state of Being. Most people are afraid of lonliness because they come face to face with the pressure of their own mind, or thoughts, and this they cannot cope with. However, one can be alone in the company of many people because aloneness is an inner state where one is completely free from the company of the thinker and the thought.

It is actually the absence of the observed that makes one feel lonely. The world of the observed is the only thing that one has known and when that becomes disturbed the feeling of lonliness appears.

The observed is the image cast by inferential knowledge, and inference functions with sensorial cognition on one side and the past experience on the other side. Out of these one constructs the contents of the image. Then, the image is observed and it is maintained by the observer or the thinker. This is not static because the image is a living entity and, as life, is action. The image is constantly disturbed because of new sensorial data being fed in. This new data has to be processed by the authority of past experience and in so doing this causes a modification of the old image. Between the disturbed old image and the creation of a modified image there is a time lapse which is not chronological, but of psychological time. You might say it is a time lapse between the broken, or disturbed image, and the repaired image. It is in this lapse that the feeling of lonliness comes. One no longer listens to the broken image, so one seeks escape. Also, when the observed, or image, is damaged the observer is also damaged. The image must be repaired and while this is taking place an intense feeling of lonliness ensues. In self defense the observer tries against all odds to maintain the image, or status quo, ignoring the real he is now confronted with. However, it is in times of lonliness that one discovers the joy of aloneness. Now escape, or refusal to repair the broken image, no longer exists since one has now discovered the inward path to freedom.

One is now on the spiritual path and in many cases eagerness or greediness to rise to powers comes over one, not realizing that one has to crawl before one can walk. One has to lay down a spiritual foundation before one can rise to higher levels. One under this condition starts to build on sand and not on rock. Some turn to drugs, austerities, or yoga to gain this end.

However, yoga is really concerned with coming to an experience of a new order of living and not just a modification of an old way of life. Also, yoga is concerned with the expansion of consciousness and not an extension of consciousness such as in psychism or occultism.

The experience of true or pure individuality is an experience of aloneness. It is the past that gives continuity to thought. Also, every conscious effort of the mind arises from the past, so whatever it does strengthens the past. There is a condition called the mutation of the mind, wherein through mutation the hereditary constituency of the mind is changed. So long as heredity remains unchanged there can only be variations. No functional change can be affected by keeping the heredity tendencies intact. The mind cannot of itself go beyond the range of modified continuity. Mutations only arise when the continuing background of heredity (habit patterns) is changed. Since mutations only arise in the moment of discontinuity, it creates a situation where the continuity of the past becomes inoperative. Hence, the reason why in all mutations it is the heredity factor that is affected.

It is only in the overflow of nature that mutations come into being. Conscious effort can only remove obstacles, but it cannot order the overflow of nature. When the obstacles are removed, then the overflow comes of its own free will. The removal of obstacles means making the mind completely unconditioned, or not to adopt any mental attitudes. One may adopt any mental attitude one wishes, but one cannot be free from the motives of self-protection and continuity.

Always behind all noble and spiritual attitudes lies the preservation and propogation of the sense of "I." The mind is so constructed that it cannot be fragmented into different compartments. Therefore, there cannot exist conflicitng tendencies in the same mind; in one compartment wordliness and in the other, spirituality. As long as the motivating factor of the mind is I-ness such a mind can never know spiritual mutation. It can refurbish and decorate the walls of its relative prison, but it can never know freedom.

The mind that knows mutation is a mind that is truly mindless; the state of mind in which there is no meaning, motivations, or intentions. The mind free from all intentions is the meditative mind, a mind of awareness, attention, and restful alertness and communion. In this condition there is no place for either the thinker or the thought. It is in this state that the overflow of pure nature is possible, where the mind - having transcended the field of relativity - is now in the field of the Absolute and now the mind becomes infused with the nature of the Absolute, or pure consciousness. This is when the mutation of the mind takes place.

An expansion of consciousness also takes place and new dimensions of living are now experienced and explored. This experience most certainly is never the result of conscious attitudes of the mind, rather it is when all attitudes have vanished. It is through Transcendental Meditation that one is laying the foundation of eternal freedom, and through the experience of the mutation of the mind, becomes a member of that stream of society that is rapidly evolving to the goal of human life. One is now in the process of leaving the field of constant change and entering the Absolute field of no change, the field that is eternally permanent where the past and the future have merged into the now, where eternity is not an endless sequence of time frames, but where time no longer exists and eternity is the now. Also, where all live in the eternal youth and everything is self-luminous. This is the Absolute.