Eknath Easwaran's Commentary
I have heard people claim that mysticism denies the physical world. A good mystic would answer, “We are not belittling Sir Isaac Newton. We don’t deny the Pythagorean theorem. All we are saying is that we have discovered another dimension to life, another realm – changeless, eternal, beyond cause and effect – on which the entire physical universe rests.”
Because our lives are oriented outward, we may doubt the existence of the Self within. I have been telling people about this Self almost daily for more than thirty years, but occasionally I still am asked, “Are you talking about something outside us?” Compared with this Self – whom we call Krishna or Christ, Allah or Adonai or the Divine Mother – my own body is “outside.” Compared with the Self, my own life is not more dear.