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| Swami Suddhananda |
It is really important to pause for a while and look at this vast universe with some leisureliness. We must take a break before an unforeseen situation puts a brake on our speed of life; or before the body itself fails.
We find ourselves within an expansive universe where the vastness of the earth, the planets, the stars keeps us mesmerised all the time. As children, while rising with the sun and sleeping with the setting sun, while enjoying the summer, the rain and winter, looking at various plants, flowers, animals and human beings, life seems to pass at a faster pace.
Then in youth, while engaging ourselves in studies and various pursuits to make ourselves physically comfortable, Time takes its toll on our fragile bodies. Some grow up psychologically but most remain gross in spite of certain exposure to various streams of education. The grossness of thinking is reflected in their obsession with gross things around the world.
Each one of us carves out a world within the
world and most of us remain imprisoned in that little world or one’s
own world of thoughts. Some childish people consider that prison
as a dollhouse and go on adding many more things to it, often
getting friends who are of similar types.
How does one help a person who considers a
prison as the house of freedom or, considers a free place as the
prison? First that person must be aware of the freedom and the
bondage, as they are. From where does a person learn about the
difference between freedom and bondage? If the answer indicates
another person, the next question would be, whom did he learn from
and question and answer would be an infinite regress.
Do not get put off by the next sentence but
read on. The Timeless Wisdom of the Upanishads reveals this Truth
and that has no beginning. Even if you do not accept the Vedas,
the Upanishads, the sages, the stories, just check out the ideas
inherent in the Upanishads. If they do not stand to reason, or
they appear illogical and absurd, you can drop them at any time
you wish.
The first question is directed towards ‘you’,
yourself. Do you know that you look at the world through your
thoughts; that the creation is not the product of your thought but
is already existing, where your body appeared in time; that the
body has no conflict with creation – the time, the space and the
objects? Body does not resist the changes that Time brings about.
Neither Time specially targets any particular body. Neither is
there a physical bondage. We are not born with our hands and legs
shackled. The limitations of Time, Space and objectivity do not
affect time, space or the objects. Both the living and non-living
objects change with the time in the changeless space. But the
sense of ‘being limited’ is clear only in the human mind and
it is only human beings who strive to go beyond the limitations.
Of course, all human beings are not conscious of the sense of
limitations. Some human beings are like the animals and plants,
though they have the potential not only to be aware of the
limitations but also to go beyond it.
The key point is that unless one is made aware
of the ‘limitations’, he or she will sit around many and
varied limitations in the name of searching for freedom.
Physical hunger is the first bondage. If the
food is not available to satisfy hunger whenever it happens, the
man will be in constant search of food, like the animals. And, in
between the searching for food and satisfying the hunger,
sometimes, somewhere, he will fulfil the physical urge to
procreate. These are very elemental portrayals.
Somewhere down the line, the human beings get
hooked on to particular food and can produce their food in any
season unlike the animals. While the animals can neither produce
the food nor procreate beyond certain seasons or time, the human
can do so by will. And that intelligence becomes a bondage, which
manifests as ‘the subtle hunger’, to wish to be able to do
anything at any time and to go on owning without limits.
If just any food can satisfy the hunger of the
stomach, the subtle hunger for ‘varieties’ of food, cannot be
satisfied with just any food. Similar is the case with the hunger
for the varieties of dresses, houses, cars, carpets, ornaments,
men, women, jobs, etc. No amount of things – non-living and
living, can satisfy that hunger. That subtle hunger is like a
bottomless pot that a person dreams to fill up by pouring water
into it. If the pot has a bottom, a pot full of water is enough to
fill it. If it has no bottom, rivers can flow through it. Oceans
can dry up. Bottomless pot and filling it up just do not go
together.
Similarly, with the hunger of the mind and
varieties of anything and everything, the whole universe shall be
swallowed up and the mind shall desire for more. If we analyse the
subtle hunger, we shall see that it is not like the hunger of the
body that one can handle as long as the body is alive. The subtle
hunger, the emptiness within, does not belong to the mind that we
refer to as thoughts. It belongs to the ‘I’ thought, an
identity, which is as elusive, ephemeral, insubstantial, yet
visible as the mirage. It is extremely dominant but has no
standing of its own. Mr Delusion deludes himself with a billion
dreams and nightmares like Mr Mirage thirsting for water. Its
thirst is the delusion. Itself is a delusion. And universes can
pass through it but it shall still survive! A life time is not
enough! A few years of youth is not even a wink!
The Upanishads do not pretend to ‘teach’
it. Neither does the enlightened one, the seer who knows it. They
straightaway challenge the ‘I’. But to soften the blow, they
first analyse as to what does ‘it’ want and that sends the ‘I’
into a fantastic spin – a spiral where it falls upside down in
its own lap! What ‘it’ wants is what it ‘is’! Who ‘I am’
is what ‘I’ look for! Hence its search, its denials,
indulgences, dreams, desires, enchantments and nightmares have no
basis as the name ‘I’ itself is redundant for the Nameless
Expanse to ‘be’. The questioning ends because the ‘questioner’
comes to an end but the relative questions to understand the
forces of nature, to exploit it for human convenience continue. No
more the creation is a mystery as it was never a mystery. The
individuality, ‘I’, who perceived and interpreted the creation
as a mystery, ends the mystery with the disappearance of itself
– not as in deep sleep where the ‘I’ remains in a potential
state, but as the ‘Awareness’, content of the universe –
ever immobile yet in eternal flux! But the questioning and
understanding of the relative world continues to make the world
more comfortable. Using the apparently hostile, destructive force
of nature, man learns to tame the untamed. But in that there is no
sense of victory or conquest. There is only the creation of a
functional, relative harmony in the absolutely harmonious
universe! Take a pause and see that Great Pause that lasts for
ever and ever….in a nameless Eternal dance!
Swami Suddhananda
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