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Swami Suddhananda |
The other day, we were going to drive back from a big shopping
mall in Birmingham and we were all seated in the car. The person who
was to drive us back had already put the key in the ignition and
while laughing aloud over a joke, started to move the key. The car
mumbled and stopped. Our laughter turned to a smile and we were
looking at the driver’s seat. He tried again. Again and again. The
car would not start. We were to return to the camp for a class at 5
p.m. and we are almost 45 minutes away.
When the car did not start, I suggested that we give a push to
the car as often we do in India. We all got down and the
owner-driver felt embarrassed but agreed for a trial. Nothing
happened and the gentleman rang up his wife. In-between, he had
already decided to sell the not-so-old car as an old car. Then his
wife advised him to handle the car gently. Again a few minutes of
trial and the car would not start. When he rang her up again to send
somebody to pick us up, his wife suggested he find out whether he
had switched off the immobiliser.
That did the trick. He was trying to start the car
without immobilising the immobiliser that prevents the car from
starting and, therefore, from car theft. We all felt relieved and
were back in time in the camp for the next scheduled programme.
Billions in this world attempt to drive through
life without immobilising the immobiliser – the strong conditionings
of the past. The toughest conditioning is not the ideas about the
history, race, religion, food, dress, language or customs. Those are
limiting and immobilising conditionings ‘also’ but the primary
immobiliser is the ‘I’ – the individuality itself. That ‘I’, the
individuality, picks up a thousand different extended notions to get
itself totally imprisoned by the thoughts or ideas of different
kinds. If the notion of ‘I’ is the primary shackle, all other
notions are chains and loads of different kinds. The paradox is that
the chained and the burdened individual wishes to release himself
from the loads while carrying all the loads because of his false
identity.
To the question ‘who are you’, the answer
inevitably begins with ‘I’ am… This first name ‘I’ itself is a name
and the name is never the thing that it stands for. The ‘I’ is the
first name for ‘the sense of being’ which is a nameless, formless
existence that touches everything in the universe.
If we start thinking deeply into the naming game,
we can recognise that before we human beings name anything first we
objectify the object. The same principle holds good in relation to
intangible emotions. Emotions are not perceived by sense organs but
one is conscious of the thoughts and the thought modifications that
appear as emotions. But there is one name ‘I’ which we have not
named after objectifying the meaning of the word ‘I’ as ‘I’ is the
‘subject’ and whatever it stands for is a Nameless, Formless expanse
which can never be objectified. And whatever we take the ‘I’ to be –
beginning from riches, body, sense organs to the thoughts, etc., can
never be the meaning of the I, the subject or all those levels are
subject to objectification.
But these objects on which the identity of the
‘I’ is imposed become the immobilising conditionings on the ‘I’. The
‘I’ itself – the first name – is the first imposter, which imposes
itself on all other identities. Or, in the name of educating the
‘I’, the ‘I’ is swamped by hundreds of identities at different
levels. The imposter either collects the identity trophies to be
shacked further or is trained to accept identities in the name of
growth, happiness or freedom.
The sunshine waits under the clouds of
identities. The ‘I’ who feels clouded, the imposter who feels
imposed upon, the immobiliser who has concluded that the identities
have the immobilising effect, must immobilise itself by
understanding the ‘nameless being’ that he is! The namings, the
words, must be left behind to communicate, to describe the
communicable, describable perceptions and emotions. Even the word
‘I’ can be used as a ‘subject’, the ‘I’ is a nameless,
indescribable, inexplicable presence that nobody or nothing in this
universe can escape!
The depth or shallowness of one’s personality
will depend upon the depth or the shallowness of the level of one’s
source of identity. If one considers the material riches as the
ultimate identity, such a person will not mind sacrificing all human
relationships, the physical bodies or the emotions to protect his
source of identity. The person is so gross that he does not
understand that all the material prosperity will need ‘his’
protection and that can never, ever protect him. That’s why, the
person who identifies with the gross body will be a bit subtler in
the sense he’ll sacrifice the wealth for the sake of the body, even
though he’ll not mind destroying other bodies to safeguard his
source of identity. Again such a person does not understand that
neither he can protect the body nor the body can protect him as by
nature the body is mortal and is constantly changing, perishing,
consumed by time. The pursuit of the sensations through sense
perceptions shall be the dominant end of such a life.
Then a person who identifies with emotions of
various kinds will be dominantly emotional and shall be constantly
affected by conscious and unconscious mood changes. Being romantic
or repressive, he may not care for the physical or material
conditions, but that indifference is more the result of an
incapacity to care than out of any sense of fulfilment. Similarly, a
dominantly intellectual person will have not much of emotions but
shall be extremely individualistic and can be very rationally
irrational. He may be more subtle than other people but that
subtlety can also make him both cunning and compassionate,
reasonable and manipulative. The person cannot be a lover as he will
be too full of himself and no amount of material acquisition can
drown that sense of void. But because of the preoccupation with
thinking such people will help in making use of the different
possibilities in nature.
Though these are the dominant characteristic
features of different people identifying at different levels, yet
one cannot just compartmentalise various people into one rigid
classification. There shall be touch of all levels in all people in
various degrees, but the divisions and the subsequent isolation of
different kinds shall always stare the individuals.
Whereas when the man understands the ‘I’ – the
nameless presence behind all names or in and through all names and
forms, he will at once recognise himself in and through everything.
As a result, he will have no sense of inferiority or superiority.
His is an incomparable existence inherent in all and, therefore,
there is an effortless acceptance of limitations of body, sense
organs and thoughts of different kinds at their own levels.
But when all the identifications at various
levels are taken to be the reality, those act like the immobilisers
and the ‘I’ is immobilised in its thinking. It will never learn to
challenge itself and, therefore, shall never learn. Then it shall
pick up various ideas or practices for its own entertainment and
survive but never for its own annihilation. Therefore, such
teachings that will help him to forget himself for sometime can be
very popular like the unconscious sleep.
Sleeping over the limitation can see people
through life and that is why many are not interested in challenging
themselves and seeing themselves as they are. To see one’s own Self
is to counteract all the immobilisers in the form of various social,
political or religious conditionings and ultimately to immobilise
the word ‘I’ itself which is the primary conditionings as the sense
of ‘being’ does not require either the name ‘I’ or the thought ‘I’
to exist. All our teachings must be directed towards it in various
assimilable ways so that even a growing youngster is made aware of
the possibility of happiness, freedom here and now while living this
life.
This teaching cannot be and should not be at the
cost of other objective knowledge as to know and ‘be’ the subject we
have to start with all our objective experiences. Neither must we
stop at the level of the objective knowledge and try to teach
‘managing’ the limited objective lessons and the identifications. We
can never succeed creating a stayable pattern or by themselves the
objective world and experiences are constantly falling apart. We
have to look at the ‘I’ who seems to be experiencing, exhausting and
relaxing to continue the initially exciting but ultimately tiring
cycle. The cycle of experiences has and is not the problem, but the
experiencer ‘I’ is the problem and has the problem. And, therefore,
one can never manage the thoughts. And the experiences without
learning about the ‘I’ itself – the primary immobiliser who pretends
to mobilise experiences and happiness in life and thereby further
immobilises himself with burden of identifications.
The ultimate teaching is to counteract that prime
immobiliser and ultimately he does it to himself to discover that
after all everything was always ‘free’!
Let us do that!
Swami Suddhananda
Samvit Sagar Trust
Tiruvannamalai
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