 |
|
Swami Suddhananda |
While coming back from
Tiruvannamalai, we have to cross a manually-operated level-crossing.
When our car reached there, the gates were closed and we saw the
guard drinking water in his small cubicle. Another gentleman,
apparently driver of another van parked on the other side of the
gate, was busy talking to the person. When our driver, after waiting
for a few minutes, opened the car door to attract the guard’s
attention, the guard waved him off saying that the train was already
approaching. We heard no sound and we saw no activity around. But we
had to wait believing in what the guard said.
Then we saw the other gentleman pull out some change and hand it
over to the guard. Suddenly the guard was all cheered up and the
gate was opened. The train was, of course, nowhere around. With a
little money passing the hand the imaginary train disappeared, the
gate that had remained closed to inconvenience people suddenly
opened. He is paid to operate the level-crossing but he keeps it
permanently closed to move to open only if he is suitably rewarded.
The whole system has become like that in our
society. If you pay money, all the wrongs can be made right and if
you do not pay, every right can be wronged. The people from the top
most position to ordinary positions are not there to facilitate the
growth or the progress of society. They are there to retard it as
much as possible for their personal benefit. If the political,
economic or social systems are full of such occurrences, the
religious system is too steeped in it. God alone knows how any
wrongs can be made right by giving something to a priest! The whole
idea is perhaps to consciously go through certain inconveniences,
hardships one has caused to others. Sometimes the Constitution
allows capital punishment as a deterrent, but human beings continue
to commit the same mistake.
Where there are so many rules promulgated, the
idea was perhaps to help the growth of society. We can take a simple
example like driving. There is a law to be followed by everybody in
a country that everybody must drive on the left side. Drivers must
know and must be encouraged to drive on the left side. It’s alright
for somebody to drive on the right side in order to overtake a slow
vehicle. Again, the driver comes back to the left side. In case the
driver breaks the rule, there is a provision to collect a fine which
will go to State exchequer. But we see the traffic authorities are
there not to regulate traffic but to catch the erring driver. They
do not catch them to collect the fine for the State, but to let them
go by pocketing some money. The same thing happens in any government
department, in any human transaction.
The cause is not difficult to find. The law is
not corrupt. The positions are not corrupt. The person or mind which
is corrupt happens to occupy the position to bend the laws for his
convenience and totally insensitive to other’s inconvenience. A
politician, a minister, a bureaucrat is not corrupt. A corrupt
person happens to be a politician or a bureaucrat. A husband, a
wife, a child or a friend is not arrogant or insensitive. An
arrogant, insensitive person happens to be a husband, wife, etc. A
journalist, a judge, an umpire or a priest is not biased. A biased
person happens to be a journalist or judge, etc.
Thus, the person or the mind is corrupt,
arrogant, biased or insensitive. In fact, there we must learn to
differentiate between the person and the mind. The first
fundamentally corrupting idea is to gain a ‘notion’ about one’s own
self which is other than the self. Those notions corrupt the
corrupted ‘I’. The word ‘I’ is corrupted as it attributed itself an
identity, a word, a description which it is not. Thereafter,
depending upon the relative importance or insignificance of the
roles it becomes unnecessarily further entangled into arrogance,
humility, insensitivity, greed, anger, etc.
Self-Knowledge, as revealed in the Vedas or
Upanishads, is only to facilitate the return of the individuals to
their original source. If the guide, the teacher, the guru, becomes
a role like any other role, then the so-called guru or guide will
prevent the returning to the source instead of facilitating it.
That’s why the guru is one who sees no difference between who he is
and what he is teaching. The Mathematics, English, Physics,
Philosophy, Management or Psychology professor is not the subject
they teach. There is a dichotomy between what they teach and who
they are. Whereas in the case of Self-Knowledge, the teacher, the
teaching and the taught are one and the same. Therefore, the teacher
has full confidence not only in himself and the teaching that he
shares, but is aware of the same perfection in the student.
The teaching, therefore, is more a facilitating
for the return to the source from where he has never moved than to
get bogged down by the different apparent distractions and
disciplines. In case of driving on the wrong side, the driver may
have an advantage at the cost of others or may sometimes meet with
an accident, but in case of ignorance of one’s own self, there is no
apparent advantage. There is always the obvious disadvantage of
mortality, insecurity, bias, corruption, conflict, fear, arrogance,
etc. Hence, the teacher need not further discipline or punish the
ignorant. Rather there is a spontaneous compassion that the perfect,
flawless, immortal being is behaving in such a helpless way,
resigning himself or succumbing to apparently unalterable emotions
and physical situations.
The one who knows, does not wait to fill up his
emptiness by others’ meek surrender. Nor he gets affected by the
others not sharing the vision. Just because somebody follows the
teaching, his roles and their misuse do not become right. The
teacher is there to point out the mistakes, the limitations, not to
condemn the student where he is already condemned to, but to help
him to awaken to the Self, reducing the roles to the level of roles.
No more the roles are used to one’s advantage and other’s
disadvantage. Rather happy with himself, the wise one plays all the
roles happily without the need to exploit the roles to his own
advantage as he enjoys all the advantages being the ‘Self’ – the
Awareness, the Silence, Immortality! And that vision does not make
him anyway exclusive but shows him the grandest possibility of all
inclusiveness where nobody or nothing stands inferior or superior to
anybody.
Hence, the solution lies in Self-Knowledge,
Self-Awareness. There one discovers one’s own happiness, fulfilment
in one’s own being and continues to play the roles – be that of a
President or a guard at the level-crossing, facilitating movement
and growth of all. He never creates an obstacle as he is absolutely
free and enjoys an existence, bliss free from any obstruction or
interference. In fact, nothing can be an obstacle to all
pervasiveness as even no hills, mountains, stars, black holes or
universe can be an obstacle for space! At least space may collapse
in dream or deep sleep, but the Self always exists as Existence
itself when everything abides or collapses within it.
This is the ultimate Self-Awareness, the
Self-Knowledge that is inherent in all which no artificial
identities can veil or dismiss. Nor is it a grace or a favour
granted to anything or anybody to be withdrawn when somebody does
not become a slave as expected. The scientific discoveries have
shrunk the earth to a village by expanding the intellectual horizon.
We need to expand it to the point of Infinite, which is ever
reached, ever here and now, to see our own being, own self in and
through everything. The individuals are shrieking out for oneness
which is reflected in the screaming headlines of the newspapers in
the world. The oneness cannot be established by wiping out all the
jungles and maintaining only one specie of plants, but to go to the
roots that have their source in one earth. We cannot reduce all the
mountains to flat earth to discover the one earth. Rather, we have
to discover the one earth in every dust, rock, hills, mountain
ranges and jungles.
So also we cannot wipe out different colours,
thoughts, faiths, but must discover the oneness inherent in all. As
even superstitions die a natural death in the advent of a rational,
scientific reasoning, so also the notions about the individuals
which are like superstitions and cannot stand inquiry or
investigations shall drop out and die a natural death. May be, we’ll
need a few of those to add a little thrill to life, but no more the
notions shall rule over Truth, superstitions over Reality! A
beginning is already made in the beginning-less beginning of the
creation. The time is ripe to share to help, to introduce and to
wake up every man to his own inner empire where he/ she shall
discover to the greatest comfort, solace and delight that everyone
is always an Emperor and the empire is never divided!
Swami Suddhananda
Samvit Sagar Trust
Tiruvannamalai
|
