Enriching Our Eternal Consciousness

            The proliferation of a mindboggling array of ‘Baba’ and ‘Guru’ within and without the length and breadth of this country adumbrate to the increasing alienation in human life which keeps multiplying with increasing complexities of our day-to-day life. The growing alienation and estrangement are actually more from the carnal and material world, thereby pushing people in search of the reason and relevance of our daily struggles to make ends meet.

            This often pushes people towards the supposedly better-endowed spiritual savants to make the ‘head and tail’ of the generally inscrutable turn of events in their life. The people would rather make their life more meaningful than remaining stuck in the mundane mumbo-jumbo. After attaining and enjoying the basic comforts and pleasures of human life, they long to stretch themselves further to explore the real purpose behind a repetitively boring and unexciting life, often trapped in a routine rut and rat race.

            We the humans are often stuck in a habitual chase of false gratifications. We seldom realise that the pleasure we seek and achieve turn out to be very short-lived after the same is achieved and we again begin the same race in search of another holy grail of happiness and contentment, shifting our goalpost further. These attainments and achievements could be aiming for the possession of physical objects or non-physical and amorphous chimaera like cherished pride, ethos or values.

            It is the latter which is more trouble and tricky than the former. Our fight and struggle for championing and securing a set of ethos and moral values often bring us more pain than pleasure, thereby compromising the very quality of our life. Besides, we know very well that these ethos and values are spatio-temporal, changing with space and time.

            Many of the values, ethos, mores traditions and customs which were very sacrosanct and worth fighting for in the distant past have suddenly become outdated and passé today in one part of the world while they still remain valuable in other parts. ‘slavery’, ‘Sati’, ‘untouchability’ and prohibition on widow remarriage’ were parts of Indian culture at one of Indian history and have become unthinkable in modern India.

            The human society has multiple codes and ways of establishing human and marital relationships in different parts of the world. Whatever is profane in one part is acceptable and permissible in other part of the world. An incestuous relationship in one part of the world appears perfectly normal in other part. So the human society has itself not evolved a consensus about the values and ethos to structure its social and communal life.

            And why not, these values and ethos develop and evolve in keeping with the variable circumstances and conditions specific to a people or its geography. The cultural diversity and differences as visible in human society across the world makes our life really interesting and attractive. The problem arises when we unnecessarily fight for the supposed superiority and one-upmanship of one’s own culture.

            It would be more than advisable for us to accept the beautiful variety in our life. We must learn to respect the ‘salad bowl’ nature of human life unless and until the following of one’s culture starts interfering and conflicting with the enjoyment of cultural rights of others, while simultaneously trying to evolve common societal ethos. The human society and consciousness won’t evolve and enrich itself unless and until we learn to simultaneously evolve a sense of discrimination for respecting the cultural values and ethos of others.

            Let the superiority, if at all required, of cultural values and ideas be decided through time, practice and individual choice rather than trying to impose one set of values over others, often at the expense or to the exclusion of others. Some of us who lack a healthy sense of discrimination, an ability to tell chaff from the grain, not only live in the darkness of ignorance but also suffer endless miseries. Like Don Quixote tilting at the windmills, their life gets wasted in fighting an imaginary battle with imaginary enemies without getting any time for indulging and exploring their lives further to add values to their eternal consciousness.

            Most of us live through our lives like zombies, without ever pausing to understand the reason and rationale behind the ‘whys and wherefores’ of human life. We, thus, waste a beautiful opportunity afforded by the Almighty to improve and enrich our eternal consciousness. If we walk carelessly, we shall surely bump against a stone or get knocked down by an obstacle. We are actually repeatedly engaging in behaviour which hurt ourselves no end.

            But the problem is we have all been doing this unknowingly without our ever realising the same. We must exercise better discrimination and discretion in our quotidian day-to-day lives to use the same as our permanent guide in all our thoughts and actions, to know the value or relevance of one’s vocation or avocation, to know what is it which we are doing or going to do is of permanent value to our eternal consciousness rather than haggling over trinkets and trivia of carnal existence.

            Our problem is that despite often knowing and comprehending the difference between the right and the wrong, we still choose the latter. We must not forget the golden advice enshrined in the ‘Bible’ saying, ‘Don’t do unto others what you don’t want to be done unto you’. More often than not, we try to get even with someone who has hurt or humiliated us, thereby bringing us to their level and eliminating the difference between them and us.

            We must remember that as long as we are trying to get even with others, we can never get ahead of them. Let’s learn the right lessons from the wrong people rather than doing the other way round, as we invariably do. By gloating over the hurt and pain of others we dislike, we are actually debasing ourselves and devaluing our eternal consciousness. If we are always engaged in the rat-race for keeping up with the Joneses, we can never realise the eternal peace and satisfaction as would afford us an opportunity for self-exploration.

            It is only when we look beyond our personal comforts and selfish desires by denying and depriving ourselves the mundane pleasures that we enrich ourselves, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Only when we raise our consciousness and individuality beyond the routine and ordinary, we become extraordinary and begin to realise the intoxicating power of altruism and doing good to others. The ensuing empowerment from evolving perfection and upliftment of our being is nothing less than heavenly bliss.

            Perfection means a mental and spiritual state when all our desires and senses are under our control and we are the absolute master of our ‘Ego’ masquerading as our ‘Self’. It is our false Self as Ego which keeps blurring our vision and constricts our understanding of our real eternal ‘Self’, unsullied and untouched by the hydra-headed clutches of the selfish senses. We may not have control over how someone behaves and treats us, but we definitely can choose to decide as to how should we respond and react to an external stimulus coming in the form of a positive or negative overture. Our free will should be harnessed and prepared well enough to be our true pathfinder.

            Remember, the sun shines over all of us equally without any discrimination. It is completely up to us to feel the pleasing, soothing and life-giving stellar rays. If we shut ourselves in dark corners or close our eyes, we shall never feel and savour the life-giving divine bounties. Similarly, the divine grace is equally available to all of us; it is up to us to explore and feel the same. Only those near fire can feel the heat, not those away from it.

            We should find time and ways to feel the divine and glorious presence of the Almighty all around us. All our high positions and possessions keep us tied to the plane of mortals like millstones round our neck. It is advisable that even while we attend to our duties and responsibilities in the material world, we still find time to explore the deeper recesses of our sublime and eternal ‘Self’. That’s why, all the kings and rulers of ancient India were saints or saintly, being repository of all the uplifting human virtues and values, almost like Plato’s Philosopher King. Some of the examples would include Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira and King Janaka.

            As has been duly proven, our thoughts, being energy vibrations in motion, are very powerful. We are all children of our thoughts. We become what we think. If we think of worldly or material pleasure, we shall attain them. If we desire permanent, unchanging bliss, we shall get the same. Electricity does not have a name, but appliances do even though it is electricity which animates them all. Similarly, the soul does not have a fixed name or identity but the physical bodies definitely have.

            While in body, the soul takes a name, acquires multiple identities and remains entangled in them. After death, the soul goes back to being a possibility of numerous lives as part of unmerged cosmic consciousness. The fact is that we are always attached to the present in spite of the fact that it shall soon become the past. But we still continue doing all wrongs due to our affection and attachment to an elusive present, while ignoring our eternally present spiritual ‘Self’ or consciousness. We must not spoil and starve our eternal consciousness for the false nourishment of the mortal and impermanent physical forms.