Life -
A Process and Activity
The philosophy of the Vedanta
makes a distinction between existence as such and the experience of any type of
existence. Human life is a psychological process, and not an immutable
existence. A knowledge of the functions of the mind is essential to understand
life in its fullness. The mind is the student as well as the object of study,
when life as a whole is the theme that we wish to investigate and comprehend.
In a famous image given in the Kathopanishad, the inner self of man is compared
to a lord seated in a chariot, the body to the chariot, the intellect to the
charioteer, the mind to the reins, the senses to the horses pulling the
chariot, and the objects of the senses to the roads along which the chariot is
driven. The Upanishad gives a caution that the supreme state can be reached
only by him who has as his charioteer a powerfully discriminative intellect
which directs the restive horses of the senses with the aid of the reins of the
mind, and not by anyone else who may have a bad charioteer. The meaning of this
analogy is that the human individuality and personality are outer forms and
instruments to be properly used by the inner directive intelligence towards the
great destination of life, and not to be taken as ends in themselves or
mistaken for reality as such.
Not only the body and the
senses but even the self conceived as a limited individual centre of
consciousness is a process of intense activity, moving, changing and evolving
incessantly. The individual self is the basis of knowledge as well as action.
Due to confinement to a spatial existence, the individual self is dominated
over and harassed by certain urges felt within itself, pointing to certain
external objects and states. The desire for food, clothing and shelter, for
name, fame and power, often appears in the human individual as a violent force
which cannot be easily subdued or even intelligently controlled. These
deep-rooted urges are an immediate consequence of the self's restriction to a
dualistic perception of the world and an arrogation of ultimate selfhood to
itself, while the truth is otherwise. We never see one and the same picture at
two given moments in a cinematographic projection, but yet we seem to see a
continuity of the existence of forms on account of a very quick succession and
motion of the pictures. Strictly speaking, we never see one and the same thing
in a particular act of perception, but the rapidity of the psychoses is so
tremendous that there is an illusion of the perception of a static existence.
And above all, there is that absolute Self behind all mental functions, from
which these draw sustenance and borrow existence as well as light.
Every action, viewed in this
light, becomes a symptom of the restlessness of the relative consciousness in
any of the human sheaths in which it is enclosed. There is an unceasing attempt
on its part to break boundaries, to overcome all limitations and to transcend
itself at every step. The environment called life in which it finds itself is
only an opportunity provided to it to seek and find what it wishes to have in
order to exceed itself in experience in the different stages of evolution. The
universe is another name for experience by a cosmic mind, of which the relative
minds are refractive aspects and parts. The desirable and the undesirable in
life are nothing but certain consequences which logically follow the whimsical
and unmethodical desires of the ignorant individuals who know not their own
ultimate destination. What is desirable today need not be so tomorrow, and
today's painful experience may be a blessing for the future. It does not mean
that all that we want is always the good.
There is no error in the world
or the objects; it is in the painful fact that we have no knowledge of what is
really good for us. It is not enough if a physician knows merely that a
particular drug has the power to suppress a particular ailment, he has also to
know what other reactions the drug will produce in the living organism. No
thought, feeling or willing can be said to be healthy when it is not in
consonance with the health and peace of the universe as a whole. That we are
members of a single undivided family demands that we have to be mutually
cooperative, and think and act in terms of mutual welfare, which, in the end,
is the welfare of the whole. When this knowledge is not given to the mind, it
acts blindly and errs with the idea that what appears to bring a temporary
sensation of pleasure to it is the true and the good. When it does not learn
the lesson of life by enlightened reason, it has to learn it by pain.
(To be continued…)
Excerpts from:
Life – A
Process and Activity by Sri Swami Krishnananda
If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit:
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
If you would
like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact
the General Secretary at: generalsecretary@sivanandaonline.org
No comments:
Post a Comment