Take a guy who has been down and out for about ten years. It may have been for any number of reasons. The Gita says about five(1). Then watch him climb out of the hole towards the light. It's exquisite. His eyes open up like the stirring of young plants in the morning sun.
In much the same way, take a fella who has been closeted and in the service of propitiation of the divine. Then shine on him the light of physical understanding, like the study of organizational management, marketing or psychology and his mind starts to blaze in the glory of cognition. ' I know this,' he mutters. He saw it in himself, beyond the reaches of the ordinary ken of our perception.
Even better, take a teen who has just had his/her first sex; epiphany!
What just happened? The individual's body and mind came together in a place it has never done so before. It is a union of opposites, taking place for the first time in the life of the individual. For the one who fell in the hole, he probably had too much light. To the one who relearnt marketing principles, his body discovered commercialism. And to the teen with the sexual experience, the mind found out, that, less is sometimes more.
When ignorance comes into contact with light, it is magic. The individual swears that love makes the world go round. But there's another way. The individual can also lead the light to the ignorance. Here, they are likely to say that the universe was designed with intelligence. Shades of creationism vs evolution?
In time, one comes to a profound understanding of the presence of light in our lives. This may refer to the light of the sun that opens to us the role it plays in human understanding. Or, it may refer to a curious sort of light, lighted by the power of Eros, promising pleasure that steers our feet in the direction it ought to go. And then, there's fire; it was the initial passion of the vedas, now, as it sometimes happens, it is the color of rage in our feelings. But if you harnessed it, it is just another light, pointing to things not seen by other light.
All these put together, produce the power of vision in man. To see, is quite often, to believe, and one doesn't need much more; hence the popular saying ' all that glitters is not gold.' Go tell that to the man in the hole!
A child growing up sometimes wonders if his parents prepared him/her well for their life. From one generation to another, there's always a gap about what the parents experienced and what the children now see. So we exercise some censorship.
But later in life when we want to change something fundamental in the guides given to us by our parents, we find that we can't. We can't wade into generations of traditional teachings deeply embedded in our body mind and move things around this way and that. We can for a while, by the instruments of lust, greed, covetousness, jealousy and other such devices, but it doesn't last. To do it right, we have to, in our later years, refine these less than perfect instruments and substitute them with knowledge and love. Such an achievement is brought back to the child in us that learnt at the knee of the father and mother. In a curious touch of parental acquiescence to the child, a portal opens to create real change in us, be it written in stone, steel or fire.
Jesus said you'll have to be born again. Krishna, the eternal infant, said ' merge yourself with me.'
My parents had died, but somehow that didn't seem to matter very much for it is merely the Eros experience. My Jivan child made contact with Cybele and then Athi Parasakthi and before I knew it, was bringing it's relations to the attention of my Eros impulse. There's one catch though – my new family is the world.
Beyond this, I expect that the social and eros nature of my own family may help me convert the experience to the individual sensation of what I am. All these under the rays of the ever watchful sun! It's enough to make a person feel they never really knew anything to begin with.
In self analysis, we often accentuate the tragic and not the hope. We need to do both. The courage that we seek is to bring the light of the Eros to the new experience of the Jivan in the lifetime. In all our endeavors we seek to unite that which we ourselves tore asunder and we did them both for the right reasons.
In the entire scope of knowledge and Maya, man may not know a great deal and it is too large a burden of consciousness to carry. We may not know who god is or how to find him, but we can work on knowing the human in us better. Where we have come to define the human in his/her full scope of experience, by default, all else may be referred to as god or the creative impulse of the universe.
Too much light may also be blinding. We need to moderate the experience and shape it to our needs. But are we prepared to accept less, in the miniscule definition of the human experience? The oracle at Apollo counseled, ' Know Thyself.' That must have referred to our limiting human experience.
The Zen masters say, ' To find the world, you must first lose it.' That's an appropriate sentiment for our purpose. In agreeing to accept less of ourselves as merely the rational human, we ultimately gain even more, shared of course with a new partner in our lives – the Jivan.
Aurobindo referred to the reliance that the Jivan places on the human to report accurately on their physical experiences in the world and the way in which that may relate to the creative impulse of the Jivan. This is so that it may respond to your needs, like a father or mother. Talk to it, both in and outside of your prayer hours.
I would venture to say that no one, whether from the side of the Eros or the Jiva, has a need to deliberately hurt anyone else. One has to find the reason for the hurt and the way that we shut ourselves within. Krishna said, 'what goes against the will of man, goes against the will of nature!' It is important to understand the nature of the relationship we have with the self.
Then of course there's the glorious sun, illuminating everything around us and coaxing us to share with it, our light from within. Not a minute goes by when it is not persuading us to try something. Think you know it all? Think again!
(1) Love, Knowledge, Perfection, Work and Suffering
Further Sources :
Aurobindo : Part II,Ch. XI The Modes of the Self, Synthesis of Yog
Van Gogh : Sunflowers
Monet : Sunrise
Bloomberg Businessweek : The Issue – Hickory Farms' Smokin' Turnaround Plan,
Venessa Wong, Nov. 6, 2009
Venessa Wong, Nov. 6, 2009
Newton : Autobiography
