The human body and mind is no less than a miracle. Even the greatest of the scientists, with data, have not been able to understand the miracles fully. The leading neurologists of the day are not able to make out a sense of the "self". Where this feeling of "I" takes place and how the "I" of different human beings is so different. Even the leading scientists have not been able to make sense of how our body functions. We have not been able to find the cause and cure of many diseases. In fact, none has been able to solve the puzzle of aging to date. We hardly know to date of life on other planets, leaving aside other solar systems, and other milky ways.
This is not a surprising part. In fact, I feel that the most surprising part of the story is that despite knowing too little, we are so sure of the completeness of our understanding of the world. In fact, the biggest surprise is that the people who know least are most confident of their knowledge. A person who has never read any scientific book or made efforts to know reality would be most confident to tell us the genesis of this universe and the purpose of life. Probably the reason is that the less we know and easier it is for us to live inside the well. We just have to find somebody to shift the entire blame if anything goes wrong. "God" is the easiest target. Anything goes wrong in our lives and we may blame "God" for doing that and may continue to live inside our well.
It's not easy to come out of the well. In fact, most of the people who aim at coming out of the well by following some guru or spiritual thought process get trapped inside another well. They become followers of the "X" guru or the "Y" and in the process believe others to be untouchable. Since they keep interacting with the people with the same thought process over a period of time, their thought process by and large gets aligned and they discard other views that contradict their worldview and live their life conveniently till the time there is some disaster. That's an easy path, many of us adopt.
Probably, the reason for continuing to be stuck inside the well is that we want to minimize the efforts. In this process, most of us decide to live our entire lives in the well we are born and brought up. We never like to challenge our conditioning. Those, who challenge the well they are born and brought up with, are not able to reconcile to the uncertainties of life and soon shift to the other well by choosing a different religion, country, culture, civilization, spiritual organization, God, or Guru.
It's easy as well as difficult to come out of the well. It's difficult because we not only keep identifying with our thoughts but also keep justifying them and in fact argue in their favor. We get so fixated on our thoughts that any attempt of even nature to show us the wider reality appears like a disaster and we resist that. We resist any change to our worldview. That is the reason if anybody wants to show us the reality, he or she becomes our greatest enemy. On the other hand, it is quite easy, if we approach life with an open mind. The moment we become attentive and look at life from a little distance, we immediately become aware of the limitations of our thoughts and beliefs. This space creates many possibilities. The moment we observe our thoughts, we are out of the well. There come such occasions in the life of each and everybody when such space between him and his thoughts is created. However, we are so attached to our well that on such occasions, we are filled with fear and again go back to our wells and start defending our beliefs and thoughts. Such moments are the grace of God when we can reconnect to ourselves and look at the open sky. For a person who comes out of the well for the first time, the grandness of the well may look intimidating and he may not dare to stay. However, continuous efforts with awareness may bring a lot of difference.
There are two different ways to connect to the open sky. One is the "Bhakti marg" where one believes that there exists an open sky and with this belief, he comes out of the open sky. Though this path looks very easy there is a fundamental difficulties with the path. First of all, how can a person living inside the well believe in the existence of the sky? It may be through reading some scriptures or by following some person who has already visited the sky. Now the question comes about the authenticity of these scriptures and a person called Guru. The Guru may infact be trapped in another well and the scriptures may also be the creation of somebody who was trapped in another well. How do we test the authenticity of the scriptures or Gurus? In fact, practical experience tells us that most people moving along the path get trapped in the process.
The other path is "Jnana marg" where the person inside the well knows the reality and moves thereon. This seems again an impossibility. How will the person inside the well know the reality? He has no contact with the sky. How can he understand and appreciate the sky? I feel that these two paths are fundamentally the same. In fact, they are two ends of the same road. The two momentums go on parallel when we move along the process to come out of the well. First of all, we take a decision to be aware. That requires effort but we choose a difficult path because we have realized that the easy path of staying inside the well is not giving us fulfillment. As we become aware, we start observing the gaps between the dots. We start observing nature to appreciate the divine. We start observing the behavior of different human beings without judgment and reaction. We start looking at our own psyche without reactions and judgments. That observation does something wonderful. The moment we observe without reactions, we are out of the well. In these moments, we get an opportunity to connect to the sky and every time we connect to the sky and go back to the well, we see a very different perspective of the well. Thus, every time we go back to the well, we know that there is a sky outside the well. It is not mere belief but awareness of the reality. However, we know that we have not understood the sky completely and therefore make more and more efforts to come out of the well, each time we fall back into the well. That awareness of the sky, even if faintly known, gives us the belief, and every time we connect to the sky, we get greater wisdom. This process keeps going on.
There may be two ways of living in such a situation. One may continue to live inside the well like a "Karma Yogi" or may move away from the wells and live like a "Sanyasi". In fact, it does not matter, to the best of my understanding. The "sanyasis" have their own wells. I have visited a number of monks and Sanyasis and they have their own deep wells of affinity to the organizations and thought processes. I feel that one can continue to live a family life and still live like a sanyasi. Sanyas, to the best of my understanding, is just to stay aware of our fixations. The moment we become aware of our fixations, there is a space between us and these fixations and fixations lose their grip immediately. Mingyur Rinpoche told me once that awareness brings wisdom and wisdom brings love and compassion. In other words, observation with awareness brings freedom from fixations with the well. Freedom from fixations brings wisdom and we are able to observe the wider reality of the sky. Wisdom brings a connection with the sky that brings love and compassion.
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