One day, I was listening to a video from Shri Alok Pandey from Aurobindo Ashram. He was discussing "authority". He said that authority has a certain value. For example, the kids are expected to respect the authority of the parents because if they do not respect, they may end up doing their harm which is irreversible. They may end up spoiling their health or have an accident. However, what about the cases where the authority itself is blinded. For example, when the parents are asking the kids to take dowry or bring money of corruption for their comfort. In those cases, should the kids still respect the authority?
The same conflict was faced by Bhishma. He was tied to his vow to support the king of Hastinapur. The kingdom of Hastinapur came to be ruled by Dhritrastra who had a great attachment to his son Duryodhana and supported cheating by his son and his brother-in-law Shakuni to snatch the rights of Pandavas. Bhishma understood this cheating and wanted to support Pandavas but he was tied to his vow. Finally, when a battle started between the Pandavas and Kauravas, he chose to fight from the side of Kauravas despite knowing very well that Duryodhana was unfair. Bhishma just obeyed the commands of the king of Hastinapur.
Arjuna also had such a conflict when he went to the battle of Kurukshetra. On the one hand, he wanted to fight the battle by throwing away the Kauravas from Hastinapur because their actions were unjust. On the other hand, he also wanted to obey the authority of the social customs and traditions which said that one should not fight against one's own family members. That is when Krishna came to his rescue and showed his Vishwaroop to make him understand that everything has emanated from Krishna and merges back into Him. All the forms including all human beings are temporary and therefore one should not be under any sort of disillusionment. After realizing the reality, one should make decisions without caring for the results and do what one's Dharma is.
I feel that these are not intellectual discussions, but rather something that all of us have to ponder over. Whenever in the history of humanity, we have made great strides, It is because somebody has challenged the authority. Galelio challenged the contemporary wide prevailing view of the society that earth is flat. Einstein challenged the widely prevailing Newtonian view of the cosmos. Jesus challenged contemporary society which was brutal and barbaric. Buddha challenged the contemporary orthodox society. No doubt all of them had to bear the cost. But if someone realizes the temporariness of the entire domain of matter and connects to reality at the level of consciousness, where is the question of cost? The concepts of cost, profit, and loss lie in the books of account. Who knows when we recast the books of account as per the divine accounting standards, profit becomes loss and loss becomes profit. Or there is no concept of profit or loss and it is all about awareness and ignorance.
One needs to decide whether he wants to live life believing the material world to be the final reality and keep calculating profit and loss before each action or decision one takes, or he wants to understand the deeper truths of nature, and after having realized the truth behind this material world live a life that is free from all these calculations. Authority stands tall only when it is supported by the truth. Why would anybody who can see the falsity behind any authority obey that? One can follow an authority even after seeing the falsity behind it only when one is afraid to lose something, and when he is calculating profit and loss. Else truth itself is the guiding force behind the actions one takes in life. If any authority follows truth, there is no conflict, and if it does not, again there is no conflict. Probably one of the best ways to examine truth is to be in a witness mode. Just maintain a little distance oneself from one's actions and that little space gives one great scope for seeing through one's own actions. Else one is so fixated on one's views that one loses the capacity to see the truth. It seems quite strange to me that in this world, a blind person desperately wants eyesight back, while we are blessed with the capacity to discriminate reality from falsity, and yet we get fixated on our biases and viewpoints to lose the great capacity to see the reality, and yet keep celebrating the "loss of sight" in the material world because now we get social validation from "a herd of blind people".
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