I have talked to hundreds of people on consciousness. It is an idea that strikes everybody. However, when it comes to living life, we get busy with the routine and feel that all these talks about consciousness, and awareness exist in just speeches, posts, and books. Yesterday, I was watching a YouTube video about the cosmos. Isn't it interesting that our Milky Way itself has around 100 billion stars in this Milky Way and there are 200 billion such galaxies in the known universe. Actually, we don't know the real dimensions of the universe so far. The nearest star from Earth is at around 4.2 light years. That means if we start today at the speed of light, it will take nearly 4.2 years. With the speed of rockets being around 5 Km/second, it will take around 2.5 lakh years to reach the nearest star. With the fastest one available to us today, we will take 81,000 years to reach there.
Not only the cosmos, we have so far not reached the deepest secrets of the oceans. We have so far not understood the quantum secrets of nature. We do not know whether electrons are waves or particles. They miraculously behave like particles when observed and otherwise behave like a wave. We do not know what these tiny atoms are made of. Our understanding of what exists inside the atoms is constantly undergoing significant changes in the last century. We do now know the origin of the fundamental forces.
Leave aside the world outside, we do not know the inner world. To date, we do not know the treatment of so many diseases. So many people die each year due to different diseases like cancer. We have no treatment available for dementia and schizophrenia. We hardly know anything about our brains. Neurology has reached new heights in the last at least a few decades and yet we do not know to date as to how the concept of "I" is formed. There are thousands of papers as to how different parts of the brain function, and yet we do not know how the brain functions as a whole. Different Psychologists have coined different theories of conscious and unconscious mind, emotional and rational mind, among so many other theories but we still remain quite ignorant of our brain largely.
Despite knowing so little, we seem to be so sure of the way to live life. I have had hundreds of discussions with different friends and colleagues, and each one of them has a different way of living, different belief systems, and a quite different understanding of life, and yet we all are quite sure of the way we live life. Is that a defense mechanism or a fool's paradise? We know that it is almost impossible to solve the hard problem and therefore we believe in something and move on. Have we all formed "cults of belief", which has no relation to reality, and even if there is some, that can not be tested, and most people keep adding many of their mental stories to the original vision of the founding fathers of the cult and these cults keep driving our lives. Human ingenuity and insecurity have given rise to the growth of many babas who have the sole purpose of providing that certainly to an insecure and fearful mind. The greatest quality some of these babas have is to tell something with conviction and the weak and insecure minds just follow them. In the absence of any authentic test to ascertain the truth, the majority has become the most popular parameter to test the authenticity and that is why these babas become quite famous.
Is there any ray of hope in this grand illusion? I feel that at least some beginning can be made by seeing the grand illusion as an illusion. We can never think of coming out of the illusion till we believe it to be real. The moment we develop a habit of being aware, we start noticing the inauthenticities. Society has told us to be good boys, listen to our parents, and obey our elders, the boss is always right is the first lesson in bureaucracy, rules have to be followed. We are told that money is quite important in life, we need relatives, family is the fulcrum of life, marriage is made in heaven, and so many other concepts that we keep catching because we live in a society. The starting point is to be open to life and keep examining whatever concepts we have formed over the years.
Every time there is a death in society, we get an opportunity to go to the cremation ground and observe what happens to the body once we are gone. What happens to the relationships once a person dies. No doubt, money is important and we get to buy so many things and experiences with money. What happens if somebody has less money. Let us enter into the lives of the needy and the greedy and see who is happier. Let us examine the lives of the most powerful in the world and compare them with the lives of a poor street boy. We will get to see whether there is a true correlation between power and happiness. We may invest heavily in our social image and try to be a good boy, helpful to others, listen to the parents, and obey the elders. But will that good boy be good to even the bad boys? Who will decide what is good and what is bad? Who gives me the authority to pass judgments on others and keep evaluating their deeds to be good or bad? Are elders and parents always right? Even if they want us to take dowry, earn bribes, indulge in gender biases, and keep trying for the next baby to have a boy? Will we keep listening to the unjust demands of the elders in the name of obeying the elders? Why can't elders be wrong?
Society imposes marriage on children. Until somebody marries, it will keep asking ten times every day about the causes of not marrying. The same society will keep making fun of marriages and the entire Whatsapp and social media is flooded with the jokes around marriage and yet every parent would be keenly waiting for the kids to get married. Since we never undertake the journey of psychological development, two psychologically infant adults marry and try to make it the center of their lives. Do we understand that marriage is an opportunity to help each other grow and fulfill the purpose of life? Marriage to most is a convenient and socially accepted way to fulfill certain desires and get certain comforts. When both partners refuse to grow, marriage becomes mutually convenient to both, else it is just compromise by one and exploitation by the other. We continue in the institution of marriage since we want to get the social validation of being a good husband or a good wife.
There is no possibility to come out of the illusion unless we see the reality as it is. We see the reality of money, powers, social image, customs, traditions, beliefs, and institutions. Once we observe, we realize that we have been quite fearful and insecure the whole of our lives. We sought security in money, power, family, social image, beliefs, and religion. However, none of these has helped us be secure. The more money we earn the more insecure we become because first we do not want to lose what we have and second our ambitions to have more have also reached the Moon. Similarly, we have powers and we become fearful of losing them. I have seen many powerful people in the corridors of astrologers who encash their fears by telling them stupid remedies. The more we invest in our image, the more fearful we become of the allegations. The social image makes us the most vulnerable human beings on this earth because we project what we are not. It is quite a lot of effort to build a fake image, and it's quite fragile since that is not based on truth. We invest a lot of time and energy in following some sect, baba, or guru who generally encash our insecurities to run their empires and sell fake blessings to us as a placebo.
I feel that only when we see these illusions as illusions, we can come out of the grand illusion. We can't see their reality till the time we are not committed to truth and want a quick fix to our fears and insecurities. Fears and insecurities are the result of ignorance and till that ignorance exists, no society or baba or belief or money can make us secure. Awareness is an antidote to ignorance and the moment we start growing aware, anything that is inauthentic and ingenuine automatically drops. We no longer look for solutions in terms of money, power, social image, beliefs, or babas. That space which is created as a result of dropping these inauthenticities, nourishes truth. Once we get connected to truth, there is no ignorance and accordingly insecurities drop automatically. In that state, we feel like exploring infinite dimensions of truth through Physics, Chemistry, Biology, in the quantum world, in the cosmic, within the human mind, words of the seers, the chirping of the birds, different sensations on the body and realize that everything is just a manifestation of the same truth. We feel connected to everybody around us. Exploration, Love, and Compassion become the guiding forces of our lives.
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