The recent news of the aircraft crash in Ahmedabad made all of us cry and worried. Still, almost all the flights took off and landed after the incident. Many of us would have travelled by air after that incident. We read and listen to news about train derailments and road accidents, yet we still travel by train and car. We see the death of near and dear ones, and yet remain so sure that we will be alive and make plans for the future. Is that faith or hallucination? If it is faith, where does that faith come from?
Probably both things co-exist. All of us know that death is a reality, and all of us have a limited time to spend on this Earth. Yet, we live life as if we exist for perpetuity. "Death" is such a hard problem that we do not want to spend time solving that, to know about life and death. We know that many people have tried for eternity to find answers to this, and most people could not find an answer. So, we try to find an easy solution. We just ignore the question and create some stories in our minds around God, the purpose of life, and the nature of self. These stories are widely believed in society and often packaged attractively in the name of religion. The more people believe in these stories and the more authentic they appear. It does not matter whether these stories are true or not. Their wide acceptability vouches for their truth. Hollowness gets wrapped in the attractive package of belief.
When we listen to news of disasters, crises, death, and horrors, these stories get challenged. Not so that we did not know that "death" is a reality, but our mind believed those stories wrapped in an attractive package. We try to find an explanation if our belief can't explain that. We associate reasons such as fault of the pilot, hit of the bird, fault of the ground staff, or the company that is running the aircraft. We are in a hurry to know the reason so that we can eliminate the possibility of being the victim. We will book a flight operated by a different airline and ensure that the make of the aircraft is different from the one that crashed. We would try to eliminate the possibilities of death. We get to know about some deaths, and the first question is to know the reason. If it is old age, we tell ourselves that we are not old enough to die. If it is some disease, we convince ourselves that we are not prone to the disease and have had the annual health check-up conducted just a few months back. If it is suicide, we tell ourselves that we are not prone to that because that was due to X, Y, Z reason, and we are safe.
Our belief in living the next day with certainty gets challenged every day, and we somehow still run away from the most fundamental question. As if nature forces us to contemplate that question deeply. What is the nature of life and death? Yet, we do not listen until we are cornered and see the death of somebody we are very close to, or experience the treatment of some life-threatening disease. Most people have not developed the capacity to read the script of nature, and that's why, when nature displays the answers written in its own script, we feel lost. We seek expert help to read the script and some run towards the Babas and some towards the Astrologers, who just make best use of the opportunity and in the name of reading the scrpit, they implant greater insecurities in the minds of the vulnerable and make them dependent on them so that their shop has a greater turnover.
The answer to fundamental questions does not lie in mindless beliefs or blindly following some Astrologer or Baba. Instead, it resides in developing the ability to read the script of nature. It doesn't require studying at branded schools or spending millions; it simply requires honest observation of oneself and the surroundings. Rather than dismissing the truth in the name of beliefs, we need to observe what happens inside us and outside. We should ask the right questions about the root causes of fear, pain, happiness, and other emotions, and answer them honestly and with integrity. These answers should be based on our observations, not beliefs, going deep into our unconscious mind. This allows us to understand our unconscious and be aware of deeper layers. It also helps us comprehend the laws of the cosmos, since the inner and outer cosmos share the same forces of nature. When we understand Astrology more deeply, it becomes more than a tool for feeling secure through remedies; it becomes a way to understand the forces of nature. Through true reading, observation, and contemplation, our scriptures reveal the truth to us rather than binding us with mere beliefs. Faith in life, based on popular beliefs, is quite fragile. "Awareness" survives the hardest of the blows when it is standing on the solid foundation of truth and not around the stories packaged in the form of "belief".
Comments