What matters in life is our focus. We may be sitting in a book shop full of books of all varieties, and yet our focus may be on some worry about a meeting or a commitment. Similarly, Sri Aurobindo was focused on the inner journey even when he was in prison during the freedom struggle. The person in the book shop will come out of it quite oblivious to the fact that some of these books could have changed his life forever. Similarly, Sri Aurobindo will come out of jail and set up his ashram at Pondichery and become a facilitator in the inner journey of millions of people. All the possibilities lie just in front of our eyes, and we decide to ignore them.
An experiment was carried out by a psychologist in which he asked a few people to watch a video in which players are passing the ball. He asks them to count the times the ball has been passed on by one player to the other. At the end of the video, he asks for the number of passes. Some tell the right number, while some are not able to. Then he asks how many could see the Gorilla? Nobody saw the Gorilla because everybody was busy counting the passes. The link to the video is as follows:
Are we too busy counting the passes? Society has put us in the job since our childhood. Our focus is constantly on the achievements of the parameters fixed by society. One after the other, these targets occupy our complete attention. Getting a degree, getting married, having kids, earning money, making properties, getting powerful positions, becoming famous, creating a network of relationships, accumulating good deeds for the next lives, and gathering knowledge to claim intellectual superiority. We keep focusing on the "passes" all through our lives and miss the Gorilla. What is Gorilla? Gorilla is life per se. It seems stupid in the first instance. Life is all about the "passes" we count. The more trophies we collect and the better our lives are. Really?
Can we see whether our fear has reduced after getting a degree from the best college? Do we feel more fulfilled after marriage? Do we feel complete after having the children? Do we feel satiated after "settling" the children? Do we feel contended after getting the powerful positions of our choice? Do we become fearless after gathering the "good karmas" for the next lives? Do we feel confident after gathering more and more knowledge? An honest examination will quickly reveal that nothing of this sort happens, and the more we gather these trophies and the more we feel discontented. But we do not want to accept the same. Why? Because everybody around is running the race, and we feel left out of the race. During the course of evolution, we developed mirror neurons, which help us learn by mirroring others. That's how we learn to walk and talk. By copying others. That's why our natural disposition is to mirror the society we live in. That's why we are busy counting the "passes".
We are never confident of the alternative way of living. Because we have never focused on the Gorilla. Meera focused on the Gorilla. The facilities of the palace as a queen, and also the tortures by her family members when she refused to look away from Krishna, never drew her attention. She was focused on her inner journey. Every person who moves on the path of inner journey becomes an eyesore to society because their indifference to counting the "passes" becomes a silent threat to everybody busy counting the "passes". That's why these people have been tortured across ages. The examples of Buddha and Jesus are in front of our eyes. However, it is also a part of the game. No player would like to play at the same level next time. Everybody wants a higher level of challenge. That's what nature offers them. A higher level of challenge. Maybe they have set that higher level of challenge for themselves when they come to this world to play their game. Or, maybe, all of us have set a level of challenge for ourselves that we want to play in this world, depending upon our maturity in the game.
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