NECESSITY AND PERFECTION - An European Experience

    Necessary or necessity simply means 'there is nothing else that is possible' or 'that which happens which is absolutely indispensable'.

    Like in a circle formed up of beads, can one more bead than what was needed be accommodated on the periphery of the circle? Simply No, because that would distort the circle. So only those many number of beads can be accommodated that are necessary for making the circle perfect. Such an arrangement results in what we often know as Perfection, the other word for beauty.

    Each and every creation in Nature is thus perfect in its own right and is the result of a cause that is necessary. Only the necessary things lead to perfection, beauty and ultimately happiness. So happiness in life is a direct manifestation of whether the happenings in life is a necessary one or not? Who can judge such a necessity? No one, because the ground state of a creature is happiness alone. And humans make enormous efforts to hide this ground state due to ignorance, and keep struggling year after year and birth after birth.

    A recent visit to a couple of European cities, just to relax without any strict agenda to do, brought to mind some concepts that are held as human superiority, as a race, a culture, certain attitude and even the word Spirituality. Normally when many of us visit such places we get mesmerized by the weather, the scintillating scenery in Nature, the advanced technology of the public facilities, and we remain in hubris. While I too was appreciative of these, but there was much more than this that caught my awe. And it was the PERFECTION that I witnessed in these cities. What I witnessed in all these cities was a solitary perfection in the way the land was used for building dwellings, layout of the buildings, the way people were going about life, upkeep of public facilities, etc and these are just a few. 

    Take for example of power transmission and telephone lines for domestic use and public consumption. No where I could see the criss-crossing of overhead power cables. All were underground. Where over ground, they were neatly tucked in. Public transport by rail in most part of the cities were underground. Upkeep of public facilities, whether a bus station, train station, trams were much beyond my experience. Noise pollution was the least though the city was bustling with activities. Public health routines like jogging, morning strolls, children on prams were as usual even in wintery mornings at near zero temperature. Help desks at most places were manned by people with characteristic politeness. In short everything was how and what it should be. No bells and whistles!

    I pondered over this for some time. Whom to congratulate? The planners - who laid out plans and policies for the Master Plan atleast half a century back? The citizens - who embrace technology in public use with as much ease as their culture? None of these cities were put under strict public code of conduct by any Lee Kuan Yew!! Then how could this happen?

        As an example for what is necessary, the Europeans have made overhead railway platform roofing with just adequate steel girders and just adequate dimensions. Even in bus stops, the shelters were just adequate and perfect. The lighting installed along the streets and at public places are with just adequate luminosity. This is in stark contrast to what I witness at my place. The bus stop shelters are constructed with so much of concrete and steel with walls blowing the trumpets of local politicians. The railway platforms roofing are made with so much of steel as if they are constructed in highly earthquake prone areas. Street lights and public lightings are so glaring that this country has so much surplus electricity. Is this what we understand as necessary? Can people, where I live, become perfect?

    In the creation of this Universe, Mother Nature does what is strictly Necessary and with Perfection, as in the circle of beads that I mentioned earlier. Nothing is too much and nothing is too less and this makes the Creation beautiful. I think the European planners too have done what is Necessary and did it with utmost Perfecction! Kudos to them.

   

MENTALITY - SOME IDEAS !

     Mentality, is the concept that we hold about ourselves and believe that concept to be the Truth. Whereas Truth, in its absolute sense could be different. And absolute Truth is NOT what our mentality leads us to believe and behave. Unless we have a compelling urge to know 'what could be this really is?', we always delude ourselves to remain in complete ignorance. 

    Let me throw some light (sun light!!) on what I said above. We all know that sun-light lights up the world and we are able to see what is around us. Is that light instantaneous? Means, is that sun-light which makes me to see around, left the sun just at that very moment and reached my location instantaneously. No No. It left the sun about 8.3 minutes before and I am receive it at this instant. WHat is the consequence of this simple observation? It shows that the sun is not at its location when I am observing. It would have travelled approx about 17 KMs further. 

    This simple observation gives a profound knowledge of Mentality. We always hold everything that is experienced to be the truth, because we never give it a critical examination before concluding for its worth to be true. Why do we do that? Because we are bound by habits not to have a compelling urge to critically examine. And why we do not critically examine? Because we find comfort in aligning with the consensus of people around, or follow what some people of repute have propagated or simply why to take a risk and to prove what? 

    Is it necessary to critically examine everything in life? Is it worth an attempt? NOT AT ALL, if you are happy in whatever you are experiencing as life, if you are as peaceful now as you were a child who remained in ignorance, if you are proud to be a human but insentient. 

    Why should I critically examine everything then? Because you are the only creature endowed with the faculty known as INTELLECT. No other life form on this planet has this. If you do not put this into use, you end up living the life of a winged white ant, that is born, lives for a day and then dissolve. 

    Whom do I have to prove that intellect of mine, by undertaking such critical examination of everything? TO NOBODY. Only To Yourself , to make this life of yours with a purpose and to have the worth of living. 

    Is it going to be so tedious to exercise the intellect in everything? Not at all, it's a breeze. You might wonder when you know that it requires absolutely nothing except a curiosity and some time to regurgitate your experiences. 

    And when you do this, you move to the realm of INNER MINING, otherwise more generally known as Spirituality as well as various other names. This does not require any material tools, any twisting and turning of the body, any special location in the mountains or Ashrams, Caves or Temples or places of worship, for that matter not even your bodily postures.

That's how breezy it is!!! 

SPIRITUALITY and MENTALITY

    Let's make things straight at first. The term 'spirituality' has been so much skewed over the times. It now stands to represent the state of a person who is dejected in life, considered to be a failure with so many unfulfilled desires, who is unfit to be in the milieu of social compulsions and believes and, most of all, a person who cannot "adjust" to the norms of the Society.  

    This type of general understanding of spirituality is fundamentally due to the inability of sentients, which we ARE of course, to distinguish between 'Mentality' and 'Spirituality'.

    Mentality is a concept that a person holds about him/herself with respect to the environment that he/she is surviving. I am using 'surviving' instead of 'living' because living is done by every creature but surviving is done by only sentients, those who have the ability to perceive and act or react. 

Let's see the meaning of the word: Mind, Mental, and Mentality. What we conceive about ourselves in our minds, and give it a form and then project the same about ourselves to the outside. This is mentality. Please take a few minutes and see for yourself. Mentality arises out of our reliance to our senses to perceive, but we saw earlier that our senses only relay a false and not the Truth that is out there!!!

    So long as I am insentient, I can have ONLY a MENTALITY only. A concept mostly identifying myself with respect to the position I hold and enjoy in the society, qualification, belief system, gender, race, and infinite other things. I exercise my power of rule over others, possess the things that makes me distinct from others, and so on. All of these serve to quell my desire to be "DISTINCT from others".

    Spirituality???? Let's see the meaning of the word. Spirit, meaning ESSENCE, spiritual, meaning ESSENTIAL, and spirituality, meaning, that which I am  after discarding all that I imposed on myself as my MENTALITY allowed.

    Spirituality, thus is the ESSENCE of myself. Generally known as Self. Being a sentient, because of which I am endowed with the faculty of "Sixth Sense", about which I boast off, I must make effort to know my Essence, else I shall continue to be insentient, that is less than human with only five senses. 

Spirituality is not an effort. It's my true nature. But I am trying to disguise myself as insentient and make all efforts to be spiritual. What sort of comedy is this?? 

Let me be a sentient and sensible!!!

CAN I KNOW WHAT'S OUT THERE?

    Why NOT? It's an emphatic YES. It's your birth right to know about yourself, which is the absolute Truth. It's always been there and it is right here right now with you. Only you've been oblivion to it's presence thus far. And as we saw in the previous blog post, our total reliance on our senses has made it still more obscure.

    How can I know about this? What do I need to do? It's very simple of course. You need to be curious to know, you need to have desire for knowledge, inquisitiveness. Unfortunately most of us tend to live and die without bothering to know about our own selves. 

    Let me share my experience. I've been calling this hair-less, taill-less monkey as Raja and going about life without ever wondering to know what could be the purpose of this body-mind system, known as Raja. And I've been identifying this with a name and many added adjectives like profession, qualification, the community, the race, and what not. 

    But the moment there was a realisation that this body - mind system, this hair-less, taill-less monkey, is in fact a part of the whole and the whole is nothing but me!! Where everything around is just me and without realising this simple truth, I was searching out there for the truth. How foolish it was!!! 

    You may now think that this blog is moving at a tangent towards spirituality, a word which often has been misused, abused, unused and to put it bluntly, considered as a time- pass pursuit of a no-mind fellow. But if you can distinguish between 'mentality' and 'spirituality', you'll not make such a conclusion. I reserve this topic on difference between 'mentality' and 'spirituality', for another musing.

WHAT IF I KNEW EVERYTHING

    All the time we've been confronted with situations compelling to make choices. Present day environment does not permit one to make choices till he/she attains certain levels of intellectual maturity. Especially when so much advancement happening in academics and IT (including mobile technology), making choices and acting on them becomes increasingly arduous.

    A choice is made either to act or to learn, to know, to understand. Action is a result of learning or knowing. Is it possible to know everything out there? Let's ponder over a bit on this.

    When we attempt to learn of know something, we solely depend on the only means of learning or knowing and the only means of such learning is our SENSES. We shall dwell on the Senses in detail on some other blog. For the time being let us take the commonly assumed meaning of the word 'senses' as what we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we smell and what we taste. We have these organs in our body, which enable us to learn or know what is in us or around us. 

    We also know that these organs are capable of 'telling' us only a limited amount of 'what is out there' and not the whole. For example our ears can hear the sound with frequencies between 20 Hertz and 20K Hertz. Anything below or above this spectrum of frequency we are incapable of perceiving, meaning, our ears 'limit' or restrict our knowing of what is truly out there.

    Similarly our eyes 'limit' our knowing only to the visible spectrum, that means they are not letting us to know what is truly out there.

    The true taste of a sweet or savory also is not known to us because the taste organ makes us to experience only that which it is capable of. Can we have an evidence? Yes, of course. In our daily experience, don't we have situations where one person says there is not enough sugar in the coffee whereas other person says 'It's just enough for me?'

    If we closely observe like this, we can ascertain that, what we experience through our sense organs is NOT the true nature of what is out there and we always get to learn or know a very limited knowledge. It means relying on the senses to learn or know is never true and always false.

    Let's look at why this has to be so? What if we knew everything out there? It is because if our ears were capable of 'telling' us about all the audio frequencies, the result would be a simple Humming. You may check this by playing 100 sound tracks and listening through one head / ear phone.

    If our eyes were 'telling' us all the visible frequencies, the result would be a black or white, and nothing else. You may check it by playing 100 odd videos and try to watch them on one screen.

    So Mother Nature has limited our capacity to learn or know through our senses, just enough for our survival. 

    If 'I knew everything', then I will not survive.

SEEKING

    When did I start to seek? Was it an effort? or Has seeking 'happened' to me?

I'd say it all just happened. Honestly. A chance contact from a long-lost friend must have triggered in me this. Till then life was usual as it is for everyone. But I must say that this trigger was quite explosive for my spiritual quest.

    When Grace embraces a person, very extraordinary events happen in life. Till these events happened in very quick succession, me too was not at all having any knowledge about spiritual quest, the traditions, etc. At the most it was a regular and routine worshipping of God. 

    We often get confused to identify the cause of such happenings. At the most one may sprint to a nearest spiritual Guru, and beg for remedy. But in 2020, when the whole world was under lock down, no such possibility was there. Still, I was lucky to have landed in online satsang by my Guruji, Shri Tarun Pradan @ PureExperiences, who guides me since then. What can I call this except Grace?

Since then life has become a happening to me. 

    In writing these experiences of seeking along the way, the purpose of this Blog, is to share the chattering this mind had thrown around. This  may be yet another instance of garbage on the web or amusing at the most. The reader is at his discretion to proceed or discard.

    What follows in this blog will be a personal account of understanding of the knowledge in Advaita, the Non-dual perspective of Self, and life in general.

    The learning was possible only with the teachings of my Guru, Shri Tarun Pradan in Pure Experiences. My Pranam to Guruji.