When a child is born into this world, he brings in him pure wonder. He incarnates godly purity. He lives in infinity beyond time and bondage of human logic. Seers when they attain godhood they become child-like again. A child is closest to existence. Existence exists in a child in purity. Society asks him who you are. The definition becomes important. Parents define him who is he. You are lent a name, which is not you but like a code or a serial number. Names are fanciful. Most of them are derived from definitions of God deities, families, places, ethnicities so on. You are defined. You will be known by this code. In the beginning, it confuses the child to know whether the code by which he is being defined is him. He questions where is the guy of such name? Because he is in the being. He knows who he is. Slowly he learns to act as per the code to denote him. Code is a mere artificial pliable assumption to indicate towards the being. But whole life the code is fortified.
Code is nothing but syllables. A syllable is sound but humans have attached meanings to it by language. Code is like binary numerals 010101 via which we make computers to learn to store and retrieve a word, sound, picture, data. All our alphabets are like binary codes. A child learns them. B bat, C cat, D dog. Because of a dog, he learns to cognise D. He learns language. Language is a great invention in man. Man has learnt to communicate far better than animals. Therefore, man has been able to communicate his mind. Language has bred thinking.
What begins with a code later becomes fortified. It becomes ego. Ego is not because it is just a borrowed name. At the centre of his self, being is seated. Being who has no name that who ‘is’ and the ego is not. The ego is a sieve that has no bottom. The ego wants to fill itself. Ego is insatiable. It wants to fill everything in the world. A beautiful story, a saint had a begging bowl made of a human skull. He went to a king and asked if the King has enough wealth to fill his begging bowl. King felt offended and ordered to fill it. But the begging bowl would remain empty. It sucked everything all wealth of the king and the king fell into beggar’s feet and beggar said this begging bowl is made of human skull.
Ego is the begging bowl of your mind. Ego is made by thoughts. Thinker wants to be something in thoughts. The ego wants to be something else because it is not. Man wants to give definition to himself because the ego is not. He wants to define himself as an intelligent person or a wealthy person or a powerful person or a famous person. He wants to be somebody so he follows society. He wants to be a king, or a prime minister or a billionaire. But he does not want to be him. Because being a man is most ordinary and ego wants to be extraordinary. Definition fortifies ego that he ‘is’. This ‘is-ness’ is defined by money power prestige intelligence. This ‘is-ness’ defines man’s ego. So the borrowed code ego is fortified by definitions of wealth, power, intelligence, prestige. He wants to fill the sieve-like void with wealth power etc. But the begging bowl remains always empty because it is made of a human skull that is mind.
Borrowed ego is not. The ego is the opposite of the being. For the ego to be the being is needed. If being departs, ego departs immediately. But ego makes us run a rat race all life. No one on the earth has ever been able to gratify ego to its full. In fact, ego is a mind game. It is psychological but it is not real. The man keeps running after unreal therefore world becomes a miserable place. When ego departs world becomes a heavenly abode.
Millions on the earth become powerful, distinguished and wealthy but we find no trace of them. In the end one comes to know that ego is not and the one who always ‘was’ is the being. And ego is a reflection of the being. Like your image is seen in the mirror. You are not the mirror image. You are you. And your image is never you. Ego is the image of your being mirrored on the canvas of the world. It is a mind game that has mired you.
A seer becomes child-like by learning by living the life. A child learns by words. That which can be roped in words or that which can be roped in pictures paintings becomes a lie because it is only an indication towards That Which Is. It is not That Which Is. Those who have learnt by living life understand that life is an eternal flow. Living is an eternal flow. From seed, it becomes a tree and from a tree, flowers come and seed comes again. An eternal flow. Words can’t define. The definition is a technique to bind that eternal flow into boundaries to erect borders around it. Like we erect borders around when a child is born but that becomes a bane of life.
Words are learning tricks that are made by opposite or non-congruent meanings. To define one thing the other is needed. But life is an eternal flow that does not come into definitions because that which is defined by definition remains undefined. Nietzsche has said that order comes from chaos. But to define the meaning of chaos we invoke order that which is the opposite of chaos. But eternally order comes out of chaos and is the flowering of chaos. The definition is an artificial understanding which and therefore is never defined.
Words or names everything comes out of the mind. This world is a big mind and creation is pure consciousness. The mind creates a false world because the mind is artificiality. The mind creates that which it does not know. Then defines it and then becomes happy that it knows the definition. But the definition is not the defined as always. The definition is a false substitute. The mind creates a false substitute for the truth. And then claims to have known the truth. Man creates philosophies to create false truths to sharpen intelligence by language but ultimately deciphers the untruth. Because within the boundaries of mind only predictable that can be predicted can be known. Boundaries of the definition of words only define that which is not because of limitation. Because the name is that eternal name that cannot be named.
That could be defined by the boundaries of our thoughts cannot be That Which Is. Seers say we cannot hear Him, see Him or touch Him because man lives in time. That Which Is is timelessly timeless. Because time is a change and creation is unchanged. Nanak says Satnam, thy name is a truth that is Akal the timeless. Lao Tzu says that which can be pronounced cannot take us into timelessness. Language is made in time. Truth is timeless. That-Which-Is is timeless.
The author is a spiritual teacher.
