What is this life? Who are we? What is being human? To look at this life from the perspective of man, a question arises whether a man is merely a thought. A thought that is thought by man. Whatever that is there around man are either thoughts or things that look illusory. Things were once thoughts. Thoughts made them into things. You are a thought that you are born to your parents. Your mother conceived you in the womb. Your father’s thought named you. You are expected to become that thought and, nay, you also begin thinking that you are that thought. And you want to truly become that thought and you frustrate yourself and your family if you try to become who you are. Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Nanak, Meera, Kabir-awakened ones-exasperated expectations of others.
You are expected to bring prestige, honour, goodwill, wealth to your parents, when you want to do that a chain gets started. One day your father’s thought lives in you as for him and your thoughts in your child. We begin living our life on thoughts lent by others. We begin to look at ourselves depending on others.
We begin depending on the eyes of others to know ourselves. A beautiful woman needs the eyes of others to be beautiful. Therefore you want to be what others want you to be. Others want you to be honest, erudite, correct, and cunning. You become what others want you to be. It is a chain reaction. To know yourself is the most precious thing in life. But to know what others think of you is the primary reaction. Whether beautiful or wealthy or celebrated all are thoughts depending on the perception of others.
Thoughts are nothing but the perception of things. Thoughts make everything into things. All things around you are in fact thoughts. Thoughts of others make you into things. Your thoughts make other persons into things. Your education, faculties, universities, religions are thoughts of others that make you into things. That makes you into commodities. They don’t begin the basic lesson of life because they don’t understand that basic lesson. They propagate confusion. You must learn knowledge but knowledge that makes you virtuous. Because knowledge is a virtue in that parlance as Socrates had said. But all knowledge that is making you into tagged commodities is not virtuous it is the disguise of knowledge.
Therefore, everyone wants to influence others with disguised knowledge. People have written books ‘how to influence others’. You keep on pouring thoughts forcefully on others because you are fearful that your ignorance may be known if you don’t do that. You know that you yourself don’t know exactly what you are actually depending upon. You believe because others believe you. In fact, one who knows never tries to influence others with knowledge. One who knows does not depend on others. If your knowledge depends on the ignorance of others, it means you are disguising yourself to be knowledgeable and seeking asylum to hide your ignorance. The knowledge that does not depend on the ignorance of others is your own experience.
To see yourself, you need others’ eyes. To know yourself, you need others’ thoughts because you have no experience of yourself. You have not experienced who you are. When you have not experienced being wealthy or being worldly, and you become an ascetic, you will keep coming back to the wealth and the world. Because an experience could only lend you knowledge on which you can depend that throws light on the darkness of your ignorance.
We depend on others. All depend on each other. We depend on thoughts. Thoughts define us. Thoughts, be that ours or others, thoughts are not your experiences. Thoughts may be the second-hand explanation of experiences. Thoughts may be the experience of others. Words can be transferred, thoughts can be transferred to others but the experience cannot be transferred to others. Experience has to be lived in one’s own being-ness. One experiences that experience that becomes the personal experience of the experiencer that elevates you from darkness to light is the real experience.
Society depends on language to shape thoughts and things around you. If language is lost society and thoughts are lost too. All thoughts that shape up man’s worldly destiny depend on society and language. Every thought that shape your life depends on other thoughts. If you want to be brave it depends on your cowardice. To cover your cowardice and fear you cover it up with bravery. Some cover up fear with anger and some with swagger. Some feel if you feel that you are being attacked then the best way to thwart an attack is to attack first. The attack becomes a shield to cover your fear of being attacked. Without being immensely fearful no one can become a great warrior. Because fear is inside your and being brave is being unfearful artificially, so you become fearless artificially. Bravery is in proportionate to fear. But there is a dimension of bravery that flowers into ultimate fearlessness but that does not depend on fear. We will talk about that later.
All thoughts are dichotomous. They depend on others. They have made your life dichotomous. You are living life in a life of relative thoughts. What you call your wealth depends on the poverty of others. You cannot be wealthy without the poor being around you. Your big palatial house is worth nothing if the poverty of slums is not around you. You feel that living in a small house is being miserable when you lived in a big house. You winning something depends on the defeat of others without which you cannot win. Your scholarly knowledge depends on the ignorance of others. Your beauty depends on the ugliness of others.
Life is not dichotomous. You have created a dichotomy. Living in a small house for someone may be blissful. But because you have a big house, for you to live in a small house will be miserable. When you lived wealth optimally, you have lived being wealthy and rich, you can also enjoy the joy of living with lesser money. You can also experience the joy of poverty. But if you are caught up with your thoughts of being rich and moneyed, you will only experience miseries of poverty not the joy of poverty. Money buys and controls everything. But if you become rich and wealthy in real terms, it will make you understand that money is worthless.
Richness is a thought, poverty is a thought too. Bravery and fear are two extremes of the same thought. Success is a thought failure is a thought too. Life is a thought and God is a thought too.
Your society, religion, language lend you thoughts to make you conditioned. Conditioning is a mere thought but you get caught up with it. You begin believing in it as if it is the truth. Conditioning is a dichotomy of thoughts. The understanding dichotomy is to go out of the dichotomy of conditioning. To go out of dichotomy is to go back to your own nature. To go back to the existence that exists in you like existence. Hindus call it ‘Akhand’ that which is not fragmented. When you fall back to your own nature you fall back to existence and you become like an uncarved stone. You become childlike as you were born today. That is what Kabir says, ‘Jyo kee Tyo Dhar Deenee Chadriya’ the shell that you got to live here in life, you give it back in the same condition as you received it.
The author is a spiritual teacher and he can be contacted at arunavalokitta@gmail.com