Question: I have been reading about the brain and I realized that we are trapped by this wonderful organ, as much as we are liberated by it. The mind is a part of this ‘gross body’. Perhaps this billions of years of old dust(read body and brain) has finally arrived at a point where its complexity lets it introspect the nature of itself and its composition. And in this introspection it can escape its own nature, itself and its own prison. It can see that it is not what it thinks it is, but is the expression of That: of the seer who is not seen.
I will be in this samsara and I will do what it takes, but I am not bound to it. I will be my body but I am not bound to it. Perhaps, I will get married, but I will not be bound to it. Perhaps I will have children, but I will not be bound to it. There is nothing here but the dance of the body, it’s becoming and it’s coming and going. We just watch it take shape… and laugh at the fetters which are the fetters of the body…..
Sir, without freedom there is no happiness. There is no higher way. Freedom is the absolute, the only and the one. Freedom I say is also sat-chit-anand . When there is love there is freedom, and what does not give freedom is not love. The love which chains is samsara : it is a base desire of the gross body, the sthool shareer . Reproduction is that! Love between a man and a woman in an act of marriage is that!Is our body not a prison? Is our mind not a prison?
Answer: A lot of people come to attend the Sunday and Wednesday sessions. A typical situation arises: they can see that the Upanishads or Ramanna or JK are indeed very strong and effective medications; but what for? The participants are clueless about the disease that it is being so diligently remedied. They can sense that the seer has applied himself deeply towards the solution of some problem; but what they wonder is whether there is a problem at all ! What the seer calls a problem, the world calls the bliss of life.
The first step is to see that there is a problem. Some of us sure do see that. The poet sees that vividly. Think of all the poets and authors in Europe and in Bengal, who wrote so poignantly, and wrote only of their existential angst. Immersion in alcohol and self-flagellation was the way of life. They saw that there is a problem with samsara , and stopped at that.
It is good in a sense that people don’t wake up. Isn’t it? Semi-awakening is so very painful. You drop-out and then you remain a drop-out, away from the centre of the society yet unable to tear apart completely. Like a limb that has been hacked down, but is still hanging limp from the body, attached through some lifeless yet stubborn strands. It is a painful situation, and equally grotesque. One feels compassionate towards such a person, but if such in-betweenness becomes a permanent feature, then one can only giggle at the baloney. Quite a sight, isn’t it? To watch a monkey gone nuts because its afraid of its own tail !
What is the point in rebelling against this samsara ? Do we understand what we are rebelling against? We understand that the samsara is dukkha , but would our understanding stop at that? When we say that we are freedom, that the aatman is freedom, then do we mean that this freedom is other-worldly? When would that freedom be realized, and how? Through compromise? Through angry rebellion against a samsara that is anyway a self-written story?
When you say, ‘My body and I would not be bound to it’ etc, think of what JK would say. Not only is there identification, there is identification with something trivial! And you call that trivia a prison? And in the same breath you say that we are free, and that there is no happiness without freedom. Read all these statements together.
Are you in the body, or is the body in you? Ditto for society. You need not even think of the body, its such a small and trivial aspect of your entire being. You are not only not the body, you are far- far beyond the body. How does the question of bondage even arise?
Freedom is here. Once freedom is here, the body and the society are nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.
– Based on my interactions on various e-media.
Dated: 1st Decemeber,’11