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| Friday, 16 April 2004 |
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'All the World's a stage'
It is indeed amazing how the spiritual insight of the Bard of Avon has probed the core issues of our existence at several points with great clarity of understanding, like the Sages and Rishis of the Orient. "All the world's a stage," says William Shakespeare the Bard in his play "As you like it," and all the men and women are merely players who have their exists and entrances and play many parts in their time and go into oblivion when the last scene is over - all too soon. We all play a pre-destined role according to the script set out by the Universal Cosmic Intelligence who is the master playwright and producer of the entire world drama, in accordance with our Karmic background, as Yogaswamigal the well-known sage of Lankapuri has said. The genuine Rishi-Vakiyams written on ola leaves several centuries ago by acolytes of great Rishis are culled from the master plan of the Universal Cosmic Intelligence with regard to particular individuals by peering into their future incarnations in time, just as Lord Buddha was able to become aware of several of his past incarnations. The Rishi-Vakiyams refer to planetary positions also, as the planets do not cause but only reflect the various changes taking place in the five elements pervading the body of an individual, since the macrocosm and the microcosm are inexorably intertwined, as our vast Universe is one continuous web of energy, according to modern science as explained by Fritzof Capra in his book "Tao of Physics". It is said that the gentle movement of the blossoming of a rose bud on earth immediately impinges on the sub-atomic vibrational field of even a distant star. This is reflected in William Blake's famous mystical lines "To see a world in a grain of sand If everything is pre-destined, the question of the validity of the concept of free-will arises. When some western followers of Nisargadatta Maharaj, the well-known sage of Bombay, asked him about free-will, he said that in the Indian languages there is no basic word for free-will, there is only Omni-will. He said the concept of free-will is an illusion and there is only an appearance of free-will. The illusion of free-will will disappear when the master illusion of ego-consciousness disappears, as the ego itself is an evanescent illusory entity, created by thought, as so cogently propounded by J. Krishnamurti, the great revolutionary philosopher of the twentieth century. The role played by a person who appears to exercise free-will and succeeds in changing the direction of a fixed course of events is itself part of the pre-destined plan and is a sub-plot within the main play of the World Drama, as clearly revealed in the Rishi-Vakiyams and exemplified in the classical Upanishad stories of Markandeyan and Sathyavan-Savtiri, where the earlier predicted life-spans of individuals were extended by the grace of the Divine. Sri Ramana Maharishi, the great Sage of Tiruvannamalai, has clearly stated that the Turiya state of consciousness or Pure Awareness, which is the sub-stratum for the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states, is the sole Reality and that the phenomenon of duality experienced as the seer and the seen, or the observer and the world, in the waking state is a mirage and is totally unreal for the Jnani. Sri Ramana says that one who has a dream is not aware in the dream that he is both the actor of the dream and the actor in all the other forms that he sees in the dream. He realizes on waking that everything in the dream was he and he alone. Sri Ramana says the Universal Self, which is the sole Reality and is pure awareness, by its power of Maya, projects an unreal reflection of Itself in the form of an ego consciousness or mind, which in consonance with other minds jointly conjures up a vast evanescent universe. This is the "Leela" or game, which the Universal Self initiates by its power of Maya or Shakthi or mass mesmerism, as exemplified to some extent by the hypnotic spell cast on the audience by the famous rope-trick magicians of India, where a person appears to climb up along a stiffened rope arising from the ground towards the sky and then disappear into thin ari! It is like the very realistic illusion created by the projection of two-dimensional pictures on the cinema screen to give a three dimensional effect. The only reality or sub-stratum is the blank screen when the screening is over. The rest of the happening is all illusion. But our minds derive great fulfilment and pleasure from this obvious illusory phenomenon. Shakespeare very aptly describes the unreal and illusory nature of the world phenomenon in his famous lines in The Tempest, "Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." To the ordinary man with a fragmented and veiled ego-consciousness, functioning as an individual observer, this manifestation is experienced as a solid objective world, of which his own body itself is a part. If one ponders deeply into the matter, one finds that one's powers of perception are very limited and veiled and one can observe only the outer layer or crust of any object, animate or inanimate, with one's physical eyes and not the interior of the object. Whereas in point of fact any physical object is an aggregate of millions of atoms, with the electrons revolving around the protons at mind-boggling velocity. Paramahamsa Yogananda has said that he experienced this new resplendent vision of the world round him when his Guru Sri Yuktheswar slapped him hard on his back one day as he was doing his routine meditation. Apart from the atomic structure of the physical world there are several subtle occult planes of existence beyond the physical, of which the human mind or ego-consciousness knows nothing by way of direct experience. Even in respect of our physical body we are not aware or in control of the millions of blood cells coursing through our arteries and getting channelled correctly into the appropriate receptors with clockwork precision, as Dr. Deepak Chopra the well-known research scientist has emphasised in his illuminating discourses. So, when such a vast Cosmic Intelligence is controlling the minutest functions in one's physical body, how can one's ego, in all honesty and humility, call even one's physical body as one's own? The ego is thus a thief and an usurper, in moral terms, and an illusory and fictitious entity, in logical parlance. When the mind realises this truth, the self-centred ego, with its feeling of "I am the doer," disappears and one then becomes aware that one is only a transient actor on the ephemeral stage of the world dramas, and that human life and human ambitions get snuffed out all too soon, like that of a short-lived fire-fly insect. The individualised consciousness thereupon merges with and becomes a joyous channel of operation of the Universal Intelligence or Omni-will. Then we really behold everyone who comes our way as blessed embodiments of the Divine. As a matter of personal recollection, the writer of this article recalls Sri Ramana Maharishi instructing him in January 1946, when he met him in person at Tiruvannamalai during his student days, in response to a query placed before him about J. Krishnamurti's teachings relating to "Choiceless, effortless, passive Awareness," as follows; Though effortless awareness or "Summa Iru," or Just Be is the real state of a Jnani, a spiritual aspirant has in the beginning to strengthen his wayward mind by carrying out serious meditation or recitation of a mantra with great devotion, to enable him to succeed in the final break-through and surrender of the ego when he pursues the "Who am I" Atma-Vichara inquiry leading to Self-realisation. It is significant to note that in this Dualistic relatively real world of Maya, with its cycles of manifestation and destruction of millions of galaxies, symbolised by the reverberating Cosmic Dance of creation and destruction by Lord Siva, the ancient and ageless Sri Agastiya Maharishi is deemed to be the Head of the Saptarishis and of all liberated Sages and Saints of the past who are functioning as the spiritual Guides and Guardians of the destiny of individuals and of humanity at large for countless Yugas and Kalpas in Time. It is a vast romance of Divine Love in the Dualistic field, fraught with heroic adventure, noble sacrifice, virtuous living and ecstatic devotion to the Beloved of all in the chambers of one's heart-namely Parabakthi. The Self-realised Jnani, however, is immersed in the absolute Non-Dualistic consciousness of Sat-Chit-Ananda in the Eternal Now, namely sheer Existence-Wisdom-Bliss, free of all human thought-feelings and of the illusory concept of Space, Time, Causation, which is the fabric of the vision we have of our vast Universe. To such a Jnani truly, "All the World's a Stage" where the Divine Leela, or the World drama is being enacted - "and the great globe itself shall dissolve like the baseless fabric of this vision," and we ultimately discover that we are such stuff as dreams are made on - namely Poorna Gnanam. C. Shanmuganayagam, Convenor, Thinkers' Forum, Meditation Group. |
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