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Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com)

Miscellaneous

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Religion

 

 

Man must confront the root of his fear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHENNAI, JAN. 11. From time immemorial human beings belonging to every

generation have been afraid of their mortality. If the Stone Age man was afraid

of wild animals, the civilised man today dreads his end from different causes.

But the fear is the same. If one reflects on this he can see that no other

living being is paranoid of its mortality except human beings. The strong sense

of individuality is responsible for this. The child has no fear of death; only

adults have. Then is it wrong to develop the sense of ``I''? Certainly not. On

the contrary human beings have to come to terms with it.

 

The body is not afraid of the changes that happens to it as it grows older. It

is the ``I'' which is frightened. Thoughts do not have fear. They come and go.

But it is the ``I'' which is afraid of the unpleasant thought. Long before the

body passes away a person dies a thousand emotional deaths. In all these it is

not the body but the ``I'' which is affected. So one has to diagnose the root of

fear and see the truth for oneself. This was the reason why Self-knowledge could

not be taught in childhood, said Swami Suddhananda in his discourse on the

Bhagavad Gita.

 

A person must differentiate between the ``I'' and the ``not-I'' in his

personality and see for himself the relative and the absolute aspects. In

meditation it can be seen that each thought that arises is an assertion of the

person's identity. When he identifies with his thought he feels uncomfortable

because he mistakes the relative as the absolute. When he questions ``Who am

I?'' the person has to see for himself that the answer is already there in the

silence of his mind - the consciousness of the Self. The verbalising of the

experience ``to be'' takes place later.

 

In the Upanishadic tradition when the map of the Reality (God) is drawn, the

individual is included in it. This can be appreciated with the example of a

globe used to represent the Earth in geography. The world is so vast that the

globe seems very small in comparison. The person in relation to the globe is

very big. But when he attempts to visualise the Earth with the aid of the globe

in his imagination, he diminishes into a speck in relation to the Earth. In the

body of totality (Reality) there is no death; there is only change just as in

the case of a wave which rises for a while and merges into the lap of the ocean.

In the relative sense the wave has an identity but in the absolute sense it is

the ocean. This vision must translate into experience in a person's life to

realise his immortality.

 

 

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