On being liberated from the dualities of pleasure and pain

[Guest guest]

In this age, where the pressures of outer life crowd in so strongly upon us as

individuals, and the influence of the media on our thinking is so potent, we

need all the more to introduce the higher technology into dealing with the mind.

We cannot simply leave it to its own devices. We need to establish our own

independence and to remain aware and awake to our own spiritual strength. And we

can only do that if we have a sense of this inner unity which we share with all,

of our real nature as independent of the passing appearances and the trivial but

often disturbing experiences of everyday life. We cannot maintain that balanced

judgement and wisdom which we need to live well if we allow ourselves to be

subjected and bullied by appearances into accepting a role consistent with the

fragmentary appearances which the mind, in its raw state, tries to impose on us.

Nowadays, everyone has a refrigerator, a television set and a food processor.

But what we really need is a mood processor, a technique which allows us to

reduce all negative thinking, criticism and prejudice in the mind and creates

from experience a nourishing soup, which strengthens us for the struggle of

life. We have to smooth out all the lumps, the remnants of wrong ideas and

complexes which the scars of past experience have left in the mind. In a word,

we have to learn to live with love and with wisdom, not a slave to instinct and

passion, but imbued with a living spirit of unity with all. The good of the

individual cannot ultimately be separated from the good of the whole.

 

So long as man feels himself to be a fragment, a bit, he will oscillate like a

penduulum between the two extremes of feeling that he, as an individual, is

all-important, or that he is a non-entity. When we are on top of the world, as

we say, we feel that what we want is easily attainable, that the world is our

oyster, and that achieving success will be a piece of cake! At other times, when

we are depressed and discouraged, anything worth-while seems utterly

unattainable and beyond reach. Then the world is a land of lost content to us

and we cry with Omar Khayyam:

 

O Love, could thou and I with fate conspire,

To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,

Would we not shatter it to bits, and then

Remould it nearer to the heart's desire?

 

But shattering it to bits will not help. The real trouble is that we are already

living a fragmentary life, that we are only a bit, oscillating between zero and

one. As long as we are one insignificant unit lost in an endless array of

others, we shall not solve our problems in any permanent way. In fact we can

only live truly in unity by discarding our role as number one.

 

In his last play, Jean Anouilh presents an aging author, disillusioned and in

failing health, who sits in his study trying to write another play, while a

stream of friends and relatives come to distract him from the work in hand, each

and all of them only really interested in what they can get out of him. It is,

so to speak, a play about egocentricity, and it was appropriately entitled

'Number One' in its English version. Those who come to borrow money from him are

the first to accuse him of lack of feeling, of not caring for anyone else but

himself, but their complaints don't inhibit them in any way from prizing

anything they can get out of him. It is a good illustration of the maxim

enunciated in the Upanishad: 'Not for the sake of themselves are the friend, the

husband, the father of the loved object dear, but for the sake of the self are

they dear'!

 

But the fact is, as the yogis tell us, that we can live in unity only by

discarding this number one stance, this fragmentary view of ourselves.

 

Let us therefore decide to take the bit between our teeth! We have to get down

to the problem of discovering the answer to the question: Who am I? What is the

purpose of life? How can I achieve the happiness I desire? As Shri Shankara says

in his Commentary to the Gita, this enquiry will lead man to discover that the

Self, which at the outset seems to be the limited fragmented individual,

confined in the physical body, turns out in the end to be nothing other than the

supreme Self, at one with the reality behind the whole universe. What is the

result of this realisation? In the words of Swami Rama Tirtha:

 

It is an indescribable sense of equality, beaming sweetness and divine

recklessness. It is the seeing of the All in all we see. It is seeing your own

Self wherever your eyes fall. It is to realise that all is beauty and that 'I am

That' - Tat twam asi or 'That thou art'.

 

In the Commentary by Shri Shankara on the verse in the fifteenth chapter of the

Gita which speaks of the individual soul as a fragment of the Lord, an objection

is raised to this teaching. 'How can there be a portion of the supreme Self Who

has no parts? If He has parts, He would be liable to destruction on the

separation of the parts.'

 

What the objector is very reasonably saying is that if you have something which

is fragmented, then it can be destroyed. As Shelley says:

 

When the lamp is shattered

The light in the dust lies dead -

When the cloud is scattered

The rainbow's glory is shed.

When the lute is broken,

Sweet tones are remembered not;

When the lips have spoken,

Loved accents are soon forgot.

 

But Shri Shankara makes it clear in answer to this objection that the fragment

of Himself, of which the Lord speaks, is not a real fragment. It is only the

appearance of a fragment set up by the mind and matter. The jiva is not really a

small part of the Lord, he is identical with the Lord Himself, only this

identity is hidden under the thick veil of the empirical personality.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical] And Shri Shankara gives two

illustrations to convey what is meant here. The jiva, he says, is an integral

part of the Lord Himself, manifesting Himself as the individual soul in the

world in each and every individual, in the form of the doer and the enjoyer of

experience. He is like the sun reflected in water. The reflected sun is merely a

fragment of the real sun, but not a real fragment, an apparent fragment, and on

the removal of the water the reflected sun returns to the original sun and

remains as that very sun. Just as the image of the sun gets distorted as the

surface of the water becomes disturbed, but becomes more like itself as the

water becomes calm and tranquil, so the jiva, reflected in the mind as the doer

and enjoyer, appears to undergo innumerable vicissitudes [fluctuations], joys

and woes, fears and hopes, and to be raised to great heights and cast to great

depths, as his individual interests wax or wane. But these are reflections of

the passions and moods disturbing the surface of the mind. And when the mind

becomes clear and tranquil, free from the pairs of opposites which disturb it

and set it into oscillation, then the nature of the jiva as the supreme

consciousness becomes apparent and he recognises the unreal nature of this

reflected self, and his real identity as the supreme Self, Paramatman,

changeless and beyond the reach of time and space and empirical circumstances.

 

Shri Shankara also gives a second illustration. Or, he says, the 'jiva' is like

the space in the jar, which is limited by the shape and form of the jar (called

the 'upadhi' in Sanskrit). The space within the jar is only a portion of the

infinite space, and it is never separated from that space. It becomes one with

that universal space on the destruction of the jar which is the cause of

limitation. The space is not contained in the jar. On the contrary, it is the

jar which is contained within the universal space. So it is, says Shri Shankara,

that there is an appearance of fragmentation when the Lord enters into empirical

life as the 'jiva', but it is not a real fragmentation, it is only a phenomenal

state, which does not in any way compromise or affect the eternal, divine nature

of the 'jiva' as the supreme Self, Paramatman.

 

 

Him who departs, or who stays and enjoys,

who is (apparently) cojoined with the qualities of nature (the gunas),

the deluded perceive not;

they see who possess the eye of knowledge.

 

Those who strive, endued with Yoga,

perceive Him dwelling in the self;

though striving, those of unrefined self,

devoid of wisdom, perceive Him not.

 

That light which residing in the sun illumines the whole world,

that which is in the moon and in the fire,

that light do thou know to be Mine.

 

(Gita 15.10-12)

 

 

The same light of consciousness abides in all living beings, and (although we

are not aware of it) it is immanent also in all that we call non-living. It is

this universal light which, entering into the body and taking on the qualities

of the mind and personality, becomes the individual soul. The aim of Yoga is to

awaken to that truth.

 

A further verse from the fifteenth chapter of the Gita sums up the process:

 

Those who are freed from pride and delusion, who have conquered the evil of

attachment, who, all desires stilled, are ever devoted to the supreme Self, who

are liberated from the dualities of pleasure and pain and are undeluded, reach

that eternal goal. (Gita 15.5)

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 21-26