Right from my childhood, while other peers were busy in normal mundane affairs, my curiosity to know what a human body comprises of and to unravel the processes which made it diseased, always fascinated me. In this curious exercise, I got an opportunity to sift through varied subjects, which, in the normal course, were neither needed to be pursued for academic distinctions nor for any specific motive in mind. I was not sure whether what I inferred was, in fact, right or wrong, but whatever I acquired, with the Divine Grace, made me believe that what all of us call as a “man” is a product of “discursive formations” and of the “socio-political contingencies” of the various epochs of human history.

The concept of “man” is beyond grammar and logic. “Man” is an invention of society, in the same way that “being” is an invention of metaphysics. While a famed Chinese thinker Chuang-tsu opined that Man was “the reality of the formless, the unreality of that which has form”, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, propounded that “the Tathagata divides his own body into innumerable bodies, and also restores an infinite number of bodies to one body. Now he becomes cities, villages, houses. Now he has a large body, now he has a small body.”

Another fascinating view was of the hallowed Mundaka Upanishad, which metaphorically summarized it “as the rivers loose name and shape in the sea, wise men loose name and shape in God, glittering beyond all distance.”  Deeply engrossing and philosophical expositions in such beautiful words as they seem, the immutable TRUTH always seemed to be far greater, far complex, far adorable than all the words used in trying to explain it. TRUTH defies all names, all words, all descriptions, all logic, all commentaries, all explanations, all comprehensions. While it’s simply the “Viraat Roop” of the DIVINE, yet all our efforts are focussed on fathoming the Unfathomable.       

Another dilemma which has always kept me analysing different real life situations and made me wonder whether, in fact, all of us need “freedom from the Known”. Isn’t it that we are so caught up in our own network of problems, our own desires, our own urges of pleasure and pain that we never look around, never watch the moon or for that matter anything which the Nature in its pristine beauty has bestowed upon us to use, enjoy and feel grateful for? Did any of us watch the immense beauty of Nature around us? Did we ever feel grateful for all those invaluable possessions bestowed on us by the Divine. Did we ever watch with all our eyes and ears open with wonder on the way immeasurable love in the form of fathomless sustenance and unconditional protection is provided to us by the Mother Nature?

Did we ever smell myriads of smells surrounding us and wonder at the variety of such bounties provided to us by the Divine? Did we ever look at things around us with the curiosity and wonder of an infant when it tries to look at it for the first time. If any of us can look at that tree, this bush, that blade of grass as if we are seeing the same for the first time, its only then that the pristine beauty of the “Viraat Roop” can be comprehended. Starting with that aspect, we can adore our teacher, our mother and father, our brother and sister, as if seeing them for the first time. There is an extraordinary feeling about that: the wonder, the strangeness, the miracle of a fresh morning that has never been before, never will be. Would any of us opt to experience that freshness, that grandeur of the Formless permeating our entire being.

We have to jettison whatever knowledge has been fed to us by a large number of our so called scriptures, our spiritual teachers, mentors and guides about what lies beyond the reach of our senses. All the concepts of history, geography and dynamics of entering heaven with its countless rewards and shunning hell with its infinite punishments, are needed to be forsaken for reaching nearer to the TRUTH. I only say nearer and not near. To be nearest to the TRUTH or to really experience it, we need to give up all dogmas, all readymade solutions, all potions of half truths, all cocktails of verbose beliefs. In short, its beyond any doubt that without freedom of thought and “swadhyay”, there is no short cut to self-knowing and without self-knowing there is no meditation. Thought is always petty and shallow, however far it may wander in search of knowledge; acquiring expanding knowledge is not meditation. It flowers only in the freedom from the known and withers away in the known.

More about the omnipresence of Mother Nature and hence of THE DIVINE all around us will be discussed in the next write up. Navratras are round the corner and perhaps it would be the best time to talk about the ADI-SHAKTI MAA JAGAT JANINI JAGDAMBA and HER INFINITE MANIFESTATIONS. JAI SANATAN SANSKRITI.