It is said ‘There are no friends or enemies in life, only teachers.’ Everyone we come in contact with has something to tell us about ourselves regardless of whether we find them agreeable or disagreeable. They may be unpleasant and repulsive or glowing with immense wisdom, but in any event, they provide a setting in which we get a measure of ourselves. I come across, and quickly latch on to, many instances of warped thinking in the course of daily living which, I hasten to add, does not exclude me. Warped thinking lacks logic, depth and soundness. And there is a great deal of it to be sensed everywhere in the ordinary course of a day.
The urge to aggrandise and glorify self is a product of a warped mind and mere continuance of the self in the direction of self-actualisation which is all about attaining goals, be they spiritual enlightenment or fulfilment of one’s worldly potential. Such individuals are concerned with gaining knowledge and giving to their society. They become spiritual teachers, preachers and propagators of a religious or any other system. Rather than putting this false self aside, they exercise the urge to advance this self to greater and greater heights. In the final analysis, self-actualisation is all about attainment, not abandonment, and propagation, not dissolution, of the false self which is a misperceived pursuit, if seen only as an end in itself.
“The self must cease, through awareness of its own limitation, the falseness of its own existence. However deep, wide, and extensive it may become, the self is always limited, and until it is abandoned, the mind can never be free. The mere perception of that fact is the ending of the self, and only then is it possible for that which is the real to come into being”. J. Krishnamurti
A deceptive impression or appearance, a gripping distorted idea or belief about something, without the awareness of its falsehood, is an illusion. Living in and being driven by an illusion is tantamount to being asleep in a wakeful state.
However, the illusion can begin to translate into self-realisation when one becomes aware of this and begins to change from within to realise the veritable truth about the purpose of one’s existence. There is a release from the entrenched self-limiting and immobilising mental state. The shift in one’s thinking patterns and responses to the environment is projected from the new psychological state. There is a revolutionary swing in one’s thoughts and actions.
This revolution is what helps one destroy the cockroaches in the mind. All of a sudden what may have appeared to be meaningful becomes meaningless and valuable valueless. Spiritual dimensions open up for encounters with fresh wisdom, reality wears a new meaning and all of a sudden there are no words to express it. There is no compulsion to bring meaning to anything in life which in itself appears as an unending process. There is no compulsion to judge, because there is total mindlessness and so no right or wrong, no good or bad, no moral or immoral, everything just is. There is total abandonment. All of a sudden life’s purpose transforms to subtracting from, rather than adding to, oneself.
A self-realised person lives in a different realm. Existing in a material world of pluralities, such a person is still unaffected by it and is fully in control of all senses of pleasure and pain and is not deceived by them. There is nothing to attain or to follow as there is complete awareness of total consciousness and sense of the divine ‘Wholeness’. In this state, all illusions are cracked open like the shell of a walnut. This is awakening! This is self-realisation!
Anil Kumar
Langshott Leadership Foundation