Monday, October 22, 2007

Immortality

We live a life of 50 or 70 yrs. but we never realize that we don’t really live it, the way it should be. Have you ever realized that most of the times you are in the state of anxiousness in life, sometimes this anxiousness is at a very gross level but most of the time it is very subtle. We don’t even know that we are living in a constant state of anxiousness… look at some examples, you get up from the bed and suddenly all the day’s work start appearing in your mind, you see the clock and you realize you don’t have sufficient time to relax on bed today, you get ready quickly for your work and drive fast and realize that there is heavy traffic and you might get late… this continues till the time you crash into bed at night… but if you pick up each act, each moment of your active day, it was filled with some anxiousness… have you ever realized what leads to this non-relaxing and ever anxious state. Some inherent fears, yes, at the root level we all have some very subtle fears which we pick up all the times mostly sub-consciously.

If you go deeper in your fears and in your anxious state, you will realize that all your fears comes from the fact, that you are mortal, you are impermanent, the moment you get this life, you start going towards your death. As if life the beginning and death is the end. At the sub conscious level this feeling and reality of mortality is engraved on your being and all the time you strive for immortality. You read newspaper and see the news of death, you see TV, again you see death, on the highway you see numerous accidents. You just keep on picking this message, this reality all the time.

All your growth in medical science, growth in economy, materialism, securities, relationships, everything is an effort to achieve immortality… since we also know at the deepest level that no matter what, all of us will die, so we try to adopt various means to protect and secure ourselves , just not our physical self but our non-physical self as well. We want to lead a purposeful life, we want to be affiliated with a cause or with an institution which is higher than our individual self. We want to leave some legacies, big monuments around, so that even if physically we die, but at least in “thoughts of the world” we live forever. We write books, build monuments, create businesses, try to become part of a big political movements and do so many things… we don’t even realize that why we are doing all this, and interestingly we keep on doing this throughout our lives, for all of 50-70-100 yrs… even in our sub-conscious mind, we are aware of our mortality and we somehow want to be immortal, no matter if that immortality is of our name, we call this fame.

This process is on throughout our lives… we become violent, we kill others in the name of religion, justice and so on… reason is, the moment we become aware of our own mortality, we get violent. Killing the other or being violent with other, make us feel superior and in some senses less mortal, at least in that particular moment. Have you even seen a soldier killing a so called “enemy”. After the murder, he gets the feeling that he has been able to survive, he is more immortal then the other coz he killed the other, have you ever observed, you are sitting in your room and suddenly you see a cockroach. The poor cockroach is not doing anything to you, he can’t actually o any harm to you, but still you get fear, and under that fear you get up and kill the cockroach, you just feel at a very sub-conscious level, a little immortal. Killing the other gives you the feeling of immortality, though very temporarily, but you definitely enjoy that. And the more you get that feeling, the more you enjoy it… this is one of the biggest reasons of all violence. This happens at a very subtle level and coz we don’t really live an aware life, we don’t realize it.

Also, normally you are against anybody who is non conformist to your belief, your god, your value system etc. and when this opposition touches its peak, you become physically violent. Here also the genesis is, you want to prove that your god, your ideology is superior then the other, coz if you are able to prove this then again you are leading a purposeful life, and doing great work for your religious organization, your affiliation grows and you get a feeling of immortality beyond the physical self or for the non-physical self.

In the true sense, the moment you accept life and death as one, and you accept death at not the end of life, but beginning of sometime more beautiful… you start loosing your affiliations, you start loosing your mad rush, your so called purpose of life. Immediately you become very empty, nothing to do, nothing to think, no goal. And this state is utterly dangerous for your SELF, for your EGO, for your MIND because it is the death of your SELF, EGO, your MIND, and hence the whole drama, the whole illusion starts. Imagine a world, a life, where you don’t have to go anywhere, you have no purpose, you just have to witness every happening around you… the mere thought of this kind of life style will sound utterly boring and useless to your minds. In your unawareness, by way of your social conditioning, you have been taught that death is the end but you don’t want to die, you want to enjoy all illusionary, impermanent riches of life. You just want to forget death and that’s how at your sub-conscious level this whole drama starts. And once you get into this vicious cycle, it’s very hard to break it. Every year, millions of people die in religious, political and economic wars and they feel proud in that, they feel as if their life has been used for a good cause. Their very want for immortality becomes the cause of their death.

One who realize and accept both life and death as part of the same process, one who doesn’t crave for any kind of immortality, one who realized the impermanence of every phenomenon… gets librated and gets out of this vicious cycle. For him life is not the start and death is not the end. He becomes immortal in true senses.

Love to all sentient beings.

No comments: