Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero by Santosh Jha (ebook offline .TXT) 📖

Why can’t he say, ‘my love, join me, be in my arms so that together we see the beauty and exuberance of the beautiful moon and stars, come and breathe the fantastic fragrances of the rose, the different flowers that God has been so kind to bestow us with...let us pray together, thank God for such joys in our lives and beseech his blessings for making us together…allowing us the satisfaction’. Why is this mind training to pluck a beautiful rose from the Garden of the God and tuck it in the locks of our beloved? Who trained our minds to define the worth of things on the basis of our personal utility? Why does our mind understand pleasure only in possessing things for our personal utilities? Why success and status is defined in terms of how much we have available for our personal consumptions? Why do people value and respect a man who has million dollars in his pocket but knows no poetry, no music, no dance, no decency to respect fellow human beings and not even a language of respectability for others? Why is it that love and compassion in mind is considered a threat to individual success? Can’t you see Uttu, this is our faulty mental training! And then, people are full of complaints with their lives. Most part of world is faced with chaos. How sad and pathetic it is that we have been so poorly trained by this current world view that we cannot even see and recognize the Frankenstein in our lives.”

“But Monku, you miss the golden rule. If what you say is ultimate goodness and we all know goodness must be something that has inherent and all-pervading power of prevailing ultimately, why is it that large majority of people are still with this world view which you call as chaotic and unlivable for you?”

“It is not easy to explain it Uttu. There does not seem a straight and singular answer to it. I can think of multiplicity of factors and they probably happened over a space of time in the evolution of humans. You can say; there might be a mix of biological pre-disposition, neuro-chemical system of human body and socio-psychological factors in the long history of our evolution as social beings. Then there is this big conundrum called brain! There might be an answer which comes after assessing the impact of all these on intrinsic human nature. Huge initiatives are being made to unravel the mysteries of the functioning of mind and its connection with our multi-dimensional consciousness. May be, some day, we shall have the right answers as why we are what and how we are.”

“I don’t take this for an answer Monku. If we know the trouble, we should also very well know what causes this trouble so that we head for a clear cut solution.”

“You know Utta, I always feel the language which we have learnt are not good enough to express the deepest and truest of feelings and realizations. That is why; the real intellectuals prefer to keep quite. The greats have said that wisdom cannot be known, it is unknowable. Wisdom cannot be known but can only be realized. This is the core trouble of humanity. Science, information, knowledge can be passed onto generations of humanity. It is said that social habits based on contemporary knowledge get registered in gene and pass onto next generations. The core wisdom however cannot be passed. Every human born on earth needs to go through the individual travails of life to understand it. That is why, only few men and women reach the wisdom. Wisdom is personal and very individual realization. You can make the wisdom as an opening line in all the books that our children read but still it cannot be understood. Tell it to the world that love and compassion is the only wisdom and make it the opening lines of all books of knowledge of the world but still only one out of a billion will understand it. It is because, love and compassion is useless if it is just knowledge. It is useful only when it captures your heart and mind and in tune with it, your entire consciousness reflects it. It is personal realization and useless as a community knowledge. That is why, transcendental wisdom cannot be part of the eugenics. ”

“So, you see little hope. We can say that there is no practical solution in hand for us?”

“No Utta. The reality is just the reverse. There is great hope. We may say that things look so bad at this moment but when we see the positives, it is amazing how satisfying the situation seems for future.”

“How can you explain that? You already said wisdom is personal realization and not something which could be taught as a subject of knowledge like science and history.”

“You just see the positives. You know what is the best part of this chaotic world? It is the universal acceptance of goodness and wisdom across civilizations and cultures. This world we live in is so big, so diverse and so dynamic. There is huge diversity of culture, mental conditions, stages of social evolution, economic conditions, spiritual sense and religious beliefs and practices. But all religions, all cultural blocks and all humans across geographical and historical layers accept one common goodness and wisdom. All humans accept that love, compassion, peace and brotherhood are the ultimate attainable aim and ends of humanity. The trouble is the wisdom is seldom put to practice. Think it Uttu, it is such a huge satisfaction that at least all men and women accept one goodness. Can you believe that! Seven billion people on this earth subscribing to one single belief across all diversity of religion, cultures and socio-economic realities! My God! It is huge hope for humanity…at least we all know and accept what we all need to do in our lives. The only small trouble is that most of us fail to achieve this desired aims in our lives. And why do we fail? You can ask that. But the answer, which my foolish brain understands is that our world view is faulty as over the years, we have created for ourselves very wrong benchmarks of personal success and goodness which dominates our world view. And this is because; the typical male view point dominating the world view. We need to change our world view and the mental training that we impart to our new generations. And as I had told you earlier, I have great hopes on the women-centric life-view, which is slowly but assuredly emerging as a beautiful alternative to the prevalent male world order.”

“Is that all about your positives? Are there more good news for us?”

“Yes, there are more positives, if you accept patience as a big virtue.”

“I still have to live a few decades more and I think I can afford some patience. Do tell me what are they?”

“Not only is there a singularity at the idea level about ultimate goodness and virtue of humanity; you will be amazed that there is concurrence even in practice, which is where we think most men and women fail. If you take a survey of old people, who have led a comfortable life or a luxurious life, you would find them closer to this goodness in actual practice. One such person, who happens to be a close relative of mine, had told me. He was then above 65 years of age. He said, ‘I regret that I could not love my own son well but I am able to compensate it with my love and affection for my grandson. When my son was a kid, I was then young and my own senses were also young demanding too much attention and time. I was busy making money, enjoying sex, indulging in habits, making merry with my friends and peer group and seeing the world. I could find little time and could devote very little attention to my son’s emotional and other needs. Now when I am old, my senses do not give me the same kick and my doctor tells me not to indulge them, I have the time and mental state to see and derive pleasure from the growing up of my grandson. Now I realize what gold I missed and wasted all throughout my life foolishly collecting pebbles. The love, the satisfaction and the joy that my grandchild gives me is my real asset. But I have to run after him to be with him always and this is really tiring. This little bastard is a real tornado’. He then said the golden word, ‘Now I understand why interest earned is always better than the principal amount acquired. You have to toil hard and waste your precious time and energy earning it but interest on the principal is something you get without making any effort and you have the time and energy as well as the mental state to enjoy the interest’.

“You mean to say that we all understand wisdom only when we grow old enough to see our graves in front of us. What is the positive about that? I am a banker and I appreciate the theory on principal and interest as we are trained to keep an eye primarily on interest earned. Still, I see only negatives. If we are such fools that we cannot see something so important when we have time and energy and what we finally do when we approach the end of it, then what good I can take of that?”

“Uttu dear, don’t see things from a banker’s perspective. The interest earned no doubt sounds a better thing but you know it better that there cannot be an interest gained if you do not have a principal amount. The principal has to come first and then only an interest becomes eligible. Earning a principal in life to gain interest later is not the negative thing. It is a great positive. Everyone has to earn his principal. The negative is that we have a world today, where creating a principal has become such a tough and humungous physical and mental exercise that it squeezes any possibility of enjoyment of leisure. We humans must have a system in place in contemporary world where earning a living should not take away everything from youthful period of life. Secondly, the world view that we have must also throw away such competitive and stupid benchmarks of success and goodness of life that makes us toil more than what is necessary for creating a principal amount for our lives. Anyway, let us not miss the real issue. I was talking about the real positives which are there, the silver lining in the dark cloud.”

“Yes Monku, tell me the final thing. I am very happy and eager that we still have a hope. If there is a positive, at least I will have peace of mind that Ashu would someday become a gentleman…come on, give it to me!”

“You can even think of being successful in changing the world view of rest of the world but not Ashu. I think he will be here any moment and it is better we wrap up this talk quickly. Sometimes, the virtue is in patience. We need to take into account that all good things take time to mature. Hope is also a close cousin of patience. The real positive is that ultimate and universal human wisdom is a very simple reality; very much apprehensible and easily executable. You don’t need a doctorate degree for it. Even an illiterate person can handle it well. The fact that I wish to tell you is that we have practical evidence that when people have their senses stabilized, poised and receptive in the long journey of life, they are in better position to understand and accept the wisdom. It is therefore a big positive that wisdom is very much attainable by our senses which are always referred to as the