On the road to freedom

On the road to freedom

March 2008

By Suma Varughese

Entry into spirituality gives us all the answers to life’s puzzles. and once we know the answers, we climb to a more and more overarching trajectory that changes our lives immeasurably To an outsider such radical changes would seem amazing, unprecedented. How can people suddenly change themselves? And of course, there is more. Alcoholics giving up alcohol, smokers renouncing cigarettes, party-hearty socialites dropping anchor inwards, reclusive introverts embracing humanity, selfish careerists turning to social work, sybarites becoming vegans and teetotallers, atheists turning lovers of God – the paradigm shifts are endless. And the source is one, though its manifestations are diverse: a movement into spirit. The space we move into thereafter is sacred, consecrated. It is a zone of powerful magic, of transformation. Life in SpiritAll seekers have a ‘before spirituality’ and ‘after spirituality’ era. No matter how blessed the before spirituality era, it is bound to have had its confusions and restrictions. The simple truth is that life without spirit does not work. Nothing makes sense. Questions abound. What could be the reason for incarnation? And where do we go thereafter? And why is life so full of injustice? What do we do with feelings? How can we attain happiness if events explode like shrapnel around us, drowning us in confrontations, failures, relationship breakdowns, illnesses, and so on? Why do some people’s lives work and others’ not? What control do we have over life? Can one ever hope to understand life?

Only entry into spirituality gives us access to these answers. No wonder the feeling often is of having groped around in the dark wilderness, trying to find a way, and then bursting out into a glorious clearing, where everything becomes clear, and we know where we are going and why. In the Briharidanayaka Upanishads, Gargi asks the sage Yajnavalkya, “What is it that knowing which everything is known?” The answer is Brahman, the Vedantic source of existence. It is this Brahman to whom spirituality gives access, and it is through knowing the answers that we seem to climb into a more and more overarching trajectory. Our lives are immeasurably changed, and so are our lifestyles. While the rest of the issue maps the changes in lifestyles, here we will look at the changes that the search germinates within us. How and when we are led into spirit is an intensely individual process. No two people have the same experience. For Dr Aminuddin Khan, a Hyderabad-based writer and trainer, the exposure came early. He says, “I don’t recall a day, or a phase in my life, when I decided to ‘get on the path’. But when I was five or six years old, a year or two before my father died, I was on the front verandah of the house in which we lived, looking across a section of the rain-drenched garden. The sun had come out, the fountain was playing in the oval pond, koels were calling in the mango grove close by, and green bee-eaters were flying around in rabbles. I suddenly felt that what I was observing all around me and I, the observer, were one! It was an uncanny experience, but an exceedingly exciting one. It made me happy. But I did not want to share it with anybody, not even my English governess. “Today, 70 years later, the aftereffect of that experience is still with me. It never left me.” Not everyone, of course, gets the answers right away. Usually, it is a gradual awakening once they enter into the holistic sphere. Shimla-based life skills trainer, Chitra Jha, says, “In 1997, I discovered Linda Goodman’s Star Signs. That was the turning point. One book led to another, and by 1999, I could not read any other kind of books.” There is a quickening of the pulse that takes place when we move into the holistic sphere, as if our inner compass is finally showing north. We somehow know that this is the ‘truth’ and in time, other insights and aspects of the truth reveal themselves. There is truly nothing more thrilling than obtaining an insight, fitting it into the insights one already has, and finding that it has created a larger truth. Life becomes akin to a kaleidoscope; with every shake a new picture appears, that takes the old forward harmoniously. This fluidity of truth effectively puts to flight all complacency or rigidity. We recognise that we cannot know the truth because it keeps changing. All convictions and world views are conditional, only for the moment. We are travelling, moving, no longer drifting aimlessly or standing in one spot. We are on a treasure hunt, and life is both exciting and challenging. What it is not is boring! And so the changes begin. Inner changeWhat are these changes? The first is to recognise that there is more to life than the material one constructed by our senses. There is a deeper source that creates these sensory and material objects, and it is both within us, enabling us to create our life’s circumstances, and around us, responsible for the grand panorama of the universe. We see through the myth that Newton and Descartes created and science assiduously cultivated, that we live in a material, fragmentary world, and that creation is a random accident. Simultaneously we become aware that interconnection is the nature of the real world, and that we are all one. Says Aekta Kapoor, “I am very conscious of animals and plants. I call up the trees people if I catch someone cutting trees in my neighbourhood, very unlike my old self, who was so wrapped up in herself! I see everything as connected, as a whole.” This is perhaps the fulcrum of the change in world view that colours all our perceptions. We are not alone in the world. The universe is friendly. There is a meaning and purpose to existence. There is a Creator. It may not be the superman in heaven we were led to believe but a force, a power, a friendly and benevolent energy, seems to exist. Slowly, the scales fall from our eyes. The 300-year-old illusion of living in a material world, which is the source of modern civilisation, falls apart like a house of cards. None of it was true, after all. The realisation is momentous, and may take many of us years to process it. We re-assess all the systems based on separation. Allopathy, based on destroying the bacteria and virus which are seen as the sources of ill-health, reveals itself as amazingly simplistic. It takes no cognizance of the importance of food, or the mind or the spirit. It takes away all power from the individual, and vests it in the God-like authority of the doctor. The very basis of modern culture, external conquest, reveals itself to be deeply faulty. Conquest of nature, conquest of nations, conquest of the poor by the rich, all have created a world rife with suffering, injustice, disease and scarcity. Such a world is not inevitable. It is the creation of the materialistic world view. A new kind of world based on oneness is possible and intensely desirable. It is this awareness that has created the New Age movement. For us Indians, this discovery is deeply gratifying because we discover that this truth has existed all along in this country, enshrined in the Vedas. We discover too that oneness is the basis of all our traditional systems from ayurveda to vaastu to arts and music. Our culture is the prototype for tomorrow’s world culture. For us Indians, entry into the spiritual domain unfolds a great love for and pride in this country. Bond with DivinityThe second and related change is building a bond with divinity. I used to be an agnostic until I had a spiritual awakening that enabled me to realise that there was a design to creation, which means there was a designer. There is perhaps little that is more life-giving and satisfying, than rebuilding one’s lost connection with God. What a source of strength and faith opens up for us when we acknowledge there is God, recognise his presence in the circumstances of our lives, and communicate with Him. Say Dinaz Dastur, “My journey started when I turned to God! It began gradually, and now it’s become an insatiable need to spend time with Him. I regularly visit the fire-temple for a good amount of time. I recite my daily prayers, and attune myself to Him totally. Now it’s become a habit that I just can’t do without. Powerful insights pour into me whilst in attunement with Him, and I experience His power, warmth and vibration flow into every cell of my being, soothing and calming me.” It is through this awareness of a Higher Power, that we discern that we are on a path. Suddenly, things come to us when we want them to. Books drop into our laps, people who need to teach us just what we are looking for come into our lives, and coincidences abound. We are no longer alone. This Higher Power seems to have joined with us, or is it that we have joined with It? We get the comforting sense of being watched over and guided. Says Anita Vasudeva, “I know there is God / Energy / call it what you will. I don’t even question it. For me God is Being and Not Being and Everything.

I just think if I can live this fully with a truth in my heart, and also find quiet time to reach a stillness – that is the practice I need to follow.” And somewhere we recognise that this momentous journey that we seem to have embarked upon without quite realising it, is at one and the same time, about changing ourselves, about discovering the truth, and about going ever deeper into knowledge of God. Rajaque Rehman, a former journalist who is today fully dedicated to teaching Art of Living courses, says, “Though I have always been a devout person, my relationship with God was impersonal. Now it has become so personal that it’s almost impossible to see a separation between me and God. "