Practise – In Gita Verse 6.37 Arjuna said: O Kṛṣṇa, what is the destination of the unsuccessful transcendentalist, who in the beginning takes to the process of self-realisation with faith but who later desists due to worldly-mindedness and thus does not attain perfection in mysticism?
When Arjuna asked Krishna – what is the destination of the unsuccessful transcendentalist – he wanted confirmation to move into the unknown, unknowable. He is trembling with the fear that if I will leave the known and move into the unknown, unknowable and if I will not reach there then what?
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 1.43, a blog I wrote on fear. The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears.
True life is always moving from the known into the unknown. And the crossing point from the known to the unknown is what insecurity is all about. The moment you cross the boundary you feel insecure. With the secure, with the familiar, you are bored; you start becoming dull. With the insecure, with the unknown, the uncharted, you feel ecstatic, beautiful, again a child – again those eyes of wonder, again that heart which can feel the awe of things is there.
You would like to know these beautiful spaces with security, but in the very nature of things that is not possible. Nothing can be done about it. If you want beautiful spaces you have to start loving insecurity. And then a miracle happens: if you can love insecurity, its insecureness disappears. If you know insecurity contains love, beauty, ecstasy, truth, God, then where is the insecurity?
Insecurity exists in your fear of the unknown, of the true, because you have lived in lies for so long – you have lived in lies for centuries. Your collective unconscious is full of lies, and it goes on projecting those lies on the screen of the mind. Everybody has lived in fear because all the religions have exploited the natural instinct of fear in man.
Fear needs Understanding and Accepting the Insecurities of Life: Fear is natural! But don’t get caught by it. Leave it aside. Move in spite of it. Always remember: the difference between a courageous man and a coward is not that the courageous man has no fear and the coward has fear – no. That is not the difference. Both have fear! in the same proportion. Then where is the difference? The difference is that the courageous man goes in spite of the fear, and the coward stops because of the fear. Both have fears!
If you can find a courageous man who has no fear, then how will you call him courageous? He will be a machine, not a man. Only machines don’t have fear. But you don’t call machines courageous. How can you call a machine courageous? Courage simply means that something is happening in spite of the fear. The fear is there, the trembling is there, but it is not stopping you, you are not being blocked by it. You use it as a stepping-stone. Shaking, trembling, but still you go into the unknown.
Both possibilities exist in every human being! Fear and courage. All will depend on which you choose between the two. Never choose fear. It cripples. It paralyses. It destroys you without giving you a chance of resurrection. Courage will also destroy you, but that destruction is very creative and it will give you rebirth.
Fear and courage, both destroy – but fear simply destroys. The seed simply goes rotten. When you sow the seed of courage in the soil, then too it dies – but it doesn’t go rotten. It dies…it dies into a new phenomenon. A sprout comes up.
Courage will kill you as much as fear, but fear will simply kill you without giving you a new life. Courage will give you a new life. Choose courage – always choose courage.
If we understand the fear and choose courage then it will be very easy for us to practise any path to move towards ourselves, what Krishna says. Like Arjuna we also may have all the questions but irrespective of the question we choose to practise.
Tags: Practise
