Awareness is the key to being self-directed, centered, and free in every aspect of our lives. This article is about how to live life more attentively, mindfully, and meditatively, with love, caring and consciousness.
But we live a life of expectation. We want everything to happen as per our expectation. This is real misery.
If your expectations are fulfilled a hundred percent, you will be living as if you are in the past, not in the future. You come home and you expect your wife to say something and she does and you expected your child to behave in a certain way and the child does. Just think, you will be constantly in boredom. Nothing will happen, everything will be just a repetition, as if you are seeing something which you have seen before, hearing something which you have heard before. You will continuously see that it is a repetition of something, and repetition can never be satisfying. The new novel, the original, is needed.
So if your expectations are fulfilled you will remain completely unfulfilled. And if your expectations are not fulfilled then you feel frustrated. Then you feel constantly as if you propose and God goes on disposing, you feel that God is the enemy, you feel as if everybody is against you and everybody is working against you. Your expectations are never fulfilled, you feel frustrated.
Just meditate upon your expectations: if they are fulfilled you will feel bored, if they are not fulfilled you will feel cheated, as if a conspiracy is going on against you, as if the whole existence is conspiring against you. You will feel exploited, you will feel rejected, you will not be able to feel at home. And the whole problem arises because you expect.
Don’t go ahead into the future. Drop expectations.
Once you drop expectations you have learned how to live. Then everything that happens fulfills you – whatsoever it is. For one thing, you never feel frustrated because in the first place you never expected, so frustration is impossible. Frustration is a shadow of expectation. With expectation dropped, frustration drops on its own accord.
Once expectations are not there you are free – to move into the unknown and accept the unknown, whatsoever it brings, and to accept it with deep gratitude. Complaints disappear, grumbling disappears. Whatsoever the situation, you always feel accepted, at home. Nobody is against you; existence is not a conspiracy against you. It is your home.
The second thing: then everything happens unexpectedly, everything becomes new. It brings a freshness to your life; a fresh breeze is continuously blowing and it does not allow dust to gather on you. Your doors and your windows are open; in comes sunshine, in comes the breeze, in comes the fragrance of the flowers – and everything is unexpected. You have never asked for it, and existence goes on showering on you. One feels godliness is.
The proposition “God is” is not a proposition; it is a statement of someone who has lived un-expectingly, without any expectations; who has lived in wonder. God is not a logical hypothesis; it is an exclamation of joy. It is just like “Aha!” And it doesn’t mean anything more, it simply means, “Aha!” – so beautiful, so wonderful, so new, so novel, and beyond anything that you could have dreamt. Yes, life is more adventurous than any adventure that you can imagine. And life is pregnant, always pregnant, with the unknown.
I will like to start with small story:
Cell was excited and was beaming with life. He has just got life out of cell division in an embryo. Cell formation was at peak. Embryo was growing in size in cells exponentially. Sooner organ formation would start. All cells were waiting and discussing what they wanted to become. One cell said, “He wants to become a heart cell because the heart is so important that if it fails death occurs”. One said, “He wants to become a liver cell because liver is the factory of the body”. One said, He wants to become bone marrow because bone marrow produces blood which is necessary for oxygen transportation which is necessary for life. Everybody was having their opinion and wish.
This cell affirmed that he wants to become a brain cell because it controls everything in the body. One older cell laughed and said, It’s not in our hand to match our wish with the wish of the Lord. We don’t even know which part of the embryo will turn into head end and which will become tail end. If you come in the head end area you may become a brain cell but if you come in the tail end area you may become anything like intestine, kidney etc. but not brain cells. And the same thing happened. The cell which wanted to become a brain cell fell in the tail end area. Now he can never become a brain cell. He was crying, criticizing and complaining. But there was nobody to pay heed to his words. He thought that most probably he will become intestinal cell but he does not like digestion, absorption and excretion. He was very depressed and sad.
Life is very unpredictable. Instead he found himself in a kidney. He didn’t like it either. He was sitting sad and silently. One older cell asked him, “What is the problem and why are you not working?” The cell started sobbing and said that he does not like filtration and micturition and he wanted to become a brain cell. Why did you want to become a brain cell? Because it is the head of all, the cell replied. My dear, it is not head, it’s in head. Also this misconception is in your head. How long will the brain survive if the intestine does not digest and absorb the glucose, liver does not maintain glucose level or kidney does not maintain mineral balance? It can not survive without them. So nobody is – head or nobody is superior or inferior. We all are like a team, each one has been given a specific job to carry out. It’s not in our control which work we will get. But one thing is in our control that how we give our best. Moreover we can add qualities of what we desire to become or do. You wanted to become a brain cell so at the quality of consciousness and coordination in your work. The cell smiled and started working.
The universe is a living body, an organic unity. In it, nothing is isolated, all is connected. Whatever is far away is connected to that which is near; nothing is separate.
If nothing is separate then the question is how to work with others as a team without forgetting our goal. Great harmony is needed.
If we understand how science and religion can work in coordination, as a team. It will be easy for us to create harmony within us.
Science is based on doubt: doubt is its method, its climate, it’s very soul. Science cannot exist without doubt. It is only through questioning, and constant questioning, that science comes to know about the facts of existence. Its world of enquiry is objective.
The object cannot be trusted. The object is dead. You have to penetrate the object with as many questions and doubts as possible; only then will the object reveal its mysteries.
Religion, on the contrary, is trust. Religion’s method is trust. Trust is its climate, its philosophy, its very being, because religion is not concerned with objects but with your own subjectivity. The journey of science is outwards, the journey of religion is inwards. Science means going outward, religion means going inward; their directions are diametrically opposite. Although they are diametrically opposite they are complementary too, as all opposites always are.
There is a harmony between the opposites. The inner and the outer are not enemies, they are in utter coordination. The body and the soul are not enemies, they befriend each other; in fact they cannot exist separately, they can exist only in a togetherness. Man and woman, darkness and light, summer and winter, positive and negative – they are all together, although they are opposites. But they are not enemies, this has to be understood: opposites and yet complementaries … and there is utter harmony in existence.
It is like inhalation and exhalation: you breathe in, you breathe out. When you breathe in it is one process, the breath goes inwards; when you breathe out it is just the opposite process, the breath goes outwards, but it is the same breath. Inhalation and exhalation are two aspects of the same phenomenon, opposites and yet complementary; so are religion and science, so are doubt and trust.
Because it has not been understood in the past a great calamity has happened to humanity, the greatest calamity, I call it – the calamity that has kept religion and science not only separate but inimical. In the past we have not been able to bring a synthesis between science and religion.
Because of that incapability the world has become split and the man who is trained in science becomes anti-religious; and vice versa, the person who moves into the world of religion becomes anti-scientific. This need not happen, this should not happen.
If you are really. intelligent you will be able to coordinate between these opposites. You will be able to bring a harmony between these two, doubt and trust, and then arises the real total human being.
What do I mean when I say a great harmony has to be achieved? I mean that when you are moving outwards, use doubt as your methodology, trust doubt when you are moving outwards. When you are enquiring into the world of objects trust doubt. Doubt is beautiful, immensely beautiful. And when you are moving inwards put your doubt aside: trust trust. And the man who can manage this I call a really intelligent person.
It is like you are seeing me, you are seeing me through your eyes, but you are also listening to me, you are listening to me through your ears. The ears cannot see and the eyes cannot hear, but still there is a tremendous coordination happening in you: you know you are hearing the same person that you are seeing. This is intelligence, this coordination is intelligence. Deep down a synthesis is happening constantly. The ears are pouring one information, the eyes are pouring another information; both are unrelated – as far as ears and eyes are concerned, both are unrelated – but your intelligence is creating a relationship between them: you are hearing the same person you are seeing.
Exactly in the same way, doubt cannot know the subject and trust cannot know the object. Doubt can know the object, trust can know the subject; and intelligence is when both pour their information into one pool and truth is known in both its aspects, as inner, as outer.
That is the real religion humanity needs now – or, the real science – which will not divide man and which will not cripple man. Up to now, hitherto, man has been crippled.
If you trust you forget the language of doubt. The society becomes unscientific, becomes incapable of tackling so many problems that man has to encounter, becomes poor, impoverished, ill, ugly. If you start only using doubt the society becomes better, scientifically better, technologically better, affluent, but the inner world simply is forgotten. Then you don’t have a soul; inwards you remain fast asleep. In both ways man remains lopsided. In both ways man remains partial and cannot become total.
The religions of the past have failed in creating a total man. And so has been the case with modern science; modern science has also failed in creating the total man. And the total man is the need because only the total man can be – contented, only the total man can be richer inwards, outwards.
Only the total man can be really in a celebration – his body satisfied, his soul satisfied, his senses contented, his spirit contented.
Tags: Doubt Organic Unity Science And Religion Self Directed Trust
