A small boy accompanied
by his father is on a hiking trip. As they approach a cliff, the boy suddenly
trips a stone and falls down and is hurt. He shouts, ‘Ahh!’ Out of nowhere the
same words are heard, ‘Ahh!’ The boy is perplexed, he shouts, ‘Who is it?’ Back
come the same words, ‘Who is it?’ The boy is angry, he shouts, ‘You fool!’ The
voice responds in the same words, ‘You fool!’ The father who is witnessing this
tells his son, that it is his own echo that he is hearing. He asks his son, to
say, ‘I love you!’ The boy does so and back comes, ‘I love you!’ The boy is
surprised at this marvelous phenomenon of echo. The father explains, ‘That’s
life in real, what you give out will always return to you in same measure, when
you give out hate, anger, jealousy, you will be returned with same. When you
give out love, joy, enthusiasm you will experience the world to be a beautiful
place.’
The above story reminds
me of Jesus’ words in the New Testament, “Do unto others what you would have
them do unto you.” That verse is known as the golden verse. It almost sums up
the message of all religious texts and teachings. When I start treating others
as I treat myself, the world will be a better place. Imagine everyone living
with that philosophy! Won’t we experience Utopian dream on this earth! This
brings to the question why do human beings fail to follow this? Why do I hate
others, have jealousy for someone or abuse and mistreat somebody? Is it not
because of the illusion of Dualism? In simple words, our minds trick us into
telling that the other person is different from me. It will go on to add
physical evidences of color, caste, creed, culture, habits and so on and so
forth. At physical level this may seem to be true. But truth many times eludes
us when our perspective is limited to the physical. Let’s take the example of
the horizon where you see the sky kissing the earth. Is it really so? When you
go further the horizon runs farther. If you are travelling in the desert, you
may notice a place of cool water few feet away from you, but as you go near you
know it’s a mirage! So what I am advocating here is that we should not limit
our perspective in life to the physical but graduate to the meta-physical, the
spiritual to see the truth of life.
At the spiritual level
we know that we come from the same source we all dearly refer to as God. God
created this universe and everything in it, so the universe is not separate
entity from God, nor are human beings who are the created ones! When you know
that we all come from the same source and identify each other as brothers and
sisters, we understand that harming anyone is, harming ourselves and loving
others is, loving ourselves. Like the story above, it echoes back to us. What I
do unto others comes back to me. I am reminded of another quote by Rabbi
Hillel, he said, “Do not unto others what is hateful to thyself this is the
whole of Torah the rest is commentary.”
In the world of today,
we are so busy in segregating things, people, communities, nations. Our minds
make us believe that the differences we see at the physical level should be the
basis on which we separate one from the other. So we distinguish between the rich and poor, the fair and the dark
skinned, the intelligent from the average, the male child from the female, one
race from the other, one nation from another and the list is endless. We
separate God as a different being than we are. We put him in the holy of holies
and fear to approach his presence. We have religious leaders who make a fortune
in making us feel miserable about how separate we are from God and other fellow
beings because they do not follow our religion or sects. What’s the result? We
have hate, jealousy, wars, crimes, acts of terrorism all done all in the name
of religion! At the time of this writing India is shocked by a father killing
his own infant daughter because she was a born a girl and not a boy! Aren’t we
fooling ourselves?
Some may object to my
proposition by saying that this is blasphemy. We do need dualism when we
separate the good from the bad, the evil form the righteous, the sinners from
the holy and God from the human. My question is, are we by separating the above
entities really hitting at the root of the problem or just hacking at the
leaves? Why do people exist whom we are compelled to label as bad, evil,
unrighteous and so on and so forth? Is it not because the crimes that these
people committed were because of the illusion of duality? I mistreat others and
commit crimes of hate because I am bent on believing that in some way he or she
is separate from me and by harming him or her, I will be promoted in my
ulterior motives. Is this not an illusion? Many of us regrettably realize of
late that by harming others we have harmed ourselves.
So finally friends, it
is time that we understand the importance of adhering to Advaita or
Non-dualism. I am not advocating a religious philosophy. But being a student of
philosophy and religion, I am using this philosophy to understand the truth.
For ‘you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ Let us be in
the driver’s seat and not run by the whims and fancies of our mind. Let us go
beyond dualism and our habits and culture of segregation to understand the
basic inherent unity in all. Dear God, ‘Lead us from darkness to light, from
untruth to truth, from death to eternal life and from dualism to non-dualism!
