Do we know anything that we do not know? Do we realize something
that is not already in us? Does this concept called ‘search’ reveal something
other than already you have in you? How can you search for a pen, which you
have misplaced in your study room, if you have never possessed that pen? What
is this fuss all about searching for the unknown or god? If it is unknown then
it remains unknown. How do you realize the unknown when it manifests as known
if you do not have any idea about this unknown? You are a searcher. You have
been searching for Shiva. You go to Mount Kailash, you go to Gangotri,
Mansarovar, Rudraprayag and many places where you believe Shiva resides. But
you look for a Shiva who looks like the one that you have seen either in calendars
or temple idols, books or television serials. Shiva comes to you perhaps in the
form of a tea stall boy. But you do not recognize him because you don’t have a
Shiva in you in the form of a tea stall boy. That is why the wisest of the
wise, Yudhishtira could not recognize Shiva when he came in the form of a
Chandala before him. Even Yudhistira was expecting Shiva to be like the one in
a calendar of his times. Simple thing, you don’t realize or recognize or learn
or understand anything or anybody, if that is not already in you. I am not
telling anything new because there is nothing new in this world. What I am
telling you is what is already in me. I may be seeing in perspective because
something might have helped me to see it in perspective. Interestingly, even
that something is known to me.
Let me take a simple example. While going for a morning walk
in a South Kolkata park, I happened to see a piece of poster that was stuck on
a round pillar. From the place where I was currently standing or walking I
could see only a shiny black patch and a faint pink that reminded me of the arm
of a woman. But within the fraction of a second I recognized that it is the
poster of the recently released movie, Dhoom 3. Why? I did not see Amir Khan,
Katrina Kaif, Abhishek Bacchan or Uday Chopra in that piece of poster because
it was not visible to me from where I was approaching. What I saw was simply a
shiny black patch and something resembled the arm of a woman. The immediate
recognition of it as a Dhoom 3 poster comes from my previous knowledge about
it. I have seen this poster thousand times during last one or two months. I
have been visually assaulted by the presence of these four figures with their comically
burning pieces of body and clothing. This is knowledge is already in me. I was
not searching for a poster in that street. But that piece of shiny black patch
made me aware that it was a poster that I already knew. Suppose, if I did not know
anything about Dhoom 3, what could I have noticed in that? Could I have even
noticed that? Out of the many pieces of posters stuck on the pillar why only my
eyes caught the sight of Dhoom 3? The answer is simple. I knew about it. The
piece of poster was just a clue to make my own conclusions. We always read
about Vivekananda becoming enlightened by the touch of Shri Ramakrishna’s
thumb. This enlightenment of Vivekananda is all about the realization of all
what he had already known. When he was working towards it, he did not know he
had it in him. Ramakrishna’s touch was a clue, a shocking clue. Same is the
case of Buddha or Jesus, or Jiddu Krishnamurty or U.G.Krishnamurty. Even this
is the case of Ramana Maharshi. They all understood what they already knew.
Michael Angelo, the Renaissance artist, once said that he
does not sculpt anything. He chipped away all the unwanted particles from a
bloke of marble so that the embedded sculpture is revealed. As a gifted artist,
Michael Angelo knew and even saw the sculpture in a marble bloke. He just
chipped away the things that did not belong to the sculptural form. This is the
case with anybody; artists or scientists or common man. We hear a lot of voices
and noises. But we don’t understand the music in it. A musician understands it because
that music is already in him. Otherwise how does a blind musician create a
symphony on Autumn or Spring? How does a blind musician sing of the beauties of
the world, more convincingly than a person who has eyes? How does a painter
paint images that do not exist in the world, if those images are not in him
already? Picasso makes a bull head out of a cycle saddle and a handle bar. If,
as a Spaniard, he does not have any clue about bulls or bull fighting, the national
sport of Spain, how could he make a combination out of two machine parts and
make the impression of a bull? The bull is already in him. So is the gorilla
mother and the goat made out of a bamboo basket. There is a famous story about the
artist, Benode Behari Mukherjee, who turned blind towards the middle age of his
life. He and his senior, Nandalal Bose did not share a cordial relationship.
But when Benode Behari Mukherjee heard that even in his old age Nandalal was
painting, he wanted to ‘see’ those painting. When Bose came to know about it,
he was baffled. How could a blind man ‘see’ his paintings? Someone took
Mukherjee to Bose’s studio where he asked someone to run his fingers through
the contours of Bose’s painting. At some point Mukherjee said to Bose that he
could have used a different colour there. Had Mukherjee not known painting in
him or realized it in his mind already, how could he have made such a
suggestion?
I feel pity about people who are in search of the unknown as
I understand that none realizes anything if it is not in him already. If it is
not in you, it is not going to manifest. If it is in you, then you need not
search at all. Whether you want it or not it is going to manifest in one or the
other form the way the Dhoom 3 poster manifested before me. I was not searching
for a Dhoom 3 poster in Kolkata. Perhaps, that would have been the remotest
thing that I could do in a city like this where I have come for a different
purpose. But as Dhoom 3 is in me, it manifests before me without my search.
Same is the case with the so called God. He/she is already in you. If he is not
there, let me tell you, you are not going to realize him/her. But is that a
problem? That is not a problem at all. It is not necessary that people realize
things. Why should we try to learn singing, when we do not have any talent in
singing? However, you try you don’t become a singer because the ability to sing
is not in you. You are wasting your time if you try to sing. If you are not a
scientist, you cannot do what a scientist do. You may read a few scientific journals
and try to grapple with the ideas expressed there. You may even think that you
have understood and now you could be a scientist of your own right. But what is
the use? Could you invent a radio or television which has already been
invented? Could you bring out the traits of a creature behaviour which has
already been explored? This is the same case with the so called spirituality.
You are not going to realize anything if it is not in you. Sitting in various
postures of meditation is a waste of time. It will give you physical inertia or
exercise, it is not going to reveal you anything because you do not know.
What you could cherish in your life is silence. Perhaps, in
silence, the way Michael Angelo had seen sculptures in marble blokes, in the
marble bloke of your mind you may see things which you already know but fail to
recognize. But you cannot be silent unless and until you have it in you. Give
it a try is the worst kind of advice that anybody could give to anybody else.
If you try you don’t get it. If you don’t try and if you have it already it
will come out. What you have is like a flow. A flow cannot be barred. If it is
barred it will come out somehow. You cannot create a flow because you do not
have a stream in you. If you have a stream it is bound to flow. I am not asking
you to become lethargic and non-doers. That does not help in anyway. All the
biological organisms are bound to function within a pre-planned flow. We as
biological beings actually do everything possible to prevent this pre-planned
flow. After preventing it, we try to find out why it is not flowing. So what we
need is a tremendous amount of de-conditioning. We need to destroy ourselves in
order to realise the real potentials. The irony is even this destruction is
natural. You don’t need to do anything. You just need to do you work with
complete involvement, call it love or sincerity. When you do it, you flow. If
your work is disturbing you, then understand, you are creating hurdles for your
flow. If you are enjoying, then you are flowing. Things will happen to you. You
just need to be. Do not do anything. Don’t ever think of praying or meditating.
Nothing is going to come through praying or meditation. You just need to be in
silence. Then silence starts speaking and that is the best form of conversation
you can ever have in your life. And through this conversation you realize
things in you. If you have it, you will have it and you don’t have it, please
do not even try.
I will finish this self-conversation with one more reference
to something that we all know; food. We all like to eat food. I have always
felt that eating food for enjoyment is as good as eve teasing. You do it for
the heck of it. You derive some pleasure. When you are hungry, you eat and it
is not teasing. It is just quelling your hunger. But when you aestheticize your
hunger and desire, you eat things for the sake of it. They titillate your taste
buds and the sensations are conveyed to your brain and you realize that you are
enjoying something. Many people say, while eating and after eating and perhaps,
even after several months of that eating incident, that the food is so great.
They make exclamatory noises and expressions like ‘vow’, ‘it is delicious’ and ‘yummy’
etc. People do this out of habit or peer pressure because they need to tell
themselves that they are eating for enjoyment. However, I would say, compared
to eve teasing, eating, if you could afford, is a harmless pleasure seeking.
But even in that condition, do we eat something that we do not know already?
People eat or choose eateries after discussing with their friends who have
already experienced the tastes of a particular restaurant. So whatever you eat out
of habit or suggestion is nothing new. You already know about it that is why
you enjoy it or pretend to enjoy. In a buffet, you find a variety of food
items. But you do not eat everything given. You choose and your choice is
completely based on your pre-knowledge about it. You know it even if you are
consuming it for the first time. You do not eat anything that you do not know.
Then how can you consume a god that you don’t know?
In Kolkata streets, in the morning I see many people
drinking a particular mix of liquid. I stood there and watched how the way side
vendor made it. He takes a big steel tumbler and put so many ingredients in it
from different packets and vessels arrayed before him. Then he adds water to it
and it turns into a yellow liquid. Irrespective of age and gender, I watch,
people drinking it with so much of relish. I know tea, I know neembu pani
(lemon water), I know lassi, I know soft drinks, I know bottled water, I know
jal jeera, I know ganne ka ras (sugar cane juice), I know fruit juices, I know
so many other drinks sold at the wayside stalls. But this one drink that is
made right in front of my eyes looks completely alien. I could drink it because
people like me are drinking it and they are not dropping dead. They are
drinking with such a flourish that one is reassured that it is harmless. But
still I do not have the courage to drink it. Reason; I do not know this drink.
In my acquired knowledge or mind, I do not have any reference about this drink.
So I walk on wondering how it would taste. But I do not drink it because it is ‘not
in’ me. Later I ask a friend in Kolkata about it and he informs me it as a ‘sattu’
which is a health drink that helps you to clear your bowels. Apparently unlike
other laxatives sattu is tasty also. Now I have the knowledge about it. Still I
do not dare to drink it. Why, because it is not in me. It is the same case with
god and realizing the unknown. There are thousands of spiritual gurus and
thousands of techniques in this world that you can read, practice and understand.
But none of these would take you to god or realization of the unknown. It does
not happen because it is not there in you. Like I understood sattu, it remains
in the level of information. I can talk volumes about sattu with or without
drinking it because for me it is just an information and it is extraneous to my
being. If sattu is there in me, I need not talk about it at all. I can be
silent on sattu. People who talk about God are those people who question god
completely. Those people coax hoards of credulous and gullible people are just
cheating them by showing some magical formulas.
So I tell you stop praying and meditating. If it is there in
you, whatever you do is praying and meditation. If it is not in you, you are
just wasting time.
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