Praarabdha: We & They

 

 

Many have asked guruji, are we suffering consequences of a pandemic due to our failures which are occurring across various professional fields or, the pandemic is the result of humanity’s collective fate (Praarabdh)?

 

One wonders! How many of us, who ask this question, include themselves in that universal set of professionals whom they seem to indicate as failing -us, as they do it with alacrity in counting themselves among the subset of sufferers? In which category you will keep good Samaritans and black marketers? Are both not part of us/them? Can they be kept in one and the same category? Is it possible to exclude them?

 

As there are problems, so are solutions. It’s our choice whether we choose to be part of the solutions or that of the problems?

 

Imagine a scenario if every one of us would have followed the instructions passed on to us by credible professionals who shoulder the responsibility to inform through worldwide networks of institutions governing us. And, we would have masked ourselves well in time and not let the virus come to infect us or let it infect others through us if, unfortunately, we were among the infected ones then, don’t you think we wouldn’t have been in a situation that we currently are.

 

Suppose any of us fails to follow instructions and take precautions that are mandatory as citizens especially, in such times. Isn’t it a professional failure in maintaining our civic sense and our duty as a citizen? Then, will our acts not become part of our collective fate (Praarabdha)?

 

Looking from a spiritual point of view, there is minimal difference between professional failure and praarabdha (fate) except time scale and remembrance.

 

Praarabdha means experiencing circumstances in the present, affected by our earlier actions or inactions. Action or inaction, which either was performed unconsciously at that point of time when it was not needed to be performed. Or was not performed despite being conscious of the pressing need for performing it at that point in time.

 

Professional failure means we are not doing something the way it should rightly be done in the present circumstances and, because of that, our effort is not bringing about success.

 

Doesn’t the difference between professional failure and praarabdha appears to be more or less that of the scale of time and intelligence?

 

Karma-siddhaanta (principle of Karma) says, a thread of ‘karma’ keeps running from ‘n’ number of births to ‘n’ number of births until we are liberated from the sense of birth and death.

 

Praarabdha means experiencing circumstances in the present, affected by our earlier actions or inactions. Action or inaction, which either was performed unconsciously at that point of time when it was not needed to be performed. Or was not performed despite being conscious of the pressing need for performing it at that point in time 

But, how are we to trust that we existed in the past and will be existing in the future same way as, we are existing in the present? We find it difficult to trust because we have not cleaned (purified) our intelligence to that extent where it becomes capable of transcending veils of past and future, which cover pure consciousness (Time).

 

Ask yourselves a simple question from a counterpoint of view. How do you trust anything in your daily life situations and activities?

 

We trust a thing when it passes the test of our intelligence. Isn’t it? Many times, it may not be limited to being rational, I emphasise. But the emphasis is not to deny rationality but to keep it at its rightful place.

 

Spirituality opens its treasure to seekers when they discover limitations of rationality (tark) and limitlessness of intelligence (pragyaa). Intelligence can never be devoid of rationality. Rationality devoid of intelligence leads to fanaticism or blind belief.

 

If sitting for meditation quietly at your home results in transcending your aforesaid limitations and transforming you into source of bliss, peace, equanimity and higher intelligence, timelessness even for a moment, does that make you any less a rationalist and scientist if not more?

 

Spirituality is the field of higher intelligence. And, terms like Karma (upholding Dharma), Praarabdha(fate), Moksha(liberation) belong to the spiritual field essentially.

 

Howsoever great our knowledge about swimming maybe but we experience swimming only by jumping into the water. Same way, when we experience timelessness, and our intelligence is established (pragya-pratishthitah), we realise how Praarabdha(fate) is different from professional failure and how it is not too.