Jyotirtam-Aashray

Indic wisdom maintains that ‘knowledge is what knowledge does’. It says human beings have the potential to manifest most conscious behaviour as it is the conscious most species on this planet and, this potential comes inbuilt in the human frame. In this sense, they may know so many things but, does knowing alone make them wise?

 

For example, today, in one sense, a manmade device/system of artificial intelligence may ‘know’ many times more than an individual human being does but, it has no value vis-à-vis human being because as human beings, we are living, we are conscious, we are capable of experiencing higher values like grace, mercy, love, compassion, empathy, sympathy, sacrifice…ad infinitum.

 

As humans, we have not only consciousness but conscience also. Therefore, it puts those values into practice that differentiate human beings from any other artificial intelligence and living species.

 

But, unlike the human body that may get viral attack once in a while, the human mind is fraught with the challenge of getting the viral attack. Fear and temptation are the two most heinous viruses of the human mind that can kill our capacity to keep our conscience flourishing. These two mutate and camouflage in many other forms like insecurity, apathy etc. Fortunately, sat-sang makes us open enough to see them in all forms and remove them.

The role of the spiritually immersed ones (jyotir-tam) is to stay free from these mental viruses. Their living itself inevitably mirrors before other enlightened ones, and the latter’s self-reflections commence.

 

The light/darkness (jyotir-tam) that stays as a conduit to connect us with ‘unlimited unknown’ experientially and that too without interfering with our freedom appears to be the way of existence itself, in which life and death both find Aashray (resting place/peace).

 

Except for the ones who could find peace (Aashray/sharan) in Reality (jyotirtam) in every phase of history, human beings struggled to settle somehow this question: what should be our way of living or how to live?

 

They struggled as communities as, societies, families, nationalities as business entities, and as excellent professional individuals. And they continue to struggle in the present.

 

One wonders, is –‘how to live’ such an important question that ‘enlightened ones’ go to the extent of endorsing fall from divine values of mercy, grace, compassion, love if these come in the way of their ‘perceived’ answer to this question! Don’t they see the irony?

 

Irrespective of our agreeing that whether pandemic is manmade or natural, if we begin to ‘live’ the way earthlings should live in the present, then the present pandemic will ‘die’ Naturally.

 

Or, will that be a manmade death? I trust your wisdom.

 

Though, wisdom is tested whenever we are face to face with an unprecedentedly challenging situation in life. Though the current pandemic is an unprecedented problem before the present generation, it is not an unprecedented experience for humanity.

 

As part of the larger human society, humanity has seen wars and pandemics inflicted great pain and voluminous loss to earthlings. And, being inheritors of that collective consciousness as well as intellectually simulated memories imbibed from the literature of those times, earthlings have some advantage in dealing with the present situation.

 

The wisdom of all of us who are living on the planet is of utmost importance. Our actions as individuals and collectives may prove decisive in our fight against the virus.

 

Though instructions of maintaining some physical distance, using masks, sanitisers and PPEs appropriately are in place, these have made usher in certain changes in our usual ways of doing things.

 

Many of our routine group activities like going for a morning walk with family or friends or fellow residents of housing societies or neighbours and group yoga practice or physical fitness sessions under someone’s guidance etc., have all gone solo.

 

Yet, when we see news reports and go out as volunteers to carry out responsibilities, observing the situation, a question lurks in mind: are all of us inhabiting this planet really behaving with utmost wisdom/responsibility?