Jaao Re Jogi : Part 3

 Jaao Re Jogi

Part 3:

Liberation:

Jeevan se kaisa chhutkara 

Hain nadiya ke paas kinara 

Here Amrapali is dismissive of the idea of liberation. 

However her belief is not necessarily universal.

When we delve into ancient philosophy it becomes obvious that human mind has always toyed with the concept of liberation. That indirectly implies that human mind has since the beginning of civilization experienced bondage. 

Bondage and freedom are both subjective concepts and experiences. A person may be physically free to roam the world and yet feel a prisoner in his mind. Conversely a man behind bars may feel completely emancipated if his mind sets him free. 

When physical suffering reaches unbearable proportions often the person prefers death over living. In such situations death is viewed as a means to liberation. 

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to define liberation as release from suffering. That suffering may be of any kind. Physical, emotional/psychological/intellectual or spiritual. The natural instinct is to shift towards a state where comfort is experienced. 

Simple physical or psychological discomfort on a daily basis experienced as wearing out or stress or tiredness seeks to reverse itself by going to sleep. Although one is unaware of himself and his surroundings during sleep, once awakened he is able to retroactively infer that the sleep was blissful. He is prepared for a fresh start. Thus sleep proves to be a kind of liberation from the daily dose of suffering. 

When suffering reaches irreversible levels and a short period of sleep also fails to let the person awaken feeling fresh that’s a matter of thinking about life. When this suffering keeps incrementally growing and quality of life becomes questionable that is when really the mind begins to consciously face the concept of liberation. 

It begins to ask the question: is there an exit door?

Amrapali is in the prime of her youth and deeply in love with her man when she refutes the idea that there is any such thing as escape from life. It would be interesting to see if she would hold the same view when she is old and weak and lonely. 

Earlier this week one of my colleagues asked if I could talk to her parents’ good friend and neighbor in India. The man is 72. His wife died last year after a protracted battle with liver disease. The invasive procedures she was subjected to despite her unwillingness in the last few months of her life had left a lasting impact on his mind. He had questions about palliative and hospice care, advance directives ( living will) and euthanasia. His fear was that despite having repeatedly expressed his wishes to have no intervention in the event of a major illness or diagnosis, his son or doctors may override the wishes. So obsessed he seemed to have become with the idea of dying that when I was talking to him on the phone he was asking me if there was a pill to take to end his life. 

He is not the only person in that stage who faces such existential crisis situation. I come across many elderly people who show a variation of reactions. But underlying it is the single concern: how will my suffering/life end? 

Not one of them appears to concur with Amrapali’s logic at that point. 

Jeevan se chhutkara is actually synonymous with peeda se chhutkara. Release from life is really release from suffering for them. Suffering comes in the form of increasing debility, disability, disease, desolation/loneliness, dysfunction, depression. There is just no more strength or motivation left to fight back. At such times even the thought of release brings hope.

But is death, that is physical death, really man’s only way out of life’s misery?

The answer is a yes for those for who physical existence is the only reality.

The answer is a resounding no for those who have no doubt in the spirit.

The most convincing explanation for liberation I found to date was from the 17th century Saint Samarth Ramdas. In his brilliant exposition Das Bodh he explains dissolution of creation at an individual human level to be happening at three levels. He uses the term Pralay for this phenomenon. 

He says that the human being goes into a state of dissolution on a daily basis during the state of deep sleep.

A second dissolution is when the physical body attains to death.

A third dissolution is the dissolution that comes with discernment of the truth behind physical existence and illusion of Maya. He calls it vivek pralay. 

Those who can understand and experience vivek Pralay without a trace of doubt are spared every suffering and the unnecessary cycling of birth and death. They would eventually see physical death but that would not be happening to them. They would be simply witnessing it standing apart. Dehi asoni videhi.

To those who are unable to accept or digest within their intellect the vivek pralay are left with no other option but to experience physical death as happening to themselves and enduring the suffering that comes along with it. 

For the videha muktas or jeevan muktas,

Hain nadiya ke paas kinara 

could carry a whole different meaning.

The pure consciousness is the kinara. It is an ever present witness to the river of life. One may keep flowing in the river forever without being aware of it. Or one may become fully aware of it and get off on this bank and start watching the river flow from that bank. It is about faith and willingness to move forward with that faith. 

Then there are those caught in the middle.

नदी लंघोनी जे गेले

तयांची हाक ये कानी

इथे हे ओढिती मागे 

मला बांधोनी पाशांनी 

They believe in the Holy Spirit but are unable to give up the affinity to matter. 

Vivek( discernment) and Vairagya ( dispassion) are uniquely conjoined twins. For one to thrive, other must thrive. Or both die.

One who practices vivek and Vairagya is a true yogi and he becomes eligible for vivek pralay. Imagine the irony of a half baked courtesan telling a true yogi that liberation is a farce! And why staying silent would be his only plausible response to that statement.

In the bigger scheme of things, liberation or no liberation depends on each person. As Muktabai puts it:

अहो आपण जैसे व्हावे

देवें तैसेची करावे 

As we think, so we become!

If we can stop thinking, we be what we are!

We simply are! We just need to quit becoming.

Nobody tells us : Thinking can be wretched and unnecessary, after a certain point.

Part 4 coming up: Dnyan