We all know
that we are an entity separate from all other entities. I say, “This is my hand”,
“I am writing this blog”, “I am feeling good” or “I am thinking.” This is
called my ‘I am-ness’ (Ahamkara). All living beings are aware of their
being. The human beings, perhaps, are most aware; when he dies, his awareness
of himself ends.
A man on the
street knows him as ‘a husband of some lady’, ‘a father of an identifiable child’,
‘a son of particular gentlemen’, an employee working as an executive with a
certain company, the one living in a particular house in a particular locality
of a town from a particular country and the one speaking certain languages,
etc.. That is how he is identified by others and he identifies himself. If he
is stripped of his various identities, one by one, say, his father disowns him,
his wife leaves him and moves away with their child, he is fired from his job,
his friends desert him, and the house he lived in and owned is auctioned due to
some financial liability, etc. he may be transformed into a virtual Mr. Nobody
from Mr. Somebody. In such a case his ego would be severely bruised.
By virtue of
one having been born as a dog instead of a human being or one working as a
delivery-boy instead of the General Manager of a big company, the fact that one
is a living being is not diluted. ‘Who we are’ can only be assumed as a
conditional reality or an illusion camouflaged as some reality. On the basis of
such ‘reality’ we can live in this world for a limited period of time in some
particular way, but cannot identify our true nature as a human being. Most of
the time we acquire our ‘reality’ depending upon the circumstances we live in,
the efforts we make and what actually we are able to achieve or acquire. If a
noble prize winner physicist is kidnapped by some tribal people to do some manual
labour how would he be able to relate to himself or the new company he would be
keeping. Ultimately, he may have to use his intellectual ability to know ‘who
he is’, provided he is ready to understand that there was something illusory
about his being a great scientist or an insignificant labourer.
There was
nothing much imaginary about what I wrote above. Many people have gone through
such experiences in their lives. They could view the reality of life with a
perspective that is not a common. They had firsthand experience of ‘illusions’
of our egos. One can have expectations of oneself on the basis of who he is in his
own world; but if he detached from his own world he would find it difficult to
identify himself.
One must try
to be free from the illusions of one’s ego. This could help him in knowing a
few very relevant things about his own life and the life, in general. We become
more peaceful, and more patient with themselves and the others, if we try to
make ourselves free from the illusions of our ego.
[This
series is being presented by Promod Kumar Sharma, who has also authored
“Mahatma A Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our
Wonderful Words”.]
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