Upasana means to sit or be close to someone. But what is the distance, the remoteness that has to be overcome in order to be near. There are two kinds of distances; one is physical and the other is spiritual. Upasana is a way of ending the inner distance, the psychological separateness between the seeker and the sought. This inner space is created by becoming; the more solid my ego the greater is the distance between me becoming and being. And as ego melts and evaporates the inner distance is destroyed in the same measure. And when the ego evaporates completely and “I” am no more, I am all emptiness and then the inner distance between me and God disappears altogether. So Upasana, devotion, means that the devotee becomes emptiness, nothingness, a non being. To know the truth that “I am not” is to be devotee is to be with God. As long as one comes and goes, there is distance. And when “I” and “thou” disappear, distances disappear. And with the disappearance of distances, the meeting happens, the merging happens. We have to die as “self” and we come close to the supreme.
Krishna can take us to devotion. In devotion both “I” and “Thou” disappear, and what remains after this disappearance is inexplicable. It is not possible to put it in words. It is infinity, which is nameless. Whatever the names we use, spirit, matter; they are all going to be wrong. That is why all the great devotes chose to remain silent, they refuse to name it. They simply said, “It is nameless”. They said “it is without beginning, without end; it has neither form nor name”. Great devotees became silent; they did not make statement about the highest truth, because all statements land us in the mire of duality. We human have no such word that is not likely to lead to dualism. All words are loaded with dualistic meanings. The moment we use word we divide existence into two opposites. It is as if the ray of light sent through prism separates into rainbow of colours. The prism of language divides every truth into two parts, and the truth divided turns into a lie. It is for this reason that great devotes kept silent. They danced, they sang, they played flute, they made gestures, but they did not say a word. They said through their gestures, dance and laughter, what the truth is. They have raised their hands towards heavens to say what it is like. They have said it with their silence. They have said it with their whole being. But they did not use words.
Truth cannot be said in words; at the most it can be indicated with indications and sign, with gestures and hints. Or like Kabir (great monk and poet of India who transcended religions!) one can say it with paradoxes, self- contradictory statements. Kabir’s language has been described as Sandhyabhasha, which literally means twilight language. Twilight is a space which is neither day nor night, where one can neither say clear yes nor a clear no. We can neither accept nor deny. Here everything is fluid, vague and mystical. It is for this reason no one has been able to discover a clear cut meaning in Kabir’s sayings. Krishna’s saying belongs to same category. Whosoever attempted to express the truth in words, their language has invariably turned into twilight language. They cannot be assertive; they have to say yes and no together. Or they will accept and deny the opposites together. And that is what makes their statement illogical to us the commoners. It is for this reason that people who came to know the space where “I” and “thou” disappear, where all opposites cease to be and duality disappears, have decided to remain silent. More discussion on these areas will follow.
Let us understand more of Krishna to understand Gita!
Dr Dwarakanath,
Mithran Foundation, the stress management people.
No comments:
Post a Comment