Deepen Your Awareness

Krishna says in the Gita that it is because of ajnana or ignorance that people experiences are kinds of agitation and so they are deluded. The cause of sorrow is moha or delusion. One can achieve one’s objective of dispelling sorrow only when one discards and destroys one’s delusion. The Gita’s message is that we should get rid of ignorance.

A German psychiatrist said, “The pathology that humanity seems to be suffering from is robot pathology.” We have become robots. We have become unaware and that leads to becoming mechanical and so we have become unhappy. The extent to which ignorance is discarded determines the quality of improvement in one’s life. The greater our freedom from ignorance, the greater is our happiness.

I was recently reading an interesting cartoon. The Bishop was very happy with a Father for his excellent missionary work. He called the Father and said, “I am very happy with your missionary work, and as a token of my love I am going to give you a very beautiful horse, which I have loved. I am going to give you this Arabian horse so that it may help you in carrying out your missionary work.”

The Father was very happy. The Bishop said “There is only one condition that you should beware of…. The horse only knows two words – “Hallelujah, and ‘O God!’ If you mount the horse and goad it to run, it will not; but if you utter ‘O God’ immediately, it will start galloping. Being teamed by a Bishop, it has become very religious. And if you want to stop the horse, pulling the reins will not do; you have to say. ‘Hallelujah’ and then instantaneously, it will stop.”

The father sat on the beautiful Arabian horse and said. “O God!” The horse started galloping at great speed. And as he said “O God” again and again, it ran faster and faster. While the Father was enjoying the ride, suddenly he realized that the horse was heading towards the brink of a cliff. Now he wanted to stop the horse and said “stop, stop!” “Hallelujah” and immediately, the horse stopped, right at the edge. One moment later they would have plunged to their deaths.

And then he looked at the valley and said “O God! You saved me”. No sooner had he uttered this, the horse started galloping…. So uttering O God was a mechanical act and not one that was thought out!.

One can find people of any religious sect say their prayers mechanically. Their prayers and expressions, “O God, O Ram or O Krishna”…. Are mechanical. And the genesis of the mechanical tendency is unawareness. The more you are unaware, the greater is your mechanical tendency, the greater is the robotic life that you lead and consequently, true religious quality gets totally eroded.

Therefore, it is very essential, in spiritual life and in religious life, to deepen the quality of awareness, be it a prayer or a worship that you are doing. To deepen your awareness, which is born out of true perception and understanding, is one of the important qualities of a spiritual or a religious life. In Tantra Shastra it is said, “Chaitanya Atma,” our Atma, the self should be one of Chaitanya, of awareness. And therefore, to deepen one’s awareness is one of the principal teachings of all the great Masters and especially of the Gita.