THE TREE OF LIFE : 2.9 SWAMI KRISHNANANDA
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27/12/2019.
2.The Search For Wholeness - 9
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9.1
What is it that we are seeking in life?
Salary, high status, long life, soft beds, big buildings, large areas of land—are these the things that we are asking for?
No. These are definitely not the things that we are asking for. When we are presented with a bundle of currency notes we feel happy, as if we are possessing something worthwhile, but we know very well we are not going to eat these currency notes. They cannot do anything except act as a means of getting something else which is our requirement. Nobody wants currency notes or coins.
We need these as instruments for procuring something else. So our desire is not for money in the form of notes and coins, but for something else which we imagine can be acquired through this instrumentality. If we go further, we will find even that second thing is not our aim. That also is an instrument for a third thing which we are actually wanting.
So on it goes, further and further, until we realise, to our horror, that we are asking for something which is beyond human comprehension through the instrumentalities of these little visible finite expressions of life.
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9.2
What is it that we are asking for, if not all these things?
We are asking for a relief of all tension, which is equivalent to happiness as we conceive it. Happiness is the release of all tensions—nervous, muscular and psychological—and our personality is in a state of tenseness because of some kind of pressure which is exerted upon our personality by something over which we evidently have no control, and of which we have no knowledge.
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9.3
The pressure is something very interesting. From where does this pressure come?
It comes from the ocean of life which seeks fullest expression through the limitation of our finite personality. The ocean wants to find itself in the river, in the pond. This little experience of ours through the senses and the mind is sought for as an instrument for the fullest expression of the whole power that is behind the tree of life. Any kind of completeness of experience is the same as happiness.
When we search for objects in this world, we are trying to search for a type of conscious experience which will introduce into ourselves a wholeness of being. We are now partial expressions. When the object we need is outside us, that unity of feeling is absent. We are unhappy because a part of our life is outside us. It may be a visible object or merely a conception.
A concept of an externalised situation or a visible object outside may be the cause of our unhappiness. Physical objects such as houses and land may keep us restless and unhappy because they have not become part of ourselves. Or merely conceptual notions such as status in human society can keep us unhappy.
Status in human society is not a visible object. It is visible only to the mental eye, and when it is imagined to be a circumstance which is outside our mind, it becomes a psychological object that can keep us unhappy.
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To be continued ...
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27/12/2019.
2.The Search For Wholeness - 9
=======================================================================
9.1
What is it that we are seeking in life?
Salary, high status, long life, soft beds, big buildings, large areas of land—are these the things that we are asking for?
No. These are definitely not the things that we are asking for. When we are presented with a bundle of currency notes we feel happy, as if we are possessing something worthwhile, but we know very well we are not going to eat these currency notes. They cannot do anything except act as a means of getting something else which is our requirement. Nobody wants currency notes or coins.
We need these as instruments for procuring something else. So our desire is not for money in the form of notes and coins, but for something else which we imagine can be acquired through this instrumentality. If we go further, we will find even that second thing is not our aim. That also is an instrument for a third thing which we are actually wanting.
So on it goes, further and further, until we realise, to our horror, that we are asking for something which is beyond human comprehension through the instrumentalities of these little visible finite expressions of life.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.2
What is it that we are asking for, if not all these things?
We are asking for a relief of all tension, which is equivalent to happiness as we conceive it. Happiness is the release of all tensions—nervous, muscular and psychological—and our personality is in a state of tenseness because of some kind of pressure which is exerted upon our personality by something over which we evidently have no control, and of which we have no knowledge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.3
The pressure is something very interesting. From where does this pressure come?
It comes from the ocean of life which seeks fullest expression through the limitation of our finite personality. The ocean wants to find itself in the river, in the pond. This little experience of ours through the senses and the mind is sought for as an instrument for the fullest expression of the whole power that is behind the tree of life. Any kind of completeness of experience is the same as happiness.
When we search for objects in this world, we are trying to search for a type of conscious experience which will introduce into ourselves a wholeness of being. We are now partial expressions. When the object we need is outside us, that unity of feeling is absent. We are unhappy because a part of our life is outside us. It may be a visible object or merely a conception.
A concept of an externalised situation or a visible object outside may be the cause of our unhappiness. Physical objects such as houses and land may keep us restless and unhappy because they have not become part of ourselves. Or merely conceptual notions such as status in human society can keep us unhappy.
Status in human society is not a visible object. It is visible only to the mental eye, and when it is imagined to be a circumstance which is outside our mind, it becomes a psychological object that can keep us unhappy.
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To be continued ...
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