Destination - Truth it is

Recently, in our engineering batchmates group, we discussed about truth and destination!

This whole discussion was triggered by NC, our globetrotting 'Swamiji', who frequently invokes 'the divine grace to light up our paths forever'.  During his rebuttal to my criticism about a WhatsApp forward message, he mentioned that the number of Gods grew as the population grew but the truth is one.  He also said that paths may be many, but the destination is the same.

I, with all the innocence that I could muster, asked him what he meant by truth and destination.  He responded in a roundabout way with analogies which were not directly answering my questions and so, I requested him and anyone else in the group to provide direct responses.

PNS, our 'Chinna Kal Siddhar', shared his life experience of that day which was his cryptic way of conveying his views which is, essentially, living life moment to moment.

DJ, a born-again Christian, was forthright in communicating his views.  He said that the destination is heaven which is eternal life, and the truth is that there is only one true living God, Jesus.  He also clarified that eternal life is having the privilege to connect with this true living God while we are still on this earth.

BG, a startup technocrat, said that there is no such thing as the truth and the destination is finding the balance, which is, whatever that works for the individual.

CR, our dear "Mr. Know all", shared a blog post which essentially conveyed the message that those who have realized the truth and reached the destination do not speak about it and those who do speak about it have not realized the truth or reached the destination (Kandavar Vindilar; Vindavar Kandilar).

RMM, an ardent follower of Ramana Maharishi, said happiness (anandham) is the destination and the truth is the consciousness or the soul (atma).  He also said that the mind is the one which prevents us from realizing the truth or reaching the destination.  He suggested two ways to remove ignorance - surrender and enquiry.  He further said that having a Guru, in physical or any other form (as Arunachala for Ramana), can accelerate the process.

Finally, NC, who initiated this discussion, said that the truth is not this body, mind and intellect (his favorite BMI) and searching for this truth of 'Who am I?' is the path to the destination.

Now it was my turn.

To me, this was all the truth - the truth that was in front of me.

Now, I had the choice to react or respond.  To react is to reply from my conditioned state of mind.  To respond is to reply from an unconditioned state.

I chose to respond.

What are my views about the truth and the destination?  Are they conditioned by years of practice of a certain set of values and beliefs?  Did I choose those values and beliefs or were they imposed upon me because of being born into a certain family, of growing up in a certain cultural environment?

My inquiry began.

We, both humans and animals, are endowed with certain sense organs which enable us to see, hear, smell, taste and touch.  These organs enable us to take care of our physiological and safety needs.  We are also endowed with the mind which enables us to observe, analyze, classify, store and retrieve information, both within us and around us.

So, what differentiates us from the animals?

Our freedom to choose.

Animals are the product of their environment.  Our environment is the product of our choices.

That's a huge difference.

As long as we were sensitive to our needs and used our sense organs to satisfy them, we were in a state of happiness.

So, when did the trouble begin?

When we allowed our mind to analyze those things that we sensed, classify them as desirable (I want more of this) or undesirable (I don't want any more of this) and store this information into our memory.  In the process, our ability to be sensitive diminished as our stored memory took control of our actions.  We went all out to possess those things, that we stored in our memory as desirable, so that we can have more of them.  We went all out to eliminate those things, that we stored in our memory as undesirable, so that we can avoid them.  Such actions, driven by the stored memories of the mind, led to plundering and destroying the nature and fighting and killing the people around us.

Observing this chaos, few people organized themselves into tribes/societies and laid down the norms - the dos and the don'ts, to belong to that tribe/society.  If anyone breached the norms, they were either punished or exiled by the tribe/society elders.  This model had limited success as the norms were laid down based on the whims and fancies of the tribe/society elders and were enforced in an ad hoc manner.

Later, people got together to codify the norms into written down laws which were applicable to everyone irrespective of their status in the tribe/society.  This enabled them to organize themselves into larger tribes, societies, kingdoms and so on.  The power to enforce the laws were vested with a king or a government led by a group of ministers.  The laws and the consequences of breaking them were repeatedly communicated to their people which eventually got imprinted into their stored memories.

In spite of all these efforts, there were people who found ways and means to break the laws without getting caught by the law enforcers.

That's when Gods, as we know today, were brought into existence.

People identified either an exclusive God who is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient or a group of demigods, under the exclusive God, who are responsible for different aspects of governance.  They organized religions to edify and worship the God.  The religions developed their own structure, values, beliefs and practices and enrolled people who believed in their narrative.  The believers were reinforced with compelling legends to make them understand the difference between the right and the wrong, the good and the evil, the virtue and the sin and the consequences of choosing one over the other.  The believers were cautioned that they can breach the societal norms or break the laws of the government without any adverse consequences, but they can never ever escape the consequences of breaking the laws of the God.  The God is watching all their actions and they will either be rewarded or be punished based on the cumulative nature of their actions.

Our mind, which initially started with classifying and memorizing the desirable and the undesirable, moved on to classifying and memorizing our actions into right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and sin and the consequences of either adhering to or breaching these values.  This conditioning has been going on over many centuries and are deeply embedded into our minds and transferred, possibly, through our DNA.

Do you realize the enormity of the challenge that confronts us?

We landed ourselves into this situation by surrendering our freedom to choose our actions to our stored memories, to the society, to the government and to the religion by allowing them to influence and condition our mind.

How do we lead ourselves away from this situation?

By being sensitive.

Being sensitive is to be aware of all those things that are happening within us and around us without taking a stand for or against them.

The moment we understand how the mind draws us away from the reality or truth within us and around us, we shed the influence that the mind wields over us.

Will this happen instantaneously?  Yes.

Will it last forever? Not at all.

Centuries of conditioning of the mind cannot be wished away by just being sensitive once.  We need to remain sensitive every moment of our life.  Whenever our mind draws us back to our conditioned way of reaction, by being sensitive to that, we draw ourselves back to the reality or truth in a gentle manner.

To go back to our original questions:

Truth is the reality within us and around us.

Destination is the truth.