Darkness At Noon-Part XIV

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Some Quips:

A quote in the Reader"s Digest highlights this situation. An electricity company, finding that it has to pay substantial compensation for electrocution from the careless handling of wires, put up a warning notice reading, “Touching wires causes instant death. Fine – two hundred dollars". This is a commentary on a money oriented life. The hidden truth in this quote is worth pondering about. Really it seems to be so. On one side of the scale this company has put life versus instant death. This should have been the most dreaded option. Not really it seems, for there is a monetary consequence also mentioned. We may not mind risking our very life, but would hesitate to pay a fine of two hundred dollars! Or so it seems. It is an option worth pondering about. What do all our values add up to?

Should not one look for an escape route?

Out of the millions caught up in this life destroying drift, some thousands escape. For their spirit of enquiry is not wholly douched. They are prepared to look for an alternative way of life, which would perhaps open up fresh channels of thought and action. Opportunities are there for those who look for it. As life unfolds, it seems that opportunities that are missed are not totally lost (they are merely delayed). It is not a “single tide in the affairs of men," for waves keep coming in and going back. Like in Chess, the beauty of life lies in looking for opportunities that keep opening up and then grabbing them. A comparatively undistributed mind is bound to find many such opportunities.

The magic wand of self-enquiry

The first step is to take a perspective view of life as is being lived now and the life in which the spirit of enquiry is kindled in us. Ramana assures that the spirit of enquiry is as natural as joy itself. It has only been lost to the extent to which it is not put to use. It is the magic wand that can transform your way of life. In the last analysis no one wants to live or continue to live a life in which he has lost his freedom in exchange for his serfdom to a mind whose ways are unknown to him. If one enquires one may be in for a shock. What would one find?

It is a fact that presently the mind has lost its innate power. It has become dissipated and weak by the innumerable thoughts that are allowed entry. By definition, a weak mind is a mind, which is voluntarily and constantly moving and the individual seems unable to cry a halt to it. The first step of course is to identify the road blocks, the negative and debilitating causes that slow down the process of any change. The obstructions need not continue nor is there any need to be bound by this kind of wasted mind. Certainly not after being exposed to the most energising direct path of enquiry that is being incessantly brought to our notice by Ramana. Why not use that which is being given to you 'unasked"?

To be continued