The Break of a Rosy Dawn-II

Sri Ramakrishna

oi-Staff

By Staff

Monday, March 30, 2009, 14:27

In living a higher life, inner awakening is the very first step. Psychologically speaking, awakening means becoming aware of something higher, and recognizing its presence and importance. Awakening is essentially an act of discovering what remained hidden, though it was right within one's reach all along, and realizing its worth and usefulness. It is, as if, something that had been kept in a cold storage, is brought out, and you ask, often with a tinge of regret, 'How is it that I had never seen it before, though it was so easily accessible!'

'The millions are awake enough for physical labour,' wrote Henry David Thoreau, the great American Transcendalist, 'but only one in a million for effective intellectual exertion; only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life.' Indeed, the majority of people remain asleep to spiritual life; they are awakened only to the world of senses and ego. They are awake enough for 'physical labour', and to them life means labouring for a comfortable physical existence. They live contented with the immediate results of their labours—food, clothing, shelter and security for a rainy day. Engrossed as they are in their struggle for existence, their minds are unfit as yet for conceiving any higher purpose of life. They are, what Sri Ramakrishna calls, the baddhas, the bound ones.

But there are people who wake up to the joy and satisfaction of an intellectual life. In the ladder of evolution, they stand elevated above those whose life is focused on only fulfilling their physical needs. Intellectual awakening drives them to read books, or travel to places where their intellectual hunger can be appeased. They read voraciously, or attend learned lectures or participate in intellectual discussions. They are intellectually hungry and any hunger by definition, needs appeasement.

Only a few fortunate ones, whose time has come, truly wake up to the world of spirit. The ideal of spiritual perfection, somehow—they do not know how—begins to appeal to them. They are the people whom Sri Krishna describes in the Gita as 'one among thousands' (Manushynm Sahasreshu, Gita, 7.3). Such people cannot sit idle, spiritually speaking. A strong taste for spiritual life develops in them. They are not bothered what others talk of this change in them. Nor are they unwilling to be labelled 'peculiar' by others.

A kind of inner boldness to explore the unknown realm of spirituality comes upon the spiritually inclined ones. Such people, however, are small in number, very small indeed. But those few are sufficient to bring blessings to humanity. For who brings the greatest good to mankind? One who is awakened spiritually. Thus awakened, he sees everything in its perspective and that is the most vital prerequisite to do good to others. Neither good nor evil disturbs his mind. His little self becomes unimportant to him. And, being freed from the shackles of his little 'I', he is able to see the bigger 'Thou' and enjoy serving him.

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