Life is a movement, and change is programmed into it. Change is not like trees wishing to be rocks or vice versa—change is like walking two miles to get to childhood, four miles to become youthful and another four miles till you meet old age and then four more miles later, death. Change goes on. If you have lived your life in the ‘being’, you will meet death blissfully, accepting it as any other change in life. But if you have lived life by not being there, death will make you wonder who lived your life in your place.
Your mind keeps on thinking: What is life? It wants to define life. It says, life is a mystery or like a lake, a cliff or an ocean. The mind wants to hang on to words so it can find a definition. The mind keeps arguing about such definitions so it can go about blindfolded. But life does not have a definition and it is never defined. Life cannot be held captive in a painting by an artist or be embodied as the lyrics of a poet. You were there before you were in the womb, you were there from the cradle to the pyre, and you are going to be there after your body dies. You are the watcher of your body and mind. You are the experiencer of the experience that you are. You are the experience yourself, and you can know it only by experiencing it, not by reading any scriptures.
Who is man and what does he want? These questions keep on springing inside the mind of the man. If we sum up what man seeks on earth, we can say that man seeks ‘change’. Man wants to bring change by bringing about a revolution. He wants to live the change that will come through revolution. He wants to create and raise something new. In fact, man wants to bring about revolution to acquire something from which he thinks he is deprived of: something that will change him or make him happy or make him immortal. In most cases, one wishes to bring change by getting wealth, because they think that by getting wealth they will get all that can be gotten, like God’s paradise will be theirs. Money is a utility for living life, for making a habitat out of consumption, but money by itself is not the essence of that by getting which everything is gotten.
So, remember, if your revolutionary change is towards worldly possessions, that you think will bring change in your life, you will be unfounded. This way you turn change towards wrong directions, like the revolution to change a regime or system will only beget another regime without any real change, because the revolution is being used by the same mindset. Anyone who is out of power calls for change, and when in power, dubs revolution as anarchy. This is how revolutions never beget change but only precede further revolutions.
What then is change and what is revolutionary change in life? It is that which is to be revolutionized and changed. In fact, that which cannot be changed by revolution has to be changed. Understand it like this: the mind wants to change that which cannot be changed by revolution, so the ultimate freedom is when you know by experience that what you wish to change cannot be changed. That is a revolution. That which cannot be changed and remains unchangeable is the door to freedom. Removing the falsehoods from life is freedom and that is the unchangeable change. You are unchanged, and you realise it not by believing but by knowing. In India, when a person dies, everyone chants, “Ram Naam Satya Hai”. But by knowing that ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’, you bring about change by revolution in your being.
Keeping aside our own selves, we want to acquire it all in the world, lay our hands on everything but ourselves. But that which is ours—our being—acquiring that is like begetting our being. If we get to ourselves and beget it, we would realise that we had never lost it. We beget the same being that we already have, that we never disowned or quit its ownership or that there is no way that we can abandon it. So, there is no point in being a beggar. Declare that you are the titleholder of your being, not the slave of your mind, and you will be the master of your being. Let the lion roar.
When you walk on the ground, you think of the past. When you speak, you observe. While listening, you judge. While eating, you don’t eat, you plan things. While singing, you also listen. While crying, you lament and pity. In laughing, you show supremacy. While thinking, you rage. You think that you would be far from here, somewhere in the seventh sky, where God will come and bless you as the chosen one and give you everything that you wish for, and then you will be happy, but you don’t know what it is. Once you possess the possessions, they become fears. You begin to run the risk of losing them. You don’t feel those possessions give you a feeling of joy, the joy of being. There is nothing up there in the seventh sky—it is all here. The joy of being is here. So, if you are here, be here. Be here. Sit down. If you want to take a walk, then take a walk in a way that you do not simply walk, you become the walk.
Change is wakefulness. It is waking up from the deception of staying asleep and unconscious. The moment you wake up, change happens by revolution, and that which had been unchangeably unchanged, you find it in front of you, totally wakeful, staring right into you and through you. That is the moment you realise that you have come home and that you have become the axis on which revolve not only your body and mind, but the very changing universe around us.
The writer is a spiritual coach and an independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com.
