When buddhi (intellect), manas (mind) and indriya (the senses) are focused on a single object it is conscious awareness. Normally there may be awareness without focused attention. A person driving a vehicle may be attentive on the road (focus attention in front) but may not be aware of things that may suddenly come from behind or sides. A totally fully aware person will have attention on all sides and his mind, senses and intellect work in unison, a synchronized way. In life too we enjoy fully when we are fully aware of actions and their consequences. But it rarely happens!
Hence, a person may be consciously be aware of the worldly life and fulfill his external life's obligations. But rarely one is fully aware, conscious of his Self, the Atman. This calls for a concerted effort, pulling out of our indulgences in the external world and look inward with the help of yoga. A person fully aware of his Self is Shiva. Here consciousness is fully conscious of itself, Self (the Atman). This is real atma sakshatkara, 'Realization of the Self'. A person is either aware of the objective world or conscious of his Self, one thing at a time and one object at a time. The Mind cannot handle several things at the same time. Moreover, it is tuned to operate on a single task at a time with or without any interest, too! This is the real problem. Most of the time our mind is elsewhere and our attention is elsewhere. There is no focused attention on anything.
When a person gets up in the morning, normally, he starts thinking about the days agenda. May be, he also goes to bed thinking about the next day's program. Both these keep him in constant worry about his engagements day after day till death. There is no respite from this busy engagements and often,he has no time to even sit and take a deep breath that is essential for his health!
Childhood disappears in no time without any awareness. Schooling and play takes away all the time. When adolescence starts, there is confusion and finally youth comes as a big problem. Many lose track and get into all sorts of problems. The age-old system of married life and family responsibilities are there. However, when a person reaches the age of sixty-five or seventy he must be in a position to sit quietly and look back and take stock of his life and realize what one has realized. This is a tall order since many have not dropped their child-hood pranks and immature behavior. This takes us to the problem of awareness or consciousness.
Consciousness is in a sense simply awareness. A person is aware of so many things. But very few will be consciously aware of certain important things in life. For instance, are we aware of our breathing? We constantly breath, day and night, even while we are sleeping, but we are not fully aware of it. Many times we are not aware of our self where we are going and what we are doing. We go on some errand and forget what for we went there. We go to a shop and forget what to buy. All these are just a confused state or not clear about what we want.
In fact, the jiva, as such, has come to this on an errand and has completely forgotten for what purpose it has come here. There is nobody to remind us, too. The scriptures clearly state that this planet earth is a place of births and deaths (mrutyu lok) where old age, sickness and death are certain. But, nobody thinks about all these and still enjoy life! There is such an ignorance, avidya, that even though we know that this earth is not a place of joy, ananda, we seek it and feel disappointed. We go in search of pleasure and profit in everything and fail miserably. A ton of misery has to be suffered in order to gain a gram of happiness. Little does the jiva knows that there is no real joy or happiness in a make-believe world of phenomenal objects that fade away with time. Real joy comes only when a person realizes that external things or objects will not give joy and starts looking for joy inward. A person established in his Self enjoys real happiness. This require a conscious awareness and practice of yoga. Yoga helps to get established in Self.
No comments:
Post a Comment