SUFFERING
One of the problems about which Bhagavan was often asked was suffering. The questions were usually personal rather than academic, since it was often the experience of grief which drove people to seek solace from him. The real solace came as a silent influence, but he did also answer theoretical questions. The usual answer was to bid the questioner find out who it is that suffers, just as he would bid the doubter find who it is that doubts; for the Self is beyond suffering as it is beyond doubt. Sometimes, however, on a more contingent level, he would point out that whatever makes a person dissatisfied with his state of ignorance and turns him to the quest of the Self is beneficial and that it is often suffering which is the means of doing this.Page 28
B.: The Bliss of Self is always yours and you will find it if
you seek it earnestly. The cause of your misery is not in your outer life; it is in you, as your ego. You impose limitations on yourself and then make a vain struggle to transcend them. All unhappiness is due to the ego. With it comes all your trouble. What does it avail you to attribute the cause of misery to the happenings of life when that cause is really within you? What happiness can you get from things extraneous to yourself? When you get it, how long will it last?
If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it, you would be free. If you accept it, it will impose limitations on you and throw you into a vain struggle to transcend them. That was how the `thief ' sought to ruin King Janaka.
To be the Self that you really are is the only means to realise the Bliss that is ever yours.41
A very devoted and simple devotee had lost his only son, a child of three. The next day he arrived at the Asramam with his family. Referring to them Bhagavan said: "Training of mind helps one to bear sorrows and bereavements with courage; but the loss of one's children is said to be the worst of all griefs. Grief only exists as long as one considers oneself to have a definite form; if the form is transcended, one knows the One Self to be eternal. There is neither death nor birth. What is born is only the body and this is the creation of the ego. But the ego is not ordinarily perceived without the body and so is identified with it. It is thought that matters. Let the sensible man consider whether he knew his body while in deep sleep. Why, then, does he feel it in the waking state? Although the body was not felt in sleep, did not the Self exist? What was his
Page 29
state when in deep sleep and what is it now when awake? What is the difference? The ego rises up and that is waking. Simultaneously thoughts arise. Find out who has the thoughts. Where do they come from? They must arise from the conscious self. Apprehending this even vaguely helps towards the extinction of the ego. The realisation of the One Infinite Existence becomes possible. In that state there are no individuals but only Eternal Being. Hence there is no thought of death or grieving.
"If a man thinks that he is born he cannot escape the fear of death. Let him find out whether he was ever born or whether the Self takes birth. He will discover that the Self always exists and that the body which is born resolves itself into thought, and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find where thought comes from, and then you will abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth and fear of death."51
D.: If some one we love dies, it causes grief. Should we
avoid such grief by either loving all alike or not loving at all?
B.: If someone we love dies, it causes grief to the one who
continues living. The way to get rid of grief is not to continue living. Kill the griever, and who will then remain to grieve? The ego must die. That is the only way. The two alternatives you suggest amount to the same. When all are realised to be the one Self, who is there to love or hate?52
Sometimes, however, the questions were impersonal, referring not to some private tragedy but to the evil and suffering in the world. In such cases they were usually by visitors who did not understand the doctrine of non-duality or follow the path of Self-enquiry.
Page 30
Visitor : Widespread distress, such as famine and pestilence,
spreads havoc through the world. What is the cause of this state of affairs?
B.: To whom does all this appear?
V.: That won't do. I see misery all round.
B.: You were not conscious of the world and its sufferings
while asleep, but you are now that you are awake. Continue in the state in which you are not affected by such things. When you are not aware of the world, that is to say when you remain as the Self in the state of sleep, its sufferings do not affect you. Therefore turn inwards and seek the Self and there will be an end both of the world and of its miseries.
V.: But that is selfishness.
B.: The world is not external to you. Because you wrongly
identify yourself with the body, you see the world outside you and its suffering becomes apparent to you; but the world and its sufferings are not real. Seek the reality and get rid of this unreal feeling.
This the visitor was unwilling to do, but instead referred again to suffering and to those who strive vainly to remove it.
V.: There are great men and public workers who cannot
solve the problem of suffering in the world.
B.: That is because they are based on the ego. If they
remained in the Self it would be different.
Still, presuming the absolute reality of the objective world, the visitor now asked in an indirect way how it would be different, demanding that those who abide in the Self should accept the unreal as Real.
V.: Why don't Mahatmas help?
For the moment, Bhagavan answers on the visitor's own level.
Page 31
B.: How do you know that they don't? Public speeches,
outer activity and material help are all outweighed by the silence of the Mahatmas. They accomplish more than others.
Now, the visitor comes to the practical point: outer activity instead of inner quest; and Bhagavan rejects that viewpoint no less categorically.
V.: What can we do to ameliorate the condition of the
world?
B.: If you remain free from pain there will be no pain
anywhere. The trouble now is due to your seeing the world outside yourself and thinking there is pain in it. But both the world and the pain are within you. If you turn inwards there will be no pain.
V.: God is perfect. Why did he create the world imperfect?
A work partakes of the nature of its author, but in this case it is not so.
B.: Are you something separate from God that you should
ask this question? So long as you consider yourself the body, you see the world as external to you. It is to you that the imperfection appears. God is perfection and his work is also perfection, but you see it as imperfect because of your wrong identification with the body or the ego.
V.: Why did the Self manifest as this miserable world?
B.: In order that you might seek it. Your eyes cannot see
themselves but if you hold a mirror in front of them they see themselves. Creation is the mirror. See yourself first and then see the whole world as the Self.
V.: Then what it amounts to is that I should always turn
inwards?
B.: Yes.
V.: Shouldn't I see the world at all?
Page 32
B.: You are not told to shut your eyes to the world, but only
to see yourself first and then see the whole world as the Self. If you consider yourself as the body, the world appears to be external; if you are the Self, the world appears as Brahman manifested.1
The trouble is that it is extremely difficult to regard the body or the objective world as unreal. Bhagavan admitted that in the following dialogue.
D.: I have a toothache; is that only a thought?
B.: Yes.
D.: Then why can't I think that there is no toothache, and
so cure myself?
B.: One does not feel the toothache when one is absorbed
in other thoughts or when asleep.
D.: But still it remains.
B.: So strong is man's conviction of the reality of the world
that it is not easily shaken off. But the world is no more real than the individual who sees it.
Then a humorous exchange which illustrates the difficulty of the concept.
D.: At present there is a Sino-Japanese war going on. If it
is only in the imagination, can or will Sri Bhagavan imagine it not to be going on and so put an end to it?
B.: (laughing) The Bhagavan of the questioner (whom the
questioner sees as an external being) is as much a thought of his as the Sino-Japanese War!2
Finally, a quotation which shows how Bhagavan sometimes answered on a more contingent plane, pointing out that it is
Page 33
suffering that makes a man discontented with the life of the ego and spurs him on to seek Self-realisation.
D.: But why should there be suffering now?
B.: If there were no suffering, how could the desire to be
happy arise? If that desire did not arise, how could the quest of the Self arise?
D.: Then is all suffering good?
B.: Yes. What is happiness? Is it a healthy and handsome body,
regular meals and so on? Even an emperor has endless troubles although he may be in good health. So all suffering is due to the false notion `I am the body'. Getting rid of this is knowledge.1