The Vision of Life :

                                                                       Swami Krishnananda


Chapter 1: 



The Vision and Its UnfoldmentWe have in our daily life rarely an occasion to be alone to our own selves and bestow adequate thought on the manner in which we conduct ourselves in the world, or the way in which we live at all. A spontaneous impulsion carries us through the day and the night, and all this goes under the designation of a reasoned-out procedure of a purposeful existence. But it is evident that there is not much of a rationality in this propulsion to living, whose pressure we feel every day, if only we can withdraw our minds into our own selves for a few minutes and investigate into the extent to which our daily conduct and activity are rational or reasoned procedures.



A habit that has been driven into us by the pressure of circumstances can adumbrate a light of reason in its own way, though a conscious direction is difficult to discover in its ways. Nevertheless, there is some sort of a principle that we seem to be adopting in our life, which is basically an emanation of the constitution of our own selves.



We do not apparently feel comfortable when we live a life which is contrary to what we actually are in ourselves, whether or not we have an adequate knowledge of what we ourselves are. What we are remains, however, as an irrefutable fact and persists in the affirmation of itself, though we do not in our conscious processes have an awareness of this automatic affirmation that is taking place within. The affirmation which is associated with the very existence of oneself is so basic to our nature that it does not call for any conscious consideration of it, a logical investigation into it; it does not demand a proof for its being there.



We live with a sort of prevision of what we want to achieve in the world. This vision need not necessarily be a highly sophisticated structure of intellectual deliberation. It is, again, a spontaneity that is characteristic of our nature, which is basically simple. We are a simple, indivisible element in our own selves. In our roots, we are not complicated. In common terms, we may say that we are more a kind of compound than a complex of structure involving different ingredients of composition. Our body may be composed of elements which are anatomical, physiological, but we ourselves in our essentiality are pure simplicity, which cannot be further reduced to a greater simplicity.



Inasmuch as this basic, indivisible, simple element seems to be what we really are, it spontaneously acts and reacts in respect of circumstances outside. This spontaneous reaction of our pure simplicity at the root of our being is actually the vision that we have about things, though it should not be identified with the laboured edifices of a logical structure as we have, for instance, in an engineering feat or an architectural mould.



The fact that we are basically simple and not a bundle of complicated elements will come to relief when conditions in life, circumstances prevailing, drive us into our own selves by a pressure which life can exert upon us, rarely though such a situation is encountered by us. Very few of us might have felt the pressure of life to such an extent as to compel us to retreat into our own selves entirely, and be totally what we are. Extreme types of tragedy, or anything that drives us to the corner, one way or the other, may be an illustration of the condition in which we may go into our own selves and feel that we need nothing except what we ourselves are.



But we cannot easily accept this position in our practical life, especially in modern life, inasmuch as we never go into our own selves. Mostly we are other than what we are. We have a business to perform, as we usually say, a lot of work that is to be done from morning to evening, which is just an engagement in conditions which are outer and extraneous to our own selves, and we get involved in this peculiar network of what we call the business of life, which is nothing but our peculiar entry into the interrelated atmosphere of a world that is many things to us—physical, social, political, and so on.



Every one of us, practically, has to be other than what we are and go out of our own self in order that we may be busy in the accepted sense of the term. Otherwise, what are we busy about? The business so-called is the involvement of ourself in that which is not ourself. This is shocking indeed to hear, that the glorious adventures of life we call our business are involvements of ourself in what we are not in our own self. We may not be happy to hear this; but, whether we be happy or nor, here is a fact, and this peculiar situation which casts us into the mould of an interrelated structure of the outer world, day in and day out, this predicament is the true life of the world which keeps us all anxious every moment.




Anxiety arises from the fact of our being in a condition which is estranged from the condition that is characteristic of our true nature. We are fear-stricken every day and we are immensely cautious about the conditions prevailing in the world. Why would we be so very anxious? The anxiety arises because our true being, which is simple knowing spontaneously through an instrument of knowledge which is other than the sense organs, is caught up in a mire of activity, compulsion and work, all which cannot be really associated with itself. If we are left alone to our own selves wholly, unconditionally, if we are free to our own selves, if this could be possible at any time, we would not be so eager to be busy in the world as we appear to be today and daub this scenery of involvements with the brush of a satisfaction that we seem to be deriving from our activities.



What satisfaction can we have, what peace of mind can we derive, what permanent acquisition can we expect by means of an involvement in a medley of conditions which force themselves upon us, willy-nilly, and in which state we have to lose ourself in a large percentage and become another thing altogether, artificially transferring our being to the being of another thing which we cannot identify with our own self? An estrangement is life, if by life we mean our extrovert involvement in the activities of nature, of society, or whatever it is that we call the world.



But, having said all this, we have to concede a little bit of credit to the simple root that we ourselves are, since, though outwardly we seem to be losing ourselves in the adventure of outward life, we cannot really lose ourselves. Losing oneself wholly and really is unthinkable. One cannot be other than what one is, though it appears as if we are doing nothing but that in our daily life. Every moment of time we get transferred to a condition that is not we. Yet, with all that, there is an irrefutable root which we are, that cannot condescend to get so transformed into something else that it ceases to be entirely.


We cannot wholly cease to be. Outwardly, we may appear to cease because of our emotional, volitional and social involvement, but it is superficial and does not touch our core. If the involvement, that is to say, if our entry into the world in the manner of a participation in things which are totally other than ourselves were wholly real, there would be no freedom for us. If our becoming other than what we are in the activities of life is a wholesale losing of ourselves, becoming servants of outer nature, if that were so, we would not be reasonable in expecting any kind of freedom in our life, and salvation would be far, far away, and unimaginable.



But the struggle of the individual to be free, the aspiration in man to achieve perfection and his resistless longing to break the boundaries of life in every way is an illustration of the strength of what man is basically. There is a tremendous power, an illimitable strength that is simmering like a jetting flame within us, wanting to burst forth into a conflagration of its real dimensions, which, of course, we are daily preventing from taking place due to the pressure of this bodily encasement and its physical associations.



This something that we are, whatever we may be, is the ‘I’ that beholds the world. The activity of the ‘I’ that has an awareness of the atmosphere in which it is placed is its Vision. There is a knowledge of what things there are around oneself. We see things, and then act. We think before we embark on any adventure, though many a time we are hasty in doing things; yet, even when we are overenthusiastic, suddenly, we would realise that there has been a previous consideration in some part of our own selves of the manner of engaging ourselves in this otherwise sudden action.



We are at the back of every action even if it be instantaneous, abrupt and unexpected, because even the most urgent of engagements is a process in time. We know time, we are aware of the process of time, and, therefore, we ourselves cannot be in time. Actions which are temporal, though they may be quick, instantaneous and sudden, are posterior to the being of our own selves, which is prior to every engagement, consideration, thought and vision, and which, therefore, is timeless.



Usually, our vision of things is physical and social. We have a little land and money, we have a house, we have a family—that is our main concern—property which is material, association which is social. The minimum of expectation of a person is only this much, and even when the expectation enlarges itself and becomes wider, it is a multiplication quantitatively of this little concept of one’s basic needs—land, house, family, material wealth to maintain oneself. Even if we were to conceive of our being lords of the whole earth, rulers of the world, it is just a larger expansion of this basic need we feel in ourselves. This is the unlettered vision of the crass, unburnished constitution of our outer personality which is physical, and associated socially in terms of what the body is made of and what its requirements are. The plunging of ourselves in this accepted tradition of wanting only these things, the force with which we enter into this water of life, the vehemence of this outward-oriented engagement is such that we cannot imagine that there can be a more modified vision of life, since mostly we go with the conviction that what we are is this body and what we need is just what the body demands. We can have no other need, though, occasionally, by the impact of natural conditions, we are driven to accept that our needs are perhaps more than merely the physical.


The history of human thought has recorded a long series of deliberations and considerations on the part of experts in this line, who took time to delve into the mystery of the manner in which we live, the way in which we conduct ourselves in respect of the world outside. These records that are available to us go by the name of the ‘Philosophies of Life’, which simply means conclusions arrived at in regard to the ultimate conditioning factors of whatever we are as we consider ourselves to be, and whatever be the manner in which we behave in an environment we call the world.



We live in a world. The meaning of the word ‘world’ appears to be so clear to us that we do not feel like thinking over its implications. This earth, this sky, the sun and the moon and the stars, these people—this is our world. This is one concept, one notion about the area that we occupy we call life, the world that is in our minds. But, actually, there is something more about what we call the world than this definition would provide us. The world may be not just a solid mass of matter we call the earth, or the stellar atmosphere; there is likely to be something more about life. Our understanding of life is our vision of life, and it varies in its intensity, its quality, its quantity, and its relation to the varieties of conditions circumscribed by such factors as, for instance, the anthropological, ethnic, geographical, historical, cultural, linguistic, religious, economic, social, and the like. We cannot uniformly set before ourselves a single perception of things valid for everyone under every condition, or every circumstance, since what we call a vision of things is a reaction of the thinking faculty, the consciousness in us, the life principle, from the state in which it is in the process of evolution. As we know that every living being cannot be expected to be in a uniform level of the evolutionary process, it will be futile to expect everyone to have a similar response to life, much less a common understanding of things.


by Swami Krishnananda


(Continued)