Aekla Cholo Re

Dr. Rajesh Bhola
India
May 17, 2013


Mother Earth provides us plenty. But this beautiful life is also full of hardships. Life is not easy; pain and suffering are part of our lives. In each of our stories, there is adversity - which, at times, is terrible. However, we can try to lead a spirited life – especially in the way we face the hardships. Facing hardships and adversity is purely an individual experience – like enlightenment. Aekla Cholo Re, a Bengali patriotic song written by Rabindra Nath Tagore, exhorts the listener to lead his/her journey alone – if need be.

 When we come into this world we are single. We come without any baggage and belongings. Gradually, we start weaving a cobweb of attachments and intricate relationships. Finally the time comes to leave this world - and yet again we are left without relationships. In the march of time, kingdoms perish, empires fall. The rich and famous, holding high power and influence, also become dust. For some time the illusion and delusion of social relations makes us feel safe and secure. But the security of relationships is just a barter arrangement, created on the basis of a mutual interdependence of contemporary counterparts. Who is a friend and who a relative? Who does actually want us? Perhaps we are always alone psychologically. 

In the cosmic arrangement everything is interlinked, and serves a purpose. There is no such thing as a small act and a big act - even our smallest act is a whole act. Each act contributes to the bigger purpose of a whole. Though we are the masters of ourselves, yet we have to learn how to tune ourselves to the requirements of existence as a whole. We tune our personality, our existence, to the totality of existence. What we call happiness, satisfaction or joy is an adjustment of ourselves to a condition that is prevailing outside. We will not have satisfaction unless we are so adjusted; and only then can our family also be well-adjusted. A few individuals staying together become a family; all families living together become humanity - a consciousness. This is not religion, this is not spirituality, this is not any kind of esoteric doctrine, but a scientific fact of the law of nature - that everything is cohesive and together; so that each one is everything and everything is each one. That is what is known as universal consciousness. The whole play is of consciousness;  we cannot exist outside consciousness. What we are is what our mind thinks, and it is consciousness that operates the whole system. We may exist for a very short span, but our consciousness continues to exist. If each individual, a particle of this consciousness, is filled with inner peace, we will have a completely peaceful atmosphere around. Peace is an outcome of the adjustment of the individual to the inextricably connected cosmic whole. Unless we are friendly with the whole cosmos, we cannot have  peace of mind. 

When, as an individual, our sense of self lessens, we become less selfish, and less self-centered. We begin to feel the suffering of others. Boundaries disappear, and we tend to the needs of others as if they were our own. Gradually, the delicate art of caring and loving - without possessing - surfaces, and becomes apparent. There comes a growing sense of oneness, of communion with all. What should the seeker of enlightenment do? I often tell parents of the specially challenged children that they have perhaps been given an opportunity to not only help their own children, but also many others in pain and misery. It is when the pain is unbearable, the turmoil most piercing, and the hardship insurmountable, that enlightenment breaks through. It takes a long time to redeem one’s soul. Each individual tries to learn from his or her own experiences, which come by facing one’s own suffering, and learning the profound lessons that suffering has to teach. The lessons are about letting go; not holding on to desire, but letting it go. Whenever we hold a sense of self, the suffering increases. When we let it go, the self vanishes, and suffering dissolves into lightness, ease and peace. In our new knowledge we then experience the most profound joy. In our loneliness we find ourselves in communion with all beings - everywhere.

Cosmic consciousness splits itself into individuals, like a ray of light becoming multiple when it passes through a prism. One cosmic consciousness is divided into multiple forms of the universe, and each individual consciousness thinks of itself as an individual. It is a simultaneous awareness of all the parts. This is why some philosophers say that the world is the body of God. The cosmic consciousness, which is also called the consciousness of God, feels the universe as its own body, and the individuals as parts of that one body.

Dr. Rajesh Bhola is President of Spastic Society of Gurgaon and is working for the cause of children with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities for more  than 20 years.



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