61. What and Why?

Question / प्रश्न 61.

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What are the chief perspectives that govern our Life?

कौन से प्रमुख परिप्रेक्ष्य हमारे जीवन को परिचालित करते हैं?

What perspectives influence the Life and What is the impact of the Life on them? 

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A baby tries to know "What?"

What is this, what is that?

For a baby whatsoever and everything around is something, the baby grasps through the senses. And the moment that thing is given a name, the baby begins to remember the spoken word or the name and to associate this word with the thing the baby wants to know.

Then as the baby grows up, and learns to understand the various activities of the  many kinds and can perform them even without giving a thought to How this is done. For example riding a bicycle or a tricycle.

Once the baby (or now the child) learns to utter a few words and can associate a material object to a word or a group of a few words, begins to "think".

With the beginning of  the "thinking", the faculty of imagination grows and then the child can have a mental and virtual world of oneself.

This newly gained imaginative power in the child begins asking the question :

"Why?"

Because now the child can relate to and reason out that something or whatever  happens, happen so because of so many causes and reasons. And though there are numerous such causes only a few of them were earlier seen related with one-another.

First of all the idea of "Time" enters the mind of the child as one of the many and several perspectives grasped in memory.

In the memory and imagination, those many words learnt and the experiences gone through are linked together in a tentative form of network in that Time-frame" originally created by the mind.

Then "causes" and "effects" are sorted accordingly and the idea of an unknown "future" takes hold. 

As there are so many and in fact maybe infinite such causes, and only few could be there within the knowledge, another far more related but conjured up idea of "Uncertainty" as a reality governs the mind. 

The Primordial Existence, the Totality of "What Is", is denoted by  ॐ - the sacred syllable.

Nature the principle that emerges out from this  ॐ is denoted by भूः, - another sacred letter which becomes "be" or "to be" cognate combination words  - तु भू, Next is the sacred letter  "भुवः" / भवनम्, equivalent of "being" the totality of the animates / sentients and the inanimates  / insentients.

Then the Existence Principle manifests as the sacred syllable  "स्वः" / स्वीय - the Greek / Latin word "sui" , indicating the "self".

Nature helps the "sui" as and in the child in developing in a mental frame-work of thought and one gets begins to live the life of the "Indivdual" one's own self and the relative assumed world, where a part is known but the rest the unknown forms a far more formidable unknown and uncertain too.

The life of every individual therefore is the expanse and expansion of verily the ॐ / ब्रह्मन् /"Brahman"" only. 

This is how the ब्रह्मचर्य - आश्रम - the first  stage of life is the activity and behaviour, the character and the characteristic of all living beings born is like this without any option or choice.

If the purity of this childhood mind could be protected and preserved anyone such could learn and be proficient in the  वेद / the Veda - either in recitation, activity,  knowledge or in wisdom. Respectively - the mantra / मन्त्र, performing the activity / ritual / अनुष्ठान / कर्मकाण्ड / the scripture /  शास्त्र, and the sphere of understanding / प्रज्ञा.

The same is encapsulated in the mantra ॐ भूर्भुवः स्वः तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यं भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात्।। 

Therefore this aphorism to be meditated upon.

चातुर्वर्ण्यं मया सृष्टं गुणकर्मविभागशः।।

तयोस्तु कर्तारं मां विद्धि अकर्तारमव्ययम्।।१३।।

(गीता अध्याय ४)

Enumerates the same Principle in the above lines if Chapter 4,verse 13

Here the four-fold Brahman has been described as the one who performs the activities like manifestation, functioning and the withdrawing of the World as a whole, unique and singular Reality.

And the two aspects of this Brahman are the "sense of the doer-ship" and another the "sense of being one who lacks action and activity".

The sense of "What" and "Why" are the external qualities of Brahman, and the sense of "Who" and "I" are the internal qualities.

With the emergence of the external, the idea of a world other than the self also is there and with the dissolution of the idea the world too is dissolved.

The sense of "How" projects the idea of "Time".

"Why" and "How" are the external nature - बाह्य प्रकृति, "Who" and the "I" are the internal nature /  अन्तःप्रकृति .

The two are counterparts of one and the same Unique Principle. 

These are the chief perspectives that govern the Life, and the Life as whole too governs the perspectives.

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