Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Beneath the surface ....

At the surface of our conciousness ... the upper most thoughts in the mind ... are the day to day happenings .. whom i spoke to yesterday, what i thought about the food i ate, how i would like do my project or what i would like happening in my life... some of these are real, some of these are wishes or fantasies, but they are strongly influenced by perspective. What I feel about the same incident will be different from what my friend feels about it ...
A little below the surface are our values, what we've been taught as children, our concepts of good and bad or right and wrong. The uppermost thoughts change ever so often, what is critical to me today will be a thing of the past tomorrow. This next level of thoughts however, does not change very often ... And they are sort of similar between people between races and cultures .. nationalities and era's. In our own lives, they dont change so much with time ..

I can trace some of the things that I strongly believe in, like my concept of God for e.g. to a very young age. I have added to that core, gone from a little truth to a little bigger truth, from a narrow perspective to a little broader perspective but I dont think my perception of the concept essentially changed ....

The important question however is, what is below this level. If my whole concept of self is built sort of in layers .. what is below this layer of ideas and values? What is that which is more underneath my concept of God, my idea of truth ? What is that core of me ? Can I percieve it somehow ? If I cannot, then how am I to learn about it ? Is the mind a good tool to learn about it? Or the heart? Do I read books? Meet people? Live in seclusion for a while?

All these philosophers, Aurobindo, M. Govindan, Vivekananda, Krishna in Bhagawat Geeta .. all these guys say so much stuff. How do I validate these ?

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