When we see a well-made movie, we get absorbed in the story. We often forget that we are just watching the movie. The transition from being “observers” to being “participators” is unconscious and quick. When that happens, we get absorbed fully and unreservedly into whatever is happening on the screen.
Seldom do the movies hold our attention without break from beginning to end. We generally shuttle back and forth between being observers (when we lean back on our seats and know that we are watching a movie) and being participators (when we forget where we are and who we are).
While our moments of self-forgetfulness may be few and their lengths relatively small while watching a movie, such periods can be innumerable and their lengths can stretch from a few months to many years to even lifetimes while watching the movie of this universe.
We don’t know when we began watching this movie called “my life.” It certainly is made with an eye for detail. It is so true to life that seldom do any of us feel that we are “watching” this cosmic movie. How rare an occasion when we can lean back on our seats and remember—as the Upaniṣads tirelessly urge us to do—that we are the ātman! How easy it is to get absorbed into what’s out there, and how difficult it is to remember that because something is wrong “in here” that we are even able to see something “out there”!
The problem is really simple. We have gone to sleep and, naturally, we have forgotten where we are and who we are. That forgetfulness has produced the dream of this universe. It’s all “in here” in my mind but I don’t know it. The dream world does seem “out there” to the dreamer.
Dreams don’t end unless the dreamer wakes up. What is “waking up” other than the dreamer throwing aside the dream-identity and reclaiming his or her waking-identity?
When we wake up from the dream of this universe, we will throw away this ridiculously inadequate dream-identity of a human being (bound, mortal, imperfect, and stressful) and reclaim our true identity of a divine being (free, immortal, perfect, and blissful).
Seen in this light, Swami Vivekananda’s words acquire special significance: “Arise! Awake! and stop not till the goal is reached.” The dream won’t end until I wake up. The human-me will continue to suffer until the divine-me wakes up. I can’t be both human and divine. The rope mistaken for a snake can’t be both a rope and a snake at the same time. It’s either a snake (when I’m mistaken) or a rope (when I am not), never both.
What do I want to be—human or divine? Being both human and divine is not an option. If I am happy being human, I don’t need to do anything different. But if I want to be divine, something’s got to change. Radically. And Now.
With a pandemic at the back of the mind, it’s time I asked myself: what am I doing to throw off this false human identity and reclaim my true divine identity?