By ViGo
Table of Contents
When we see the dynamics of society functioning, the question is: how can we build a society where people can flourish?
Society is like an ocean; individuals are like rivers. They all flow towards the ocean. How they are flowing towards the ocean and what sort of ocean is created, what sort of society is created, that is the deciding factor.
So, when it comes to individual flourishing, what is that individual flourishing?
If you ask human beings on this planet, existentially, what are you made up of, most people cannot answer. They will say, “I have a body.” Or they may say, “Yes, I have a mind.”
That is why the whole society is built on a body-mind basis.
When only body and mind exist, the mind begins to orient the execution of life only aligning to body experiences. If you see how you spend your life, it is mainly about body satisfaction.
“I want to eat this. I have to see this. I have to hear this. I want to meet such and such a person.”
Like this, only body experiences, meaning sense-perception-based happening through the body.
Sense perception happens at many levels, because sense perception in the end indicates the ability to perceive. The ability to perceive is the basis of living. Without perception, you cannot feel you live. In the end, we are all living. We should feel we are living. That is life in fact, that is living in fact, that is the ability to perceive the Self.
Actually, the whole manifestation of nature from consciousness is to feel itself. The feeling of the presence is life in a way.
When we understand these dynamics of expression of life, it is very clear that perception is very important, and it should not be fixed to only sense perception based.
If you limit your whole life towards these five senses, it is like a frog living in a well.
How many oceans are there, how many seas are there, how many rivers are there, how many wells are there? If the frog ends up living in a small well, what a big miss.
The majesty of the ocean is missed. The elegance of the river is missed.
As human beings, most of the human beings end up living in a small well of sense perception. It is a very big loss in the journey.
When life itself is getting limited to such a purview of limited, sense-oriented body experience and perception, you go to a job, you have relationships, you construct a house, you do everything based on this restriction.
Of course, a frog which is living in a well does everything based on living in the well.
Then how is flourishing possible?
Knowing the Self
To flourish, the first and foremost thing that you need to understand is who you are and what you are made up of.
How many people know they are made up of five sheaths?
We call it Pancha Kosha: body, energy, mind, wisdom and soul.
Pancha Kosha
The whole society is established based on body orientation. Or some things people do with a mind orientation.
There is no study, practice, availability, expressions, organised methodology or anything based on energy, based on wisdom, based on soul.
Until the awareness about Pancha Kosha, meaning five sheaths of the human being, happens, any flourishing is difficult.
Because flourishing means a comprehensive, a totality of functional expression.
Flourishing is the awareness of who you are.
What experience it brings to travel to Paris, a million-times richer experience will happen in terms of wisdom. You cannot call it experience in relation to what you experience based on sense perception. It is a kind of knowingness at the level of wisdom, being that itself.
That is what Patanjali explains in its third chapter, the special powers or what to call it. It is not an illusion or imagination. It is a different way of living life where, instead of perceiving, you can live by being that itself because you are aligning to the consciousness.
Like this, many possibilities are there for which you can utilise your time called life to explore.
For a true flourishing of society, you need to understand what you are made up of, what is Pancha Kosha, meaning five sheaths, five layers which create you and this creation.
Then, when you know your Self, a clarity will come about how to express life.
In the same way, you are blind about your own Self, about who you are.
For establishing a flourishing society, the first and foremost basic thing needed is to know who you are.
By knowing who you are, you can be a good parent, a good teacher, a good doctor, engineer, scientist, and so on. Because that basic understanding changes the way you act.
Living without comparison
Philosophy class in Yoga Gita Ashram
The first and foremost thing that happens with a flourishing soul, or to a person who has understood himself or herself, is they will live not by comparing to anyone.
“They have a house, I also need to have one. They have such and such a house, I also need to have. They have made such an interior, now I have to make it.”
It is always the human mind which compares, compares, compares and tries to get it.
For that, life is wasted.
Such a kind of chasing, the complexity of the mind, will be there. Instead of chasing the complexity of the mind, settling in the simplicity will happen.
An individual way of seeing is required. Not a collective society mindset which decides what is required.
Your mind is not influenced by that mass conclusions, hysteria thing. You will be independent, truly independent.
“For my life, for my comfort, this is all the arrangements required, only that.”
If you have the capacity, do it.
We have a saying in the local language which is “always stretch your legs only up to where your bed is, your mattress is”. Meaning to stay simple. If you stretch beyond, either you will be cold or something will pinch.
In the same way you should stretch for the resources only up to where you can easily reach and try to find a peaceful settlement in it.
Not like, “I want this,” because you see others and, as an example, you want to adopt that in your life.
This comparative way of living will not be there.
We are temporary travellers
A curious child looking out from a narrow-gauge train in Matheran, India
When you are in a train, you know why you are in the train.
Suppose even if you are travelling for eight hours in the train, moving from one city to another, you boarded a train and you are sitting inside the train. You know for what you are there.
That is why you will not make unnecessary arrangements.
When you are travelling in a train, you know it is just eight hours you are sitting there. You are not taking a blender from your home, or chai-making utensils, or a bed.
If you have to make unnecessary arrangements and if you are making it, struggle will start.
You will bring a blender from your home; you want to make your own juice. Then all the fellow travellers will also bring one and only one plug is there, you will fight.
You bring your bed; they will bring their bed. Where to put it in a coach? Around seventy or eighty people will be there. Where is the space?
That is what is happening in society. Nobody knows they are temporary travellers on this planet. Everybody wants to have many homes, many luxury things. They want to buy for themselves, their children, their grandchildren, at the cost of what? Somewhere, somebody has to work hard for it, losing their own life. At the other end, just for some complexity of the mind, resources are wasted.
Such foolishness will not be there in society.
As you know, “I am on this train for eight hours,” you will behave sensibly. And in those eight hours, how do you feel about your neighbours who are sitting next to you?
Will you fight for a border or fencing?
In the same way, once you know the purpose of your existence on this planet; why am I here? Am I here for this or that? And for how long will I be here? The whole angle will change how you approach life. As per that, you function.
In the background, you know, “Oh, I am on the train. I just want to go to that city.” That’s it.
Why am I here? Am I here to kill someone, shoot someone, argue with someone, control someone or fight with someone?
Or am I here to be at peace, to be affectionate, to be loving, to celebrate, to be in dance?
That will be very clearly understood.
Towards a flourishing society
Moment of celebration in Yoga Gita Ashram
To create a flourishing society, we all have to work together, stage by stage. It takes some time.
The work that needs to happen in society is for people to understand who they are. To create the possibility where they can stay with their Self. To bring a new way of functioning where it is not a competition to live with each other, but a co-existence under which we all share this presence and time on this planet.
Quite the opposite is happening. For centuries after centuries, again and again, what we are doing in the name of life, it is very insane.
Why are we here on this planet?
To live, to celebrate, to be happy, to share. It is a joy or the gift of this creation to live. In that flourishing society, resources will be shared by all, and basically they all know for what they are here. I am here to be at peace, to be affectionate, to be loving, to celebrate, to dance. That will be very clearly understood.
The key is knowing the Self.
The path is Pancha Kosha: understanding the functionality and the presence of the five sheaths and organising that. That is the path for flourishing or success.
What is needed in life is to drop what you are not. That is all that is needed.
Pure Self means which is distributed as Pancha Kosha – Pancha, five layers of your expression.
When the five layers of expression begin to express as they are, that is a very beautiful journey that anyone can experience in life.
