JOY OF LIFE

DR.SHRINIWASKASHALIKAR

So many thousands of authors and poets have written about joy, but still I feel like sharing what I seem to have experienced.

At certain stages, the joy of life is a concomitant experience of; a result of a chemical reaction, or illumination of a bulb in electrical circuit, or fire resulting from striking of a match stick.

In childhood it is associated with good food, good clothes, and toys and pampering with other things. It could as well be hugging, cuddling, patting on back or a kiss. Latter it may be associated with adolescent romance and latter with material possession, social prestige, accolade from society, political power, art in various forms, creativity in different fields; and so on!

As we evolve further; (which is not exactly linear or sequential and may be simultaneous with above phenomena) a new experience begins to emerge. This experience is of joy without chemical reaction, joy without illumination of a bulb, and joy without

striking a match stick! This joy is the joy of being the chemical process, being the electricity and being the burning itself! We have now got freed (tyaga) from the realm of and bondage of reactive happiness; that results from and depends on; the fulfillment of our needs and wants! We have got rid (tyaga) of our felt needs, felt wants and felt desires. This was very difficult to imagine in absence of its experience and I used to feel that this was escapism from the struggle of life! But now I understand that tyaga is returning from our periphery and merging with our center or our core! If we correlate this with the concept of cosmic homeostasis, then it becomes clear that in this state we become one with the core of the universe and freed (tyaga) from the bondage and dragging by the fleeting aspect of universe!

This can be described roughly as the phenomenon of sublimation of one’s personality.

In the 12th chapter of Gita there is a verse, stating that through study; we get knowledge, through knowledge we achieve dhyana, through dhyana we

practice karmafalatyaga and through tyaga, we attain shanti i.e. peace.

If we consider the life as a learning process and our experience of life as knowledge, then the everlasting unconditional joy in the very process of whatever we do is dhyana, and the state of freedom from every kind of subjectivity is tyaga! Tyaga is a state of extraordinary ecstasy (shanti). The apparent byproduct of tyaga is withering away of the commercial or even professional considerations! The life is totally free of; every kind of subjectivity and hence every kind of felt need, want or desire! Thus dhyana and tyaga culminate into shanti i.e. eternal and ecstatic peace, which is not an idle or resting state; but a state of, “being transtemporal living space” or cosmic consciousness!

The practical step or the process to realize this state; is NAMASMARAN; which has been illumining thousands of generations from time immemorial and will continue to illumine the

thousands of generations to come; all over the world!