Why do we spend our lives searching for a path to truth when we can create our own path through the Wilderness of Samsara?
The world needs path makers and breakers, not path takers. It is much easier to follow a path, than to constantly create new ones, it is true! Yet, a curiously attractive Dharma is making breakthrough-s in the impenetrable walls of sub-conscious collective thought, through which our fellow humans may advance in their march to Moksha.
Every time a new path is created, the path-maker benefits humanity because the task is now made easier for those who come behind. Once we succeed in performing a difficult task, we will find that the same task will be performed much more easily by others. As a teacher – Acharya for more than 50 years, I have observed this phenomenon hundreds of times.
I will give one very concrete example. About 30 years ago, at an International Yoga competition held as part of Pondicherry’s International Yoga festival, I and my students witnessed a young teenage girl from Assam perform an extremely difficult Asana which we had never seen before. She did the Asana so beautifully we were awe –struck. Standing on one leg, she lifted the other leg, bent the knee and placed the foot gracefully under her chin. She then stretched her arms upward and held them in a Shiva pose making a curved line with hands limp at wrists. As a final finishing touch, she broke into a brilliant sparkling smile, totally, happily at ease!
We were thunderstruck and marvelled at her mastery. Stimulated by the sight, my students began to practice this very same pose. Within one month, one young girl had achieved it. Within three months four more could perform the Asana. Now this pose is so common in our Institute that no one will give it much importance! The opening of the brick wall made the impossible possible. After that, large numbers of people were able to achieve the Asana.
I have witnessed this phenomenon with many other Yoga feats, as well as in Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music and other difficult arts. About two decades ago one of my senior dancers succeeded in performing Eka Pada Virya Asana (One Leg Heroic Pose) with hands outstretched in Agra Mudra and full body parallel to the ground. She then made a complete circle while balancing on one leg right in the middle of a Shiva Thandavam dance item. All were dumb founded at her skill. Now in our Institute almost everyone can do it! The path breakers- makers had shown the way, and the way then became easy!
Another lovely story from the Jewish tradition illustrates this spiritual psychic law – truth – principle!
Rabbi Joseph Caro once encountered an extremely difficult passage in his study of the Talmud. After many days of toil, he finally comprehended its meaning. At a nearby table sat a businessman who would come every evening for study. Rabbi Joseph noticed that this man was approaching the very passage that had given him such difficulty. Curious as to how his neighbor would deal with it, Rabbi Joseph listened in. To his great surprise, the businessman mastered the passage without any difficulty, immediately hitting upon the very interpretation which he had himself arrived at only after so much effort. Rabbi Joseph thought, there is something grievously lacking in my understanding of Torah. Why else would it have taken so much time and toil on my part to see what is so readily obvious to even a part time, rather unexceptional student of Talmud?
That night, Rabbi Joseph had a dream, in which it was revealed to him the significance of what had occurred. “Know,” he was told, “that from the time that the Torah was given at Sinai, no man had comprehended the particular insight which you have uncovered. This is why you had to labour so strenuously – this facet of Divine Wisdom had yet to enter the world of earthly intellect. But your efforts opened the channel by which this truth was revealed; you have made this truth readily accessible to every mind that approaches the study of God’s Torah.
Human efforts and successes never go in vain.
Sincere Sadhana lifts and evolves not only one’s own spirit but the collective consciousness of all humanity as well!
Pujya Ammaji,
Yogacharini Meenakshi Devi Bhavanani,
(Director ICYER at Ananda Ashram, Pondicherry)
