The slow and steady get to know the ultimate

Jan 5, 2010, 12.00am IST

Moni Mohan Bhattacharyya.
Slow and steady wins the race-so goes the proverb. Spiritual developments leading to nirvana or truth-realisation take a long period of time following strict adherence to certain principles. Ratnakar, the dreaded dacoit, was transformed as Valmiki, and he wrote the Ramayana, after long years of meditation.


In the story of the Pandavas, Arjuna was blessed with the divine grace of Krishna, but as the Lord Himself reminded Arjuna, before attaining this state Arjuna had to pass through many births which he totally forgot. The Jataka tales say that the Buddha had to experience several births before being enlightened.

Spiritual development is a slow process demanding sustained and committed effort. Some might think it to be a boring process; however, it is highly rewarding one for it brings lasting peace to an avid seeker. Spirituality cannot however be thrust upon anybody nor can the process of spiritual evolution and the learning process be crunched as a crash course. Any forcible attempt in this regard proves futile.

To attain nirvana or divine enlightment is the ultimate goal of human life and surely this is the supreme divine gift a real seeker can ever think of because in this mundane world any other material gain is considered trivial in comparison.

In physical science, we come across an interesting analogy of the spiritual path in the form of one reversible path. In thermodynamics, work can be accomplished by two different ways, namely, the reversible and the irreversible ways. All natural processes are called irreversible, as they take place abruptly or spontaneously. As for example, water flows spontaneously from a high level to a low level, or a gas inside a cylinder comes out of its own if there is a leak in it and by so doing they also make changes in the surroundings.


However, the reversible path is completely different, although one can accomplish a change both reversibly and irreversibly. The result is however different in the two cases as the mechanisms of the two paths are quite different. A reversible path is a slow process, so much so that the change does not affect the ambience at all, or in the language of thermodynamics it is always in equilibrium with the surroundings in terms of some variable factors, namely, pressure and temperature.

Because of the slowness of the process as also the fact that it does not inflict any injury to the surroundings, it takes a pretty long time, to go from one state to another state.

In order to get maximum benefit, one is to follow the reversible path. The irreversible path yields much less in comparison as the path involves sudden changes. So in the physical plane also, a disciplined effort yields maximum dividends than in the case of indisciplined one.

Reversible path can also be reversed to the initial state without disturbing the surroundings in the same way as followed in the forward moving case. The resemblance here is also surprising as a divine seeker in the exalted state may slowly come down to the normal state for the benefit of mankind.

Now, the question arises as to why slowness becomes the prerequisite for attaining spiritual enlightenment to human beings. The plausible answer may be that the human mind is so expansive and the fastest moving complex system, which is otherwise almost impossible to restrain, needs the nagging slowness for a considerable period of time as the perfect antidote to control it, so that each and every minutest level of mind can be focused and sensitized to the maximum effect.