Sep 20, 2004, 12.00am IST
People become enlightened in three main ways: through suffering, outcome and purpose. Sudama's life is an example of enlightenment through suffering.
He was reluctant to go to Dwarka as he thought he might be misunderstood as wanting something in life. He believed that man gets what he deserves, not what he desires.
Living in poverty, he could enjoy bliss remembering the Lord. When he returned from Dwarka, seeing the prosperity showered on him, he lamented: "Oh Lord! You think that you can imprison me with this material prosperity, but you forget that you are imprisoned in my heart till eternity".
Enlightenment through outcome arises out of setting goals and ambitions. We are all taught to mask our true feelings. We are afraid of the unknown, our feelings, our intuitions, because the outcome is unknowable.
When we hold back our genuine feelings, we become frustrated and lose confidence in ourselves. We become a follower and not a leader.
But when we follow our intuition and the outcome is right, we get that special experience called enlightenment. The intuition comes from the unconscious mind.
The third way of enligh-tenment is through purpose. Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi lived deli-berately to achieve something noble and lofty.
Robert Bly in Iron John narrates the plight of a prince disguised as a knight riding first a red horse, then white and lastly a black one. These colours have a logical symbolic progression in relation to man's life.
The redness of his emotions relates to the younger years; the whiteness to work and living according to law and the blackness of maturity in which compassion and humanity have a chance to flower.
In the later years of his presidency Lincoln was a man in black. He had libe-rated the blacks and given them freedom. Emotions no longer ruled his temper.
He had ceased to blame anger and had developed a brilliant, philosophical sense of humour. There was nothing to hide and life was an open book.
Mahatma Gandhi experimented with non-violence and in his later years did penance and self-purification by going on fast for a cause.
Miracle is not materialising something from nowhere; it is living a fulfilled life everyday. The Dhammapada says that it is everyone's duty to get free of hate, disease and restlessness.
This can be done not by rejecting the world but by cultivating love, health and calmness within. The ideal state is to 'feed on joy'; joy that can be self- generated, flowing from the ever-reliable source within. Man becomes self-contained.
Tao Te Ching recommends that as you get in harmony with nature, your actions cease to seem like action. It can be called 'flow' or 'unfolding'. Where regular action involves effort of will to accomplish something, flow automati-cally takes you to your destination.
Tao says: "Flow around obstacles, don't confront them. Don't struggle to succeed, wait for the right moment".
Carol Pearson in The Hero Within refers to six archetypes we live by: the orphan, wanderer, warrior, altruist, innocent and magician. The magician sees life for Uto-pian possibilities and claims more power.
Magicians are willing to take a stand even if it is risky or revolutionary. Unlike the warrior, they give up the illusion of total control over themselves.
In doing so they generate the ability to recognise the flow and move with great effect. That is why they appear to do magical things. Famous magicians include Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
The magician, instead of trying to be a winner in the existing less-than-perfect world, is willing to create a new world.
T G L Iyer
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