Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
30 November 2019
Anxiety (5)
“Impatience”
When primitive man knew a word as life sophisticated, he was excited about the word. Whereas the primitive man, who was only listening to the sound and not to the word, wondered, why is this man excited? What for?
He is uttering the same sound as me. But he is excited the whole day. It may be just a word for a tree or a leaf or whatever it was. He would have been jumping the whole day in his life, uttering the word.
Because that sound tree or leaf had become a word to his mind, he was excited by it. As life sophisticated sounds as words in every primitive man and woman, they were never excited by words.
Therefore, a child, when it instinctively utters a sound ‘mama’, it is a word to the parents. The parents are excited, but not the child because to a child it is just sound. Also, the child does not know it utters sound.
But, as the child grows, the intelligence in life will sophisticate intellect and memory in the child. The child begins to know words. That is the proof that memory is only required for you to recognise words and their meanings, but not to conduct life. Life will conduct itself the way it is meant to be conducted.
If you think you need your memory to conduct life, it is not needed. You need memory to recognise life that is conducted by the intelligence in life.
But why is a child excited by colours? The appearance of colours is new. The recognition is new. Visual stimuli excite you and supersede excitation by a word from memory.
Don’t you get excited when you see something which you have not seen before? When somebody tells you about it, you are not equally as excited as when you get to see it.
And such is life. Only the illusory can be known. The real can never be known, because the real can never be known. The illusory is only meant to be understood and you can understand only the illusory and not the real.
You will become patient without anxiety with this understanding. You will understand the illusory as an illusory. Not illusory as a reality. But man thinks he will enjoy when he finds the real. No way. You cannot. It will not be possible for you. You will always be impatient, and anxiety will prevail in your daily life without the above understanding.
The enlightened understand that you will get to see what you are meant to see, you will get to hear what you are meant to hear and you will get to know what you are meant to know. This is why the enlightened are patient, neither impatient nor in anxiety.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
As man begins to reflect, if he does, on the intelligence of life as revealed by the wise, there is a transformation in his relationship with daily life and those he meets. If this happens, it happens just as it is meant to. Meanwhile, his conditioned beliefs and reactions lose their forcefulness and striving for results gives way to acceptance and gratitude. His reliance on memory, a dominant player in his waking state, gives way to childlike immediacy and delight. A man or woman is no longer a slave to impatience and anxiety when he comes to understand.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator’s Note:
We believe that if we know a word, we can use it, say it to express our wishes for example. But Dr. Shankar makes it clear in this article: First comes the sound, first the individual emits sounds with a certain sound and rhythm, and only later does the memory evolve in his mind, leading to the recognition of a certain sequence of sounds as a certain word with meaning. Then the use of words, that is, the utterance of certain sequences of tones, which appear as words, continues to happen to the individual in his life, without the need for memory to form the sounds. Memory simply enables him to recognize the sounds formed by life through his body as words. In the article it is expressed in this way: "If you think you need your memory to conduct life, it is not needed. You need memory to recognise life that is conducted by the intelligence in life." A simple observation with incredible depth if it is deeply understood.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.