UPSC GEETA 3: IDENTIFYING QUASI-TRUTHS

 "What are those problems?"  

I was waiting for his answer. I was thinking and trying to interpret the brief silence that occupied him. But he was busy smiling and looking at me. Why is he smiling? My patience is struggling. I now want my answers. Am I supposed to interpret his smile as well? Is this world this intricate? Is my mind this intricate? What else is fake? 

He interrupted my train of thought, "Do not overthink!" 

I will tell you two things today. The remaining two problems. 

I said, "go on!" 

"The third problem is the distinction between fabrications of your mind and reality." 

"exactly", I exclaimed, as if I knew this, "But how to know what fabrication is and what is reality?" 

"Do not jump, do not pretend to know something that you somehow guessed through deductive and inductive reasoning. Reason is not knowledge; it is a tool. Knowledge is right experience interpreted rightly", He blasted on me. 

I was honestly not ready for this. I got surprised. I had no idea that a chill guy like him can scream at the top of his voice and so loud over this. I remained silent. I was afraid because I thought someone would l hear us. 

He said, this time calmly enough, "Do not worry, nobody can listen to us. Time has stopped!" 

I was wondering if what he is saying is true. I wanted to verify it. And now my Physics brain was taking over and I wanted to know how he did it? My curiosities were turning another way. 

"Do not get distracted!", He continued, "You do not have a guided curiosity, your curiosity derives from a lust for knowledge which is just a fool's curiosity. I suggest you develop control over your curiosity. Once you do it, you will become a Gyani". 

"Who is a Gyani?" 

I instantly regretted. I am sorry. 

He continued, laughingly, "You are such an idiot. Now listen, just see what your problem is. Not Nikhil's, Not Akash's. Specifically, yours. Isn't your problem this lack of distinction?  You were an avid dreamer since childhood, aren't you? At a young age, you used to imagine whole stories in your mind, and you used to enjoy them on your own. Your family members used to see you playing with yourself alone in your backyard. In this, you have once dropped a whole TV set on yourself, do you remember?" 

Yes, I did. I wonder how does he know? 

He continued, "Actually, your whole life has been a fight between your mind and your conscience to remain in reality. You used to imagine stories about yourself. What vivid fictions you used to imagine. You could have been a very good fiction writer. But you used to imagine that for yourself. Haven't you spread a lot of false stories about yourself to your friends? You got your first girlfriend through this false storytelling, didn't you?" 

I felt embarrassed. He continued. 

"Also, you kept fooling yourself all these whiles. You fooled yourself telling you are very smart and intelligent. You fooled yourself saying you are born to be a Physicist. You fooled yourself and your Girlfriend, Simarti, a bright future of how you two will be together. Haven't you? The moment she realized this fiction, she broke up. She realized, you live more in fiction than in reality. You also realize it sometimes, like when you left your PhD, your fiction broke. The fiction demanded hard work. Hardwork broke your fairy tale. And it broke your illusion that you were intelligent."

"Now, you stand naked, at zero point, having nothing, no achievements, pure at a struggling point. Even now, you try to escape to fiction thinking about future, IAS, and DM and all that, but you need to awaken yourself, see what fiction is and avoid all fictions at all costs". 

I was shaking from inside. He almost killed me. I did not know what to say, what to think, what to feel, what to be. He snatched away all fictions from me. 

Silence prevailed. 

I cleared my throat, and tried to ask, "But does that mean I am a fool, that I am not intelligent, that I am not any good, Will I not be able to achieve anything in life?" 

"What I am telling you is taking a firm grasp on reality. And you are again asking me to give you a static answer. Fool, stupid, Intelligent, achiever, achievement, all these are static Quasi-truths. In reality, Humans have made these categories through language. They do not exist as absolutes in reality. Language is not at all something to be relied upon. Language is fictional."

Somehow, I realized, what he is saying is much deeper. He is not asking me to drop my lies. He is telling me to drop everything other than this present moment. 

Just when I was going to ask, "What else is fiction around me, Enlighten me master!" 

He said, without even letting me start asking, "Everything that has a limited space and time extension is false". Memories are fictions, Imaginations are fictions, Language created to name and identify things are fictions, Relationships are fictions, Matter is fictional, Thoughts are fictional, Ideas are fictional, Body is fictional, Mind is a fiction, all emotions, all instincts are fictions. All categories of nature are fictional, and many things are."

I was thinking but no thoughts were coming. 

What is reality?

"This particular moment, this bare, boring, thoughtless reality. Rather reality, uncorrupted by fiction is reality". 

So, Does this mean, Reason is also fiction?

"Yes and no! Reason is a tool of mind. A sort of stick that is used to guess what is and what is not."

"Reason, when used to create and sustain fictions, then it becomes fictional only, Reason, when used to know truth and reality, and discarding fictions, only then is it reality!" 

So, Am I right in saying, Intelligent is one who is trying to unravel what is real, and discarding fictions?

"Yes, He is Gyani."

So, I think Gyani also is a dynamic category. Gyani is not static. A Gyani is a Gyani only when he keeps on striving. The day he stops, he ceases to be. So, the Gyani was not really a Gyani but a fiction. 

Yes. Now you are getting it. 

So, I am intelligent only when I am trying to lift off the weights of imaginations and fictions around me.

He smiled at me. I interpreted it as yes. 

he further said, "So, Your UPSC selection is going to be but an event. Nothing more, nothing less. It ceases to exist one moment after you see your rank, It ceases to be one moment before you see the holy PDF."

And, "What is true is what is right now. Me, at this moment, trying, striving to know, striving to study, is this real?" 

"yes and no".

No?

yes, No!

Why so?

Striving is reality, You are not!

"I am not? Not even in this moment?" 

"You exist as an action of nature. You do not exist as an independent actor. You do not exist as a separate actor than the nature. Nature is what is acting through you and in you. Nature does action on your body. Your body and your mind decided one day that it wants to clear Civil services, and it began. Then, nature pushed a button as if, and action started happening through you. A washing machine started working when pushed button. But did it clean the clothes? Or Dadima did?

"Dadima Did!"

"So, nature does, and nature becomes!" 

I was feeling shattered. It was not sadness, but it was too overwhelming as a statement. I am not. And suddenly it felt I started not being. A kind of psychological melting started to happen. An evaporation of ego. And evaporation causes cooling. My Mind felt cooler. 

He smiled at me as if knowing how I was feeling. 

He said, "Feel it". I will wait. 

I was feeling it. An ecstasy prevailed. 

My curiosity melted. I did not want to know other things. I just wanted to be. It felt Orgasmic. Not the sexual, but something else. Something not material. But it was real. No, it was not. It cannot be. 

I stopped. He was smiling. I was ready after 15 minutes for the last problem.