Eaglepath
I rather root my values in my own hallucinations t
Some years ago a Marwari merchant of Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered six months of sleepless nights due to the persecution of a bug that one night entered his brain through his ears! Every fifteen minutes, and sometimes oftener, the bug would creep around inside the skull seeking for a more edible portion of the brain. The merchant went round the globe, meeting all the possible specialists, and yet had to return to India with his pet disease uncured. However, the merchant heard of a great doctor in Lucknow and reached that city with newly lit-up hope. The doctor examined him elaborately and reserving his opinion to himself, declared that he would try his best. Weeks passed. The merchant was almost raving and hysterical as repeated sleepless nights of agony and pain broke down his nervous system bit by bit. One day the doctor approached the patient to inform him that in case the merchant could afford to send a man to the western front, the doctor could exert his influence with the Red Cross and procure for him, a special medicine prepared by the Germans.
Any expense, if it could only relieve him of the agonising pain, was cheap for the merchant. Again months passed. Despair and hopelessness were choking the merchant, when one day the doctor in all cheer and smiles approached the patient and showed him a parcel and said, “Here is the medicine! Now the miracle will be done. There are three tubes here; with one we can make the bug swoon down for at least two, three days; the second, injected after a week, would kill the bug; and third would make the dead bug come out of the ears.” The merchant was naturally much relieved and felt extremely hopeful. Was not the rare German specific for all bugs in the brain procured at such a heavy cost? The next day the doctor with half a dozen of other specialists attended the patient in a well-equipped operation theatre and administered the first of the three injections. As told by the doctor the bug in his brain did swoon, and the patient had a restful night probably, the first night he had slept so soundly after many a month. However, after three days, the bug had started as usual creeping and crawling around, eating the brains and burrowing holes in it! The merciless bug! A week passed. Again the operation theatre scene was repeated and the patient then onwards felt that the bug was really dead. During the week the patient was not even once disturbed by the enemy in his brain.
On the day when the last of the injections was to be administered all the medical college students were called to be in the operation theatre. All the elaborate precautions required for this serious and strange injection of the costliest and the most rare German medicine was enacted faithfully and last of the injections was successfully carried out. After half an hour the patient’s ear was carefully washed, and lo! in the ear basin was seen floating a dead bug! The doctor lifted it with pair of forceps to the gaze of the satisfied and contended patient. The patient was wheeled out of the operation theatre. The doctor went up the door and after closing it carefully wheeled round to face the silent audience of wondering students who were surprised that they should be invited to witness but a mere injection!! ‘Friends’, addressed the practical scientist, ‘you have been watching so far the cure of a very painful disease for which the patient could not get a cure all over the globe. And strangely enough, the German injection bottles were nothing but tubes of distilled water which I had procured from the local chemist round the corner in the street. ‘The most difficult part of the operation was’, confessed the doctor, ‘the hunt that I had to make yesterday night for a live bug. When at last I got one I pressed it carefully between my fingers in one end of my kerchief and preserved the dead carcass, which was dropped into the ear before washing it, and it was that dead bug, which I had hunted out last night, that you saw in the ear! May be the means are unfair but, for an unreasonable patient’s imagined disease, the only cure can be the false medicine of mere attributed powers.’ Viewed spiritually, we all are living the delusions of the merchant. We are suffering the pangs of an imaginary ‘bug’ in us, identifying ourselves with the ego we come to entertain the wrong notions of ‘I’-ness and ‘my’-ness and the consequent sufferings, sorrows, limitations, finiteness and so on. Now we need a Lucknow doctor who will kill for us the bug in our brain, the ego sense, with the rare medicine, the Ᾱtma-jñāna, which, when its purpose has been served, shall be recognised as nothing new or rare but as our own real nature!
Chinmayananda, Swami. KENOPANISHAD:: Self: Different From Known and Beyond Unknown . Central Chinmaya Mission Trust. Kindle Edition.
Any expense, if it could only relieve him of the agonising pain, was cheap for the merchant. Again months passed. Despair and hopelessness were choking the merchant, when one day the doctor in all cheer and smiles approached the patient and showed him a parcel and said, “Here is the medicine! Now the miracle will be done. There are three tubes here; with one we can make the bug swoon down for at least two, three days; the second, injected after a week, would kill the bug; and third would make the dead bug come out of the ears.” The merchant was naturally much relieved and felt extremely hopeful. Was not the rare German specific for all bugs in the brain procured at such a heavy cost? The next day the doctor with half a dozen of other specialists attended the patient in a well-equipped operation theatre and administered the first of the three injections. As told by the doctor the bug in his brain did swoon, and the patient had a restful night probably, the first night he had slept so soundly after many a month. However, after three days, the bug had started as usual creeping and crawling around, eating the brains and burrowing holes in it! The merciless bug! A week passed. Again the operation theatre scene was repeated and the patient then onwards felt that the bug was really dead. During the week the patient was not even once disturbed by the enemy in his brain.
On the day when the last of the injections was to be administered all the medical college students were called to be in the operation theatre. All the elaborate precautions required for this serious and strange injection of the costliest and the most rare German medicine was enacted faithfully and last of the injections was successfully carried out. After half an hour the patient’s ear was carefully washed, and lo! in the ear basin was seen floating a dead bug! The doctor lifted it with pair of forceps to the gaze of the satisfied and contended patient. The patient was wheeled out of the operation theatre. The doctor went up the door and after closing it carefully wheeled round to face the silent audience of wondering students who were surprised that they should be invited to witness but a mere injection!! ‘Friends’, addressed the practical scientist, ‘you have been watching so far the cure of a very painful disease for which the patient could not get a cure all over the globe. And strangely enough, the German injection bottles were nothing but tubes of distilled water which I had procured from the local chemist round the corner in the street. ‘The most difficult part of the operation was’, confessed the doctor, ‘the hunt that I had to make yesterday night for a live bug. When at last I got one I pressed it carefully between my fingers in one end of my kerchief and preserved the dead carcass, which was dropped into the ear before washing it, and it was that dead bug, which I had hunted out last night, that you saw in the ear! May be the means are unfair but, for an unreasonable patient’s imagined disease, the only cure can be the false medicine of mere attributed powers.’ Viewed spiritually, we all are living the delusions of the merchant. We are suffering the pangs of an imaginary ‘bug’ in us, identifying ourselves with the ego we come to entertain the wrong notions of ‘I’-ness and ‘my’-ness and the consequent sufferings, sorrows, limitations, finiteness and so on. Now we need a Lucknow doctor who will kill for us the bug in our brain, the ego sense, with the rare medicine, the Ᾱtma-jñāna, which, when its purpose has been served, shall be recognised as nothing new or rare but as our own real nature!
Chinmayananda, Swami. KENOPANISHAD:: Self: Different From Known and Beyond Unknown . Central Chinmaya Mission Trust. Kindle Edition.