Our experience and pursuits should have an uplifting influence on our consciousness. And all such uplifting and loftier learnings should lift and enrich the collective consciousness of the entire humanity, thereby creating newer possibilities and unlocking newer mysteries of Divine Creation. Unless and until we do so, these shall continue to make us incapable or unqualified for any future engagements with superior pursuits.

The truths of human life become starker when we keep losing our near and dear ones at regular intervals. This often drives us towards realisation of the mundane character and emptiness of our existence unless we start comprehending the spiritual nuances of our various worldly experiences and encounters. These days, when I see someone fighting, getting angry, getting arrogant or becoming vile and vicious, I am immediately drawn into a different world. The vile and vicious, the uncomfortable people or interlocutors are God’s ways to put us through tougher tests and ordeals for preparing us for better and bigger responsibilities in this or the afterlife.

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Seeing them as the children of the same Almighty as created me, I am often transported to a thought whereby I start looking for the reason for which God might have sent these uncomfortable people to earth or into my life for making me and many others learn some of our lessons. After all, as they say, if things are happening your way, it is good. But if they are not happening your way, it is better as the same is happening God’s way and God knows better than us. And one can say with certitude that all our negative experiences have been followed by positive and better ones. One loss has always been compensated by much bigger gains.

Spiritual rationalisation has been found to be an effective and helpful tool in correlating present life’s incidents with past lives’, ‘Karma’, thereby getting away from life’s many woes and getting ahead in life. While talking to all kinds of people, I often see myself talking to and interacting with a frame of bones covered with a pile of earth, eventually going back to nature. I also visualise these people including myself sooner or later departing the scene, leaving the causes or the outcomes of the fight, anger, arrogance or viciousness behind, so far behind that people would hardly remember any of us.

More so, because most of these people would also soon be replaced by others who would hardly us as most of us would be lost through time, without any traces. All the ordinary and extraordinary people end up either in graveyards or cremation grounds sooner or later, being consigned to insignificance unless we really leave our footprints on the sands of time.

Moreover, when life throws stones at us, it is more than advisable to use these for making bridges or constructing a beautiful edifice that would satisfy our creative self and would also glorify the Almighty. If life gives us the sourness of a lemon, we should make lemonade of it. So, while life’s various quirks and turns make us feel low or disheartened, we should immediately change gear to rediscover ourselves, to engage with different and positive preoccupations of life rather than remaining stuck on the negative and depressing aspects of life. However, if rebirth were to be the truth, as Hinduism and many other religions believe, we ourselves can’t identify ourselves with those great causes, outcomes or feats in our newer incarnations as we usually are reborn with no memory of past lives. But the learnings and lasting impressions of our previous lives remain ever so etched on our eternal consciousness to guide us through our future roles and responsibilities. That is why some individuals have better felicity, knack or talent in certain fields than many others because of their past learnings and experiences.

The talent of prodigies can be traced to their remarkable successes and learnings in their previous lives, thereby getting implanted onto their eternal consciousness and helping them in their extant lives. That is why, it is advisable that after we have provided ourselves with the basic necessities for a comfortable human life, we should start delving into the deeper truths of human life and divine drama, simultaneously trying to stretch the human imagination and knowledge to better understand the vastness of the multiverses.

Mind you, it is these lasting impressions and learnings, positive or negative, that we take with us to the other world or the after world. That is why, while we keep striving at human excellence in every sphere of life, we should nevertheless be wary of any experience or encounter that negatively affects the evolution of our eternal consciousness. It is the imperfections of our soul which keep us mired in the incessant cycle of birth and death. The faster we get rid of this, the better for our souls to go beyond the trap of repetitive mundaneness to engage in loftier pursuits of knowledge.

Against this background, it is ironical that notwithstanding the fact that we are all born of the same God, we keep sparring over the various expressions of the Almighty. Knowing very well that each one of us may be reborn or re-expressed tomorrow on the other side, we still conduct ourselves to accept our extant positions or forms as something permanent. After all, Hindus could be reborn as Muslims or a Pakistani could be reborn as an Indian. But we keep drawing so many boundaries among ourselves.

All those who believe in the superiority of their God or their power, also believe that all expressions of the Creation are actually born of or created by their God and as such all the followers of different castes, races or religions have also been made by the same God. As such, we should have no reason to engage in internecine conflicts with one another. But for some strange reason, we refuse to accept and understand this.

And if we do not understand this, we shall neither have time, energy or the inclination to engage in the higher pursuits of knowledge. As the highest and most intelligent expression of God’s Creation, we must move away from the parochial concerns of a single planet by resolving its many problems and must go beyond this to stretch our knowledge and wisdom in consonance with the humongous possibilities created by the Almighty.

(Concluded)

The writer, an IAS officer, is Mission Director, National Health Mission & Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of West Bengal. The views expressed are personal