Putting the identity out of a job
In the comedy Sci-Fi series Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy there’s a scene where the “Ultimate Question” of Life the Universe and Everything is the focus. It’s very instructive as far as Self Realisation is concerned. Here’s a few quote extracts from the principal characters: Deep Thought (the supercomputer designed to answer the question), Vroomfondel and Majikthise representatives of the Union of Philosphers, Sages, Luminaries and other professional thinking persons who want the computer turned off.
Majikthise: “I’ll tell you what the problem is mate: Demarcation. That’s the problem.”
Vroomfondel: “We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.”
Majikthise: “We’ll go on strike.” [If the computer is not turned off]
Deep Thought: “Who will that inconvenience?”
Majikthise: “Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits. It’ll hurt buster, it’ll hurt.”
… and so it goes on in an hilarious discourse that results in the computer taking 7.5 million years to consider the problem.
Now look at it this way:
Self Realisation is about putting the identity self out of a job.
That’s exactly what the Vroomfondel and Majikthise fear the most and they, in this context, are the ego-mind identity speaking. It fears its demise and it equates this demise with physical death. No income, no money, no food, no body – death.
The identity self is always seeking demarcation, boundaries. It deals in what it sees as “rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty” and seeks to protect itself from them with its beliefs.
In life and in the script, it threatens strike action yet it’s a false claim as Deep Thought points out with eloquence and ease.
The strike action will hurt but no one other than the identity self suffering again as it fights with itself in a battle for survival.
Your true essence has no demarcation, need for boundaries or “…rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.” It is before and beyond such ego-defined limitations. It is safe beyond even the concept of it.
By not trusting the essence of whom we really it is the greatest inconvenience in the Universe and the cause of suffering. It stems from the belief in separation and that all I am is this body-mind.
When it is seen that the identity is always in constant fight with itself and we just keep on feeding it perpetuating the suffering. The questions arise:
Who is the one that is aware of this?
Is that affected by it?
The answer, it will be seen, is Awareness (aka Infinite Silence) and no it remains at peace always and your essence is it.
Self Realisation is about putting your identity self out of a job.
Trusting only Awareness/Infinite Silence.
It’s this that will lead to the realisation of lasting peace within.
