Of losing Me and Mine

Date :20-Aug-2019

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

By Vijay Phanshikar

Then I was a man

I only went up the Hill

As I had time to kill

But kill I did all that was

Me and Mine

With Me and Mine gone

Lost all my will and skill

Here I am, an empty vessel

Enslaved to the Divine Will

and infinite skill

- A short poem

at the start of the first chapter

titled ‘When I lost my sense’,

of the iconic book “Inner Engineering”

by Sadhguru

(Interpretation entirely mine.)

THESE words take the reader from a strong sense of identity to a deep awareness of self -- from Me and Mine to the Will Divine! Up the Hill, the poet did kill time, but also did kill his Me and Mine and then lost all his will and skill, an empty vessel ...! Such emptiness is often in evidence when one travels to the point of loss of the sense of identity or of a narrow definition of who one is. Until that point, there was Me and Mine, a clear existential awareness. Then something strikes like lightening, burning that narrow confine in which one is bound. Then comes that vast nothingness -- empty vessel! Many seekers of elevation find this emptiness very taxing, very daunting. But then they endure that and elevate themselves. Beyond that point is the deep awareness of self when one gets one with the Divine.

That merger -- of the individual with the Infinite -- takes one to a hitherto unknown zone of supreme sublimation: Aham Brahmasmi (I am the Brahma)! Nirvana is what many call this condition of sublimation. When I am trapped in Me and Mine, my vision does not travel beyond my own identity. Things around me, people around me are part of my world. A strong attachment binds me to all these. A strong loyalty assails my senses all the time.

This is Me and this is Mine, I assert. That assertion sounds great. It gives me a heightened sense of importance and afflicted by that sense, I do not even wonder Ko Aham (Who am I?). But life is not so simple. It assails you, engulfs you, burns you from all sides, inside and outside, in the process shaking up your sense of identity, importance. Those vagaries force you to start seeking answers to the riddle called life. In that state you ask: Ko Aham? ! This, too, is a very tough point in the journey.

One is tormented, traumatised by a loss of sense of identity. Out of that inner turmoil, from that terrible existential push and pull emerges a faint and quaint consciousness of Ko Aham? Who am I? And then comes up from the unfathomable depth of one’s core the answer So Aham! (I am That, the Brahma!). That is the point when one travels away from one’s sense of identity and goes close to a consciousness of self. The narrow, existential sense of Me and Mine is gone and a wider sense of oneness with the Divine emerges. That is the point when the temporal journey lends itself to a spiritual realisation. The Nirvana!