“Most people are not free. They are 
confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit 
themselves to fewer possibilities by the 
narrowness of their vision.” 
- V. S. Naipaul

THE truth in this assertion hits us immediately. We realise that we confine ourselves in the myopia of our vision of life. V. S. Naipaul makes such candid assertions from his deep civilisational observations that he put forth for us in his numerous books. He often treated human individual as the core of life’s flow. And he often grieved that the human individual cannot make himself/herself free in a true sense because he/she is restricted by his/her vision. Haven’t we said often that life offers immense possibilities ? Yet, haven’t we sensed that most of us are not in a position to exploit those possibilities freely ?

 

And then, haven’t we experienced certain choking, certain suffocation of our spirits ? Despite these, each one of us -- almost -- realises that our own potential is severely restricted by our own vision of ourselves. And if we think deeply, we feel amazed -- even shocked -- by the limitations that we put on our spirits. One old Sanskrit verse says it all: Mana aiva manushyanaam karanam bandha mokshayoh ... (Man’s liberation or incarceration lies in the mind). In the Bhagvad Geeta, too, Lord Krishna talks of the limitless power of the mind provided one knows how to unleash it. I recall a moment of revelation when I was out on a stroll with my Guru and boss in journalism -- G.T. Parande. As we walked along the forest-path that evening, he suddenly bent down and looked deeply at a mound of cow-dung. “Vijay, can you see some activity in this ?”, he asked me. Bending over, I saw that a lot of little insects were moving about in that little world, and said so.

 

My Guru asked, “What forms the sky-line for these insects ?” “Umm, the top-line of the cow-dung mound,” I replied rather tentatively. My Guru smiled and said, “Yes. You are right ! That is the insects’ sky-line. Whichever place you live in forms your sky-line. So, Vijay, why not mentally live in the Himalayas -- and have the lofty Himalayan sky-line ! That way, you will liberate yourselves from a dwarfed sky-line !” That lesson would live with me forever. My Guru talked of the same principle that V. S. Naipaul put in his famous words. This quote of Naipaul’s can shake one out of a spiritual slumber, make one sense the immensity of potential one embodies -- provided one knows how to unleash one vision from the narrowness of one’s thought and dream and idea of self-worth.