The World As A Classroom

By T.S. Ananthu

We come into this world and exit from it in much the same way as we do into our classrooms – neither is a permanent abode. Therefore, it is good to remind ourselves constantly that we have come into this world to learn something and that at the end of it all there is going to be an exam. The 20th century Lebanese mystic Mikhail Naimy specified the only subject which forms the curriculum of this ‘school’ and on which we will be examined at the end of life:

Love is the Law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man. And what is it to love but for the lover to absorb forever the beloved so that the twain be one?

The word ‘love’ in English is used quite liberally, and has a wide spectrum of connotations. One way of examining this spectrum is to associate love with different aspects of our own being, and recognize that whenever we love someone or something, it consists of a mixture of feelings drawn from these five aspects of existence:

1. Physical love: This form of love always has some selfish element in it. An extreme example is ‘I love fish’ – wherein the love for the fish is confined to a person’s taste buds and does not extend to any form of compassion for the fish that is being killed and eaten.

2. Intellectual love: This happens when we classify someone as ‘good’ and feel positively for that person. This does not have the obviously selfish element as in physical love, but nevertheless is conditional – it exists only as long as the person continues to be ‘good’ in our eyes.

3. Emotional love: This is less conditional, but nevertheless has the potential to change to hatred – for emotional people have a tendencyto swing from one extreme to another like a pendulum.

4. Devotional love: This is the purest of love possible at the level of the mind. It doesn’t have to be to a deity, it can be the devoted love of a mother for her child or a wife/husband for her/his spouse.

5. Spiritual love: It is only at the level of the spirit (which is our life-force, and is different from the mind) that we encounter what Naimy defined as the highest or truest form of love. Each one of us carries this spirit within us in much the same way that we carry the mind with us – both exist in the forehead, but at the subtle level. Mystics have used the analogy of the cave – ‘guha’ in North Indian languages, ‘guhai’ in Tamil – to explain the subtle aspect of our forehead. The mind in its usual state cannot penetrate the depths of the cave because it is too restless – and so its waves prevent it from seeing the depths of the ocean. Therefore, when we close our eyes, we see only darkness – like what happens when we stand in front of a deep cave. But if we still the mind, we can penetrate this darkness and discover that our ‘cave’ holds unbelievable treasures. The most valuable of these treasures is our own spirit, which is none other than the Lord. At that level, the feeling of ‘other’ vanishes, and therefore the lover can ‘absorb forever the beloved so that the twain be one’, as Naimy put it. Kabir put the same thing this way:

जब मैं था, तब हरि नही, अब हरि है, हम नाही

प्रेम गली अति सांकिरी, ता मे दुइ ना समाही

When we can reach the above state of true love, the lesson has been learnt fully, and we don’t have to come back into the ‘classroom’ of this world, except maybe to teach others the same lessons we have learnt. But until then, we keep coming back. It is a slow and exacting learning process – involving experiential learning (of the swimming or cycling kind) rather than intellectual or book knowledge. All the love experiences we go through in life are stepping stones towards that higher and true love. Naimy conveys it through these powerful words:

The love of man for woman is not love. It is thereof a very distant token. The love of parent for the child is but the threshold to Love’s holy temple. Till every man be every woman’s lover, and the reverse; till every child be every parent’s child, and the reverse, let men and women brag of flesh and bone clinging to flesh and bone, but never speak the sacred name of Love. For that is blasphemy.

That means, when we examine our own life at the end of a lifespan and discover that we have we have been loving only the part, not the Whole, we realize how incomplete, if not selfish, we were, and so voluntarily come back to this classroom to reach the goal of Whole – ‘purnam’, as our scriptures put it. Until then, it is ‘neti, neti’ – ‘not this, not that’.

(T.S.Ananthu (77) gave up his career in the field of engineering and computers soon after his marriage to devote himself to the pursuit of an 'alternative' life-style and related ideas together with his wife Jyoti who also gave up her career at St. Xavier's College, Bombay, and IITD. Together they pursued their interests at the Gandhi Peace Foundation and later founded Navadarshanam, an alternative community dedicated to ecological and spiritual pursuits in a small hamlet in Tamil Nadu, not far from Bangalore. After Jyoti's demise in 2008, he shifted to his guru's ashram in Beas, Punjab, where his focus is research on the science-spirituality connection.)