The Point

The point is not in having more, but in being better.

The point is not in having friends more, but in being friendly.

The point is not in having love more, but in being in love.

The point is not in having money more, but in being rich.

The point is not in having health more, but in being healthy.

The point is not in having understood more, but in being understanding.

The point is not in having God, but in being Godly.

The point is not in having cared more, but being caring.

The point is not in have life more, but being alive.

The point is not in having memories more, but being memorable.

The point is not in getting stuck, but being in flow.

More than in the noun, the essence is in the verb.

More than the visible, the essential is the invisible.
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The Unity

Lost in the transient celebration of youth, and pleasure,

Among the charade of attachment and longing,

Drugged in pride, and achievements

Living that mirage, in that what we call Life,

Hidden is the truth – the ultimate fate – The Death,

Yet man tries to escape it, ignore it, forget it.

So, is solitude inherent in life.

Yet, man tries to escape it, ignore it, forget it.

Each soul, by essence is alone.

It is all transient drama of togetherness

With people and things!

The drama ends in no time.

Abruptly in one moment of stillness!

In that stillness

Is lost all the hurt, all the grudges,

All the follies, and all the achievements.

Meaningless are all the wins,

Just the loses mean of worth then,

For they had helped purifying the soul,

Realized in that silence!

Even then, in the solitude of life,

It makes a beautiful sense,

Watching myriads of people and things,

All different and unique,

Singing their own songs,

In meter and rhythm different!

Watching and listening to all,

The different strokes,

The different colors,

The different tones!

So diverse and varied,

Like colorful blossoms in the garden!

All are different,

But are tied with the One,

The invisible thread,

The thread of Love,

The thread of God,

The thread of Humanity!

Appears Life like a glittering necklace,

Worn by the most amorous damsel – The Creation!

A necklace of countless glittering diamonds,

Sparkling with enchanting shimmer,

Each is unique, each is precious,

Each belonging to a different world,

A unique and unknown world of mysteries.

But then, all are strung into that One.

The One invisible thread,

The thread of Love,

The thread of God,

The thread of Humanity!

The differences is so overwhelming,

Distracting and disturbing,

That easily I miss out the Axis,

And get deluded in the maze of countless mirages,

Lost in the world of Maya,

Garbed by the emotions

Of righteousness, hatred, pain,

And countless separations!

Then from deep inside,

That Voice of Clarity,

Beautified in Love immense,

Calls up and dispensing the deafness,

Bringing light to the dark dungeon,

Lighting up everything around,

Showing to the eyes of my heart,

The hidden Thread of Unity,

The thread of Love,

The thread of God,

The thread of Humanity!

All of us are islands perennially alone -

Lonely souls in the Ocean of life.

But the Ocean embraces us all!

That One Intimate Ocean,

The Ocean of Love,
The Ocean of God,

The Ocean of Humanity!

We are all One,

Reflecting the same Unity,

In different forms and shapes,

In different colors and creed,

In different sounds and symphony!

I choose not to get stuck,

In people, things and events!

For they dis-integrate my inner self,

And distort my vision.

One-sighted am I to the binding Unity,

To the Love, God and Humanity!
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Meister Echart take on Being and Freedom

Meister Eckhart says we should be free from our own things and our own actions, to be really free in this world. This does not mean that we should neither possess anything nor do anything; it means we should not be bound, tied, chained to what we own and what we have, not even to God. 

Eckhart approaches the problem of having on another level when he discusses the relation between possession and freedom. Human freedom is restricted to the extent to which we are bound to possession, our works and lastly to our own egos. By being bound to our egos, we stand in our own way and are blocked from bearing fruit, from realizing ourselves fully. Freedom as a condition of true productivity is nothing bud giving up one's ego, as love is free from all egoboundedness. Freedom in the sense of being unfettered, free from craving for holding onto things and one's ego, is the condition for love and for productive being. Our human aim according to Eckhart is to get rid of the fetters of egoboundedness, egocentricity, that is to say the having mode of existence, in order to arrive to full being. 

In the having mode of existence what matters is not the various objects of having, but our whole human attitude. Everything and anything can become an object of craving: things we use in daily life, property, rituals, good deeds, knowledge, and thoughts. While they are not in themselves bad, they become bad; that is, when we hold onto them, when they become chains that interfere with our freedom, they block our self realization.

Eckhart uses "Being" in two following different though related meanings - 

1. Being denotes the real and often unconscious motivations that impel human beings, in contrast to deeds and opinions as such and separated from the acting and thinking person. He says, "People should not consider so much what they are to "do" as what they "are"...Thus take care that your emphasis is laid on being good and not on the number or kind of things to be done. Emphasize rather the fundamentals on which your work rests." Our being is the reality, the spirit that moves us, the character that impels our behaviour; in contrast, the deeds or opinions that are separated from our dynamic core have no reality. 

2. The second meaning is wider and more fundamental: being is life, activity, birth, renewal, outpouring, flowing out, productivity. In this sense, being is the opposite of having, of egoboundedness and egotism. Being, to Eckhart, means to be active in the classic sense of productive expression of one's human powers, not in the modern sense of being busy. Activity to him means "to go out of oneself", which he expresses in many word pictures: he calls being a process of "boiling", of "giving birth", something that "flows and flows in itself and beyond itself." Sometimes he uses the symbol of running in order to indicate the active character: "Run into peace! The man who is in the state of running, of continuous running into peace is a heavenly man. He continually runs and moves and seeks peace in running." Another definition of activity is : The active, alive man is like a "vessel that grows as it is filled and will never be full". 

In Eckhart's ethical system the supreme virtue is the state of productive inner activity, for which the premise is overcoming of all forms of egoboundedness and cravings.

(PS - This article is taken from the chapter 3 of the book - To Have or to Be, by Erich Fromm. The point 1 and 2 above are critical. Just by going with the point 1, one might mistake the state of being as a state of inaction. One might go the wrong way of detaching oneself from the material world of activity. The second point completes the state of Being, beautifully. It is not about detaching from the world of action. But it is about using action, to escape from one's egoboundedness and craving of having. One needs to remind oneself is that being in a state of  inaction, is not the state of being. It is a dead state of mind, where one is stuck with a given set of beliefs and biases. Such a state is also another manifestation of Having - this time a bit more dangerous and camouflaged. 

So, it is nothing wrong in having more, or doing more. It is neither bad to have less, and to have done less. But the point is about going beyond the attachment and boundedness with one's having and doing domains. The point is about being in spontaneous activity to be able to affirm who one really is - one's true self. This activity might be anything, and has to be free from the hidden agenda to have or accomplish something. It is just a process. It is interesting to remind oneself, similar thought expressed by Krishna in the Bhagavat Gita. The point is not how much you have in your plate. But whether you are able to experience Beingness, through freedom, love, productivity, expressing your real self. This state of one's being is related to be being one with God by the ancients. Bhagavat Gita talks about this state of beingness as the state of Sattva. I have discussed this in my earlier article - http://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2012/06/on-action-and-law.html)

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On Action and the Law

Dharma is the Omnipresent law, the Archetype, the ideal. Dharma is the Way. Karma is the vehicle to tread the way. It is the means to be one with Dharma. It is the manifested dharma. If dharma is the order, karma is what keeps it alive. 

Karma exists in 3 fold manifestations - the knower, the knowledge, and the known. All these three dimensions of karma can exist in the following 3 climates or temperaments - Rajas, Sattva, and Tamas. 

Following words try to express the feel of Rajas: 

Plurality, analysis, individuality, separation, alienation, arrogance, fear, stress, anger, nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, disbelief, meanness, stinginess, prejudice, go getter, material efficiency. 

Following try to explain what constitute the Tamas: 

Attachment to an individual, lust, attachment to having something or somebody, indulgence, laziness, driven by baser instincts, attachment to results, to profits, helplessness on the face of obstacles, rationalization, over intellectualization, delusion, inactivity, habit 

Sattva stands for unity, integration, non attachment to the material manifest, one sighted concentration on the Archetype, the Dharma, the Ideal. From this vantage point all the three constituencies of Karma, viz - Knowledge, knower, and the known are considered as a way to be one with "Krishna" – the invisible Ideal – The Truth – The Source. From this standpoint every moment of existence becomes a worship. The action or the outcome of the action per se loses its importance. What is primary is the process of being in the act to be able to "see" the invisible in all the three material constituents - the knower, the known and the knowledge. 

Life is an opportunity to practice Sattva every moment of being alive. It is about living in touch with one’s sense of Being, instead of Having. Both Tamas and Rajas are flavors based on the mode of “having” 

It is easy to be swept in the delusion of having something or somebody. The way media, society and the world around imposes its noise on our minds, It is very easy to fall in the trap of the rat race of searching one’s self worth, one’s identity, in the form of one’s possession of power, knowledge, education, a lucrative job, profits, deals, relationships, etc. Not much attention is given to Be. Even if someone is giving a passing thought into one’s being, it is always weighed against what he shall “have”, out of “being” that. So, a person would prefer reading a book, if one is convinced that it would help one at work, and everyday living, manipulating life and people to achieve one’s own end. Or others might want to read, to have a stint of fantasy, to escape from one’s own reality. Not much thought is given to just Being. 

The state of Being is mostly misunderstood as the state of inaction. Rather it is quite contrary. The state of being is actually as state of immense internal and external activity, which helps a person to express out who she really is. It is a journey to discover one’s real self. It is a journey of self analysis to know one’s own self, the life, and the world around. It is a life lived in deep contemplation observing and knowing life. It is about being in that profound gratitude and appreciation of the creation and grandeur of nature. It is about trying to solve the mystery of one’s own existence. 

Being is what remains with man – his increases awareness, his growing respect of life and people, his enhanced capacity to love, his enlarged soul and heart, his resolution to stay with the Dharma, love, peace and harmony – no matter what. Being is that immortal sheen on one’s soul that transcends one’s life. It continues to be in this creation long after the body ceases to exist. After 2500 years of the death of the prince Siddhartha, the shine of his Being still is so young and relevant in this world. Same is the case of Beethoven, Dickens, Shakespeare, Blake, Mozart, Michelangelo, Jesus, and hundreds of masters who have made their being sublime in their lifetimes. Certainly no matter what they had, has all perished away. Nature and life has not even a passing awareness of them. But it was their Being which has remained timeless. 

Today is the world of markets. It is the world of business, of industry, of capitalism. Capital is the God. It is not for wellbeing, man wants capital. But it is for capital, one needs more capital. Capital is no more just a means. But it has become an end to itself. Everything is measures in the backdrop of its salability. Even before taking up a hobby, it runs out in the mind of man, on the aspect of its salability to the society. Today, in the shelves of the best sellers, you see books which worship the men who “have” – in the form of power, capital, prestige, knowledge, or any other such forms of getting more capital in return. Unconsciously man has started measuring his own worth based on this skewed scale. 

But, remembering the ageless wisdom of the Vedas, if we practice the Sattvik form of living - a living based on the way of being, life becomes a beautiful play of discovery and enchantment.

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One with the Essential

To Discern – The Essential from the myriad of the non-essentials,
Is the axis of existence – the internal compass – the pole star.

Going beyond the darkness,
To see the morning dawn.
Going through the transient illusions,
Through the mirage of sensuous pleasures,
Eludes the real One,
With all His Beauty!

For non-essentials are those roses,
Non-essential are the forms and contours,
Non-essentials are the fragrance and mushiness.
It needs the eyes of an artist,
To see through these veils,
The Source of all these beauty - fragmented,
The Unity – the Integrated One – The Genesis of ALL.
The invisible – but very much present,
Entwined with the mundane!

Through the eyes of the soul,
He gives small glimpses,
To few masters, after all their toil!
Through the material gross,
Sanctifies He all that is in existence,
With His invisible presence,
To all in flesh and blood,
To all in lines, letters and colors,
To all flora and fauna!

All material both in nature and artificial are but non-essentials.
They are all fleeting, transient, dynamic forth.
Changing forms from winter seed,
To Spring Blossom,
To the death of the Fall.
Holding all changes,
Is the invisible force of life,
Heading through infinite forms,
Take birth, growing and dying, and back again,
Re-affirming the Archetype – the Ideal – the One,
Flowing through eternally!

Lust is non-essential,
Love is Essential.
Anger and Hatred are non-essential,
Compassion, Kindness and Empathy are Essentials!

The seed of the acorn is non-essential.
But Essential is the blue-print of the grand oak tree in it!
The longing of Juliet was non-essential.
But Essential was Eternal Love she stood for,
Showing to the generations to come – what is Love!
Shakespeare, Einstein, Socrates, Jesus, Plato, Buddha were non-essentials.
But Essential were their timeless wisdom – always invisible, but available!
Power, fame, wealth and possessions are non-essentials,
Essential is courage, kindness, generosity, compassion and love.
Living safe cocooned by the security of materials and money is non-essential.
Risking life and reputation for a noble cause, being in love, helping the other is Essential.

Here I walk through the sands of times,
Searching for the invisible,
Sieving Through the heap of the non-essentials,
The hidden, enmeshed and ingrained,
Soul of the invisible – Omnipresent, Omnipotent!

The Invisible does not elude the disciple.
Always He is present for him,
Wearing the garb of the non-essential,
Play the game of Maya – now and always.

Here, in this heart, lives another disciple,
Eager to be one with the One!
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The dance with the invisible

The Ideal

The Most Beautiful

The Most Intimate

The Archetype

The Perfect

The Divine

The Invisible!!

Thou art the context of all contents,

Thou art the source of all life and all Art,

Thou art the source of all light and love,

Thou art the source of all hope and faith.

O dear Absolute!

From thou emanates

The dark and the shadow.

The pain, hatred, destruction and violence.

The heart bleeds,

The violin cries,

The ocean moans!

All are but orientations different,

Of the same Truth,

The one Unity!

I do not know who are you.

I do not know your will.

I do not know from where you come,

And to where you go.

But sometimes,

Some moments come,

Bringing with it a transient glimpse of thee,

In a form of a deep pang of pain,

Or an unexpected storm,

A strange coincidence,

A heart wrenching solitude.

But at the same time,

That silence bathes the soul,

With that all encompassing Presence,

The Source of All,

All things bright and beautiful,

And all things dark and ugly.

Dancing in rhythm with the invisible,

Figuring out the tune,

Listening to the Song,

Amidst all the distraction of 10,000 things.

Traveler is my soul,

All alone and abandoned,

Quiet and Calm,

Throbbing with life,

Centered onto Your Presence,

My Lord.

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Adding that needed depth

"Go and be somethingological directly", Mrs Gradgrind orders her children in Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854). The children are brought up on their father's strict utilitarian principles - or rather, on Dickens's ferocious satire of them. So they have "a little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet; and all the specimens were all arranged and labelled", but they have no fairy tales or nursery rhymes - nothing that might encourage fancy or wonder.

Not surprisingly, the children come to bad ends. On her deathbed, Mrs Gradgrind tells her daughter: "There is something- not an Ology at all - that your father has missed, or forgotten."

Science, in Dickens's view, does immense good - moral, social and intellectual - but only when it works hand in hand with imagination and reverence. Dickens being a Protestant Christian, did not see science as a threat to religious faith. On the contrary, he argued, learning the true nature of forces or objects brings us close to their creator. In a speech he gave in 1869 at the Birmingham and Nidland Institude, he speculated that Jesus might have taught scientific truth about the "wonders on every hand", but chose not to because "the people of that time could not bear them". 

Dickens's objection in Hard Times was not to science itself, but to the reductionist principle that imposes stultifying order and leaves no room for emotion or imagination. Plenty of Victorian scientific writers would have agreed with him. Michael Faraday, for example, taught that "in the pursuit of physical science, the imagination should be taught to present the subject investigated in all possible, and even in impossible views."

Dickens was appalled by people whose scientific knowledge was not connected to imagination or feelings. As soon as we meet Bradley Headstone, the teacher in Our Mutual Friend(1865), we know that he will prove a villain, because his mind is rule-bound and sterile: "From his earliest childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage...astronomy to the right, political economy to the left - natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics and what not, all in their several places." The same tidy-mindedness that incidcates the barrenness of the little Gradgrinds' natural specimens foretells Headstone's descent into criminal insanity. 

What excited Dickens most about science was its ability to reveal an unimagined world behind ordinary objects. "The facts of science are at least as full of poetry, as the most poetical fancies", he wrote in an 1848 review of RObert Hunt's The Poetry of Science. By revealing the wonder of everyday things, science compensates us for the beloved but ignorant beliefs it destroys. "When science has freed us from a harmless superstitions" Dickens wrote in the same review, "she offers to our contemplation something better and more beautiful, something which rightly considered, is more elevating to the soul, nobler and more stimulating to the soaring fancy." Dinosaurs, he went on, are really far more impressive than dragons, and coral reefs more so than mermaids.

Accordingly, Dickens championed writers who used science to show the world as spectacular, magical or astonishing. Among his close friends were mathematician, and father of the computer Charles Babbage, and Richer Owen, the comparative anatomist who coined the word dinosaur: Owen was enthralled by Dickens's novels, following them avidly as they came out in installments. Science historian Gowan Dawson has argued that there are strong similarities between Owen's paleontological studies and the way Victorian novel readers tackled serially published novels. 

On the same lines of Dickens, many greatest names in the field of physical sciences like that of Pythagoras, Archimedes, Kepler, and more recent Neil's Bohr, Newton, Einstein, Pauli, etc, have time and again hinted on the danger of the reductionism of science.

In our contemporary world similar over simplification raises its ugly head in the way children are taught  in schools, workers work in offices, managers and clerks manage the administrative works, engineers work out engineering feats, teachers teach and do research, priests carry out religious practices, doctors treat patients. 

Time is ripe, when there is an immediate need for man to step back, and listen to the in-audible, see the invisible, reason out the non-apparent, thereby being fully human. Mankind needs to focus on depth and not breath - on quality, not on quantity - on being, not on having.

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On Loving - An Action

Erich Fromm speaks about Love, marriage and relationships from the perspective of "having" and "being", beautifully as follows in his book - "To Have or To Be"

"Love has two meanings, depending upon whether it is spoken of in the mode of having or in the mode of being.
Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, there is no such a thing as "love". In reality there exists only the act of loving. To love implies caring for, knowing, responding affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing.
When love is experienced in the mode of having it implies confining, imprisoning, or controlling the object one "loves". It is strangling, deadening, suffocating, killing not life-giving. What people call love is mostly a misuse of the word, in order to hide the reality of their not loving.
The same may be said of marriages. Whether the marriage is based on love or, like traditional marriages of the past, on social convenience and custom, the couple who truly love each other seem to be the exception. What is social convenience, custom, mutual economic interests, shared interest in children, mutual dependency, or mutual hate or fear is consciously experienced as "love" - up to the moment when one or both partners recognize that they do not love each other, and that they never did. Today one can note some progress in this respect: people have become more realistic and sober, and many no longer feel that being sexually attracted means to love, or that a friendly, though distant, team relationship is a manifestation of loving. This new outlook has made for greater honesty - as well as more frequent change in partners. It has not necessarily led to a greater frequency of loving, and the new partners may love as little as did the old.
The change from "falling in love" to the illusion of "having" love can often be observed in concrete detail in the history of couples who have "fallen in love".

During courtship neither person is yet sure of the other, but each tries to win the other. Both are alive, attractive, interesting. Neither yet has the other; hence each other's energy is directed to "being", i.e. to giving to and stimulating the other. With the act of marriage the situation frequently changes fundamentally. The marriage contract gives each partner the exclusive possession of the other's body, feeling and care. Nobody has to be won over any more, because love has become something one "has", a property. The two cease to make the effort to be lovable and to produce love, hence they become boring, and hence their beauty disappears. They are disappointed and puzzled. Are they not the same persons any more? Did they make a mistake in the first place? Each usually seeks the cause of the change in the other and feels defrauded. What they do not see is that they no longer are the same people they were when they were in love with each other; that the error that one can have love has led them to cease loving. Now, instead of loving each other, they settle for owing together what they have: money, social standing, a home, children. Thus, in some cases, the marriage initiated on the basis of love becomes transformed into a friendly ownership, a corporation in which the two egotisms are pooled into one: that of the family.

When a couple cannot get over the yearning for renewal of the previous feeling of loving, one or the other of the pair may have the illusion that a new partner (or partners) will satisfy their longing. They feel that all they want to have is love. But love to them is not an expression of their being; it is a goddess to whom they want to submit. They necessarily fail with their love because "love is a child of liberty", and worshipper of the goddess of love eventually becomes so passive as to be boring and loses whatever is left of this or her former attractiveness.

This description is not intended to imply that marriage cannot be the best solution for two people who love each other. The difficulty does not lie in marriage, but in the possessive, existential structure of the both partners and, in the last analysis, of their society. The advocates of such modern-day forms of living together as group marriage, changing partners, group sex, etc, try, as far as I can see, only to avoid the problem of their difficulties in more "lovers", rather than to be able to love even one."

Beautifully expresses so succinctly, Fromm points to the root cause of attachment and pain, or disillusionment one undergoes in love, is rooted in one's propensity of "having" the object of love, in the above abstract in his book. Love in all forms loses its sheen, its life, its vitality and potency, when the love falls down to the form of a commodity to be "had". A person would be in excruciating emotional pain till he has not "had" his love. Countless poets have expressed their heartbreak, loneliness and helplessness in being in defiance from their love object. If by luck, the lover is able to "have" his love, then, as Fromm has rightly explained, the magic evaporates, as precisely occurs to one, when one buys the latest iPhone, and then loses interest in that, when a new version of iPhone is released the next year. I know here I have taken the subject to an extreme, and no one compares his lover to an iPhone. The comparison here is symbolically done to put a point.

The way out of this existential dilemma is always to relate love as an action - a productive, creative, nourishing and beautiful action. When one says, "I love you", one should relate it to saying, "I am standing in an act of caring, respecting, feeling, appreciating and affirming, who you are and who you are not". It is true that one cannot "fall in love". Rather one can only walk in love, stand in love, sing in love, write in love, create in love, see in love, paint in love, and live in love. I like to be always "inlove" :)

It is so true when Fromm says - "To love implies caring for, knowing, responding affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing." Yes, when one is not able to self-renew and self-increase, and do the same for his object of love, one has to be aware that it is not love that one is. But rather it is a personality defect - a craving, a need, a parasitic and symbiotic attachment.

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An Effort

I have been talking about the insanity of "having" the current society in some of my previous articles, such as http://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2012/04/dont-kill-just-listen.html
http://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2012/03/karl-marx-on-being-and-sham-of-having.html

This propensity of having is so ingrained in everyday life, that it is most often hidden from our conscious selves. It is rather easier to come out of this race of having more and more on a material realm, related to possessions in material, once man sees the innate emptiness in just material possessions. But the addiction of possessing more and more in the mental and emotional realm is much more tricky. Man many a times is prey of his own rationalizations, and get stuck to the illusion of having.
Erich Fromm portrays in a beautiful and simple way the nature of "having" knowledge and learning, and its difference from the higher state of "being" in the realm of knowing, in his book "To Have or To Be". He says-
"The difference between the mode of having and the mode of being in the sphere of knowing is expressed in two formulations: "I have knowledge" and "I know". Having knowledge is taking and keeping possession of available knowledge; knowing is functional and serves only as a means in the process of productive thinking.
Our understanding of the quality of knowing in being mode of existence can be enhanced by the insights of such thinkers as the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Master Eckhart, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. In their view, knowing begins with the awareness of the deceptiveness of our common sense perceptions, in the sense that our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is "really real" and, mainly in the sense that most people are half awake, half dreaming, and are unaware that most of what they hold to be true and self evident is illusion produced by suggestive influence of the social world in which they live. Knowing, then, begins with shattering of illusions, with disillusionment. Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. Knowing does not mean to be in possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically an actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.
The Buddha calls on people to wake up and liberate themselves from the illusion that craving for things/people lead to happiness. The Hebrew prophets appeal to the people to wake up and know that their idols are nothing but the work of their own hands, are illusions. Jesus says : Truth shall make you free. Master Eckhart expressed his concept of knowing many times; for instance, when speaking of God he says: "Knowledge is no particular thought but rather it peels off all coverings and is disinterested and runs naked to God, until it touches him and grasps him". According to Marx, one needs to destroy illusions in order to create the conditions that make illusions unnecessary. Freud's concept of self-knowledge is based on the idea of destroying illusions through ones own rationalizations in order to become aware of the unconscious reality.
All these thinkers were concerned with human salvation; they were all critical of socially accepted thought patterns. To them the aim of knowing is not the certainty of "absolute truth", something one can feel secure with, but the self affirmation process of human reason. Ignorance, for the one who knows, is as good as knowledge, since both are part of the process of knowing, even though ignorance of this kind is different from ignorance of the unthinking. Optimum knowledge in the being mode is to know more deeply. In the having mode it is to have more knowledge.
Our education generally tries to train people to have knowledge as a possession, by and large commensurate with the amount of property or social prestige they are likely to have in later life. The schools are the factories in which these overall knowledge packages are produced - although schools usually claim they mean to bring the students in touch with the highest achievements of the human mind. Many undergraduate colleges are particularly adroit in nurturing these illusions. From Indian thought and art to existentialism and surrealism, a vast smorgasbord of knowledge is offered from which students pick a little here, a little there, and in the name of spontaneity and freedom are not urged to concentrate on one subject, not even ever to finish reading an entire book."

This is beautifully expressed! I would not have agreed more to the thoughts of Fromm, and could not have expressed it so to-the-point, precise and correctly. It amuses me when I get weekly newsletters from various organizations presenting abstracts of various books and articles. The so called think tanks of the current world like Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and others in the league, try to bring out tit-bits of knowledge form here and there. Most of the articles try to give a peek to the reader, some deep and long research work of some professors inside the hallowed walls of the greatest universities of the world. It is good that this helps the common man to have a peek onto what is happening in the realms of the frontiers of leadership, science, archeology, etc. But the issue is the common man is satisfied with an abstract, or an illustration, or a simplified "digestible" format of the knowledge. With the half baked knowledge the reader extrapolates it and tries to use it for himself. Neither there is a depth of thinking that is developed in the reader, nor the reader is able to create something unique and original. Most of the things he says, believes and opines are borrowed thoughts, which are not even understood properly. I understand that one has to learn from the giants. But "learning" from the giants is reduced to "copying" from the giants. The scope of the writings of the greatest masters and thinkers get reduced when man tries to relate to them from the mode of having, and not giving enough time and energy to go deep into the real essence of them. No wonder I see many writing in their interests section, in their profiles in the social networking sites - Bollywood gossips, films!
Our society is in dire need of increasing depth and quality, and reducing the quantity. An effort needs to be taken from each individual to take a breath, step back, and be mindful of his present - what he is reading, what he is watching, what he is doing, what he is thinking. And from that point, he has to go deeper into each realm, trying to break through the forced illusion that is being intricately woven by the modern plague of capitalism, consumerism, commoditization, globalization, and what not. It is high time to ask ourselves questions like - "Which book am I reading nowadays?", "What I understood for myself from the book I read last?", "What is that I care the most?", "What the great thinkers of yesteryears had to say about their lives and nature of the world?", "What are the illusions I subscribe to without even questioning?", "Was I helpful to others in any way today?", "Was I in a state of love or hatred in the moment just passed?", "What is the legacy I am leaving behind", "What I would like to leave inscribed on my epitaph, when I die" etc.

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Don't Kill. Just Listen

At a time when most of the humanity is very busy in the race to have more and better, to be more productive, to do more in less time, to devour more and more, to produce more, to get the best deal - not only in the commodity market, but also in the realm of relationships, - the words like patience, perseverance, beingness, reasoning, love, compassion, relating to, etc are scoffed by many. Today man is eager to kill, not having any time to listen. When I say, "eager to kill", I not only point to the increasing terrorism determined to kill peace, love and solidarity, but I also intend to point to people in this society who are always eager kill others with the ammunition of hatred, superstition, prejudices, narrowness, close-mindedness, impatience, and an deep seated unwillingness to listen to the other, and understand the other. Man is slowly losing out his innate humane faculty to understand, empathize, express his solidarity and to connect to others being in love. Loving the other looks like a huge task. People do not sometimes even are able to relate to the other, forget about loving. Most of us are busy building up our guards to protect ourselves, our ego, our self-importance, in the name of individuality. We are busy doing the same with ourselves, and the other is busy too doing the same with himself. Most of the time is spent creating the separateness, creating those dis-integrated silos to save oneself, and then life fizzles out in ones own dungeon, either alone, or grouped with similar thinking diseased souls. Man misses out the opportunity to be able to really see the Truth, woven in the plurality and appreciate the inherent unity. It is not religion, culture, God which divides man from man. But a deep seated psychoanalytical disorder in man, which hinders his inherent capacity to love others, is the root cause of the dis-integration prevalent among men. 

Already having tough guards built around our ears, eyes, and minds, most among us tend to super-impose our own autobiography onto the other. The only way of life for most among us, is to quickly apply a borrowed or a quickly arrived at theory or framework and rationalize humans, relationships, work, circumstances, institutions to fit into a bias as per the framework. The idea is to find a quick fix, to be "productive", to be "smart", to be able to "do a split second decision", to be able to "lead". The same busyness and eagerness to produce results have been fuelled by the big capitalistic corporate environments, where the basis of all ethics, values, meaning, and existence of one is just - results, and value for the share holders. This predilections of modern man to find quickies, have shown its colors in the way people relate to men and women in their lives too - both in personal and professional realms. People so easily fall in love, and also fall out of love for that matter. A one night stand is considered to be the most in-thing and fashionable. Strangely, a weird existence is being propagated among most which is grounded on lack of patience, depth, creativity, authenticity, loyalty, courage and love. And most unfortunate thing is that each of these are definitive factors which make us humans. Inventing new machines, and making the existing machines and computers faster and better, as days pass to months, and then to years and decades, man being surrounded by machines, computers, networks, commodities, have slowly started identifying other fellow humans, including himself as a commodity. Having reduced to just a commodity, it is obvious that the human qualities of love, compassion, beingness, will be inevitably missing in the society. 

We can choose to continue to be in the state of trance, gradually relinquishing our core human values, or rather step back and think for sometime, what we are doing, and where we are going. Certainly before killing again - an idea, a person, a hope, a potential, a love, an understanding, a compassion, a concern, an affection, we need to stop and listen. We need to listen to our entire being, listen to the stars, listen to wind, listen to the stream, listen to the Earth, the sky and the moon. We will have to start reclaiming that lost awareness of the forgotten language - the language of being, where in its pristine form, man was able to relate not only his fellow men being in deep love, but also to nature, to flora and fauna. 

The Greatest Masters of yesteryears - Jesus, Buddha, Vedic scholars, Kabir, Rumi, to name a few, had always stressed on love and being-ness as the way to realization of man, his real essence and the real essence of this universe.

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The Right Action - On Beingness

There is one profound dimension to the right action that I would like to bring to the attention of the reader. This is the aspect of "Being" over "Having". Action as related in the contemporary society is mostly from the realm of "having". It is when wants to have something, he takes an action. That having might be material or more sublime. It might be related to experience, emotional needs, or more exterior oriented to achieve a worldly goal. In the realm of "Being" action is more of an internal activity which one undertakes just to observe, understand, accept, know and be silent, in the meditation of inaction, but keeps growing internally to increase one's level of appreciation of life as a whole. I can give an example on the way Mother Earth manifests herself. Mother Earth or as she is known by the ancient Greeks as Gaia, is always in a state of tranquil inaction, in an outward realm. But she is always quietly serving thousands of seeds to nourish them in her womb, holding in her immense embrace the sparkle of the diamonds, the sheen of gold, the passion of throbbing geysers and hot springs, and innumerable life forms. Mother Earth does not enter into these activities to "have" something. She even does not proclaim her actions to the universe. She also does not go and stop the mindless human when he exploits her and hurts her. 

Please note that I am not pointing out to sacrifice, forgiveness of un-conditionality. I am going beyond that. I am pointing to a place where there is a silent but throbbing state of is-ness. Mother Earth always is in a state of "is-ness". This state of "is-ness" from outside looks like a life-less inertia. But in reality, from within, Mother Earth is in endless activity grounded deep into love, concern and compassion. She does not have anything. She is just "IS". This awareness and appreciation of "Being-ness" brings into one's consciousness new depth of being alive, which would have otherwise fizzled out when man is vexed in the race of having and having. It allows a man to be really free. He is for the first time would be able to live his life without the added heavy baggage of expectation, judgment, fear, or heartbreak. For the first time he would be able to love freely. This idea of being is not a trick to save oneself from the unavoidable misfortunes and helplessness of life. If the reader is going into this direction, I would be pained that the idea is not understood at all. I am coming from a point of being in a state where a person will be for the first time be able to see the hidden beauty of life, which is camouflaged by the apparent commotion, dis-integration, contradictions and ugliness all prevalent on surface. This is the only way to see God. The private space of silence that one creates in the gaps of one's thoughts, ushers one into the way to the understanding of life in a much more deeper and true way. That way man is more closer to the truth. 

I try to implement this state of being every moment of my life. That helps me better to integrate myself with the diverse realities of life. There are mishaps that happen. Most of the times the harsh realities of life look so overwhelmingly against man's wish and desire. Many a times life brings man face to face with situations that one is embarrassed to core to confront. There are people one loves to the core, but they hate them more than anyone. Men are most hurt by people they love the most. But in the state of "Being", one starts to recognize that, in spite of abominable ugliness of the world around, there is an undercurrent of beauty and melody and a serene composure joyously gurgling. The more he recognizes the harmony in which the life is woven, more he goes deeper - between the ridges of the tapestry and dives into the beauty gushing out from each deep pore of the fabric of life. He realizes that the true bliss is not having something or somebody. That pleasure of having is just momentarily. Eventually what one has, rusts, decays and dies. Only what stays is what "is". 

There might be many other deeper levels of understanding the idea of "Right Action" in the Gita. But to the level I have come up with years of my own internal activity, and help and guidance from my friends, teachers and people around me, I have come to relate to just this level of understanding of the "Right Action" from the Bhagavad Gita. There is a long way to go for me before I can try to even fathom so many uncharted avenues this profound work of art can take us.

PS - Please note that reference to "man" in my essays are meant to stand for "mankind". I don't intend to be patriarchal in my expressions. This is done more from the point of view of simplification of the expression.

I have been delving into the aspect of "Right Action" in last few articles of mine. In these, I have tried to synthesize from my various readings, contemplations, innumerable synthesis, experiences and understanding of myself and life, the essence of right action. An initial treatment of the topic has been done the my previous articles on Bhagavat Gita as follows -

http://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2012/03/idea-of-right-action.html

http://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2012/03/symbolism-of-bhagavad-gita.html

In this current essay, I have tried to touch upon the idea of Being inherent in the attitude of the "right action". I have added this essay as the last part of the earlier article - "The idea of right action", for completion sake. So that the reader can separately contemplate on this idea, without any distraction of other aspects, I thought it would be better to bring this out as a separate essay. Hope you enjoyed it.

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The Idea of Right Action

Bhagavad Gita gives reference to "karma" - action, aligned with "dharma" - the laws of nature, at multiple places. The idea of "action" and then the "right action" as postulated in the Bhagavad Gita is pretty interesting and profound. In this article I discuss different dimensions of this philosophy.

A) Action without attachment to the Goal.
In this Krishna says, "You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty"
In simple terms it means: Keep on performing your duties without expecting any reward in return, leading a selfless life.
Most of us today have forgotten about this part and always take things as business deals. Be it friendship, love or even marriage. We always impose conditions before doing anything so that we benefit from it in the end. Here the suggestion is to do away with the greed of the result of any action.
In this level, one can logically arrive to the efficacy of this formulation. Obviously, when you are not distracted by the future result that your action will take you to, and focus all your energy and attention to your task at hand, you would be able to be more organized and efficient at your task. This will by itself lead you to successful result.

B) Action - the only path to true wisdom.
In the next level, we are told that "the path of knowledge is the same as the path of action." What this means is that "the path of action," i.e, of what is called Right Action, when it is attained, merges with the path of knowledge. At this point, they become one and the same; but this is  because that action is no longer action, as we normally understand it, but something quite different: it is wisdom in activity and, ultimately, just wisdom. So we can see that in order to reach this path of wisdom, a man cannot be bound to the action he is carrying out, but must be immersed in the Law, and act from there. Right action is not an attitude of giving in order to receive, of sowing in order to reap. To understand this we have to break down our mental structure which is unable to conceive the reality of something for that "something" in it. If we take a certain path, we feel we have to get somewhere; if we make a sacrifice, we have to gain a reward; it we give, we feel that sooner or later we must receive something in return. This is the way we tend to think. But the Bhagavad Gita has totally a different formulation. It says that right action would put an end to the chain of exchanges, with cause and effect. It leads one to a kind of freedom, where one is closer to the truth, to the wisdom. There is nothing that action shall take to, which is any way near to the profundity of wisdom that action itself nurtures the person. It is the journey the person undertakes doing an action that beautifies his character with added insights and wisdom. The result of the action is just another outcome - a bonus, if you would. There many grander aspects of entering into an action per se. Attaining knowledge, wisdom, understanding, maturity, insight, etc are various other dimensions that linger from the process of entering into a right action. It is further said that without action, no wisdom is possible.
To explain this tenet, let me take up a small example. If I am to explain to my daughter what love is, I might explain all the definitions, theoretical frameworks, aspects, nature and ramification of this word. My child might be able to get a fair idea of the concept in a mental level. But it will be still be in the superficial level of just another intellectual concept, a shallow mental picture. It is only through her personal experience of what is love, by entering into an activity engaging her entire personality, experiencing the bliss of being in  love in relating to it, or experiencing the pain of not in love, from the level of mind, heart, body and soul, she will be able to for the first time taste what real love is all about. You might agree that this voluntary or involuntary engagement into an activity to really experience love is a necessity in the part of my daughter to really understand what love is, in its totality. Not just a partial understanding in the level of mental models. Same thing holds good in any aspect of life. An understanding which is based on borrowed ideas, without entering into self-action, remains superficial in the level of just mental models. That is just a partial view. That is by itself powerless and sterile. There is no potency, vitality or life in it. Life has to be lived, entering into activity, to experience and understand life, in its various aspects. One who has not seen, felt and trekked the Himalayas, will never even come close to what is known as the grandeur of the Himalayas.
In today's world of rampant commoditization, people think that they can buy anything and everything off the shelf. If one wants to have a good dinner, one immediately buys oneself an expensive dinner in a restaurant. But the person totally misses out the pleasure of growing the vegetables, washing and cutting them, cooking them, and really cherishes the profundity of the pleasure of eating and sharing the food, after ente ring into all these activities. One would be able to appreciate the difference in the quality of pleasure one derives in the second way, when compared to the first.
One has to really understand that even in the realm of interpersonal relationships this holds good. If one does not take deep interest into the other, and really enter into an internal activity to understand a person, his point of view, his pains and fears, his personality needs, his background, his interests, one will never even be able to relate to what the other is even trying to say. Most of the way we relate to others is very superficial. We never feel for the other. We relate to the other just in the mental and logical level, most of the times superimposing our own autobiography on the other person. Relating to another person in such superficial realm, we end up either loving, or hating him. One has to understand that such a stance is just an illusion. By this, one has to understand that he is not dealing with another individual, but just a projection of one's own self.

C) Being-ness over Having-ness - 
In the journey from "action" to the "right action", Krishna proposes the aspect of Being over Having. The state of being is prescribed to search for the "right action" for one own self. This right action for an individual is suited to the uniqueness of the individual. It helps the individual to express himself fully and bring the full expression of his unique individuality. In Sanskrit, the term used to denote this is "Swadharma". In the state of being, which precedes the state of doing, a person is asked to contemplate on his self, and use his reason, experience, understanding and other human faculties to break through the illusions both within and outside, and search for himself the right action - the right way of being. Only after this phase, one is asked to venture into the world of action. This phase of being-ness does not end when a person is in the domain of doing. He continues in this state, being centered in his "Swadharma", and keeps taking action. He is always centered and grounded.
The state of Being has two fold purpose. One is it allows the person to select which action to take, and which not to. This is a sense of discrimination one develops within. The second is that the person grounded in the state of being, even when performing the action, does not get distracted by the storm of the distractions of "having" from all the directions of the material world. He is tuned to the internal compass of "Swadharma".
This can be appreciated in the way Mother Earth manifests herself. Mother Earth or as she is known by the ancient Greeks as Gaia, is always in a state of tranquil inaction, in an outward realm. But she is always quietly serving thousands of seeds to nourish them in her womb, holding in her immense embrace the sparkle of the diamonds, the sheen of gold, the passion of throbbing geysers and hot springs, and innumerable life forms. Mother Earth does not enter into these activities to "have" something. She even does not proclaim for her actions to the universe.  Please note that the state of being-ness as is not about lethargy, in-action, and a dejected state of hopelessness. Rather it is a state of immense internal activity. The activity might not be visible to the material world. But there are lots of upheavals being crossed, battles being won, obstacles being overcome, in the is-ness of one's own inner self. This builds up the psychological capital which provides the strength and direction to oneself to relate to the world outside. Mother Earth in this case, always is in a state of "is-ness". This state of "is-ness" from outside looks like a life-less inertia. But in reality, from within, she is in endless activity grounded deep into love, concern and compassion. She does not have anything. She is just "IS". This awareness and appreciation of "Being-ness" brings into one's consciousness new depth of being alive, which would have otherwise fizzled out when man is vexed in the race of having and having. A person will be able to see the hidden beauty of life, which is camouflaged by the apparent commotion, dis-integration, contradictions and ugliness all prevalent on surface. This opens up avenues to appreciate and observe divinity from the everyday chores of one's existence. Being-ness attaches meaning to an action. This meaning crops from one's capacity of love, concern, passion, vitality and potency. In the state of "Being", one starts to recognize that, in spite of abominable ugliness of the world around, there is an undercurrent of beauty and melody and a serene composure joyously gurgling. The more he recognizes the harmony in which the life is woven, more he goes deeper - between the ridges of the tapestry and dives into the beauty gushing out from each deep pore of the fabric of life. He realizes that the true bliss is not having something or somebody. That pleasure of having is just momentarily. Eventually what one has, rusts, decays and die. Only what stays is what "is" 

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Karl Marx on "Being" and the sham of "Having"

Marx has given a beautiful analysis of the prevalent state of things in society on the aspect of "having" over "being". It goes as follows - 

That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for (i.e, which money can buy), that I am, the possessor of the money. My own power is as great as the power of money. The properties of money are my own (the possessor's) properties and faculties. What I am and can do is, therefore, not at all determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman for myself.COnsequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power to repel, is annulled by money. As an individual I am lame, but money provides me with twenty four legs. Therefore, I am not lame. I am  a detestable, dishonorable, unscrupulous and stupid man, but money is honored and so also is its possessor. Money is the highest good, and so its possessor is good. Besides, money saves me the trouble of being dishonest; therefore, I am presumed honest. I am stupid, but since money is the real mind of all things, how should its possessor be stupid? Moreover, he can buy talented people for himself, and is not he who has power over the talented more talented than they? I who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their opposites? 

If money is the bond which binds me to human life, and society to me, and which links  me with nature and man, is it not the bond of all bonds? Is it not, therefore also the universal agent of separation? It is the real means of both separation and union, the galvano-chemical power of society....

Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, co-founds and exchanges everything, it is the universal confusion and transposition of all things, the inverted world, the confusion and transposition of all natural and human qualities. 

He who can purchase bravery is brave, though a coward. Money is not exchanged for a particular quality, a particular thing, or a specific human faculty, but for the whole objective world of man and nature. Thus, from the standpoint of its possessor, it exchanges every quality and object of every other, even though they are contradictory. It is the fraternization of incompatibles; it forces contraries to embrace.

Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust etc. If you wish to enjoy art you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, i.e, if you are not able, by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune. 

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Interpretation of the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra

Meaning of the 1st line - "Om Triambakam Yajamahe"

Honoring the threefold expression of life. According to Vedanta, everything in the manifest world, meaning everything that has form and phenomena, has a beginning (will, idea), a middle (love, nurturing, life, womb) and an end (full form, ripening, reaching to the full potential) to it. It is just the nature of life that everything that is born must die, and riding that wave of the beginnings, the middles and the endings, with effortlessness and balance, and enthusiasm, and appreciation, is the key to living a conscious life. 

Meaning of the 2nd line - "Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam"

If we do surrender to this flow of life, if we are not struggling all the time, if we are not resisting all the time, if we are not trying to impose our individualized ideas about how things should be, but really can have the awareness of how things are, then we experience "sugandhim pushtivardhanam" - which means we experience the sweet fragrance of life. If we begin to accept the beginnings, middles and endings of life, without a lot of resistance, then it is literally said by the yogis that we experience a sense of joyfulness, that we feel tangibly in our bodies, in our minds and in our hearts, in our souls, and that, a fragrance arises when our personal experience is in alignment with the experience of nature, with the experience of life, with the experience of divinity.

Meaning of the 3rd line - "Urva Rukamiva Bandhanat"

By surrendering to this three fold impulse, it encourages my mind and soul to bring to my awareness that what is nourishing to me and relinquish that is not. If we can maintain such a consciousness, we do not have to struggle so much. We can accept that nature is going through those cycles and we can be in alignment with those cycles, and that can bring us happiness and joy, at the right time. 

Meaning of the 4th line - "Mrityurmukshia mamritat"

Like a cucumber that falls off the vine when ripe, death falls of our awareness. We lose the attachment to mortality. We remember ourselves essentially as unbounded, infinite beings and if we can resonate in that plane of that existence, then, even as we are living in this world of beginnings, middles and endings, of form and phenomena, of births and deaths, and going through our cycles of individuality, there is another level of our awareness, that says, I am beyond it all. I am an expression of these births and deaths, but I am deeper than that. 

- By David Simon (Chopra Center of Well Being).

This is the most accurate interpretation of the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra I have read or heard from any source. Thanks to Deepak Chopra and his league to have beautifully explained the crux of this ancient mantra.

Interestingly the same ideal of the trinity is expressed in all the major ancient civilizations -  

In ancient Egypt this cycle of life was known as - Osiris (birth, will), Isis (love, nurture), Horus (form)

In ancient Vedic traditions this was known as - Brahma (birth, will), Vishnu (love, nurture), Mahesh(form)

In ancient Christianity it was known as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit

Similar symbolisms have been created in the ancient Celts, Zorastrians too.

It is interesting to find the similarity in the philosophy of nature all across the world.

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Being Aware. Being Alive

To be able to relish any gift, the first and foremost thing we do is to open the wrapping which hides the gift. Same obviously applies in considering the gift of life too. The most interesting part of this gift of life is that it comes camouflaged with wrappers in multiple levels. It takes lot of effort, guidance, education and will to be able to peel out these layers of veils one by one, and be able to see life in its original beauty. I use this word - “life” to mean both man’s inner self, and the society, which forms an integral part of who man is.

Various philosophers have enquired into this process of peeling out the veils. This finds its crowning development in the writings Spinoza, Freud and in Marx. Most generally speaking it is about developing oneself in such a way as to come closest to the “model” of human nature or, in other words, to grow optimally according to the conditions of human existence and thus to become fully what one potentially is; to let reason or experience guide us to the understand of what norms are conducive to well being. Inner liberation - freedom from the shackles of greed and illusions - is inseparably tied to the optimal development of reason; that is to say, reason understood as the use of thought with the aim to know the world “as it is” and in contrast to “manipulating intelligence”, which is the use of thought for the purpose of satisfying one’s need. For example a person who is the prisoner of his irrational passions loses the capacity for objectivity and is necessarily at the mercy of his passions; he rationalizes when he believes he is expressing the truth. 

Two most far-reaching, eye-opening critical theories at the beginning of the latest phase of industrial society were those of Marx and of Freud. During his times, Marx showed the moving powers and the conflicts in the social-historical process. Freud aimed at the critical uncovering of the inner conflicts. Both worked for liberation of man, even though Marx’s concept was more comprehensive and less time-bound than Freud’s (which is non-applicable in the current society, in its original form). Interestingly both these theories also share the fate that they soon lost their most important quality, that of critical and thus liberating thought, and were transformed by most of their “faithful” adherents into ideologies, and their authors into idols. 

Similar experiment was tried by the Buddha in ancient India, as I have tried to explain in the following articles - 

http://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2011/05/uniqueness-of-gautam-buddha.htmlhttp://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2011/05/interesting-experiment-by-prince.htmlhttp://criativ-mind.blogspot.in/2011/05/on-pain.html

An optimal living, is not just about relishing the gift of life by being able to uncover it from the packaging of illusions. The idea becomes more serious when that gift is nothing but the man himself. It becomes of urgent attention when the existence of man depends on his uncovering of who he is, and what is his relation to the world outside. It needs immediate focus when the question is related to man’s own existence and the possibility of being alive optimally. 

Fromm states this beautifully in “The art of being” as follows - 

“The strength of man’s position in the world depends on the degree of adequacy of his perception of reality. The less adequate it is, the more disoriented and hence insecure he is and hence in need of idols to lean on and thus find security. The more adequate it is, the more can he stand on his own feet and have this center within himself. Man is like Antaeus, who charged himself with energy by touching Mother Earth, and who could be killed only when his enemy kept him long enough in the air.” 

He further says later in the same book - “.....becoming aware of truth has a liberating effect; it releases energy and de-fogs one’s mind. As a result, one is more independent, has one’s center in oneself, an dis more alive. One may fully realize that nothing in reality can be changed, but one has succeeded in living an dying as a human person and not a sheep. If avoidance of pain and maximal comfort are supreme values, then indeed illusions are preferable to the truth. If, one the other hand, we consider that every man, at nay time in history, is born with the potential of being a full man and that, furthermore, with his death the one chance given to him is over, then indeed much can be said for the personal value of shedding illusions and thus attaining an optimum of personal fulfillment. In addition, the more seeing individuals will become, the more likely it is that they can produce changes - social, and individual ones - at the earliest possible moment, rather than, as is often the case, waiting until the chances for change have disappeared because their mind, their courage, their will have become atrophied....This is not primarily a question of intelligence, education, or age. It is essentially a matter of character; more specifically, of the degree of personal independence from irrational authorities and idols of all kinds that one has achieved.”

One discovers answers to one's existential problems only when one feels that they are burning and that it is a matter of life and death to solve them. If nothing is of burning interest, one's reason and one's critical faculty operate on a low level of activity it appears then that one lacks the faculty to observe.

Being able to live life with total mindfulness, with application of reason, love and productive activities to be able to realize the truth hiding behind the innumerable veils of illusions, by being more aware and alive, is the most momentous vantage point that humanity is endowed with. This makes humanity so special, and being alive as a human so unique and precious. 

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