Saturday, December 29, 2007

Seeking Completion

Just close your eyes for a moment and think,"What do you want most in life?". Different people seek out for different things. Some people wish to have a great career, some want loads of money and lots of fame, some want an understanding life partner, some want to find out the purpose of life etc etc... The list goes on.

But why is man involved in so many quests at the same time? Why does he need all of this in life? Lets take a look at what we need in life and why.
Money/Fame:
Some men feel that there is no joy in life till you have all the luxury of the world at your feet or till you are known by one and all. They feel incomplete till they do not experience/achieve all the materialistic things in life. Don't we frequently come across the line,"You should experience everything in life, atleast once"?

Sex:
This is one of the prime needs for most individuals as it comes in the physical category. Sex involves the desire for satisfaction of a strong physical urge. If the urge for sex is continuously suppressed, the desire becomes very strongly prominent and one starts feeling more and more incomplete without gratification of the desire.

Partner/Soul mate/Friends:
Man seeks company of someone who would understand him and care for him. He wants a partner or a soul mate for sharing his deep emotional self, his feelings hitherto known to no one. Man without a partner feels emotionally incomplete and thus seeks emotional completion in form of a soul mate or like-minded friends.

Knowledge:
This category of men are involved in seeking the truth... Trying to find out the purpose of life. Trying to answer the deeper philosophical questions. The world, to them, seems so incomplete without the knowledge of the truth. Questioning all the commonly known beliefs, they involve themselves in unraveling the bigger mysteries of life. The more they know, the more they want to know. Without complete knowledge, they feel incomplete.

Whether seeking one of the above or something else in life, what are we all actually seeking? Why do we want to satisfy the burning passion within us? If you look at any passion that you have in life and ask, "What will I get if I get this?", the answer would be a sense of fulfillment. We seek fulfilment because we feel incomplete. In these various forms, man is seeking completion for his various needs - physical, emotional, social or intellectual. The underlying basis of anything that you want in life is the need for completion. All of us want to be complete!

And for a man who knows that completion is what he is actually seeking, the next question would be "How do I become complete?". There is the famous story of the musk deer who tries to find out the source of a beautiful smell which is present all around it. It goes round and round in circles but cannot find what it is seeking. What it is truly seeking - the source of that smell- is the musk lying within the deer itself.

We seek out various external means for completion. We try to find completion by seeking something that lies outside us. But the truth is that all that we really need in life, all the completion, lies right within us. Looking out for this completion in any of the above forms or through any other external means brings only temporary satisfaction and nothing else.
The only means to be complete is to look within. And you will find the path unfolding on its own in front of your own eyes. Imagine a 3-D person being held up in a 3-D prison with no way to escape. What will happen if the person is given a fourth dimension? Can a 2-D plane of paper hold a 3-D object? Surely no. So, when you get this fourth dimension, you become free from the daily attempt in life to seek completion in various forms. And the fourth dimension and many more lie right within you.
Delve deep into your consciousness. Meditate. Look within. To know you are already complete!

4 comments:

Ajay Gupta said...

Enlightenment is not an end in itself. It is just a means. A means to a greater truth. I accept your concept of the existence of a fourth dimension. We can truly understand something only when we look at it after detaching ourselves from it. Irony it is such that we usually understand how much something meant to us only after we are completely detached from it.

Anonymous said...

I really feel I have been upto something, while I am reading this. It was like a revelation, I knew all that was written here but this read made me clear of it all.

Thanks Again..and yeah you made it to my links in my blog :)

Shreyans Mehta said...

@Mannar
:)

Kg said...

"But the truth is that all that we really need in life, all the completion, lies right within us"

may or may not be true.
well if people can realize this fact to be true, you have reached nirvana - the "ultimate goal" according to your theory. and some people are lucky enough to atleast tread on this path to try to realize this truth, the fact is that most people arent even aware of this path itself.
but looking at it from a different perspective, maybe most people arent supposed to tread this path. else why do you think the higher power designed this universe, put in gazillions of matter/energy in it and let loose 6Bn men in this game of life on the face of the earth to struggle with myriad facets of life. are all of us supposed to reach that enlightenment? I dont know.

secondly, is it right to assume (even though i believe it is) that the quest for knowledge and the higher truth is above others? Why is it so? After all this is also a desire and hence in some ways similar to other desires of sex, money fame, beauty etc etc. Then shouldn't it be a matter of personal choice. and so i again come back to my question. why was this utterly complex world designed if all other desires/quests were supposed to be subordinate to the quest for knowledge. just for an example (could be fact or fiction, i dont know), 'The Da vinci Code' relates the ancient practice of having sex as a way of celebrating the communion between the male and female powers.

nd finally yes i agree with the higher dimension theory. been looking out for some more signs that show me the way forward :) hers's hoping we all find our signs.

Cheers
Kg