Well, while I was wondering why I named my blog as 'Illusions', it didn't take me more than a second to recall that excellent novel by Richard Bach, regarding the saint like 'normal' being.
The story goes like this: a man (let's call him Guru) is very much passionate about flying his glider, and is tremendously obsessed with it. At the same time he has some gifted powers (people said that he was blessed with it) and he said that he got what he aspired for. He was quite often consulted by people, seeking solutions to their problems, and in the initial phase he used to save them from their woes. But it wasn't long before when people (of his followers, you could say) started depending on his 'Divine' insight for anything and everything, right from which car to buy to which day to select for an operation. Guru realised that this wasn't the purpose of him being around, and changed his approach to the people based on their hapless and unnecessary dependence on him. He now quite often turned down the request of his 'followers', and asked them to find the solutions themselves. They wondered that their 'divine' master was not in a good mood or health. They let some time pass. But slowly they realised that Guru had by now consistently started telling them one (most irritating thing according to them) sentence for all their queries: 'Think for yourself, analyse where's the problem, seek who you are, and then decide what's best for you, because the truth is only YOU are capable of helping yourself!'. Guru knew that he was speaking the TRUTH. But people were not willing to accept this version. They gathered momentum in branding Guru as an imposter, a cheat and a person incapable of donning the 'divine' position of a Guru. Finally Guru is forced to evict the place by this very own 'followers'. And the story goes further. More than just being an interesting read, the book does try to magnify the 'illusions' of the mind, the continuous streams of vagaries, that quite often daunts everyone.
As, Bruce Lee's Guru (in the movie Enter the Dragon) says, "The Enemy is only an image, you break the image, you break the enemy!". Probably, the foremost plague of any mind is the ability to consistenly stir out one illusion or the other about the self, people around and world. As I restart my public writing after months, I want to remind myself of this concept every time I login to see my mind through. Hence the heading, ILLUSIONS.
The story goes like this: a man (let's call him Guru) is very much passionate about flying his glider, and is tremendously obsessed with it. At the same time he has some gifted powers (people said that he was blessed with it) and he said that he got what he aspired for. He was quite often consulted by people, seeking solutions to their problems, and in the initial phase he used to save them from their woes. But it wasn't long before when people (of his followers, you could say) started depending on his 'Divine' insight for anything and everything, right from which car to buy to which day to select for an operation. Guru realised that this wasn't the purpose of him being around, and changed his approach to the people based on their hapless and unnecessary dependence on him. He now quite often turned down the request of his 'followers', and asked them to find the solutions themselves. They wondered that their 'divine' master was not in a good mood or health. They let some time pass. But slowly they realised that Guru had by now consistently started telling them one (most irritating thing according to them) sentence for all their queries: 'Think for yourself, analyse where's the problem, seek who you are, and then decide what's best for you, because the truth is only YOU are capable of helping yourself!'. Guru knew that he was speaking the TRUTH. But people were not willing to accept this version. They gathered momentum in branding Guru as an imposter, a cheat and a person incapable of donning the 'divine' position of a Guru. Finally Guru is forced to evict the place by this very own 'followers'. And the story goes further. More than just being an interesting read, the book does try to magnify the 'illusions' of the mind, the continuous streams of vagaries, that quite often daunts everyone.
As, Bruce Lee's Guru (in the movie Enter the Dragon) says, "The Enemy is only an image, you break the image, you break the enemy!". Probably, the foremost plague of any mind is the ability to consistenly stir out one illusion or the other about the self, people around and world. As I restart my public writing after months, I want to remind myself of this concept every time I login to see my mind through. Hence the heading, ILLUSIONS.
Cheers.
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