Arrival is the seed of Fear
Truth is infinite and has no locii. When we try and place arbitrarily a coordinate for a value of what we call “Truth”, then since the real Truth is infinite – our “Truth” gets challenged. Even after “arriving” at the our “Truth” we still seem to find something beyond that which renders our “Truth” incomplete. This act of declaration of arrival – through following of scriptures or dictates of a Master – and the feeling of incompleteness inherently creates a fear. Uncertainty around our capacity to pin down the Truth is what creates ego. For in absence of any real arrival we formalize the supposed arrival by giving it a stamp of “ONLY” or the “Best”. So, our “arrival” or conclusion becomes better or more complete than others. Not because it is so, but because it has a mandate of a self-proclaimed “Judge” or the backing of Numbers. The louder the shrill, the more confident we feel of our arrival. The yearning of this safety – in numbers, in an authority, in a proclamation – betrays a fear not peace. It betrays the underlying incapacity as opposed to confidence.
When we create a peg or a fixed reality for ourselves, the process is always the same – the yearning from here to that peg is cloaked as “Hope”, the reaching there creates “Happiness”, falling short creates “Sorrow”, and the time after being there brings “Fear” (of losing it – for reality is dynamic and non-static).
Humanity has revolved between just these FOUR primary emotions and their variations. There is always a relationship between the imaginary fixed and the real dynamic. This constant falling short of the dynamic Truth is basis of mankind’s fears.
This obsession with certainty does not have a relationship to a person’s intelligence. Even Einstein, after being squarely snubbed in Solvay Congress by Bohr and Heisenberg regarding his disbelief at the indeterminacy and search for the Spinoza God, did not abandon this thread. Until the end, the Greatest mind of modern world was still looking for determinacy. Looking for causality and a pattern. Lack of such certainty has created fear in the most brilliant of minds in mankind’s history.
No wonder God has been the greatest product and concept of all time. That is why, in my opinion, Rishis like Vasistha hold such a high place. After a life of spiritual and religious learning, he had the boldness and the honesty to tell his best known student, Ram, that “Divinity and Fate were ignorance”.