Specific diseases
Vir-us to rewire us
Abstract
Sometimes when an individual or a collectivity is going through an immense conflict, a difficult situation, away from our field of vision something in the depths is also bringing out strengths and solutions which otherwise would have taken centuries perhaps to appear. Yoga, as Sri Aurobindo said, is one way to catalyse this process of growth and progress. The following article is an attempt to articulate how yoga not only can ‘appear’ in the most difficult times, but there come times in front of humanity as a whole when yoga is the only way out. The corona crisis has not only convulsed us in every way but it has paradoxically also clearly highlighted what really we should be doing as a species. Yoga, which means union, is the way out: Yoga with our inner depths, yoga with the wider Nature, yoga with our inner feminine, which has been suppressed for millennia now. Using a dream, the article attempts to present a viewpoint on what corona really represents and is asking us to do.
The landscape is a lush, deep forest. In the foreground is what appears to be a bush, a brightly-coloured bush that looks like something out of science fiction as it is unique to the shrubbery around it. In fact, the neon-coloured blossoms on the shrub are the club shaped viral spike peplomers of a virus and I immediately know this ‘bush’ to be an image of a coronavirus. A female deer is peacefully munching on these ‘blossoms’ one by one. I take the image of the deer eating the blossoms of the virus bush to represent how the wonders of the natural world can be an antidote to the pandemics of our time.
Being a psychology student, as well as someone who has been a seeker (unconsciously or consciously) for much of my life, I have always had a special relationship with dreams. Thankfully, none of my teachers back in college were of the paradigm who described dreams as ‘meaningless over-activity of the brain neurons’ and at least from then on my natural curiosity about what dreams really are has remained a source of inspiration, excitement, and awe. I also am sharing my thoughts here with the belief that most of you are like me, students of their own psyches, or souls, and so have your own relationship with dreams.
Among all the Western psychologists, it was probably Carl Jung who undertook an extensive, innovative, intuitive, scholarly, expedition into the psyche. Credited with expounding on many useful concepts like introversion/extraversion, collective unconscious, shadow, animus/anima, the famous one-word association test which many of us today play like a game (where we say a word and our game-partner has to say the first word that comes to their mind on hearing it), Jung also gave many useful insights into what dreams are, and more importantly perhaps, where they try to lead us. Being the products of our unconscious psyches, he saw them as complementing and compensating our ego-selves, and thus made dreams a major tool in his work with his therapy patients. As his work and study deepened, Jung came to the conclusion that dreams are messages from the deepest wisdom that is at the common source of all the world’s most ancient civilisations. And that in fact being open to our dream-world is a way to open to the Infinite, the Self. Dreams, then, can be a window into providing us deep insights into changing our ego self to become more in tune with what is going on at our deeper levels.
It has not just been psychology as a discipline that gives so much importance to dreams, but many spiritual traditions have placed much significance on dreams. From the little that I have researched, and I am sure you would have your own examples in mind of such traditions, certain forms of Sufism work a lot with dreams, as do some schools of Tantra. Mother and Sri Aurobindo have also answered various questions of their disciples in this regard. Therefore, I take it that, with this brief introduction, some of you, if not most of you, may be motivated to include dreams in your sadhana if you already don’t. Now let me come to the main thesis of the article that I shall attempt to put across.
This article begins with a dream shared by an American in a podcast (of which I am a regular listener) called, This Jungian Life. It has three psychologists talking about various issues from the perspective of Carl Jung’s work and theory. Unmistakably, this dream was discussed owing to the extraordinary situation that has gripped the world. We all are going through an unprecedented time, and almost overnight, a disaster of epic proportions, has been unleashed on all of us which has not left any aspect of our lives untouched. Some are calling it the biggest socio-psychological-economic disaster in their living memories. The most humbling and ironical fact about this is that it has all been brought about by a virus, a microscopic entity that is not capable of even living outside a host. With all the inflated talk around intercontinental missiles, atomic bombs, space-wars, this minute virus has deflated all the so-called superpowers as well as nations dreaming to join the league. It is no doubt that very profound questions have been raised about our politics, our economics, our relationship with Nature, our relationship with life, and the most dreaded of all, our anxieties around death.
When such unprecedented and large-scale crises hit humanity, it has been observed that people experience a great intensity within themselves. We are suddenly faced with our mortality and vulnerability in front of the awe-ful power and majesty of Nature, of Mother Nature. These very existential crises cause the formidable ego to start breaking apart, as if automatically we all are left much more exposed, and open. It reminds me of these beautiful lines in Savitri:
“An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
An hour arrives when fail all Nature’s means;
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface soul
And be the ungarbed entity within... (1)”
I am sure most of us have taken refuge in these very lines in times of our personal crises, but this time it is as if the Ancient Mother is asking the whole of humanity, or at least those who are athirst enough, to engage in casting at length our surface souls and make a radical choice of utter unselfishness, taking a leap from living a life of ego to the life of our soul. Unless we do this, no cosmetic changes will now ever suffice.
Let me again turn back to this person’s dream. He begins with the place of the dream which is a lush green forest. Forests mostly symbolise the ´unknown´ and at the same time the most utterly natural places on Earth. We, who have all been living in cities for the past many millennia, began from these very forests. This is perhaps also the reason why instinctively we all long to re-turn to the forests, if for nothing else than a weekend getaway. In dream symbology therefore, forests symbolise our unconscious psyches, which are in tune with the natural world of plants, animals, trees, rocks, minerals, but not with an intention to use them for our own interests. How different then from our ego-selves,whose primary preoccupation is to see how it can use things, people, resources, even the sacred (including one’s gurus), for its own aggrandisement.
He then describes a brightly-coloured bush which is as if from a science fiction and knows that it is a corona-bush. It is very interesting again that the dream has projected the virus in the form of a bush in a natural environment, which again suggests that we human beings may like to believe that this ‘damn virus’ has been unleashed on us and it is contrary to the natural order of things, but the truth is everything and anything that ever confronts us is natural in the widest sense of the word. Is there anything in the physical world, or even the mental world, which is unreal? Our bodies are surrendering in front of this microbe because in our collective folly and egotism we have crossed all boundaries and ventured into those places of the natural world where it was not our mandate to venture into. Is it not true that we have been abusing nature for the last two decades at an unprecedented scale? This virus seems to remind us that this can not continue without a pushback from the vaster nature. If we believe that we can abuse all other species unabated, this has been a very tragic lesson to tell us that we are being not just ignorant but arrogant. Hence, in this huge ‘forest’ of creation itself, every being, every entity, from a virus to a man, has its own place and no species can have an absolute licence to invade others’ space.
The third most significant or central presence is that of a deer, and specifically, a female deer. The deer is mostly symbolic of the soul, especially the gentle peaceful aspect of the soul, and it is particularly interesting that the female deer is seen to peacefully chew the corona blossoms. The dream shows that the soul does not react with dread and can in fact assimilate/digest even something which is lethal to the human body. What a contrast to the contraction we feel within ourselves, viewing every other person as a potential carrier of the ´deadly´ virus and reacting with fear! This most wonderful image itself is worth meditating upon and I am sure it may cause interesting internal changes within most of us. The image of femininity is also a hint about the sort of qualities that are being asked of us in order to approach the corona rather than ´running away” from it (which we are doing right now).
I am definitely not suggesting throwing all care to the wind and making merry on the streets and greeting and hugging our friends, but it is rather about our inner response to this situation than how we behave outwardly. We must remain indoors because the virus spreads rapidly and we are a country with meagre resources with a humungous population, but the truth is that we are facing a global epidemic which is putting a burning question to us: how are we going to make sure that in the future, and the near-future, this sort of an epidemic does not cause us to collapse economically, socially and existentially?
Many commentators, especially of the Western world, are suggesting that radical changes have to be come, that out-of-the-box thinking needs to happen to ensure humanity does not get crippled. But how is it going to happen? The feminine, who is qualitatively different from the masculine, may hold the answer. Again, this is not to say that women are better than men, for femininity and masculinity are psychological realities which exist in each one of us, and in fact to live a life in harmony, we all individually need to balance these qualities. Femininity, especially in the form of a female deer, will evoke many responses within each of us, and all of them are valid as long as we have/feel a connection with those qualities.
The female deer is of course also a symbol of Mother Nature, and so is the dark deep lush forest. Both are images of the Mother; one in the form of the natural vegetation and life, the other in the form of an animal. Corona, then, is a natural entity that has lived in the ‘womb’ of Mother Nature and is the soul qualities of a deep peace, a sense of inclusion rather than contraction, within our own ego-formed boundaries; and being a soul-presence, being aware of our immortality and experiencing a deep communion with all that exists (yes, ,including this virus) are some of the qualities that I can think of. Female is also generative, thus capable of giving birth to unique solutions which are beneficial to all, and not just a select few. Our soul, being one with all creation, is incapable of causing irreparable damage to other forms of life, because there are no ‘others.’
It is again very interesting that a virus made us overcome all differences which till half a month ago seemed so ‘real and true’. After all, the West really was ‘evil’ to the Islamic world, just as right-wingers could never compromise with the Communists. This virus has made all that so trivial, and now everyone wants to reach out to everyone else with whom they could not even exchange civil greetings before. We have looted all our natural life to a point of no return and now rather than being aggressive and bent on increasing the GDP and economic/military might, we may have to pause and introspect as to where it will take us and how much more damage await.
All governments have declared a war on this virus, but are we not going to accept that it is us humans who have been waging many such wars on the rest of the inhabitants of this planet? Yes, we must protect as many human lives as possible, but the enemy is not out there as Covid-19 or AIDS or any such entity, but within us. We are head-deep in that. The enemy is ego.
In her 1967 New Year Message, The Mother declared:
“Men, countries, continents!
The choice is imperative:
Truth or the abyss (2).”
I do not think we have much time left to choose, in fact perhaps the choice has been made already, and now it is to be seen who will have the conviction and fire to surrender all, and mould to Truth rather than ego.
References
1. Sri Aurobindo. Birth Centenary Library, Volume 28. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 1970, p. 11.
2. The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 15. Cent ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 1980, p. 193.
Poorva Sharma is a psychology student based in Delhi
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