duhkhour guhlah paiyloun

Misconception

Misinformation that leads to misconception is the undoing or cause of ruin of every individual. Believing an untruth and acting with the conviction that it is true results in misery and deception. The fundamental misconception of life is incorrectly identifying oneself. “Who am I” is the question that begs our attention. It can haunt us throughout life unless we awaken to the truth of our identity.

Life can be summarized as the search for self-identity. A young boy who attends school may decide to wear a baseball hat. The conventional way to put on the hat is with the stiff brim (visor or bill) facing forward. After some time, the hat may be put on backwards with the brim facing the opposite way. Another way to wear the hat is to put it on sideways with the brim covering one ear. Sometimes the hat is tipped downward and put on a diagonal with the brim facing toward the feet and almost falling off the head. Each position of the hat corresponds to an identity for the young boy. When the brim faces forward, it indicates that the boy is straight or living a conventional life as a good citizen and a baseball fan. If the hat is put on backwards, the boy is unconventional, a sort of protester of modern social norms. The hat put on sideways is a sign of some connection with a gang. When tipped on a diagonal and almost falling off the head, the hat indicates that the boy is a “dork,” a jerk or fool. Gangster rappers will also don the hat tipped forward and on a diagonal almost falling off.

The progression of the hat’s position on the boy’s head can take a period of several weeks to several years. The variation indicates how the boy is identifying himself. He can also change his clothing style, language, music preference, food, walking postures, facial and hand signals, and sexual habits, etc. Moving the hat is a sign of cultural shift and personal identification of the boy. Eventually the boy can throw away the baseball hat and don other headgear that becomes a symbol of a new identity based on the external social influences that impress him. He also chooses to associate with acquaintances of the same inclination. He may get rid of all hats and shave his head or let his hair grow and make dreadlocks. Each external appearance indicates an internal decision to identify with a particular social group. Most people go through many stages of experimental self-identification during their lifetime.

Unfortunately, the experimentation for self-identification is almost exclusively done by associating oneself with objects or concepts that are external designations that are temporary and subject to change and destruction. Absorbing oneself in external designations, one encounters much frustration and struggle. There was once a woman who purchased a new Lexus. As she drove out of the dealership a VW van painted with rainbow colors smashed into the new Lexus and caused considerable damage. By chance, the woman was not physically injured. She sprang out of the damaged car and began to scream in rage.

“Why the hell did you run into my new car! I just pulled out of the Lexus dealership. Give me your insurance papers. Your insurance company will pay for all this damage to my car.”
“I’m sorry lady, but I don’t have insurance. I can’t afford it,” said the young man with the dreadlocks.
The lady screamed, “Damn fool! You are good for nothing dope head!”

Although the lady was not physically injured herself, she seemed to be in an extreme state of pain and frustration. Why was the lady so distressed and pained? What part of her was affected by the accident that damaged her car? If a person has a toothache, they can point to the exact spot where it hurts. The swollen or sore gums or the decayed tooth with an exposed nerve is easy to identify. Where was the lady hurting? She was not physically injured. Yet, she seemed distressed and pained due to her attachment and identification with the new car. Her attachment was so strong that whatever happened to the car affected her. The idea, “This new Lexus is mine. I am going to enjoy driving it,” was the immediate object of attachment of her false ego.

False Ego

The ego is self-identification of oneself, or “I am.” The false ego is identifying oneself with a temporary material object or person. One may think “I am the owner, controller and the enjoyer of this particular material thing or person.” The lady above assumed she was the owner and enjoyer of the new car. Because the object or the relationship is temporary, the conviction that one is the owner, controller and enjoyer is illusory or false. At most, it is a short term relationship that can change at any time.

How does the false ego evolve? Why would a person identify with a temporary thing or relationship knowing well that it can end at any time?

A human being has a body with senses, which gather information and impressions of the physical world and feed them to the mind. The mind is the center of all activities of the senses. When one looks upon and hears about sense objects, the mind becomes a reservoir of myriad ideas of sense gratification. Varieties of desires and attachment build up in the mind. The sensuous contemplation of an object leads to the development of attachment to enjoy the object. One thinks about the object by seeing its desirable qualities. One begins to feel how pleasing it would be to own and enjoy the object.
One wills or becomes determined that unless they own and control the object they will not achieve sensual and mental fulfillment.

From contemplation of an object which includes thinking, feeling and willing, one develops progressively attachment and lust for it. Thus the mind and senses become repositories of lust.

The intelligence or the power of the person to discern right from wrong, good from bad, positive from negative, becomes affected by the lusty mentality and begins to make decisions based on lust for the object rather than what is the long term good for the person.

The lusty intelligence becomes the seat of the false ego. The person, using the faculties of the senses, mind and intelligence which are infected with lust, becomes attached to a temporary thing and develops a sort of addiction to enjoying the object with their material senses and mistakes this temporary enjoyment as true happiness.

The woman with the Lexus developed the strong attachment to enjoy her new car. But, her pleasure was abruptly interrupted by the man in the rainbow VW. She vented her frustration and pain which quickly turned to anger. It was as if she was injured by the damage done to her car. The truth is that her false ego was pained by the abrupt accident.

The false ego or the material object oriented consciousness has two psychic divisions. One identifies as the creator or controller, and then as the enjoyer of the object. While enjoying the object one develops a very strong and sometimes obsessive attachment to it. The passionate or overmastering craving to control and enjoy an object is the symptom of lust.

Lust

Lust evolves under the influence of the mode of passion. The mode or quality of passion develops from unlimited desires and longings. It may be characterized as the attraction between man and woman. The mutual attraction is called the mode of passion. As the passion increases, the hankering for material enjoyment becomes prominent in the mind. This leads to increased desires to enjoy sense gratification. For sustained sense gratification, a man or woman seeks profit, distinction (or honor and recognition in society) and eventually adoration. A man or woman want a happy family, nice children, house, car and many objects of comfort and utility for sense gratification. These are the products of the mode of passion.

Due to hankering after so many objects of pleasure, one is obliged to work very hard. The result of work, namely the salary or profit, binds a person by the activities of self-interest and the attachment to profit for maintaining sense gratification. One is forced to continue working to please his or her loved ones, maintain prestige and enjoy life surrounded by many objects for enjoyment and comfort.

Modern civilization is immersed in the merry-go-round of passion, self-interest, material enjoyment, attachment, lust, frustration, anger, illusion, entrapment in material existence. It is almost impossible to free oneself from this entanglement. The only glimmer of hope is when a person becomes completely baffled by prolonged lustful activities and begins to seek out knowledge of the cause of entrapment and how to get out of the unrelenting cycle of material life.

A shocking example of how lust can lead to frustration, anger and illusion is the story of the chief judge on New York’s highest court, Sol Wachtler. He had a four year affair with a New York socialite named Joy Silverman. When their relationship ended, judge Wachtler fell into a deep depression compounded by
a mix of prescribed amphetamines, tranquilizers, and anti-depressants.

His began to stalk his former girlfriend with hang-up calls, anonymous, obscene letters that included a threat to kidnap
her teenage daughter and extortion demands. He hoped Silverman would turn to him for help with the harassment. This went on for thirteen months.

Silverman, however, went to the FBI for help. Judge Wachtler was arrested. He made a guilty plea to the kidnap threat and accepted a fifteen month prison term. His ornate chambers in the Court of Appeals in Albany were replaced by an 8×7 cell in solitary confinement, where he was placed for observation after arriving at a North Carolina prison where the mentally ill are housed.

When lust is not satisfied it turns in anger. Anger is transformed
into illusion and illusion continues one’s existence in material entanglement. Lust is the greatest enemy of man. It is lust only which keeps us bound up in a inextricable network of illusions.

Frustration, anger, greed, delusion

One tries to satisfy lust. When he cannot, frustration is felt and then anger. From frustration and anger, one develops greed. The downward spiral begins by wrongly contemplating an object. There is a right way and a wrong way to see the world. The right way is to see everything in existence as being created by, controlled and owned by God. Everything and everyone is meant to serve God according to His desire and will. The incorrect way is to see everything and everyone as independent of God. This wrong way of seeing leads to one developing false attachment and desire that turns to lust. If the lust or excessive desire to own and control something or someone is frustrated, one becomes angry. From the frustrated state of anger, one can develop greed and especially delusion. Such delusion bewilders the memory and results in loss of intelligence. When intelligence or the discriminative faculty is lost, one begins a cycle of self-destructive and anti-social behavior.

Entrapment

Once, a thirsty deer was on the edge of a desert. There was no source of water nearby. Looking out into the desert, the deer saw a large body of water not far off surrounded by the hot sands. It became convinced that it could easily reach the water by walking toward it.

The deer began to walk into the desert toward what it thought was a lake of sweet water. As it walked, the water seemed always to be a little farther, but it never could reach it. The combination of the scorching sun, hot sands and dehydration overwhelmed the deer. It died before it could drink the water which seemed so close, yet always a little farther away. The deer was tricked into walking into the desert by seeing an optical mirage.

The desert mirage is a “real” optical phenomenon because it can be captured on camera. The “real object” is the sky which appears as a patch or desert mirage due to light rays that are refracted to form the false image below the real object that seems to be a short distance from the observer. The mind of the observer interprets the image. The deer was thirsty so it became convinced that the image was real water in the desert. This was a fatal mistake for the deer.

There are several conditions necessary for entrapment by material nature. First, the reliance solely on material perception of the imperfect senses is the most important. By observing nature, we can see this principle demonstrated repeatedly. For example, a fisherman will carefully hook some bait or fix a lure to his fishing line in order to catch a fish. The bait is some type of food that the fish likes to eat and the lure is an artificial replica of the same. Both are designed to trick the fish so that it gets caught by a hook and is pulled into the fisherman’s grasp by the fishing line.

Every living entity has four fundamental defects of perception: mistakes, illusion, imperfect senses and a cheating propensity. These defects of perception inhibit a living entity from attaining perfect knowledge on its own without help from an outside authority that is free from them. The fish and other animals as well as human beings are repeatedly misled by mistakes of perception that result in illusions due to misunderstanding their mistakes to be truth, imperfect perception due to limited sense perception and a cheating propensity. Without help, a person can remain in a state of illusion their entire life without much hope of getting release.

Secondly, the inability to control natural urges of the mind and body. These urges are occasioned by speech, the mind, anger, the tongue, belly and genitals.

Every human has the power of speech or communication as do all living creatures in some form or other. Most communication is nonsense. For example, the croaking of a toad in a field invites a snake to find and eat it. Although the croaking of the toad invites death, still is goes on croaking. Similarly, human beings spend most of their time talking about mundane subjects such as sports, money, politics, sex, etc. These subjects are entertaining and help pass the time, but they have nothing to do with the real problem of life: understanding oneself in relation to this material world and the Supreme Personality of Godhead. By continual discussion of mundane subjects, a person develops the conviction that he or she is the observer and that all other things are objects of observation. This is the fundamental mistaken conception that entangles a living being in an illusory state of existence without hope of getting release.

When one believes he is the seer, he becomes convinced that all objects of perception are ultimately meant for his enjoyment. A television or computer is a superb instrument that provides entertainment. They pleasure the mind and senses of a person for years on end. Thus, one’s attention is completely diverted from self-realization to self-pleasure. Important questions such as “Who am I, and what is my factual position in this material world” “Am I the enjoyer as if a god,” or “Am I meant to be enjoyed by the Supreme Godhead?” are forgotten.

In the material concept of life, everyone attempts to be the enjoyer and tries to make everything or everyone else the object of enjoyment. This false attempt entangles one in a network of actions and reactions that seem impossible to undo. The continual search for enjoyment renders the mind fickle and hard to control. It wanders from one object of the senses to another. Thus, overwhelmed by illusion, people are so engrossed in seeking sense gratification that they have very little time to understand self-realization. When one ignores the pursuit of self knowledge and occupies oneself with temporary sense pleasures, life’s precious time is wasted.

Once a very rich man tried to purchase back one moment of his life that had already passed. Regardless of how much money he offered, he could not buy back one second. Therefore, the most precious thing we have in life is time we are given to live. Every moment is precious because once passed we can never get it back.

Seeking the truth of life in sensual pleasures is like the deer walking toward the mirage of water in the desert. Our intelligence when properly trained should tell us that water exists but not in the desert although we might see a lake of fresh water in the distant desert sands. We should seek water where there is greenery of grass, flowers and trees. Similarly, we should seek knowledge of self from self realized persons. Factual self realization is a relational experience. In a vacuum we cannot realize who we are. But, in a relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, we can understand who we are eternally. We become entrapped by illusion when we separate ourselves from the eternal God and identify with temporary material objects and relationships.