The Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Inner Voice
Swami Chaitanya Keerti
2 June, 2004
Those who were praising you to the skies and falling at your feet yesterday are ridiculing and lampooning you today. Those who were dying to befriend you yesterday do not want to see your face today.
This always happens in the life of not only individuals but in societies and nations. This happens mainly in the East and particularly in India where emotions rule more than the reason.
We make ordinary people heroes and when they fall in our eyes, we crush them to pieces. This is a love-hate relationship and we express both emotions in such way that it becomes a catharsis. When there is too much love, know well there will be eruption of hate too.
Realising this phenomenon of love-hate, success-failure as two sides of the same coin, our ancient seers taught us how to deal with such situations. They brought in the dimension of witnessing consciousness, what is known in Sanskrit as sakshin. Societies, nations and races have collective consciousness or unconsciousness, but it is the individual alone who can enter into the realm of witnessing consciousness. This way, his spiritual quotient grows and his spiritual growth becomes a shining example. Lord Krishna makes Arjuna aware of this dimension on the battlefield of Mahabharta.
Meditation makes us realise this, and we transcend the storm of emotions, we become what Osho calls as “watcher on the hill.” This state of consciousness is serenity and bliss.
Osho says: “Nothing fails like success! Failure fails, success fails. There is only one possibility, that you know your being, only that satisfies, only that never fails.”
