Every time I look at a little infant or a baby, my heart melts and this fills me with absolute joy. From social context, I could have no connection with the baby I am looking at. He is not my family member or a nephew or a niece or any other label which we usually put on human beings, but still, in my experience, I feel a deep connection. I believe many of you might have had the same experience where you just looked at a baby and that filled you with great joy.
This happens because this is not just a process of physical looking, rather this is a process of deep involvement and communication which is happening back and forth between you and the baby during that moment. This is the process of establishing a deep level of connection. Now if I extend the scope of the same example you will find that the same joy sprouts within you instantaneously when you look at a garden full of beautiful fragrant flowers, or a mountain, or an offspring of an animal say for e.g a Puppy or a Kitten.
I can give you innumerable examples and if you deeply analyze, you will find out that inherently the quality of experience is the same. The intensity of experience may vary but the quality of all these experiences is similar in nature.
When a baby looks at you, he looks with a deep sense of wonder. When a baby interacts with you, he interacts with everything he has got. When a baby smiles or laughs while looking at you, his laughter is not just a process of opening up of his mouth physically, his laughter is the very process of opening up of his heart.
Mothers have this experience very often. Let’s say the baby is crying and the mother just goes up to the baby and embraces him. You will see how the baby clasps the mother and just surrenders his life completely into mother’s hands. The mother responds in return and outpours her immense love completely onto the baby. Which means this is a surrender which is happening on both the sides.
This is that experience which we are calling as the experience of ‘Transcendence’. This is not a physical surrender, this is not a mental surrender, this is the surrender of the being itself. When two life forms connect to each other at the level of being which is beyond body and mind, that is what is called as the experience of beauty, and any experience which is beautiful inevitably leads to transcendence. The same experience happens when two people fall in love with each other. Unless there is complete surrender from within there is no possibility of love.
Now let’s go one step ahead and ask ourselves if we can instantaneously establish a connection with a baby then why it is so that we are unable to establish this connection with people with whom we interact on our day to day basis? The very simple reason is a strong sense of identity. We identify with our physical body hugely. Today if you go to google and research, you will find that the investment in the beauty industry is far more than the investment in Medical industry. What does this signify?, Clearly we are strongly identified with the way we look physically.
The second level of identification is at the level of our mind. You will see those people who consider themselves to be highly intellectual, it’s almost impossible for them to just give a simple smile. It’s very difficult for them to just open up their heart and be loving. Every time you look at such people they look dead serious. This clearly shows that we strongly identify ourself with our minds and think this is it.
If we just loosen our boundaries of body and mind and make it little porous, You will see being joyful and being loving will be effortless. Once your identities become absolutely porous, suddenly you will see that you start to establish the deep level of involvement with every being you come in contact with, be it a baby or an adult or an animal or a plant or any other form of life which exists on this planet.
Once this happens, this is what we traditionally refer to as ‘YOGA’. Yoga means Union. Which means a person who has consciously removed the boundaries of his physicality and has reached the stage of absolute Union within himself, such a person is referred to as a Yogi. It’s time that we realize this possibility in our life because this is the doorway to reach the highest level of pleasantness. Once this happens, then being loving, compassionate, empathetic, life sensitive etc. will be the natural expression of our life.
Peace & Love!
🙂
