Suppose someone were to tell you that
everything you know has been taught by your enemy.
Your education.
Your religion.
Your ideas about success.
Your understanding of health.
Even your idea of what it means to be
spiritual.
Would you immediately reject such a statement?
Or would you remain with the question for a
while?
Most of us would dismiss it. Not because we
know it is false, but because our minds are conditioned to defend what they
already know. We are educated to seek certainty, not to question the
foundations of certainty itself.
Perhaps the real issue is not whether someone
has deceived us.
The real issue is whether we know how to
observe without the influence of what we have already been taught.
Before asking who your enemy is, perhaps there
are simpler questions.
Who are you?
Where have you come from?
Who is the one asking these questions?
These are ancient questions, but because they
are ancient we often assume they have already been answered. We inherit answers
from our parents, our religions, our nations and our books. We repeat them
until repetition becomes knowledge.
But is repetition understanding?
*
Look at the world.
Every nation believes it is right.
Every religion believes it possesses truth.
Every ideology believes it is saving humanity.
If everyone is certain, why is humanity still
divided?
Perhaps certainty itself deserves to be
questioned.
**
There is a remarkable dialogue in the Bhagavad
Gita.
Arjuna stands on the battlefield, looking at
those he is expected to fight.
They are not strangers.
They are his teachers, his family, his
friends.
Suddenly, everything he has believed about
duty collapses.
He does not know what is right.
Most people see this as a story about war.
Perhaps it is not.
Perhaps the battlefield is the human mind.
There comes a moment in every life when
everything we have believed no longer seems sufficient. Our ideas fail us. Our
conclusions fail us. We stand inwardly as Arjuna stood outwardly, in complete
uncertainty.
Krishna does not simply tell Arjuna what to
do.
He first invites him to understand who he is.
Without understanding oneself, action becomes
confusion.
***
Many centuries later, another man stood before
another kind of battlefield.
J. Robert Oppenheimer had helped unlock the
power of the atom.
Science had achieved something extraordinary.
Then came the destruction of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
Knowledge had advanced.
But had wisdom advanced with it?
Human beings have become extraordinarily
clever.
We can split the atom.
We can travel into space.
We can communicate across continents in
seconds.
Yet inwardly we remain frightened, ambitious,
competitive and divided.
Technology has evolved.
Has consciousness?
****
History repeatedly reveals the same movement.
Hitler imagined the superiority of one race.
Millions accepted that imagination as truth.
An idea became more important than a human
being.
Notice what happened.
The danger did not begin with violence.
It began with identification.
"I am this."
"You are that."
The moment identity becomes absolute,
relationship ends.
Where there is division, conflict follows
naturally.
*****
The story of the Afrikaners is another
reminder of how identity is formed.
A people gradually created a language, a
culture and a history that gave them a sense of belonging. There is nothing
inherently wrong with belonging. But when belonging becomes separation,
identity can harden into exclusion.
This is not unique to one nation.
It happens wherever identity becomes more
important than humanity.
******
Subhas Chandra Bose wanted freedom for India.
Che Guevara wanted justice for the oppressed.
Both believed that society needed radical
transformation.
Whether one agrees with their methods or not
is another matter.
The more fundamental question is this:
Can society change if the human mind remains
unchanged?
Can a revolution outside produce peace inside?
Or will the old mind simply create another
system with a different name?
History seems to suggest the latter.
*******
Think of a football player standing in defeat.
Lionel Messi stood, his back facing Spain, lifting
the 2026 World Cup trophy.
There was no argument with reality.
Only the fact of losing.
Can the mind observe defeat without becoming
bitter?
Can it observe success without becoming proud?
The problem is never winning or losing.
The problem is the image we have built about
ourselves.
********
Now consider someone almost unknown.
Harry Yanto Bikal walks through dense forests
in Sabah to teach children in a remote village.
Why would someone choose such a life?
Perhaps because meaning is not always found in
achievement.
Perhaps it is found in attention.
In care.
In doing what needs to be done without asking
whether the world is watching.
Such people rarely become famous.
Yet they may understand life more deeply than
those who seek recognition.
*********
When we look at all these lives, Arjuna,
Oppenheimer, Hitler, Bose, Che, Messi, Harry, we are tempted to compare them.
But perhaps comparison is unnecessary.
Each is simply a mirror.
Each reveal something about ourselves.
Our ambition.
Our fear.
Our confusion.
Our desire to belong.
Our search for purpose.
History is valuable only if it helps us
understand ourselves.
Otherwise, it is merely information.
**********
The philosopher asks, "What is
truth?"
The scientist asks, "How does it
work?"
The politician asks, "Who should
rule?"
The revolutionary asks, "How do we change
society?"
But there is another question.
Who is the one asking?
Ramana Maharshi devoted his life to this
single inquiry.
"Who am I?"
Not as a philosophy.
Not as a belief.
But as an observation.
When anger arises, who is angry?
When fear appears, who is afraid?
When thought says, "I know," who is
this "I" that claims knowledge?
If one watches carefully, one discovers
something extraordinary.
The observer is usually made of memory.
Of experiences.
Of conclusions.
Of images accumulated through time.
Can there be observation without this
accumulation?
Can the mind look at itself without
immediately naming, judging or condemning?
Perhaps that is meditation.
Not repeating words.
Not controlling thought.
But seeing.
Simply seeing.
***********
So let us return to the beginning.
Who is your enemy?
Is it another nation?
Another religion?
Another ideology?
Or is the enemy the movement of fear, ambition
and conditioning that exists within every human being?
If I do not understand myself, whatever I
create, my religion, my politics, my education, even my search for God, will
inevitably carry my confusion.
Then the confusion becomes organised.
It becomes tradition.
It becomes authority.
It becomes civilisation.
And we inherit it as truth.
Perhaps, then, the real revolution is not
political.
It is not religious.
It is not even philosophical.
It begins the moment the mind observes itself
without escape.
In that observation there is no teacher.
There is no follower.
There is no authority.
There is only the immense seriousness of
discovering, for oneself, the answer to a question that no one else can answer.
Who am I?
Cheers.
ravivarmmankkanniappan@1406240720263.0644°
N, 101.5936° E
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