UNDERSTANDING THE HARMONY AT VARIOUS LEVELS

Unit - 5
Understanding the Human Being as Co-existence of the Self and the Body
 Human Being as Co-existence of the Self and the Body
What do you visualize when you read the words human being? You may imagine a
human body with its familiar form and features. We want to explore exactly what a human being
is.
The proposal is that human being is the co-existence of the Self and the Body.

Who is interested in understanding what is written in this book? Who makes sense of the
words? We keep saying things like ‘I am happy’, ‘I like this bored’, this is my friend; that is a
stranger; I like this music; I want to eat delicious food’ and so on.
We can see that the food was consumed by the body and I enjoyed the taste of the food.

 The needs of the self and the body

 If you try to understand self and Body separately, it could be understood on the
basis of need.
 Respect is one of the needs of the self.
 If you look at the need of the body, it is physical facility.
 You may observe it in yourself that food is required and respect is also required.
Both of these are required for human being.

One can be replaced by the other example.
If you are given well prepared tasty food, but it is given to you with a push and sharp.
If you are given respect, but no food, you may tolerate it for a day or two.
Both of these are required by giving food only, you can’t ensure respect.

Just by giving respect; food is not ensured.

Both of them have to be fulfilled separately for human being.

Need – Are they Temporary of continuous?

To clarify the difference between the two types of needs

 The food is required continuously or you need it only when you feel hungry?
 If we are forced to eat when the stomach is full, we find it uncomfortable, rather
intolerance.
 Thus, food is needed from time to time and not continuously. Therefore, food is required
temporarily.
 What about respect? It is also easy to see that we desire respect all the time.
Example

 If a friend wishes you every morning, but does not with you one day, how you feel
– comfortable or uncomfortable? From this, if you conclude that there is a break
in this feeling of respect for you, you feel uncomfortable, is n’t it?
 One of our friends came to visit with his ten – years old daughter. A conversation
was taking place. At one point someone asked her “does your father love you?
 She was silent for a few minutes. The person asked “Does he not love you? She
looked at him and said “he loves me but, why does he shout at me and beat me”?
Taken aback, the friend defended himself by saying “I have scolded you few times,
but I have n’t beaten you, have I”? Her response was, “remember, the night
before Diwali… two years ago”.
Since feeling is needed in continuity, even a small gap is not acceptable.
The child remembers these minute gaps over such a long time!
 In case of respect, we want continuity; but in case of food, we don’t want the
continuity. Hence, both the needs are different with respect to time. Can you
observe this?
 Explore all your needs. We can differentiate between the need of the self and the
need of body.

Needs – Quantity and Quality

The other way to see the difference between the two i.e. quantity and quality. The need for
food is quantitative in nature. We can identify the quantity of the food needed to nurture our
body.

 Any physical facility is required in a limited quantity. You can observe it in yourself –
whether you need physical facility in a limited quantity or unlimited quantity.
 The feeling of respect, trust etc… is not quantitative. These feelings are quantitative in
nature. We can’t talk about their quantity says feelings are there or not there.
 Either this feeling is there or not there; measure of quantity does not apply to it.
 The need for physical facility relates to the Body and the need of happiness relates to the
self.

Fulfilment of the Needs of the Self and the Body

How these two different types of needs are fulfilled.

 The need for food is fulfilled by something physical.

 It really is! But when it comes to the need for respect. It is fulfilled by the feeling of respect.
 Few expressions of the expectation of right feeling, from which you conclude that your
friends respect you.
 You can find out if your need for food will be fulfilled if your friends keep saying nice things
about you, but they don’t offer you anything to eat, all day!

 If your need for respect will be fulfilled if your friends keep on feeding you with the best
of foods, but keep making fun of you, all day.
 While talking about the basic human aspiration. We saw that three things are required for
a human being to be fulfilled.
i. Right understanding in the self.
ii. Fulfilment in relationship with human being.
iii. Physical facility with rest of the nature.
The need of the self is happiness, while the need of the body is physical facility.

 The need for happiness is fulfilled by right understanding and right feeling.
 Are both, the Self and Body, important or you can do away with any one of them? Are we
taking care of both or are we largely focused on the body only?
 If we observe our day to day living, we are largely focused on the needs relating to body?

The Activities of the Self and the Body

The self has the activity of desire, thought and expectation. Observe within yourself, whether
these activities are going on in you or not? What do you see? Are these the activity of the self or
the Body? Whether these activities are going on continuously in you or only for some time?

 We will find that the activity of the self is continuous in time. We cannot stop it.

Any work that we take from the Body, like eating, walking etc., is temporary in time. After
some time, the Body gets tired and we need to give it rest. We cannot make it continuous.

 When we are bored of thinking about one thing, we start thing of something else.
 Any activity with the help of Body is difficult to continue while any activity of self is
difficult to stop.
 The self and the Body can be differentiated on the basis of their need as well as their
activity.
 The third difference is at the level of response.

The Response of the Self and the Body

The response of the Body is based on recognizing and fulfilling whereas the response of
the Self is based on knowing, assuming, recognizing and fulfilling.
Example

If someone is piercing a needle in your body. The Body will we cooperate with him or oppose
him? That depends upon the situation and our assumption about that person. If the person
piercing the needle is doctor. We cooperate, It means that the recognition and fulfilment of the
self depends upon the assumption in the self?

 The recognition and fulfilment of the Body will be the same in both the cases. The
recognition and fulfilment of the self depends upon the assumption.
 If you observe people around you, they have various assumptions in themselves.
 Even a single person may have many different sets of assumptions.
 Any misleading assumption that is not right, leads to a wrong recognition and fulfilment,
ultimately leading to wrong behavior/conduct.
 If we assume ourselves to be of one sect, and assume the other sects to be our opponent.
Our behavior with the people of these two sects will be quite different.
 The conduct of the human being basically depends upon the response of the self, as all
decisions are made by the self.
  With right understanding, our assumptions, basically our acceptance is set right, our
recognition of relationship is set right and therefore, we make effort to fulfil the
relationship.
 With the recognition set right, our fulfilment of relationship will be set right.
 This transformation from the state of problem or indefinite conduct to the state of
solution or definite conduct can be ensured by human education – Sanskar.

The Self as the Consciousness Entity, the Body as the Material Entity

 We saw that the need, fulfilment, activity and the response of Self and Body are
completely different. They are two different types of reality – the self (which is also called
as Jeevan) is the domain of Consciousness, while the Body is the domain of material.
  Happiness is the need of the consciousness and it is fulfilled by right understanding and
right feeling which are activities of the consciousness itself.
 Whereas the need of the material body is fulfilled by physio – chemical (material) things
only.
 To understand the human being, both the domain of consciousness as well as the domain
of material needs to be understood.

Gross Misunderstanding – Assuming Human being to be only the Body

A gross misunderstanding is to assume the human being to be just the Body.

 The needs of human being are concerned, they are in terms of happiness and physical
facility.
 The need of happiness is continuous because it is actually the need of the self.
 With the assumption that ‘The human being is just the Body’.
 All the efforts for fulfilment of human needs have to take place through physical facility.
 We are trying to fulfil the continuous need for happiness, like respect, through physical
facility like clothes and food.
 We feel deprived so we try to accumulate more; that is how we get into a loop. Check if
you are also caught in this loop.
 The gross misunderstanding is assuming the human being to be the body and therefore,
trying to fulfil all the needs through physical facility alone.
 There is exploitation of natural resources for more and more physical facility and human
beings are exploited in the process.
 They are made to complete for the limited physical facility.