By Dr Fabian Lyngdoh
Death and destruction are inescapable phenomena which overwhelmingly haunt the human mind, and prompt various communities to identify some gods or goddesses to personalize and worship them. If death and destruction are tamed through worship, then what else should man be afraid of? However, there is an overwhelming sense of limitation that haunts human consciousness. First, there is a sense of material limitation. Man is aware that his life is physically limited. His life is bound to activities, necessary to support his physical existence. ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return unto the ground.’ Man’s desires far exceed his capacity to satisfy them. He is not the best being that he yearns to be. That is why he sings, ‘If I have the wings of an eagle, over this prison wall I’d fly.’ Second, there is a sense of spiritual limitation. There is consciousness in man that he is also a spiritual being bound to moral laws and religious obligations. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’ Man yearns for spiritual realization because he feels that he is spiritually imperfect. He seeks wealth, fame and glory to strengthen his control over material resources, but he renounces them to be strengthened in spirit. He is bound to reconcile contradictions.
Human life is also physically and mentally enmeshed in binary oppositions. The greatest of them all are, ‘Life and Death’ to which all other binary oppositions are ultimately linked. The very fact that man exists, is the source of his happiness, but the fact that he would one day die, is the source of his pain and sorrow. The binary oppositions at the social level are, ‘Individual freedom and Collective order.’ Unrestrained individual freedom is anarchy, and absolute collective order is tyranny. The extreme of both cases is the shadow of death. Society is the natural organization of human beings where the interplay of individual freedom and collective order is institutionally maintained in a state of equilibrium for the interests and satisfactions of all. The balance between these two coordinates of human existence guarantees protection of freedom and security for all.
But there is also a rebellious being lurking in man’s subconscious mind, ever seeking for absolute freedom from all limitations. Man’s yearning is to fly over hills and vales as gracefully as an eagle, to swim as swift as the fish of the sea, to float with the clouds, to see the uppermost limits of the sky and the deepest depth of the oceans and so on and so forth; but his material existence is bound to physical laws. He would like to do anything in society; to be the most famous of men, to marry the most beautiful woman and keep as many mistresses as Solomon, to live in the best of palaces, to be the giver of the law and the director of actions. Yes, every man would like to be the greatest of men. But alas! He is bound to social laws.
If man is neither bounded by physical limitations nor responsible to any moral laws or religious obligations, what would he seek for? With such unbounded freedom, he would absolutely seek continuity of existence in pleasure and contentment. Every human being subconsciously yearns to enjoy this absolute freedom which is not available in a normal social order, except in dreams. Indeed, most of our dreams are the milieu where our subconscious minds find pleasure in exercising absolute freedom not available in waking life, or where we experience torment of absolute bondage to be awakened up to a safer world of reality.
The rebellious being in each one of us abhors any form of limitation encountered in real life, sometimes even to the extent of seeing death which is the ultimate source of pain as the ultimate solution. It is the sense of refuge in death that leads desperate people to suicide. There is also a mysterious pleasure of death and destruction. People can experience pleasure in the process of death under the influence of alcohol, drugs, and other habits which interfere with the sound functioning of life. Alcohol and drugs can temporarily numb the effect of psychological limitations such as shyness and fear implanted in the subconscious mind, and moral inhibitions imposed by the society. Man experiences pleasure in such temporary freedom, without realizing that his physiological system is undergoing derangement in a process of death and destruction. When a person recovers from drunkenness, he is tormented by a hangover, which is nothing but a mild residue of the torment that his system had actually undergone, which he then calls pleasure.
An addict would sell his gold to secure his drinks in pleasure, and people would only say that he is drunk. But if the intoxication were to last permanently even without further drinking, then he would experience torment instead of pleasure, and people would not say that he is drunk, but that he is mad. Then, he would sell everything he has to rectify his mind to a heaven of sobriety again. The pleasure of intoxication is in its temporariness. We call alcohol, ‘wine’ or ‘drink’, because it induces temporary alteration of consciousness; but if it induces permanent drunkenness then we would call it a ‘poison’ that leads to insanity. If there is a substance or a practice that can induce experience of temporary death that permits man to a brief spiritual entry into the world beyond, it would be the most pleasurable and costliest of all things, because it provides an experience of resurrection. The inventor of such a thing would be the greatest entrepreneur of all. The climax of pleasure is always towards neutralization, which is relative to death; and emotions of pleasure, if allowed to grow uncontrolled, ultimately lead to death: Smile – Laugh – Sing – Dance – Frenzy – Stupor – Death.
Man also finds pleasure when his individual freedom is temporarily divorced from the collective order. That is, pleasure in the destruction of the normative order. The most common expression of defiance by a group of intoxicated youth in any locality is to sing, shout or scream at the top of their voices as if they are possessed, and speak words that are morally offensive. That is the seed of ‘heavy metal’ which seems like an expression of rebellion against established normative order. Whenever a religious group or social group breaks away from the bigger group, there is always a feeling of joy, unity and affection among members. But when new institutional norms are formulated, and the hierarchy is established to regulate the activities of the increasing members of the group, the tempo of joy and attraction dies out. All the initial unity and joy arise not from any novelty in the new group, but only from a sense of freedom from an established order.
In a certain course on Kama Sutra, the organizers cleverly stripped off moral inhibitions of the participants day after day, accompanied by actual stripping of clothing stage after stage. A process of de-socialization took place with the pleasure of the participants which culminated in a naked group sex sessions. This is the pleasure of freedom from the established normative order. Unrestrained freedom is what the individual is seeking for but could not find in real life within the ordinary social order. Therefore, people readily enjoy the pleasure in any artificial and transient society, where a miniature state of nature with unrestrained freedom is recreated.
But freedom is always there, we only need to break the hold of bondage. The bondage is neither in the physical system nor in the social system, but lies deep inside the self. Eternal Love is overflowing, and beauty is plentiful too; we can listen and hear it, look and see it, touch and feel it, embrace and enjoy it everywhere. It pleases the heart and soothes the soul. Beauty is created on the heart’s yearning for love, and a heart full of love would never be lacking of it. Love does not come from beauty, but it is beauty that comes from love, for without love there is no beauty, and the heart that is lacking in love shall cherish beauty in vain.
It is advisable that we discover happiness and pleasure in the beauty of the balance between individual freedom and the collective order as established in the normative order of the society, and not in a rebellion against it. Let us enjoy singing and dancing in our day to day life and surroundings, and realise the truth as someone has wisely said, “I travelled the whole world in search of happiness and when I returned home, I found it.”