STRESS, SARCASM CYNICISM AND SKEPTICISM: DR. SHRINIWAS KASHALIKAR

From time immemorial; life is inseparably associated with stress and therefore stress management. Various philosophies, ideologies, religions, traditions, customs, conventions; and in short; different ways of life; actually constitute the process of traditional stress management.

This path identifies four progressive stages in traditional stress management, which take us to the perfection, self realization, objective existence, eternal truth, sacchidananda, ishwar, paramatma or parmaeshwar. These are baddha, mumukshu, sadhak and Siddha.

Baddha means completely oblivious to one’s true self and totally lost in one’s subjective or petty self. One can say, totally and unknowingly individualistic.

Mumukshu means a baddha who has just begun to get; ambiguous but haunting “wake up” calls or promptings; from the core of his or her heart. There is restlessness. There is search of the “self” without direction or clarity. There are doubts, distractions, disturbances and frantic activity; like that of a beginner in swimming.

Sadhak stage begins when the mumukshu gets the guidance and direction for the search. The efforts keep getting rectified and refined. The pace, the swiftness and the momentum keep increasing. The progress however is full of subtle, conflicting, confusing, harrowing, dreadful spells of ordeals in physical, instinctual, emotional and intellectual realms of an individual. These are often destabilizing, uprooting and violent in nature. These are essentially the ordeals which destroy all kind of subjective frameworks of an individual and bring him closer to objective state of existence.

Siddha is a stage; marked by the final and extremely subtle processes of dissolution of subjective or individual self into cosmic self. The struggles in this stage are often beyond the comprehension through language of digits and letters. This stage is beyond the comprehension of different levels of individual consciousness and also beyond three dimensions.

When we are in the first three stages of traditional stress management; we are tender and delicate within. We are amenable, accessible, vulnerable and susceptible to damaging and harmful inflictions; coming from within us; and from the baddha people.

The powerful inflictions or onslaughts of skepticism, cynicism and sarcasm of the baddha individuals are stupefying, disorienting, distracting, distorting, dragging and devastating in nature. The baddha individuals knowingly or unknowingly manifest these; and energize, expedite, facilitate the process of dementia, amnesia i.e. loss of memory of our self called VISMARANA; and suck us in the hell of destruction called VINASHA!

VINASHA can be compared to the fire setting in; due to short circuiting.

Hence it is said; “To prevent VINASHA; avoid the company of those, who forget, deny or denounce God i.e. self; and/or malign their motherland, guru, mother and father! Such avoidance; whether physical, mental or intellectual; is possible; only through the unshakable and steadfast persistence in the practice of NAMASMARAN.

Is it not possible to successfully tread through the four progressive stages of traditional stress management and prevent VINASHA in some other simpler ways and/or through some short cuts? This question is more difficult than; “Is it possible to shorten the period of gestation in womb?”