Every experience in the world is a mix of good and bad. Some see social violence and terrorism as freedom struggle. Any enjoyment in our life is associated with long-term misery. All perception of duality in the world is due to the body, the mind, and the intellect.
Humans suffer because they are trapped by their upadhis, limiting adjuncts, of the body, mind, and intellect. A human being possesses infinite possibilities, though the infinite seems to be ensnared by the finite body and mind. So, the key attribute is to rise above likes and dislikes.
Though a person’s spiritual awareness is covered by a thick veil of ignorance and makes the person a slave of endless desires and passions, the inherent nature of infinite Brahman does create a fascination in the form of an inward pull. Sri Ramakrishna used to say: ‘Brahman weeps, ensnared in the meshes of maya.’
Under conditional bias and inbuilt prejudice along with worldly temptations, our knowledge cannot freely manifest. We attain bliss when the individual will is removed. It is the limited individual perception that divides the experience into joy and sorrow. It is wrong to say somebody is imparting happiness or sorrow to us. Our defective understanding is responsible for our joy or unhappiness.
Gross intellect discriminates between the pairs of opposites: hot and cold, brightness and darkness, rich and poor, wise and ignorant; the corresponding entities are respectively temperature, light, wealth, and knowledge. The difference between the opposites is in the quantity and not in the quality of the entity. For example, it is the quantity of wealth that makes the difference between a poor and a rich person; acquisition of knowledge that differentiates between the ignorant and the learned; the amount of light differentiates between brightness and darkness. It is this conditioned intellect, stored in us as prejudice that meets with a specific state of the self. As an example, a charged particle can be made to interact with another similar or dissimilar charged particle, but not with uncharged or neutral particle.
If one is devoid of attraction or repulsion, prejudice or conditioned intellect, there is nothing to be biased about.
Source – Excerpt from an article titled ‘Wisdom or Eye of Knowledge by Gopal Chandra Bhar’ published in Prabuddha Bharata magazine December 2018.