Editorial
Where Am I?
“M
August 2021
an is a compound of animality, humanity, and d iv i n i t y ” s ay s S wa m i Vivekananda. In our daily life we function from one of these, or from the borderlines of any of these three levels of life.
The Vedanta Kesari
10
Our life manifests at the animal or pashutva level when our senses, behaving like wild horses, drags us to experience the pleasures of sense objects. Dictated by bodily instincts, our thoughts and actions remain selfish and flow mainly towards food, sleep, and lust. We begin to function at the human or manushatva level when our mind awakens to higher thoughts and develops the capacity for rational thinking in different fields of knowledge like natural sciences, humanities, and religion. At both these animal and human levels we remain bounded by the laws of Nature or prakriti. It is when we struggle against this bondage to Nature that we begin to manifest the divinity or daivatva in us which is variously known as Self, Soul, or Atman. To break free from the shackles of prakriti, our scriptures and saints give us powerful tools in the form of awakening questions like ‘Who am I?’, ‘Where have I come from?’, ‘Where am I going?’…. When we deeply engage with such awakening questions they unveil the divinity within us. There is another question we can ask ourselves as we go through our daily lives; it is: ‘Where am I?’
This down-to-earth question with no metaphysical trappings, has the power to
awaken us into the present moment — the only window of time through which we can realise the inner divinity. Asking ‘Where am I?’ creates multiple levels of awareness in us — we recognise the influence of external circumstances on us, we understand the nature and dynamics of our relationship with things and people, we realise where we stand in our spiritual journey, and at a deeper level we become aware of where our attention is. This last awareness is most important because basically we are where are attention is. When our attention flows out into the world through the senses or through thoughts, we become entrapped in the things of the world. Hence, the degree of control we have over our attention decides at what level our life manifests — animal, or human, or divine. Again, the question ‘Where am I?’ presumes that we have a clear idea of where we want to be. Without this clarity, the question loses its significance. Speaking about his mission in life, Swamiji declares that it is “to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.” This then is where we should seek to be: A state of experiencing and manifesting the inner divinity through our every thought, feeling, and action as a loving service to the Lord manifest as the world. As we travel through life with this ideal, let us remember to ask ourselves every now and then ‘Where am I?’
