Where the mind is without fear!

Osho tells a beautiful story about fear. A Yogi following the path of fearlessness set up his hut high in the mountains. In deep forests and complete isolation he did his tapasya. His fame started trickling down the hills like rainwater did through the ravines. People accepted him as a siddha because he was no longer afraid of wild animals and inclement weather elements. A young man wanting to follow the same path reached him for diksha. They were talking and a big lion roared nearby. The young man began shivering with fear. The Yogi laughed and said you have too much fear in you, making you almost ineligible for the path. The young man accepted his fear openly. After some time, the master got up and went inside the cave to do something. The young man wrote a few holy hymns on the rock the holy man was sitting on. On returning, as he was about to step onto the rock, the Yogi’s foot shook with horror. He was within a fraction of a second to commit blasphemy by stepping on a holy hymn. He was terrified. Now the young man roared with laughter. You are as fearful as me, just that your objects of fear are virtual, mine are at least real.

Most of us believe that fearlessness is in direct proportion to one’s spiritual evolution. We believe that the obsession with self preservation plummets down in proportion to the rise in awareness. Little do we realize that for one gram of real physical fears shed from our being, we nurture and add kilograms of virtual fears, the fears of religion, of blind conventions, institutionalized faith, of our image that we have built and the consequent fear to maintain it. Physical threat born fears are ingrained in our biology; psychological fears are what we have built up in the citadels of our minds.

We are scared of snakes. Our forefathers must have been bitten fatally in the forests. We have this collective paranoid fear of snakes, so much so that we even forget that 90% of them are non-venomous to humans. But then to us the word snake strikes as a collective noun, a symbol of all our real and assumed fears. It doesn’t matter if it is a Kobra or a little harmless worm that can hardly do any damage to the human system. Yes caution regarding snakes is one thing, but paranoid fear of them is totally another. Not many of us have been exposed to a life threatening situation against a snake, still the sight of a snake, from the cutest to the most lethal, triggers the same chemicals of plain, unadulterated fear into our system. Simply because up and down the ladder of our evolution we have added to the virtual fears regarding them.

A common wolf snake is a little snake that feeds on skinks and other little prays found near homes, so the poor little thing sneaks into houses as well during its reptilian feasting. Its reptilian status makes it lethal not its feeble venom. It has vibrant soft pink color and artistic white patterns, making it look like a scarily mischievous foot-soldier in the slithery army. People take these bands as a mark of fatal venom. ‘The smaller and shinier, the more venomous it is!’ they exclaim with raw fear. Like I also did last year as I rushed to my mother’s fearful call as she stared at the little thing in her room. We humans have set up our own norms of what is sinful and what is not. Among them is the principle that one is entitled to kill a snake if it enters our house. I won’t be too judgmental about it. All I can say is that we can look for alternatives before condemning it to death. There are always options provided we use our basic human faculty, i.e., reflect a bit before instinctively reacting.

I had hardly any knowledge of the little common wolf, so scared to the guts, believing it to be a life threatening creature, the symbol of my virtual fears born of my ignorance about its reality, I killed it. I had little clue to any other option. The act was my cowardly reaction  pushed by my virtual fears and ignorance of the reality about the little reptile. The house is in a village and you don’t have any snake catchers even in the nearest town. Pained by my reactive deed, and still more by my inability to respond in any other way, I searched for information about this type of snake. The dispelling of my ignorance caused me repentance. I stood guilty in my own eyes. My virtual fears bred by my ignorance and nourished by collective fearful hysteria about a reptile created a life threatening situation where there wasn’t any. Aren’t most of our fears, anxieties and insecurities the phantoms doing rounds in the darkness of ignorance?

My realization came to be tested this morning. ‘Saanp saanp!’ my sister is hysteric with fear. She has broom in her hand, but a broom can scare a husband, not a snake. Indian women feel empowered with a broom in their hands, as if it is a sword, against their husbands. But the weapon fails them against mice and little snakes.

Let knowledge be your tool, at least to the wise ones. I see the beautiful common wolf snake slithering on the verandah floor, creeping to test my realization. Yes, it looks scary. It’s agile. It has a tiny hood. Its patterns are something that gives jitters with a scary sensation. It cannot kill humans with its venom. It is just enough for skinks. But it can scare humans like any other snake. We are always on a tinderbox to give a blast to our fears. On top of that it glides sideways like a rattle snake. My knowledge about it stops me from repeating my cowardly act last time. I have the knowledge that it cannot kill me. Still my biological system has triggered the panic hormones through the system. It cannot overcome decades of systematic breeding of virtual fears. The body reacts one way, but my mind is alert. I decide to take the best option. I pick up the little one feet fire-tong and decide to give it a chance at life. My hands are shaking, a raw primordial fear of the reptile. My mind but surefooted with the knowledge that its venom won’t kill me, but all along this even my mind has a strain of doubt about my knowledge about the fact about the common wolf snakes. Of that later!

The rawness of nature! When two scared to the guts creatures decide to come on the negotiating table you can expect goof ups. I fumble. I am scared. It is even more scared. I have at least chance at life. It thinks that it is under mortal threat. Its tiny hood is doing all it takes to ward off the threat. It slithers like a rattle snake. So fast and agile! The heaves at life! God knows why there is so much of attachment to the body across all the species! On top of that my instrument is really short and I cannot afford to catch it from anywhere down its body leaving its little hood with spared length to bite my hand. Even a fake bite by a harmless snake is lethal, because our fears are real. I have to catch it a bit below its hood to give a best option to both the parties. My writer’s hands shake and let it slip many times. Whenever it falls, I jump like a trail of firecrackers has been tucked at my tailbone. My sister is warning all this while that it will sneak inside. Her solution is the stick waiting in the corner. Finally, my knowledge and awareness overcomes my pure biological reaction and the phantoms of virtual fears. It’s caught decently and I take it outside to let it glide into the marijuana plants that have strangely thronged at every nook corner this year. ‘I will use the stick if it comes in again!’ I have to appease my sister also.

Now coming to my nagging suspicion all this while in my mind even with the facts about the common wolf snakes. A few years back, a young man took fancy to catch snakes. He would do it expertly and hold them by tails as they fled for life. One day he was fully drunk and decided to make a little entertaining show of it. It was a common wolf snake I am more or less sure. Well, he caught it and in high spirits decided to go around the village showcasing his catch. Almost sloshed in country liqueur, he tried to put it inside a little bottle, succeeded also, but not before the little thing did what it is supposed to do under these circumstances. The gallant young man ignored the bite of this little worm type snake and died next day. Well, scientifically the venom of a little common wolf snake might not kill a human being in normal circumstances. But then biological accidents are always beyond the understanding of medical science also. Possibly this country-made alcohol and the apparently little bite by a little snake concocted something lethal to kill him. Now this fact was nagging me all the while. Knowledge liberates, it enslaves also. It opens, it shuts the door also. Main thing is how much we balance. The door cannot be either completely open or totally shut off. I would term his deed a foolish one, not an act of fearlessness. Fear within the limits of practical caution is a convenience, beyond that it turns into either foolishness or crippling bondage of paranoid virtual slavery to apprehensions, insecurity and assumptions.