From darkness to light….
From darkness to light
I watched a Telugu movie a long time back called ‘Antham’, which translates to ‘The End’…. One of my favorite movies!
It’s the story of an orphaned boy who is brought up by a gangster who raises him to be a merciless killer, a criminal in the eyes of law. To this boy who has grown up to be this criminal, that’s the only life he was ever made preview to. He does not know that it is wrong… he has an aura of loneliness and melancholy around him. He later goes to Colombo, Sri Lanka to escape a certain crime when he meets this quick spirited, simple girl who makes him realize the beauty of life outside his known upbringing. He falls in love with her and right when he becomes a changed man after realizing how his life was wrongly framed, he is killed by the cop who had always been after him.
A practical movie, neatly done and fairly realistic for a South Indian movie!
The protagonist of the movie is a criminal, but he wins the sympathy of his audience for he lived the way he was raised. It was not his fault, for he knew nothing better! That was all that was ever taught to him!
The point of the movie that got me thinking is the fact that people become who they are bred and cultured to be for the most part! And if they are shown a better path, a more humane or better still, a spiritual path, that’s what they will take!
Now consider beggars and terrorists…. We look at them as wrong people. And they are!
But probably, a better term would be… They are ignorant!
And so are countless others based on how we view them.
Right and wrong come in when things are viewed through the lens of morality! And morality is extremely contextual and relative! It changes from time period to time period and from culture to culture!
What might be wrong to me, may be right to you and vice versa!
Morality is never absolute! What is absolute is the need to get past ‘Ignorance’….
The world is plagued not by moral issues as much as it is with ignorance…. And in that, every person is ignorant! Every one of us is ignorant for our knowledge is limited!
Indian intellect exhorts us to move “from darkness to light”…. It is termed not as “from ignorance to knowledge”, rather, as a journey to move past our illusionary ignorance that keeps us from the true knowledge of who we are!
It is called “Knowledge of the Self”… The “Absolute Truth”.
What a beautiful way of viewing life and its purpose! How complete!! How true…. A journey…. The growth from one level of knowledge to a higher level of knowledge… each stage dispelling the darkness in our beings, which is our ignorance!
This popular Sanskrit Verse encapsulates it in its entirety:
“Asatoma Sadgamaya… Tamasoma Jyothisgamaya… Mrityorma Amrudangamaya”…. Meaning, “It’s a journey from Untruth to Truth… from Darkness to Light… from Death to Eternal Life”!
This is the most humbling explanation… the most compelling way to realizing the Absolute Truth that I have come across till date….
This is the core to the purpose of the human birth! From darkness to light….
What does your intellect say?
