Forgetfulness, A Blessing And A Scourge

Image credit: Alicepopkorn

Consider this: You belong to a family of noble kings. The kingdom is vast and wealthy. Every native is happy and  healthy. The ruling family is revered for their wisdom and goodwill to all. The kingdom has known only peace and prosperity. Then one day, you, the king, decide to go on an adventure to learn new things, to have fresh experiences. You embark on a journey to a foreign land. But before you go, you ask the great magician of the court to cast a spell upon you, so that you forget who you really are, your true heritage. Forgetting who you are, you roam around the neighboring country,  fraught with pain and suffering, where almost every citizen belongs to a family of struggling beggars. You too, soon begin to adopt this attitude of a beggar filled with strife, and feeling the depths of your unworthiness as you struggle and complain: woe is me!

The wisdom teachings of all cultures tell us this is the reality of our own dilemma. We have forgotten our true heritage as we journey through our lives. Robert Frost asks:

What if it should turn out eternity
Was but the steeple on our house of life
That made our house of life a house of worship?
We do not go up there to sleep at night.
We do not go up there to live by day.
Nor need we ever go up there to live.
A spire and belfry coming on the roof
Means that a soul is coming on the flesh.

As we live our day to day life, we live in a state of  forgetfulness of our divine nature, in order to participate in the drama that this life affords; the joy and the sadness of desire and fulfillment. In the much loved children’s  book, The Wind in the Willows, when Rat and Mole go looking for the lost baby otter, they come upon the nature god, Pan who delivers the lost animal to them. The two companions have a transcendental experience as they approach the place where Pan and the baby otter were: ....Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near…Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then…while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible color, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper…Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship… Sudden and magnificent, the sun’s broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished…As they stared blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realized all they had seen and all thy had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water… and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before.

In a similar story from Hindu mythology, one day the mischievous baby Krishna had again stolen some curds and blamed it on his brother. He dared his mother to look into his mouth to see that he was telling the truth. What she saw when she looked into his mouth astounded her. She saw…the entire universe. Moving objects and immovable things. She saw the heavens and the eight quarters:the mountains and islands and all the seven oceans which surrounded the earth…she saw the gods who presided over the senses… She saw the mind…she saw the birth of the universe…she saw herself looking inside the open mouth of her little son… Krishna’s mother, Yashoda, was bewildered. She saw the truth of her own divinity and the play of illusion, that creates the sense of separation. When Krishna saw the state his mother was in, he gave her the gift of forgetfulness, her experience was like a dream which is entirely forgotten.

This poem by Hafiz says it well:

It
Was all
So clear this morning.

My mind and heart had never felt
More convinced:

There is only God,
A Great Wild
God.

But somehow I got yanked from
That annihilating
Realization

And can now appear again
As this wine-stained
Talking

Rag.

From The Gift:Poems by Hafiz translated by Daniel Ladinsky

So forgetfulness is a blessing and a scourge. As Hafiz says, the experience of God Realization is annihilating, it was somehow yanked from him so he can function in the world. Once we have had a glimpse of  divinity we can begin to experience a loneliness in our lives that I wrote about in an earlier post, It Can Get Lonely. The secret of life  the wise ones teach, is to live in the world and not of it. To live in alignment with our divine heritage knowing that living in this finite physical form is, by its nature full of pain and its causes, but suffering is an option.