The Modern Alchemist

Every living being has the capacity to grow, develop and achieve complete satisfaction in the environment it grows up in. Take a tree for example, it does not budge an inch from where it lives. It never goes anywhere in search of additional resources. Everything a tree needs for survival is provided by nature, water, air, soil, sunlight etc. The tree is like a Dhyana Yogi increased in meditation, with whatever it has, fixed in one place, never desiring or yearning. The goal of Zen or Dhyana is to become such a being.

I see a tiny fly in my garden, just a tiniest speck of white. It is damn smart. If you swing your hands towards it, it can dart and change course instantly. Even this mite of an organism knows which plants to fly towards, where to get nourishment, how to protect itself during rains and how to increase its numbers in the environment sustainably. It never wants to do things it is incapable of doing and never aspires for anything more than it has been provided by nature. If you ask me how I can read its mind, I would answer that it has seen nothing else in its life other than what it has perceived in its immediate world. How then should it or can it yearn for something it has no idea or understanding about?

Let us go one step upwards to the realm of mammals most similar to us – apes. While chimpanzee life is seemingly erratic, they move from one region to the other in search of resources. Their community life involves local skirmishes, in a race for status. However, children are protected by the community and the adults are happy with whatever their environment offers them. They can easily live and prosper with whatever they are provided by nature. Bonobos and Gorillas are even better, they are extremely peaceful, and rarely fight with each other.

Humans continue this line of evolution. On the surface, we too take care of young ones through family structures and society. We invest in the upbringing of children. We all want to lead peaceful lives and value a society that takes care of each other.

This is where the similarities end. Modern human society has descended into a morass of greed, envy and sado-masochism. Humans are absolutely unable to live calmly and in peace with nature. We all want something more.

1) We are always unhappy with our present and want a utopian future to unfold in order to be happy.

2) We want to be higher in status than all peers. It is not clear why that is a goal and why that status would make one happy.

3) We want to boast about leading an impossible lifestyle, so that others will look up at us, even these actions merely breed envy.

4) We choose jobs which leave no time for our family.

5) We choose high paying jobs that ruin our health and make us unhappy.

6) Even after making all the money we could spend inner lifetime, we are greedy for more and more.

7) We live life as if we are the only being to never die any time in the future.

We then wonder why we are so unhappy with our life. Whenever possible, we make the most terrible choice possible. We are unable to be at peace with what we have. This urge for something more inside us makes us different from all living beings and animals.

Nobody ever has given a proper answer to what we seek. Even we do not know what we seek. However, Advaita Vedanta gives us some answers.

1) We are always looking for something that brings us to a state of permanent happiness or bliss. Advaita calls it Ananda. We are searching for something deep, a certain truth about existence, a truth (Sat) that will bring us happiness.

2) Our intelligence (Chita) guides us insistently towards that goal. We know for certain, deep inside our heart, that state of bliss or Ananda exists and that goal is accompanied by a sense of bliss.

However, the fool eternally seeks everything everywhere except within, and that is why he never finds it anywhere outside. Till the last second of his life, that foolish person, even if he were a multibillionaire. will never have found it. If billionaires were truly happy, have you ever heard any billionaire say – “enough is enough, I have made enough for this lifetime?” Wealth is a strange willful magical delusion you perform on yourselves. The more you have the less you have. It is a form of Avidya (ignorance) that makes you poorer and poorer as you become richer and richer. The richest man paradoxically becomes the greatest beggar. We can see that play before our eyes, by merely looking at the antics of the richest man today.

The one place you forgot to look at was inside yourself. Maybe the object of your eternal search was for a true self - the self of your childhood and the carefree person you once were before you changed into the ghoul you are now. You remember the youth when you were extremely happy with very little and a time which seemed perfect in every way. All is not lost. If you allow your intelligence (Chitta) to guide you inwards, you will still find the greatest treasure of your dreams. The state of bliss which children experience is still within. Advaita calls this state of beatitude, Atma Gyana. There is no God to seek or who will give you happiness, you instead want a state of expanded consciousness where you tap the infinite storehouse of happiness within.

A person who gains Atma Gyana wants nothing more. Everything on earth seems pale and dull compared to this inner treasure. What do treasures and dollars mean to the small child? A bauble will do for the kid. It is the value it attaches to the bauble or trinket that matters, not the object by itself. So, what is liberation? If the world can offer you nothing you want, then you become completely free, unbound by constraints and free to do whatever you want. In short, by seeking the Atman self (or its Satchidananda nature), you reach the Ananda which was inside you all the time. This is in short the story of Paulo Coelho's Alchemist. The child searches everywhere for a treasure, till he realizes that the treasure was exactly where he was before he began his quest.