A person, very close to me and obviously belonging to Jillellamudi family, told me the following: నాకు ఈ మధ్య చాలా తృప్తిగా ఉంటోంది. నాకు త్వరలో ముక్తి వస్తుందేమో అని అనిపిస్తోంది. “I am very satisfied these days. I feel, I may get mukti soon.” I got an impression that she is referring to death when she said mukti. I immediately found two flaws in the interpretation of mother’s words. Before I explain the flaws, I would like to explain my understanding of individual words.
There are many interpretations of Mukti. Let me explain what I understood from literature and what I feel is more appropriate in the present discussion of Mukti. In simple words, Mukti is liberation or release. It implies the freedom from samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth. This liberation is possible only when one sees the truth and reality behind the fog of ignorance. In other words, Mukti is a state of being knowledgeable because only knowledge can remove ignorance.
Once you are knowledgeable about something, you can never become ignorant of it again in your life. Once you master swimming, you cannot forget it unless there is some pathological cause. In other words, Mukti is permanent. Once you get mukti,
there is nothing else that you need to crave for in life.
I have also read, the scriptures say Mukti can be attained while one is alive (Jivanmukti). I strongly believe so and I would like to go beyond that belief. It is a wrong perception that you need to die to get mukti. One of the two flaws of the above statement of the person is that the person was mentioning as if she is going to die. If the mukti means death, people should fear being pleased in life like they fear death. Doesn’t it sound hilarious? So, there are 2 points to remember: Mukti is a state of being and one can attain while living on the earth..
Mukti is permanent – there is no return from it.
As a consequence of the second point above, any state of being pleased, which is conditioned on the things that change, can not result in Mukti. For example,
I am pleased because I ate good food.
* I am pleased because I am healthy.
I am pleased because I have a good house to live in.
* I am pleased because my kids are good – settled, earning good money and living happily.
* I am pleased because I get good sleep.
*I am pleased because the society around me respects me.
* I am pleased because I have enough money to live the rest of my life. I am pleased because I am spending quality time with a person that I value the most in life. I am pleased because I am able to serve people around me? etc.,
All the above examples of being pleased can not give me mukti because I will not be pleased the moment the conditions are not satisfied.
This is the second flaw in the starting statement. If the state of being pleased is conditioned on something, the state ceases to exist the moment the conditions are not satisfied. Therefore, that state of being pleased is temporary and it can not be equated to mukti as mentioned in the scriptures. In practice, there are at least 3 factors that make being in the state of pleasure almost impossible if that state is dependent on some conditions.
- People would never say, I am satisfied if I have good health OR I have a good house to live in. They always use AND between clauses. I want good health AND a good house for me to be pleased in life. The challenge with AND in the clause is that even if one condition among all the conditions is not met, the whole condition is not met resulting in loss of the state of being pleased.
Typically, the list of conditions that make one pleased tend to be partial. The list keeps getting modified with time – mostly, with the additions of new ones. As the number of conditions grows, it can only get so difficult to get all of them satisfied.
If a condition is satisfied today, it is not guaranteed to remain satisfied future as well.
I think it is appropriate to call “AND between a list of conditions that do not change with time once satisfied” as UNCONDITIONAL. In other words, by “s”, Mother means “unconditionally being pleased is Mukti”.
What do I mean by unconditionally being pleased? There should not be any conditions in the above examples. If you remove all those conditions, all the above examples will become identical with “I am pleased”. Again, as Mukti is a state of mind, so is “I am pleased”. In fact, scriptures say that “being pleased” is the nature of Self.
Mother has explained a very profound concept of Mukti in one simple word so that all of us can appreciate. All of us routinely experience conditional satisfaction (being pleased) like the examples given above. So, all of us have the experience of satisfaction. We need to make it unconditional. All of us try to make it unconditional but we struggle.
I think, in order to be unconditionally pleased, one has to understand nature, the nature of 1, the nature of mind, and the way things happen in general. Mother has also explained many of these profound concepts in simple words. I think, if we start analyzing Mothers words in depth, I am sure, we will reach the state of Mukti. And, I strongly believe that it is possible for every one of us to reach that state.