Ignorance is no bliss

Voltaire was a French Philosopher, “as wise as it is possible for men to be; …” He met a good Brahmin who said, “I wish I had never been born!”

“Why so?” said Voltaire.

“Because,” he replied, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost… I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought, I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands… I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.”

The same day he had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend his question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganga in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, he returned to Brahmin, whom he thus addressed:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contended?”

“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times and I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire.”

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on Voltaire than anything that had passed. He almost concluded incorrectly that Ignorance was bliss.

But the truth behind this story was easily unraveled by Guruji with the power of Kundalini knowledge. Each human is evolving through different Chakras where accumulated Prarabdas start haunting him. In Mooladhara, which possesses the properties of the earth, he suffers from hardships related to the physical body. In Swadistana, he has trouble with his children and such as the Chakra is associated with progeny. In Mooladhara he becomes ambitious and wants to become famous or rich. In Anahata he strives to be a musician, an artist. In Vishiddhi, he wants to become a yogi and no matter how much efforts he puts, he seems to be going no where. These are all passing phases and once Kundalini crosses the Vishuddhi no more Prarabdas daunt an individual.