By Vijay Phanshikar :
“I look to achieving a heightened sense of being.”
- A woman achiever in media
and social engineering.
NO DOUBT, a tall order -- from multiple angles !    ,

 

 

NO DOUBT, a tall order -- from multiple angles ! Yet, it is certainly within the reach of an inspired person who has at least tasted -- and tested -- the power within ! In other -- and spiritual -- words, a heightened sense of being means a more refined self-awareness (beyond the text book) ! This takes one to another level -- absolutely beyond the concept of here and now, as if into an ethereal zone where no definition applies, no dimension exists. A heightened sense of being !! Though that special zone appears ethereal, human intellect has a pretty clear idea of how things are up there -- in terms of depth of understanding, in terms of height of awareness of being. Old texts in almost all cultures talk of all attributes of being -- from vitality to immortality ...! So, when one thinks of a heightened sense of being, one gets ready to take a leap into a highly demanding area of existence where every known definition of goodness appears to fade. That is the zone of the journey of excellence to perfection.

 

In his iconic novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach describes a seagull that is inspired by the idea of the zone beyond excellence -- which he appears to liken to Heaven where everything is ethereal (means, beyond the realm of human touch). That concept or construct takes an ordinary seagull to the levels of absolute greatness that can be likened to immortality. So a heightened sense of being may mean rising in emotion, cognition and action to evolve into a ‘super’ personality that makes every definition of excellence elevate itself. Obviously, such a person would aim to achieving something better, higher, finer, wealthier, happier in life. Yet, all that would not mean achieving the mundane success. For, the aim is to attain a multi-dimensional success in which attaining higher levels of spirituality is an essential.

 

This was also how ancient Indians thought about life as a journey towards a zone higher than excellence. They talked of a moksh (salvation) not as something only poetic, but as something well within human reach if one approached it with a sense of commitment to aiming for the great goal of perfection -- which may be described by the term ‘moksh’ -- which may be the heightened sense of being ! Of course, there have been sages who denied themselves the pursuit of ‘moksh’, so to say, stating that salvation would deprive them of the opportunity to serve God embodied in every animate or inanimate entity. For those self-effacing sages, service to humanity was the ‘moksh’ or a heightened sense of being ! Taking the concept further, Swami Vivekananda said, in effect, that he serves a god whom the uninformed call ‘man’. The concept of the heightened sense of being, thus, embodies the idea of a continuous effort to reach higher zones of human sensitivity and sensibility on whose shoulders one rides to the peak as well core of being.