Man is not an Island

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Man is not an Island
By Bhaskar Banerjee

The eternality of man?s quest for union with the whole is instinctive and natural, and whether a person is a theist or an atheist, does not seem to make any difference at all. This is because on the physical level, one is either a man or a woman. Obviously it is not the whole, nor can it ever be. In other words, to be a man or a woman is to be one half of the whole.

Interestingly, we find this concept having a similarity with the Hindu way of thinking. It says that no man is just a man and no woman is just a woman. Each man is both a man and a woman. One of the many forms of Nataraja is that of ardhanarishwara, half man-half woman. Modern depth psychology calls it bisexuality.

There is a beautiful Greek story which says that in olden days, the two sexes were united into one body. Naturally the body with two faces, four hands and four feet was like a ball, and it moved with amazing speed using its eight limbs like the spokes of a wheel in a continual series of somersaults. Being undivided, the strength of this men-women race was terrible, and equally boundless was their ambition. They planned to ascend the heavens and conquer the gods. Zeus then hit upon a fitting plan and said, ?let us cut them in two and then they will have only half of their strength left and it will be consumed in finding their other half.? So he split them apart into male and female, and from that day onward, so goes the story, the two halves have been searching for each other.

The desire for conquering the heavens may have been thwarted by the clever ways of the gods, but the aspiration has in no way failed to simmer eternally in the subconscious minds of man. This pining for the reunion of the sexes is what we call love. The longingness for wholeness - the return to oneness manifests in male-female attraction, man?s need for a woman and a woman?s need for a man. On this level, the root of this almost irresistible physical urge for union with the opposite energy polarity is a spiritual one. ?Love,? as Socrates observes, ?is the hunger of the human soul for divine beauty.?

Physical union is the closest that one can get to end this duality ? the nearest, on the physical level to the spiritual state. That is why it is the most deeply satisfying experience the physical realm can offer. The orgasmic delight or ecstasy is, however, just a fleeting glimpse of heaven experienced in total forgetfulness of time and ego .With the ego disappearing, time is not perceived, and only the beauty and bliss of that momentary experience remains, forever beckoning us in our seeking. The lover is eager not only to find beauty but to create it, to perpetuate it, to plant the seed of immortality in the mortal body. Love is a way of the sexes to reproduce themselves and thus to prolong time into eternity.

And what is this beauty that we are all seeking to perpetuate through love? It is virtue and compassion and courage and faith and wisdom and justice ? in fact all those qualities that radiate beauty and are timeless in nature. In one word, beauty is truth. Man?s quest for Truth is routed through beauty. The truth that is one and the one that is whole. Man exists as a part, not isolated from Existence, and hence the innate desire to be one with the whole. A wave is only at the surface, at the periphery of the ocean, but it cannot be separate from the ocean, or else it would never even exist as a wave.

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