Of looking within & changing perspectives

Priya S Tandon

What may look beautiful to you may look ordinary to me. What may be a design to you could be chaos to me. What may be trivial to you, could be a big deal to me. Each one of us has our own point of view, about anything and everything.

Quite often, people view us according to our position in life. Folklore has it that there was a boy named ‘Parsu’. He used to run errands for his mother and for the rich village landlords. When he grew up and got educated, he got a respectable job. He was then called ‘Parsa Babu’. Later, he became a big business man and earned name and fame. He was then called ‘Paras Ram Ji’.

So, it was the same person, but his name changed as his situation in life changed. A wise man described it: “Iss Maya ke teen naam — Parsu, Parsa, Paras Ram!” Here, the respect commanded by the man was commensurate with his material success in life. So, the world perceives you according to what you achieve.

Do you ever wonder what people think about you? Most of us are concerned about what the world thinks about us. Do people find me intelligent? Stupid? Snobbish? Boring? Well-turned out? Badly dressed? It has rightly been said: “Sabse bada rog — Kya kahenge log!”

Pause for a moment and turn your thoughts from what others think about you to what you think about yourself. Sathya Sai Baba preached: “You are not one person, but three — the one you think you are; the one that others think you are; and the one you really are.”

‘The one you think you are is a reference to physicality because more often than not, we identify ourselves with the body.

The second — ‘The one others think you are’ — is mostly about the kind of person you are. It’s your impression in the minds of people. So, it refers to the ‘mind’ of a person. It refers to your nature, temperament, knowledge, hard work, ambition and health. It’s what people perceive you to be. Your public interface.

The third — ‘The one you really are’ — refers to your soul. That is your intrinsic self.

So, our personality has three facets — the body, the mind and the soul.

The day we perceive that the soul is the real ‘us’, we begin to shift our perspectives. And the day we realise that each soul is a part of one Supreme soul, everything changes.

It’s best not to waste time on bothering about what other people think about us. It is better to understand who we are, for it is only then that we shall have the right perspective and the right perception. It is then that we realise that it’s okay to be a Parsu, Parsa or Paras Ram, as long as you are at peace with being who you are.

As we get on in years, we realise that real beauty and peace come from within. There are no cosmetics which can give the kind of glow that comes from inner happiness, peace and contentment. Happiness really is a state of mind. One person can be happy eating ‘dal-roti’ and another can be miserable with his six-course meal.

Contentment comes from detachment. The more you cling to the world, more it evades you. The more you detach, the more you realise that you don’t need much. Peace is something everyone wants. One of the most beautiful things I recently read was about a man who said to Sathya Sai Baba, “I want peace.” He replied, “Remove the ‘I’ and remove the ‘want’. What is left? Peace!!!”