The World is a Stage

 

Photo Credit: Write Spirit

The World is a Stage

Shakespeare in his play ‘As You Like It’ had said – ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’. If you have gone through the play, you will know that Shakespeare is talking about the seven roles a person plays from infancy to old age, defining each role in poetic verse in his inimitable style.

If you look closely at what Shakespeare is trying to say you will understand that man shifts through various roles and wears different masks from childhood to old age. Actors too play different roles during the course of their career and some of them go so deep into the role that they actually become the person whose role they are playing. Thus, for actors’ spirituality comes easily. Role play is something they keep doing all the time and then they have to come home to be themselves.

In one’s childhood one passes through a stage of being a child, but you were not identified with it. If you were actually the childhood itself there would be no room for the next stage of being a youth. The child could then not become a youth and would remain just a child. But you were not the child and you passed on to the stage of being a youth. This is again another stage; you are not one with it. If you are one with it you cannot grow old. You will pass through it also - it is a phase.

The first three stages are just like the waking state of the mind, the surface of your personality – just a fragment, the part where waves exist. As you grow up and enter the fourth and fifth stages, you find that these are deeper than the surface. They are like the dream state of the mind, where for the first time you are no longer in contact with the outer world. The outer world has ceased to be, you live only in your dreams. You enter subjectivity – the objective has disappeared but the subject remains.

The sixth stage is still deeper, just like the dreamless sleep – the third state of mind – where even dreams cease to be. Where objects have disappeared, now subjects too, disappear. The world is no more, even the reflections of the world in the mind have ceased to be. You are now fast asleep with no disturbance, not even a ripple. These are three stages of the mind and the spiritual seeker has to pass through parallel stages on the spiritual path also.

The seventh is like the fourth. The Upanishads have not given it any name, because no name can be given to it. The first is waking, the second is dreaming, the third sleep – but the fourth has been simply left as the fourth, it has not been given any name. It is symbolic. The Upanishads call it turiya. This simply means the fourth, it doesn’t say anything more. It is nameless because it can’t be defined Words cannot express it, it can only be indicated. The seventh stage of the seeker’s consciousness is like the fourth stage of the mind.

Before we enter the seventh stage and try to penetrate its mysteries, a few things help create a base for something that is most difficult to understand. The first six are stages, but the seventh is not really a stage. It is called a stage, simply because there is no other way to call it. The first six are stages and the seventh is you. The seventh is not a stage, it is the state of your very being, your very existence, your very nature!