The Swing of the Pendulum
Baba often uses the analogy of the swing of the pendulum to describe the state of our mind. In the interview room, He says with deep sympathy, “Your mind is like the pendulum; it swings from faith to doubt, and doubt to faith. At one time you have faith in Swami, and again this faith is followed by doubt! You vacillate! Learn to be steady in your heart,” smiles Baba. “Come, examine, experience, and then believe. But don’t lose faith merely because somebody says something. Don’t discount your own experience!” In the Gita Vahini, Swami says, “The weak will be agitated as peacock feathers; they are restless, with no fixity for a moment. They sway like the pendulum, this side and that, once toward joy, the next moment toward grief.”
The pendulum is a very picturesque analogy of the human situation! It symbolizes the eternal problem of swinging from birth to death, the consequence of our attachment to desires. From birth we swing toward death gathering momentum from the cumulative effect of unfulfilled desires, only to swing back to another birth, back to where we started. Through our lives, we swing bet-ween grief and happiness, love and hate, heat and cold, anticipation and disappointment, peace and confusion, between the dualities of opposites. The Lord has said in the Gita about this swinging of the pendulum: “Sukha duhkhe same krutwa laabhaa laabhou jayaajayau…—Treat alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat.”
Baba reminds us that happiness is only an interval between two moments of misery; misery is only an interval between two moments of happiness. Once the pendulum swings forward, it must come back to its original position. “Grief and joy are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. It is like a printed page; you cannot have only one page without the reverse!” says Baba.
The pendulum also signifies time. It is the movement of the pendulum that gives us a measure of time. God is described as kala-swarupa [embodiment of time]; He is also described as kalateeta, beyond time. What does this mean? Taking the analogy of the pendulum, it means that God is beyond dualities; beyond the swing of opposites; i.e. He is dwandwateeta! If we do not swing between the opposites, then we will not be subject to the bullying effects of time! So the only way to transcend the pull of dualities is to welcome neither happiness nor grief.
In fact, Baba says, “Generally man seeks only happiness and joy; under no stress will he desire misery and grief! He treats happiness and joy as his closest well-wishers and misery and grief as his direst enemies. This is a great mistake. When one is happy, the risk of grief is great; fear of losing the happiness will haunt the man. Misery prompts inquiry, discrimination, self-examination and fear of worse things that might happen. It awakens you from sloth and conceit. Happiness makes one forget one’s obligation to oneself as a human being. It drags man into egoism and the sins that egoism leads one to commit. Grief renders man alert and watchful. So misery is a real friend… So, troubles and travails are to be treated as friends; at least not as enemies. Only it is best to regard both happiness and misery as gifts of God. That is the easiest path for one’s liberation.”
The pendulum swings as long as the main spring is able to make it swing. Once we tighten the spring, it unwinds itself. The swing of the pendulum is a consequence of this unwinding process of the main spring. This can be compared to human life. When we are born, the main spring is wound with the prarabdha karma, the karma that has to work itself out during the present life, which runs out as the spring unwinds itself! Most of the time, man does not realize that he is swinging because of the unwinding of the main spring of prarabdha karma. He even enjoys and grieves with the swinging of the pendulum. But man is not a mere clock, an unintelligent machine! The moment he realizes that the swing of the pendulum is the result of his prarabdha karma, then he can transcend the swing! He can swing but not take part in the joy and grief of the swinging.
His problem is that he is not only swinging, but also identifying himself with the swing, thinking all the time that it is he who is responsible for the swinging. The moment wisdom dawns on him, he can cultivate detachment. We may not be able to alter the course of events, but we can certainly alter our attitudes to them. Paul Brunton, in his book, Message from Arunachala, says, “Even were we immutably preordained to undergo predicted disasters, our reaction to them is not preordained. Events may be fixed by unseen powers, but our attitudes toward them are not. This is the fire of wisdom that burns up karma!”
We can take the analogy one step further if we think of an electric clock that we do not have to wind every week. We swing like the electric clock’s pendulum, thinking all the time that it is we who swing. We forget that we swing because there is a power that makes us swing. It is the divine power, which, like electricity, is unseen but active in and through us. Like puppets, we swing and dance so long as the sutradhara, the puppeteer, pulls the strings. “Surrender!” advised Krishna to Arjuna. “Surrender!” advises Sai Krishna to all of us swinging like the pendulum! “Man surrenders his dignity and status to other men for purposes in life like wealth, fame, possession, pomp, power, etc. But rarely does he get the chance to surrender to the Lord for the sake of the Lord!
How can he get the urge as long as he craves for the aadheya [object] and not the aadhara [support/base]? How long can a base-less object satisfy? Man wants the gift, not the giver; the created not the creator; things from the hand, but not the hand! He is running after a non-existent thing. Can there be an object without a pre-existent cause? No; if there is one, it can only be the uncaused God. It is sheer ignorance to surrender individuality for the sake of the transitory products of action, the ‘caused’ rather than the cause. Surrender rather to the basis, the cause and the origin of all, the Sarveswara [Lord of all]. That is genuine sharanagati [surrender]!”
Let us not swing like the pendulum. Let us transcend the dualities of opposites. Then both will not affect us; we will have titiksha, equanimity. That is what Baba wants us to learn when He tells us, “Don’t swing like a pendulum!”
~Narayana Murthy
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, February 1975
