Attachment

Q) What is attachment?

Ans.) The inclination towards a thought and need for its fulfilment under any circumstances is attachment.

In "God Talks with Arjuna" written by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda, the character "Karna" is depicted as "rāga (राग) - attachment." 

When we look into the story of Karna's birth, he is born before all Pandavas were born. This clearly means our attachment is born before even we have taken our physical birth. In fact, attachment is the root cause for our physical birth or for our existence.

Karna's mother Kunti gets attracted to the external world (external Sun - light) and gives birth to Karna. Kunti who is depicted as "the power of dispassion" realises her mistake and will let go Karna - attachment. This is a clear indication that we can get rid of our attachment by the power of dispassion.

There is an other story which is not widely known about Karna’s previous birth. The Mahabharata mentions that Karna was a demon named Dambhodbhava in his previous life. This demon had terrorised the universe on the strength of a blessing he had received from the sun-god. He had been blessed to have a thousand kavachas (protective layers) which had the following characteristics.

• They could only be destroyed one at a time.
• They could only be destroyed by someone who had performed a thousand years of austerity.
• They would cause the immediate death of the destroyer of the kavacha.

This combination of blessings made him undefeatable till he met his match in the form of the divine sages Nara-Narayana, who are considered non-different from each other. They fought with him alternately, one fighting while the other performed austerity – both doing so for a thousand years. When the warrior would destroy one kavacha and fall dead, the ascetic would revive him by the power of his austerities and then they would swap places. The warrior would fight and finally destroy another kavacha after a thousand years till the ascetic acquired enough merit through austerity to take up the fight for another thousand years and destroy one more kavacha.

By this resourceful and arduous arrangement, those sages destroyed nine hundred and ninety nine kavachas. When just one kavacha remained, the demon fled to the shelter of the sun-god, who due to attachment to his worshipper refused to hand the fugitive over to Nara-Nārāyana. Eventually, the demon was impregnated by the sun-god into the womb of Kunti and he was born as Karna. Simultaneously, Nara-Nārāyana appeared as Arjuna and Krishna annhilated Karna to complete their unfinished mission of ridding the universe of the terrible demon.

The history looks good and interesting. But what is in it for us? What is it trying to tell us?

If we ponder on the deeper aspects of the story, it is a clear indication that because of attachment we are entangled in this cycle of life and death or the wheel of samsāra. To get rid of our attachment we - the manifested nature (vyakta swarupa depicted as Nara or Arjuna) need to anchor our self in the un-manifested nature (avyakta/ Stillness/ Silence depicted as the Nārāyana or Krishna). 

As we go deeper and deeper into our conscious, sub-conscious and super-conscious realms  there could be innumerable levels of protective layers of attachment because of which we are born, the way we behave, the way we act, the way our bodies are, and the way we live. The day we understand this and realise that because of these various levels of attachment, we are undergoing through this wheel of samsara, we start our process of identifying the various levels of attachment and by anchoring into Silence/Stillness/Un-manifest/avyakta we can let go and get rid of our attachment towards our aspirations, goals, desires, wants, needs, in fact our thoughts itself. The day or the moment that happens then we are free. It may take a moment or many lives depending upon our extent or the strength of attachment that we have towards our thoughts. 

On a humourous side we can say that the whole culprit for our existence is our attachment. And to get freed from it we have to let go that attachment. Remember, it is also born from within and not from somewhere else. It is that feeling of separation or the illusion of duality where by we feel that we are not complete and if we acquire something, then we will be complete and will be happy. In reality the attachment is an illusion of wanting external things. Instead of anchoring into the real Light that is within we are trying to acquire the external things that are but a mere reflection of that inner Light.

The attachment is like dirt on a mirror. We have to attempt to clean it and the moment it is cleaned we can see our True reflection in the mirror. Remember that the mirror is always present.

Let us also look into the deeper meaning or the esoteric meaning of the following regarding the kavachas Karna had:

Ø  They could only be destroyed one at a time. - The attachment towards each thought has to be annihilated in Silence/Stillness and could be done only one at a time, because the attachment towards the thought if not annihilated completely, it may leave a residue which will pop up at a later stage. So, we have to wait patiently in that Silence to let it burn completely.

Ø  They could only be destroyed by someone who had performed a thousand years of austerity. - One has to uplift oneself to Sahasrara for annihilating the attachment towards thought.

Ø  They would cause the immediate death of the destroyer of the kavacha. - The moment the attachment is annihilated, the "I" or the identification also gets annihilated. This is biggest attachment we will have, in fact we never want to lose our self. But, until and unless we cannot let go our self, we cannot see out true Self. This can be done only by anchoring in Silence/Stillness.

Remember, Silence is always present. What we need to do is to de-focus from the external world and the moment we do that, then we can acknowledge the presence of Silence. This process of de-focusing requires an effortless effort and the moment we do it, we are already in the presence of Silence and in that stage the attachment disappears.