ANXIETY as "Primal Ignorance"

by Haridas Chaudhuri

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"The root cause of anxiety working as a negative force is ontological ignorance. It is what Vedanta calls primal ignorance or nescience (avidya). It is the ignorance of one's authentic self and its relationship to Being. It is the ignorance of, or alienation from, that nontemporal dimension of existence (turiya) in which the individual and the universal are essentially one. The seers of the Upanishads declare that awareness of the nontemporal dimension of Being helps man to conquer all fear and anxiety.

There is an old Vedantic story illustrating how the brave man becomes a coward through ignorance.

An old laundryman who was half blind was in the habit of taking his laundry to the riverside every day upon the back of his favorite donkey. One day he had an unusually heavy load of laundry. By the time he was through with the washing and drying of all clothes, it had become pretty dark. The worried old man, who could hardly see at night, was calling his donkey thus: "Where are you, my pet, it is so dark now. I am not so afraid of lions and tigers as I am afraid of night."

Just at that moment it so happened that there was a lion in a nearby bush. The lion heard the words. The lion thought that "night" must be some kind of terrible monster, far more powerful than himself. And so he became afraid. The laundryman, who was looking for his donkey, heard a rustle in the bush and placed his load of laundry upon the lion's back, thinking that it was the donkey.

Seized with extreme fear and anxiety, the lion thought that this must be the terrible monster, Night, who had already appeared upon the scene. So the lion meekly submitted to the laundryman's driving him to his house. The lion-donkey was tied in the stable and the laundryman retired for the night. On the following day before the break of dawn the laundryman, according to his custom, put together another load of dirty clothes, placed the bundle upon the back of the "donkey," and proceeded to the riverside, the "donkey" walking behind him.

The sun was just rising now. The veil of darkness was being lifted from the face of the earth. Another lion appeared in the neighborhood and witnessed the procession of the old laundryman and his faithful "donkey." With a feeling of shame, he shouted to his kind and said: "Hey, what are you doing there? Acting like a donkey?" The lion-donkey answered in a whisper: "Hush - don't talk so loud. Here is the terrible monster called Night. If you shout and brag, the monster will capture you in no time and break your neck. Undaunted by this, the lion said: "Is that so? Let us see what happens if you follow my advice. Give out a good roaring sound and declare your identity."

The "donkey" followed the advice and lifted his voice in a thunderous roar. The laundryman was now startled to hear the roaring of the lion. He looked back and was horrified to see what he saw. Summoning all his courage and strength, he ran away from the place as fast as he could, leaving behind his laundry and all. The lion was instantly released from the donkey-spell and with a majestic bound went back to his own domain of freedom.

This is a story about the kind of ignorance that casts a hypnotic spell and turns a lion into a donkey - i.e., puts the chains of bondage around the neck of freedom. The fear of night made the lion a coward. And what is night? It symbolizes nothingness - the monster of ignorance. It symbolizes anxiety which has been aptly described as "the shapeless daughter of the shapeless night."

It is within the power of man to break loose from the shackles of the past and to carve out a new path of self-development. It is in his power to rise above the threatening conspiracy of circumstances and to remold his environment in accordance with his inward sense of values. Endless talk about determinism makes him forget his spiritual essence and regard himself as a plaything of chance circumstances, a helpless log of wood drifting on the tide of events. The social monster of "Thou shalt not" stares him in the face. Ceaseless suggestions about "should" and "should not" transform his existence into a socially and politically manipulatable object - turning the lion into a donkey.

The spirit in man is essentially rooted in the eternal - the nontemporal dimension of existence - where fear and doubt, death and destruction, cowardice and bondage, are unknown. Primal ignorance in the form of self-oblivion or self-estrangement uproots him from his ground of existence. So long as man is in the realm of ignorance, anxiety torments him, no matter what he does. If he lives in forgetfulness of higher spiritual values, he sinks in the abyss of unknown fears. By turning a blind eye to his higher spiritual potential or by smothering the voice of the infinite within him, he loses himself. Suppression of that voices produces what Kierkegaard has called the anxiety of paganism.

But if, in paganism, there is latent anxiety due to alienation from the spirit, in Christianity there is patent anxiety due to the sense of sinfulness and obsession with the devil. Paganism is immersion in the immediate, in the givenness of nature. Christianity swings back to the opposite extreme of alienation from the immediate, from the solid support of nature. The more a man turns to God, the more his latent anxieties come to the fore on account of fear of the dark forces in life. This may be called the anxiety of religious longing. It is the anxiety of estrangement from one's instinctual base in life.

Anxiety is effectively overcome when the veil of ignorance is lifted - when the individual is integrated with the ultimate ground of existence. He then becomes aware of his inmost self as a higher principle of unity, bringing together, in a harmonious whole, both nature and spirit. In this dynamic self realization, the immediacy of instinct and the mediation of reason become integrated. Various impulses and desires get organized with reference to the central goal of life. Blissful realization of the eternal opens up new directions in which the instinctual drives of personality can be fruitfully channeled."

by Haridas Chaudhuri

Editor's Note:
OK . . . so if a "realization of the eternal" is what cures anxiety - how is the "eternal" "realized"?

Well, that's a pretty big question . . . but we've found some exercises to practice, and perhaps checking out some Spiritual Giants might do the trick . . . but your undaunted LiveReal Editors are still on the case . . .

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