The Snakes Within

Why are innocent people subjected to apparently terrible experiences? Someone recently asked the Master about one of his relatives, who had led a good, moral life all his 70 years and had attended to meditation every day. Yet he was facing all kinds of intense physical and mental problems, raising serious doubts in the family’s mind about the existence of a loving, benevolent God. The Master responded by pointing out that we see only a part of the picture, not the whole one. Yes, for those 70 years he had indeed led a very good life – but what about earlier, in his previous lives? We cannot see that because we do not see a person’s inner layers of karmic actions and consequences. For that, we need to go ‘inside,’ wherein the whole karmic picture is revealed to us. As long as we are trying to understand the answers to such questions on a purely intellectual level, we will fail to do so.

Yet, saints do give us hints of the answers at this level of existence. For example, Jalal-al-Din Rumi left behind a beautiful story that goes something like this: A traveler in the desert was feeling sleepy after a sumptuous lunch, and so decided to take a nap under a huge tree. While enjoying his peaceful slumber, he was suddenly and rudely awakened by a huge blow on his leg. He screamed, got up, and realized the source of the blow was a mighty stick being wielded by a man on horseback. “Hey,” he demanded of the horseman, “Why did you do that?” The horseman responded with one more blow of the stick. The traveler was sure that he had never seen or interacted with this horseman in any way, and the injustice of being hit like this for no fault of his made him very angry. He started abusing the horseman, only to receive a bigger blow for every abuse.

Thinking the horseman wanted him to vacate the cool shade of the tree, the traveler moved into the desert sun. But, to his annoyance, the horseman followed him there too, and kept raining his blows. “Listen, why are you beating me like this?” demanded the traveler, only to receive the stick again. At his wit’s end now, the traveler decided to run from the place. But the horseman followed him and continued to hit him. The traveler increased his pace, until he reached the zenith of his abilities as he ran faster and ever faster. Still, the horseman continued to pursue him. Finally, the lungs of the traveler could take no more. He collapsed and fell down, almost unconscious, and vomited all the lovely food he had eaten before he had lain down under the tree. As he did so, his bleary eyes noticed that he had thrown up a small but extremely poisonous snake, which had obviously entered his system when he was fast asleep and snoring with his mouth open.

He now realized that the horseman was not his torturer but his benefactor. He fell at his feet and said, “Sir, there is no way I can thank you enough for the great favour you have done to me. But why didn’t you tell me the reason for your beating me when I repeatedly asked? If only you had done so, I would have happily cooperated instead of trying to run away, and maybe the snake would have come out faster.”

“My dear man,” the horseman replied, “If I had told you when you were under the tree that this very poisonous snake has entered your body, you would have died of fright then and there. This was the only way I could have made the snake come out without harming you more than absolutely necessary.”

Each of us has a poisonous snake inside of us – several snakes actually. All kinds of negative tendencies eat away at our essence, thus depriving us of a healthy, whole existence. Rumi’s story refers only to one snake – the ego, which is the root of all other impurities keeping us away from oneness with the divine One, or Whole. These impurities are like the branches of a plant, with ego at its root. If the ego (feelings of ‘me’ and ‘mine’) is eliminated, all other impurities (such as anger, lust, pride and greed)l automatically will wither away.

The horseman in Rumi’s story represents the law of karma, through which this world operates. This law must hit us with its stick as long as we remain impure and thus subject to duality. If we were aware of the poisons eating away at our essence, we wouldn’t be able to take it, because we cannot face the terrible traits of selfishness that we all hold within our invisible inner layers. What we see at this level of reality represents only a very partial picture of the truth. The victims of crimes and injustice may seem innocent to us because they have not done anything to poison their inner being during the brief period when they occupy their present physical body. But that period – say, 70 years – is not even a blink of an eye if viewed from the perspective of the Whole. According to some mystics, one day at the inner level (called Brahma) is equivalent to 4.32 billion years in human time.

When God sees us, he sees the whole picture, not a partial one like we do. He selects those who are ready to vomit out their snake and so subjects them to repeated thrashing. In reality, God is helping to purify them through the law of karma, which is a subset of the law of love. Because we cannot see these two laws functioning, we feel sorry for the victims and upset with the perpetrators. That is only natural, on account of our inability to view the whole karmic picture in its entirety.

Because of our limitations, the best we can do is help and support the victims as calmly and effectively as possible. Even more important, we can also remind ourselves that when viewed from the perspective of the whole, all the events taking place in this creation are designed with only one purpose in mind – to remove the sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine, ’or ego (the mother of all snakes) from our way of looking at the world.

When viewed through that perspective, snakes enter our inner being surreptitiously whenever our conscience is sound asleep, as Rumi conveyed through the story of the horseman and the snake. Nobody gets away with anything. Every one of our actions is etched in our inner layers and is inevitably followed by its reaction, which appears in the form of a consequence, such as the blows of the horseman. These blows may seem like a tough ordeal, but they are necessary for our own wellbeing – that is, when viewed spiritually rather than from a materialistic perspective. They represent the inexorable law of karma, which determines every single occurrence in the world as seen through the blindness of our physical senses. Our world is a classroom wherein we are taught (sometimes through what may seem like tough lessons) to purge ourselves of the snakes that have entered our inner being over lifetimes. In this way, we will leave our limited understanding behind and become pure enough to merge with the divine Whole.