The Ghost in us

All of us (99.9% of population) are hosts to a ghost within our bodies. It makes us fear and desire; makes us apprehensive / hopeful of future and regretful / proud of our past; makes us view people who have a different idea / different color / different god etc as things that can be sacrificed in establishing our own. The ghost is not the same in everyone, though the process by which it comes into existence is same. It has different names but for a given person it has one name. Mine is called Parthasarathy.

The ghost is the individual residing inside the body - the individual which is the sum total of all the thoughts that has happened in the mind since the birth of the body. The presence of these ghosts all over the planet is manifested in the form of the atrocities that humanity has been committing on itself and on other living beings. While it is important to setup systems to prevent these ghosts from mutilating the host bodies of other ghosts and to setup mechanisms to assist the bodies that have been affected, it is primarily important to those of us who are concerned about all the violence around us to give a one way gate pass out to this ghost inside us! For without this, we cannot hope to even start genuinely addressing the madness the ghosts have unleashed on humanity.

There are different ways and means to show the exit gate to the ghost. Folks like Buddha, Christ and Sankara have, in my opinion, been trying to drill exactly this into our heads. But the ghosts are so adaptive that they made these normal (biologically) human beings into special deities so as to give a new means (in the form of their devotees) for the ghost to continue its existence. When the ghost leaves, a normal (biologically) and healthy human being exists who genuinely wishes for the well being of all of creation. Such a person feels that he/she and any other person are like the fingers of the same humans hand. Such a person can never imagine the possibility of they benefiting at someone else's expense. At that point, duality ceases and advaita commences. Sankara, who most probably was such a person, when asked to describe himself from this perspective said, 'Aham Brahmasmi'!