The Four Traps

We all want to achieve certain goals in our lives. The goals may be different for each person and indeed different even for the same person in different stage of his life. These goals may be love, happiness, prosperity, power, peace, salvation, recognition etc.

The achievement of a goal depends on the path on chooses in his life. If he chose the right path and move on the path with determination, it is only a matter of time, when he attains his goals. However, often a man is trapped in circuitous path that leads to nowhere and the man keep on moving without reaching to any destination. There paths are like traps which gives the illusion of moving forward but actually leads to nowhere as the man keep on moving without ever coming close to his goal.

GIta, the holiest scripture of Hinduism, provides four paths of salvation i.e. Union with God. These paths are "Gyan" (Knowledge), Karma (Action), "Bhakti" (Faith) and Yoga (Self-realization). A man can achieve salvation by following any of the four paths.

The Abraham religions viz. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, emphasis only one path of God viz. unconditional devotion to God which needs total surrender to God. Buddhism runs contrary to the path of faith and provides only one path of salvation viz. self-realization as Buddha himself said
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own commonsense".


In the modern time, the secularist and atheist lay emphasis on action (right action or karma) and knowledge (right knowledge or "Gyan") as the right path as faith has no place in their scheme of things. Everything that is true must be established by the evidence and logic.


Thus even after millions of years of evolution and experience, man has not been able to find a single path that can lead to the desired goal or mankind whether it is the spiritual goal of salvation or the worldly goal of peace and happiness.


Everyone seems to be confident about their path and fail to see light of the other path. Often people keep on moving in the circuitous route where they come back to the same place again and again without moving an inch towards their goal which may be happiness, health, salvation or anything.

The reason, why most people are trapped in a circuitous path is because instead of discovering the right path by conscious effort merely follows their tendencies. Therefore, they never move but get trapped in their tendencies. This nature of man was given a physical shape by "Asaf-ud-Daula" in 1784 when he constructed "Bhul Bhulaiya" (The Passage of Confusion).

The Passage of Confusion

In the ancient city of Lucknow (India), there is a famous place called "Bara Imambara" whose major attraction is "Bhul Bhulaiya" (The Building or Passage of Confusion). There are hundreds of narrow stairway passages, some of which have dead-ends, some end at precipitous drops while others lead to entrance or exit points. Most people get confused and unable to come out of the "Bhul Bhulaiya". One should always take a Guide to explore "Bhul Bhulaiya".

The "Bhul Bhulaiya" was constructed to confuse any enemy intruder. People are often trapped in the circuitous roots of the building and keep on coming back to the same place again and again without being able to find the path leading to the exit door.

The architect of the building has a good knowledge of human psychology and they have designed the passages in such a way that the path you chose using your commonsense or experience is never the right path. The right path is one which is counterintuitive as discovered by one such traveler.

Everyone who visits Lucknow must have gone to Bara Imambara and has seen the mystic "Bhul Bhulaiya". I had a visit at childhood. My the then memory reminds me of a place where people can get lost if not properly guided. I can recall a moment when our guide left us in a place and told that within ten minutes if we could get ourselves out of the "Bhul Bhulaiya", he would not accept his charge. We failed miserably to get out of the place. We tried for half an hour. Every time it seemed that we were landing at a same place. After we surrendered to him (the guide) he took only few seconds to show us the stairs to get outside.

Rule of reverse

Last June, I again had an opportunity to visit "Bhul Bhulaiya" after 20 years. I was expecting for the offer from the guide. But he did not turn up. So I by myself told him (after he showed guided us) that we would be trying to get out without his help. He told that we would not be successful. For first five minutes my experience was same as I had twenty years ago. Suddenly something clicked in my mind. I made a rule of reverse. If someone needs to climb up he need to take to downwards step. Same is thing to go down. Going to left and right also had the same method. I wondered that the rule clicked. We were being able to move wherever we were wanting. Then it was a matter of few minutes we were at outside without the help of guide.

Amazing and wonderful piece of art! Is not it?

However, only few people are able to understand the rule of reverse and discover the right path as most of us are always trapped in our tendencies or commonsense. It is said in "Bhagawat Gita "
All Actions is entirely done by the nature of the nature of man. Man deluded by his ego thinks, "I am the doer". (Gita, III 27)

THE FOUR TRAPS

Even without having any knowledge of Gita or any Scriptures, man has the natural tendency to use these four paths of achieving the goals of his life. However, these four paths gradually become his traps as his nature always traps him in these paths which are designed as circuitous and counterintuitive.

These four traps are discussed as following:-

1. The Knowledge Trap

The first trap of the all educated men is the trap of knowledge. This has become truer in the modern times when almost every person is imparted education. An educated man seems to have a clear understanding of the world as he has remembered many theories which define the world and the people. If anything is incomprehensible, it is only due to lack of knowledge. Everything in this world can be explained by the knowledge and solved by using one of the theories that men has created. If an unexplained event happens, the person blames his lack of knowledge for it and seeks to learn more and more knowledge till the end of his life.

A man of knowledge lacks the knowledge of other three viz. karma, faith and self-realization. He does not practice what he preaches as he does not believe in the knowledge. Knowledge for him is a tool to earn his livelihood and solve the problems. He can prove anything under the sun by sheer arguments, logic and evidences.

"Johann Wolfgang von Geothe" guarded the people of knowledge in following words,
Knowing in not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Yet the men of knowledge due to their infallibility of knowledge try to know more to succeed rather than trying others paths for aching their goals.

2. The Action Trap

There are many people who are always trapped in the action, which they consider as right and good. They are often called workaholic in the modern times as they are addicted to work. They believe in action and they are always engaged in action.


Yet they may not be very successful in their life as their actions often lead to nowhere. These people do not have good knowledge of the world and the people, they also do not have faith on others and they have no time for self-realization. Since they do not have proper knowledge, they make many mistakes and they often repeat the same mistakes again and again.

Thus they devote more time in doing the job as they do not know the best method of doing the job. Further due to their lack of faith in others, they can't trust others and they end of doing not only heir job but also the jobs of others.

Every action leads to a reaction which is actually a counter-action which is equal and opposite of the action. Hence every karma gets accumulated and the man gets trapped in cycle of karma. Despite of working hard, the karma does not exhaust but rather keep on accumulating over the period of time. Thus the man of karma is trapped in such a way that they are never free from action in their life.

3. The Devotion Trap

Faith is the deepest trap of mankind. Often faith is called blind as a faithful man is unable to see any light. The blind faith on religion is the cause of all terrorism and extremism in the modern world. It is impossible to convince people, who have blind faith in their scripture, their people or their ideology. These people are the slave of words because instead of seeing the spirit of the scriptures, they see the words. They are easily misguided by the unscrupulous people who only let them know only the limited words of scriptures and use them for their selfish political or economic goals.

The people of faith have no real knowledge nor they believe in selfless action (karma). They are also not capable of self realization as they have stopped using their commonsense and intelligence to know the truth. They have closed all other paths and they are ever trapped in the blind alley of faith and devotion.

4. The Self-Realization

Trap The forth major trap is the excessive faith on the self as one believes that he is the reflection of the God and the universe. This philosophy is explained in Indian Scriptures as "Aham Brahmasmi " (I am the Universe/God). It is said in The "Upanishads",
As is the human body, so is the cosmic body As is the human mind, so as the cosmic mind As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.

The people seeking self-realization believe that they can discover all knowledge from within. They trust none but themselves. They fail to take advantage of the knowledge discovered by millions of great men of wisdom over thousands of years. As a result they waste lot of time in the "reinventing the wheel".

In the ancient time, people left all worldly pleasure and became ascetic, saints, yogis or "Rishis" as they tried to discover the knowledge from within following the path of self-realization. The result was that everyone discovered knowledge that was so different that it confused everyone. They, however, instead of looking the truth contained in the knowledge discovered by others, insisted that only their knowledge is true or genuine.

When the knowledge lead to wrong conclusion, they instead of taking support of the other knowledge already available in this world, sought to again reinvent the wheel and discover the knowledge from with.

Thus the people who followed the path of self-realization became more and more secluded as they created little value for the society as their quest was only for the satisfaction of the self.

The Four-in-one Design to Avoid All Traps

All the four paths of salvation are equally important and useful for achieving any goal of life whether worldly of spiritual. However, one can not achieve anything if one gets trapped in a single path.

In order to arrive at the destination, one has to travel all the four paths as no path is complete in itself. Each path leads one to the other path. The only difficulty is that when the right path comes in our way, we often discard it as that path is designed to be counterintuitive.

Only when the knowledge is put into action, it created value for the man and society. Every piece of knowledge that is tested always leads to creation of a new knowledge or increases our faith in the theory.

If it proves what was predicted, it gives rise to the faith in the theory. If it does not prove so, then also a new knowledge is created (that the theory is incorrect). By the help of self-realization, one can then search something that has not yet been discovered by the world.

Thus only by self realization, a new knowledge can be created and the new cycle of knowledge-action-faith and self-realization begins. Only when all the four paths are combined, man can escape the trap and realize his goals.

A Brief Profile of Dr Awdhesh K Singh

I am an Engineer by education, a public officer by profession and a spiritual person by intuition. I hold my PhD degree in the field of E-Governance. I am a founding member of The Aatmic Science Foundation (The Science of Soul Foundation) that is working for the synthesis between all religions, spirituality and sciences.

The website of the foundation is http://www.scienceofsoul.com

My main area of study and research is to use religions, spirituality and scientific methods of investigations to understand and solve the real life problems of human beings.
I have published hundreds of articles and research papers on this topic on various websites and journals.

Please contact me on my email aksinghirs [a] yahoo.com for any help, suggestions or feedback.
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