What is normal?
Years ago, when our lives changed overnight because of the pandemic, people started asking when things would go back to “normal”. However, we rarely stop to think what normal means in the first place.
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Years ago, when our lives radically changed overnight because of the pandemic, people started questioning themselves about when things would go back to “normal”. However, we rarely stop to think what “normal” means in the first place.
Sometimes we think that to be “normal” means to be just like everyone else. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, when our movement had its first boom in North America and Europe, thousands of people started becoming devotees and would suddenly stop eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, and so on. They would even start dressing in a different way. People would think that they were not normal. However, what is normal? If a sane person goes to live in a psychiatric house, he would be considered strange, because he would be different from all the crazy patients. Amongst criminals, an honest person looks strange, and amongst alcoholics, a sober person definitely appears to be out of place.
If one is practicing yoga and does an inverted head pose, he will suddenly see everything upside down. He will see everyone walking on the ceiling. However, this is just because he is in an unnatural situation. As soon as he comes back to his feet, he will see that everyone was “normal” the whole time. It was just him who was seeing things upside down due to the position of his body. If there was someone “abnormal”, it was him.
Similarly, the original, sane condition of the soul is very different from what we consider “normal” in this world, which is a concept that changes according to time and place. You can just imagine the reaction of people to a person dressed in the same fashion as people would dress a few centuries ago; they would not consider him or her “normal”. Similarly, most people nowadays eat meat, drink, or sometimes even smoke, habits that would be strongly condemned in Vedic societies of the past ages. Nowadays, on the contrary, because most people do these things, people who want to live a pure life are considered “strange”. Our idea of “normal” thus changes over time according to what is in fashion.
However, there is a concept of “normal” that is eternal and doesn’t depend on the seasonality of this world. This concept is discussed by Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Thākura in his book “Jaiva Dharma”.
This book relates the stories of several seekers who found spiritual perfection, becoming self-realized. Reading their stories, we can learn what “normal” really means in the deepest sense.
There, the idea of visarga is given. Visarga is a Sanskrit word that means “eternal nature”. Material objects don’t have an eternal nature: they are always changing. The phones or computers we are using right now are a combination of different material elements that were transformed into these particular forms. They will stay like that for some time, but eventually, they will be destroyed. The material elements will then be transformed into something else.
The spirit soul, however, has an eternal nature. We have an eternal spiritual nature that is much more evolved than the consciousness we have now. The problem is that, being engaged by the laws of nature, we forget about it.
More than covering our own qualities, such material conditioning also clouds our understanding of reality. In such a condition, we start to think that drinking, smoking, and doing other questionable activities are “normal”, just like in a dream, we may not be able to understand the absurdity of many of the situations that are presented to us.
In his teachings, Śrīla Prabhupāda frequently compares our current conditioned state to a dream. When we dream, our minds create many different images and situations, and, forgetting what reality is, we just play along with such illusory situations. As long as we continue dreaming, it is impossible for us to understand what reality really is.
Similarly, in our current stage, our understanding of reality is covered. We just adapt to the different circumstances that are presented to us in life, and consider whatever situation we are in as “normal”. Our progress in Krsna Consciousness is compared to gradually waking up from this dream and gradually recovering our full consciousness.
When we finally become fully awake, we can fully comprehend the absurdity of material life. However, as long as we are dreaming, it’s practically impossible to understand.
We can thus choose what “normal” we want to fit in: the temporary “normal” of a materialistic life in this world, or the eternal normal connected with our eternal spiritual identity. That’s a choice that is ours to make.
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