Wall of Laughter
There was once a very strong and high wall that stood in some place, stretching far on both sides. The people who lived on both sides of the wall knew nothing about what lay on the either side and about those who lived there.
One day, the people from one side of the wall wanted to learn about things on the other side. So, for this purpose, they built a tall ladder and placed it against the wall. They sent a man from among them up the ladder so that he could see what lay beyond the wall and come down and tell them what he saw. But when the man climbed the ladder and got to the top, he found the world on the other side to be so beautiful that he just couldn’t contain himself. He started to laugh uncontrollably and leapt across to the other side!
After this, the people living on this side of the wall sent another man up the ladder. But then the very same thing happened this time as well! When he reached the top, he found what he saw on the other side so wonderful that he burst out laughing and jumped to the other side of the wall.
This kept happening, over and over again. Each time the people sent a man up the ladder he found the sight on the other side of the wall so attractive that he laughed out loud and then leapt across to the other side. In this way, despite their efforts, the people living on this side of the wall remained completely unaware of what lay on the other side.
This ‘laughing wall’ is like the ‘wall’ of death. One part of our life lies on this side of the ‘wall’ of death. On the other side of this ‘wall’ is a world of great joy—the world of Paradise. In contrast to Paradise, this side of the wall, where we presently are, is a world of hard work and struggle.
The story of the ‘laughing wall’ is as it were the story of the whole of human history.
By his very nature an individual seeks a life full of joy for himself. He is a joy-seeking being. Ancient man, faced with a life of challenges and sorrows, began searching for ease and happiness. For this purpose, he invented many things—such as, for instance, the wheel—following which a person’s quest for a life of happiness continued apace. You could call this the ‘Journey of Civilization’. After a long period of many centuries, this journey entered the phase of what is called ‘Modern Civilization’. This civilization, based on modern industry, has led to the ‘Age of Consumerism’, when all sorts of consumer items that promise physical comfort have become super-abundant and are very easily available.
In this way, human civilization negotiated a long journey and finally arrived in the 21st century. But having got there, a new, exceedingly serious problem arose. Man’s ‘laughing wall’ has now become a new sort of ‘wailing wall’! People are now being forced to realize that the world that they sought to build for themselves after so much struggle and effort is not the world full of joys that they hoped for. Rather, it is a world full of problems. And so, in the 21st century, human civilization has entered a blind alley, synonymous with what can be termed as ‘The End of History’.
Why and how did this happen? The answer to this has much to do with the nature of modern industry, of which pollution is an indispensable part. In order to create the world of our dreams we need pollution-free industries, but to create such industries is simply impossible for human beings. In this way, the problem of industrial pollution, which has assumed epidemic proportions today, has negated a great deal of the achievements of modern civilization.
On the one hand, there is the huge environmental pollution that is happening as human beings continue in their relentless quest to construct a world of their desires. But on the other hand, there prevails throughout the cosmos a completely pollution-free industry which has been in existence for aeons. This is the industry of Nature. Human beings have completely failed to create pollution-free industries. But on the very same planet where we presently live Nature has been running, since the very beginning, completely pollution-free industries, and that too on a huge scale!
Planet Earth is continuously in motion. It moves continuously about its axis, at a speed of around 1000 miles an hour. Along with this, it moves in the vast space in a fixed orbit around the sun, at a mindboggling speed of 67,000 miles per hour. The first journey gets over in 24 hours; the other in a year. This twin movement of Planet Earth is taking place continuously. But this produces no noise or any other sort of pollution!
The sun is an enormous storehouse of fire, heat and energy. It is so vast that it can contain 12,00,000 planets the size of the Earth! It is situated at a distance of around 92 million miles from the Earth. Despite being so far, it continuously sends to Earth light and heat, without which life here would be impossible. In this process too there is no pollution at all!
There is another industry in Nature—in the form of trees and plants. This industry functions in accordance with an intricate system. Trees and plants continuously supply animals and human beings with much-needed oxygen. Along with this, they continuously absorb the carbon dioxide that we breathe out. This is a really astounding sort of industry. And it too is completely free of noise, smoke and other sorts of pollution!
The Earth has huge reserves of water in the form of seas and oceans. This water contains preservatives, in the form of salt. Because of this, this water is not directly usable for humans to drink. But here too there is an amazing natural industry that works for our benefit. The sun’s heat causes sea water to evaporate. Then, through a process of condensation, water, now made free of salt, falls in the form of rain in areas of human habitation. This is a natural process of desalination of sea water, another industry of Nature that creates no pollution whatsoever!
These are two vastly different sort of phenomena: modern man-made industries, which are inconceivable without emitting pollution, and the pollution-free industries of Nature that are a blessing of God. The former have proven a failure in creating for us a world of joy. In seeking to produce objects of comfort, they have produced an impenetrable jungle of problems for humans that now may threaten the very survival of all life forms on Earth. But at the very same time, the industries of Nature produce a vast range of things that we require not just for our comfort but also for our very survival and are also completely pollution-free!
If, in line with the story about the wall mentioned above, death is considered as the wall that divides two worlds, it would be true to say that on one side of the wall is a ‘wailing world’—a world full of pollution and racked with environmental destruction on account of human greed—and on the other side a ‘laughter world’—Paradise, a world of unending joy.
The 21st century human civilization, despite having reached an impasse, is giving us a new, hope-filled lesson—and that is, that we should not try to create a ‘laughter world’ on this side of the ‘wall’ of death, for any such attempt is doomed to failure. Instead, we should focus on trying to obtain a seat in the ‘laughter world’, the world of joy that is Paradise, which lies on the other side of the ‘wall’.
