Iron Man 2 and the Journey Within

We watched Iron Man 2 yesterday. In the final scene, Iron Man aka Tony Stark streaks across the sky in his ultra fast suit, chased by his old friend James ‘Rhodey’ on another armour suit designed by Tony Stark himself.

The irony here is – although ‘Rhodey’ is Tony’s friend and doesn’t intend to hurt him, he is not in control of the suit. The suit keeps chasing and attacking Iron Man. ‘Rhodey’ says to Iron Man (he was at least in control of the communication system) in this scene that his suit is being controlled by someone else, in this case, Ivan Vanko – the evil scientist.

Enough of science fiction, now for the science. This morning I was reading Swami Chimayananda’s article on Bondage posted by Kugan on Harnessing the Heart. I immediately connected that article to the scene depicted above.

Swami says:

Think of the tragedy. You must attend to this body constantly, all the twenty-four hours of all the three hundred and sixty-five days of a year, nay, and one day more in a leap year. There is no escape. You must be with it all the time, without any holiday. An all-time-servant you become of your own body. You can have a release from your office, home, friends, society, —from everything, but not from this body-catering-mission in life.

Although this spiritual message may not have been intended by the Iron Man 2 scriptwriter, ‘Rhodey’ in that scene was being controlled by Ivan Vanko. He became a slave to every move that Ivan programmed the armour suit to perform. Similarly, we have become slaves to our body and mind. We are merely wearing the suit of our physical body. Our weapons of senses are being controlled by external influences on the mind. If only we could turn our vision inward, we would discover the true ‘Rhodey’ inside of us – the divine soul.

Swami continues:

Because of this identification you must preserve this body, feed it, clothe it, treat it, when ill, and when necessary it must also get a blood transfusion or a heart transplant. It is not sufficient that we look after and preserve the body, but we must also run after all the objects desired by it—house, car, radio, air-conditioner, television and what not! 'Why am I living so contentedly in this slavery?' 'Because this body is me. My body's happiness is my happiness.'

‘Rhodey’ kept chasing Iron Man – being controlled by foreign power. He was aware, but he couldn’t do anything – the external force was too strong. Finally, Rhodey’s suit was reset – over-riding the control and he became his true self once again.

Let us all get in touch with the true Rhodey within us by controlling the armour we have. The only way to do this is by resetting our thoughts and mind in tune with God.