The Circumstances in Which We Have to Live in The World
Go down deep into your own
mind and think for yourself. Who has peace in this world? That tentative
comfort that you may be enjoying in life—either due to your placement in
society, your financial status or your physical condition—is, again, a matter
of apprehension. Who can be always healthy? Who can be always wealthy? And who
can be always secure in this world? Hence, who can always have peace? This
medical analysis of the mental states of people will reveal not happy conclusions.
But unhappiness is loathsome. Illness is what we detest, and comfort is the aim
of our social and physical existence. While inwardly we are secretly made to be
conscious of something which is at sixes and sevens with the world, outwardly
we are pressurized, due to another circumstance, to comfort ourselves that
everything is all right.
There is a very peculiar
attitude that we develop towards our own selves which can be very safely
defined by a single word: duplicity. We do not maintain a true relationship
with our own selves. At the very outset, we manage to be untrue to our own
selves in order that we may live in an untrue relationship with people. It is
sometimes felt that in order to justify one falsehood, another falsehood may
have to be heaped over it. A single falsehood does not stand on its own legs.
We are acutely aware of something peculiar in our own selves which cannot stand
the logic of nature or, perhaps, the will of God; and with this circumstance,
we have to live in this world.
We have been forced to accept
that we somehow have to live in this world. We do not ask people, “Is it
necessary for me to live in this world?” The question is already answered by
our own selves: It is necessary. That it is necessary to live in this world is
not learned by us from books. It is not a sermon that we have received from our
Gurus or Masters. We have come to a conclusion definitely, by our own selves,
for reasons we alone know: It is necessary to exist in this world. A hypothesis
is already taken for granted. And this necessity to exist is—very, very
unfortunately for us—involved in a network of complicated adjustments that we
are required to make every moment of time, so that every minute that we pass
seems to be an artificial existence. We are perpetually aware as to what is
around us, as a field marshal may be looking around in the battlefield to see
what is moving and operating in all ten directions. What rest can we have here?
But rest we must have. We have already concluded that it must be there; and we
have to move Earth and heaven to gain this acquisition.
The inward suspicion with
regard to one’s own capabilities in the understanding of the nature of this
world, and the powers that one can wield in this world, go hand in hand with
the suspicion that we develop with everyone else in the world. We cannot trust
anybody wholly, because we cannot trust ourselves wholly. This is because the
trust, or the distrust, as the case may be, is only a description of an
attitude that we generally develop in regard to anything—firstly, in regard to
our own selves, and secondly, in regard to others. The distrust in regard to
ourselves—in regard to the knowledge that we have and the powers that we
wield—naturally has to condition the feelings that we have in regard to other
people in the world, so that we cannot wholly trust our own brother. We have to
be guarded even with him, for a secret reason which each one knows and no one
can publicise. What a pitiable state of affairs that we have a secret attitude
which conditions our public attitude in respect of the whole world—a secret
which cannot be publicised, yet which conditions our public behaviour.
This very
difficult-to-understand situation of our own mental operations is perhaps the
background of very bitter analyses which were ruthlessly conducted by
psychoanalysis about the nature of man in this world. Medical examination is
not always a pleasant thing to undergo. Very unpleasant it is, for various
reasons. And even to find time to go deep into our own mental makeup is not a
happy thing. When we go into the corners of the citadel in which we are living,
we will not scent fragrance, and perhaps we will not find even a clean floor to
sit upon. Within ourselves is a world of dustbins, cobwebs, and undiscovered, uninhabited
abysmal niches which refuse to come to the surface, or into the daylight of
understanding. There are corners in our own selves which we do not want to see.
Are there not corners in your
own room which you hide from visitors because they are not clean? There is a
basket where you have thrown torn pieces of paper. There is an old cloth which
you have been using for wiping your floor. There is a kitchen which is all
pell-mell. You have only a drawing room with a beautiful sofa to receive VVIPs.
Such a drawing room we have within our own selves; but the unwanted corners,
unfortunately for us, are a majority in their number. The drawing room within
ourselves is very small in extent, and very few VVIPs can go inside. But we
manage to behave very well with these VIPs, and shake hands with them knowing
very well what we have inside our hearts: quarrels, disharmonies, court cases,
daily skirmishes and a doubt as to whether it is good to die or live with such
peculiar, suspicious surroundings within our own precincts. Nevertheless, we
manage to shake hands with people and sit in parlance.
This sad state of affairs
cannot go on for a long time. Every dog has his day, and we have our day. But
that day cannot be every day. This is the beginning of a right pursuit in the
direction of the true values of life. As we know very well, by common sense,
that no enterprise can be embarked upon in life without perfect health of the
body, the basic prerequisite of any adventure is physical health, first and
foremost. Likewise, in your noble pursuits with whose sublime notions you have
come to this Sadhana Week, the fulfilment of these purposes requires a basic
presupposition and requirement: mental health.
Continue to read:
Religion and
Social Values by Swami Krishnananda
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