Religion and Social Values : 1.

                             Swami Krishnananda :      25th of   April   1922     to    23th of November 2001.



1: The Circumstances in Which We Have to Live in the World :


Part : 1.


The normalcy of the physical body, which we call health, is also a state where we are buoyant with a new type of freedom. The greatest freedom is health, in which condition of freedom from every shackle we feel buoyant and often forget our own selves. The healthier we are, the less we think of ourselves. When an illness of any kind enters our body, we become conscious that we are. We begin to be aware of each limb of the body. An eye, an ear, a tooth, a finger, a toe, or any blessed part of our body attracts our attention when it is set out of tune with the normal function of the body.

So is the illness of man in general. The continuous consciousness of ourselves and people around us, with a consciousness attending upon it as an awareness of our peculiar adjustable relationship with people which keeps us perpetually aware of our personal relationship with others, keeps us also in a state of anxiety of an indescribable character. No one knows definitely what would happen to oneself the next moment, and there is an apprehension that something untoward may happen.

While anxiety about the future may be permitted if nothing unpleasant is going to be expected in the future, it becomes intolerable when we always expect something which may be to the detriment of our well-being. This anxiety, this apprehension, arises from our own selves. It does not come from outside; it does not drop from the trees. There is a wholesale maladjustment of ourselves right from the outer skin down to the deepest of whatever we can be, and so whatever we speak is an artificial expression of our conduct. We do not and cannot reveal the whole of ourselves in our expressions. When we think, we are guardedly thinking about circumstances, lest repercussions may impinge upon us. We are always at daggers drawn, under a pressure of a feeling that we are not in our own homes. There is a necessity felt by every one of us to be vigilant, as if we are on a battlefield.

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 pressurised, 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.

Swami Krishnananda

To be conrinued  ..