Religion and Social Values : 10.

Many of you cannot know your own level, and will not find it easy to discover the circumstances of your life. It requires a superior investigative faculty. Rarely can people know the truths of their own selves. You can know your strengths and weaknesses to some extent, if you are honest to yourself. But if, as it is the case with most people, you are wrongly convinced that milk and honey are flowing in this world and you are on velvet, that would be an overestimation from which you have to guard yourself. There is no need to underestimate yourself as a sinner and a good-for-nothing fellow in this world. That also may not be a true picture of yourself. Nor may it be true that you are on a high pedestal of living and you are a master of all the arts. So, let there be a true assessment of yourself.


How are you going to make this assessment? Many of you would find it difficult to find a guide. People live in distant places or large cities, and have many difficulties in life. How will you find a suitable guide? Where such a guide is possible, go to that guide and ask that superior: “What do you advise me, sir, at this present moment of time in the condition in which you discover me now?” If this is not possible, sit alone for a few minutes before you go to bed at night—after you finish your dinner, chat with your family members and read the newspaper or whatever you do. When all that is done and you are free to go to bed, do not suddenly lie down. Let the family go to sleep, but do not go to sleep. Sit alone and close your eyes: “Am I really a great man inside? Have I any importance? Is there any significance in me which is worth reckoning in life? Is there any importance attached to me?”


Importance—significance, value, greatness, whatever it is—is a description of either your social association or relationship with people, your physical condition, your mental structure, or your physical achievement. “Am I great, spiritually?” Put a question to yourself. “Am I a highly achieved person in the religious and spiritual fields? Am I a highly accomplished person in an intellectual and rational field, or in a scientific field?” You will receive a very, very uncomfortable answer to your question. “Am I a perfectly well-built physical stalwart? Am I really a very significant and valued person in human society?” What else is there in life except the value that you have in respect of your relationship with other people, the value that you attach to your own physical strength, the value that you attach to your own educational or artistic and scientific achievements, or your religious and spiritual heights? In what sense are you important in this world? You would be really sorry when you receive the answers from your own self. Perhaps you would not be able to sleep after a thorough investigation of your own self in all these directions. What is there in you, except these things that I have mentioned?


To be continued  ...