What is Knowledge : Ch-1. Part-8.

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Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation.


Part-8.



Merely shouting slogans of freedom cannot make us free, because these slogans are again an outcome of the herd instinct.

If many people say something, we also believe it is so. We are always under the pressure of something or the other, from morning to evening, and we never have the leisure to think independent of these conditions which are hanging on us.



We are grief-stricken. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, we have a sorrow in our minds.

We are not really happy people, and we try to appear as if we are happy by drinking, by eating, by a diversion, by going to a picture house, by dancing in a club or by running from place to place in high-speed vehicles.

For the time being, we have forgotten that the devil is behind us. If we run fast, the devil is unable to catch us. But it shall catch us, one day or the other.



And what is this devil? It is that which we are unable to understand, that which escapes our attention, that mystery of life which we are unable to probe into.

That is the devil that is trying to catch us. And we are trying to run away from it by various gadgets, physical as well as psychological, that we manufacture.

We have a blanket to cover ourselves with when it is very cold, we have an electric fan when it is very hot, we have some food to eat when we are hungry, and we have various other entertainments when we are bored with our existence.

This is a type of escapist life that we are living – a running away from a problem, and not a solution of a problem.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued ...


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