Religion and Social Values : 8.

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


Part-8.


Sometimes, you may be warned that this is not the true state of affairs. You get warnings from various sides—from your office, from your social relationships, from your own body also—that things are not exactly as you think. There is something different from what you are imagining in your mind. Now, this is a point which is not visible outside to the naked eye because it is only inside, not outside. But the urges of your mind, which channelise themselves through the avenues of the senses, pull you out of yourself in the direction of your activities in office and factory, etc. so forcefully and impetuously that you have no consciousness that there is a dark patch within your own self, which even an X-ray cannot discover. This dark patch obstructs the movement of light from within you. And, just as a dark spot in a moving film may be projected on the screen and you will see the black spot on the screen, although actually it is not on the screen—it is in the film that is moving through the projector, which is seen outside—likewise, you will project this black spot onto other people. You will see all people in this world as evil: “There is no good man anywhere. Everyone is wretched, stupid and idiotic.” This difficulty, which is sociological, may be a consequence of a psychological lacuna, as you can understand from the illustration of how a defect in the film can make the screen outside appear defective inasmuch as nobody looks at the film but everyone sees only the screen outside.

There is much to say about our own selves; but we cannot become objects of our own study. Since all our studies are laboratory investigations and observations through telescopes, microscopes, etc., we cannot study our own selves. This little lacuna, this knot, this confusion, this dark spot, this rubbish within cannot be seen by ourselves because there is no instrument that we can apply against us. It is not an object; it is a subject, to put it more precisely. As we are subjects, we cannot become objects. We cannot become other than what we are; hence, we cannot study our own selves. The syllabuses of our educational institutions do not prescribe the study of one’s own self. It is all a study of somebody else, as if somebody else is the most important thing in the world, and one has nothing to say about one’s own self. The truth is the other way around.

Due to a total misguiding movement of the mind, an overemphasis is laid on that which is not ourselves, while secretly our love for our own selves is the most intense. There is an altruistic manifestation of a secret selfishness in man, mostly. Thus, the world goes. It is not for nothing that the great master said that the world is maya, a tremendous illusion. In what sense it is an illusion, you will have to study for your own self. At least, in one sense, I have mentioned to you what it is like: a projection of a picture which is not the true picture of the world, and an engagement of your whole personality in the witnessing and visualisation of the performance of this untrue picture of the world. Do you not call this maya? What else is maya, if not this.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...