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| Swami Suddhananda |
Many secular as well as
religious conferences have already been held and are continuously
being organised in order to solve the problems that mankind
encounters at different levels. It happens in the family rooms,
village squares, street corners, farmlands, classrooms, university
corridors, assemblies and parliaments of the world, and in the United
Nations.
If ancient man was discussing it in the jungles and caves, we are now
meeting in the most luxurious ambience, but the subject of discussion
is still the same – how to solve the different problems of humanity,
be it starvation, disease, poverty or the ill-effects of overeating
and affluence. If the poor countries are meeting to develop their
economy, the affluent countries are meeting to manage their affluence
where the social problems appear much more exaggerated and
nightmarish as affluence is supposed to have solved all social
problems. Let us analyse the drop before analysing the ocean. Let us
look at the life of an individual before looking at the country of
the whole humanity.
The individual begins without any learning and
prosperity. The suffering of any kind can be explained in the
background of poverty of both material kind and intellectual kind.
Then the individual begins to work hard for survival and creates
enough food for sustenance and has a dwelling to protect himself from
the harshness of summer, rain or winter.
Then the intelligence is used to understand the
world around to cure the deterioration and the disease of the body.
Once the body is relatively stable, the person discovers that the
problem still exists at the social, economic and political fronts.
He, as a single person, may manage or tolerate his poverty but he is
just not alone and that brings the families, the community, the
country and the world around into the picture. When it involves even
a small family, the politics of managing becomes inevitable. Some
families are run by consensus, some by dictatorial method, some with
love and some with manipulation, some with simple ethics ruled by
common sense, some with no ethics and some with a fear of the unknown
which makes them ethical out of their fear.
Thus, we can see a miniature world in a family
and, to be more precise, in the individual himself. If we look at the
priorities or the needs of a growing individual we will see that the
physical sustenance is the first priority. Once he can keep himself
alive, he needs to be educated in order to understand the world
around. When he is alive and a little more experienced – experiences
of different kinds are the first steps of learning – he has to start
dealing with the people and the materials around. How he deals with
them depends upon the mind of the individual. If he is crazy and
dictatorial, he will impose such a system around, if he is conscious
and conscientious he will be very caring. Depending upon where he is
and what he controls, he will create the atmosphere of individual,
communal or national ambience of torture or harmony.
That is why if the individual slips out of hand
and is not trained properly, we will have a society of barbarians
hidden inside the affluence of every kind as even the individual
himself can be crude and cruel in spite of all his wealth, dress and
the language. Such a person or society can have a religious belief
too. Sometimes a belief is self imposed or imposed by the people or
society around. That belief can include a disbelief in anything that
doesn’t meet our eyes. That is the reason why God has become a very
controversial topic and all religions dealing with different kinds of
Gods can never be the rallying point for mankind as each religion or
belief system demands exclusive importance and thereby superiority.
There are many political conferences where the
world leaders meet to justify their systems of governance in the
different countries. A dictator justifies his stand citing the
illiteracy of the masses. Even a party can be absolutely despotic
citing the same reason. The world political meet must focus on the
individuals’ right and usually in a democracy the individual is
supposed to be held supreme. But when the leaders of the parties in a
democracy are corrupt, they become more authoritarian than the
dictatorial regime under a person or a party. Similarly, if
individual freedom is upheld completely in a seemingly dictatorial
regime, that becomes a benevolent dictatorship. There the individual
leader himself is a huge group as his mind holds the whole country as
one. He does not sacrifice anybody’s interest, in the absence of a
personal interest of his own.
Such a world view is rare in politics as the
individuals who participate in politics do not have such a vision. In
case they have such a vision as individuals or a group, they can
guarantee supreme importance to every individual and thereafter it
becomes the responsibility of every individual to fall into the
harmony of the whole society. An enlightened democracy is almost like
a natural law where the individual is rewarded or punished not by who
he ‘is’ but by what he does. The earth’s gravity does not hold a
falling king in midair nor does it drag down a standing commoner.
With that as the very fundamental assumption, then we move into the
specific cases where not only the action is looked into but also the
person and the circumstances in which a particular action is done, is
taken into account. Everybody, irrespective of positions, enjoys this
privilege. As much as the ordinary citizen, the President or the
Prime Minister is accountable in such a system. Democracy can be the
reflection of such a vision as much as a dictatorship. But if
followed, the dictatorship will be benevolent and if not followed
even a democracy can be a collective dictatorship of a party.
It all depends upon the individual and the
individuals are the products of the thoughts that they have picked up
or have been exposed to. If we allow a child to grow up, the
self-preservation instinct will influence his behaviour and the
person cannot grow up to be anything but selfish. Even his occasional
selflessness will have a strong selfish motive, to be recognised as
somebody other than who is really ‘is’ – the embodiment of
selfishness. This is where a religion or a school of thought can play
an important role. If it challenges the individuality which is
steeped in limitation, it leads to hopelessness and therefore total
selfishness. Instead of challenging the ‘I’, the individual, if the
religion or faith provides another identity or security, then that
faith or religion becomes another tool in the hands of the selfish to
exploit millions around. The faith becomes a powerful tool because
millions follow it without any questioning and politics or religion
can be played out to control millions.
The most dangerous part of it is that a selfish
person who happens to be a political leader need not even believe in
that belief. Still more dangerous is a selfish person who dons a
religious robe or identity without the least conviction or have a
fanatic conviction of a faith. As much a non-believer politician can
exploit the faithful millions that much a fanatic believer can
exploit the millions only to stay in power.
Therefore, the absolute importance of
understanding one’s own Self can never be over-emphasised. The
individual picks up a social identity by just being there in the
family or society. He picks up a political identity by being a part
of the system or rarely, by initiating a system. He picks up a
religious identity by believing in God or a theology. There may be a
totally rebellious person who denounces every kind of social,
political or religious identity or the identity by riches or poverty,
but still he remains there to enjoy the privileges or the
inconveniences of a society organised by the believers of different
secular and religious systems. Such non-believers in any system are
very critical of everything without in any way contributing to
society at large. Such parasites are plenty in every system. We
usually talk about religious parasites but we forget about the
political hangers-on, social parasites who are there like leaches
only to fatten themselves.
We see them in families, we see them in industrial
establishments. We see them in educational, commercial, social,
political and religious establishments. An individual who abuses any
privilege to indulge in his personal weaknesses without using it for
his personal growth which would ultimately be used for the growth of
society, is a parasite. If we deeply contemplate we will see that all
the conferences of the different social, religious, political or
economic interest groups are of one type of parasites scheming to
latch on to other groups to enhance their own power. They completely
forget that the core is too weak to benefit in any way from it. Every
gain becomes a burden and the group meetings are a sort of catharsis
to know that after all every group of political or religious beliefs
has its own crisis and they move on from crisis to crisis in every
conference.
If we have to look for solutions we must recognise
that the individual is the crisis and causes crisis in everything in
the world which has no crisis inherent in it. If we think deeply, we
can see that even death is not a crisis. That creation is
continuously dying or aging in every moment is not a crisis; that ‘I
am dying’ or ‘I am aging’ is the thought that causes the crisis, the
fear and anxiety. The religions that are based on mere faiths and
authorities of persons or books of any kind that can never be
questioned will have a lot of explanations to do in order to be
accepted because, such faiths neither contribute to the material
growth of a society nor to the spiritual growth of the individual who
in the beginning seems to be condemned to one secular role or the
other. Such a religion becomes yet another identity added to the list
of limiting identities of all kinds. The roles by themselves have no
sense of limitation. When the actor with a sense of limitation
identifies with the roles, suddenly the roles seem to gain a
limitation and the limitation of the actor, the individual is further
exaggerated.
Therefore the organisers of religious conferences
must question themselves as to whether they have the ingredient which
will help the individual to understand himself or whether they are
going to give different faiths to different individuals. If we are
bent upon converting people to ‘our’ faith, ‘our’ belief systems,
then the religious conferences or parliament of religions will
continue to do much ado about nothing like any other political or
economic summits or conferences. Are we ready to accept and declare
to the world that every human being picks up one role or the other in
life and that he is in reality beyond every role? Can we accept and
declare that every other religious identity too is a role and the
person in reality is beyond every religious and secular role? That
shall be true education which will introduce the individual to his
true nature and that is same for all humanity, the whole living and
non-living creation. Once a person sees that Universal Nature of his
‘being’, thereafter not only he will be comfortable with his own
varied roles but also with the apparent differences that exist in and
through all the roles. Not only will he be able to accept all forms
of religious lifestyles but also all types of secular lifestyles.
Such happy people will not only accept themselves for who they are
and what they have, but also will accept others for who they are and
therefore what they have.
Such religions which have nothing to contribute
towards discovery in the physical universe and nothing to reveal
about the true nature of the individual and the creation will
automatically fade away as humanity becomes more and more educated to
challenge every perception and belief. That is where such people who
have held up those faiths for earning a living will howl loud
protests as their bowl of sustenance is fading away. They will be
more aggressive to keep it going, to impose, to convert and will use
all their might for the losing empire to strike back. Bereft of the
vision that neither sustains the relative world nor reveals the
Absolute Reality, such religions are self-dismissing and an educated,
thinking humanity will soon forget it and may remember them fondly as
one of the many different steps the humanity took towards its own
physical and emotional maturity. Such a vision – the undifferentiated
being in and through an apparently divided universe, will make the
individual a beautiful person and the ugliness of superiority or
inferiority on the basis of birth, nationality, caste, creed, sex,
race or religion will stop ruling the human mind.
Until the religious discover the true identity and
the educated individual, after gathering information about the world
around, discovers himself, the ‘I’, the world will not be free from
wars, exploitation, cruelties and killings. As long as the mind of
the individual is a battleground where different factional ideas,
divisive thoughts, domineering identities are raging a constant war,
that long the world outside will not be free from cruelties and
exploitation. The warring people fight wars in the name of politics,
economics, religions and society. As long as we give greater
importance to the professionals, the politicians, the economists, the
religious, the physicians, the scientists, the artists, the parents,
the children, the wives, the husbands, etc., and completely neglect
the ‘individual’ who assumes these roles, that long the comparison,
the contrasts, the superiority and inferiority complexes, cannot be
taken away.
Therefore, man being empty, unfulfilled and
unaware of himself will use his professional role, his relative
knowledge to exploit and subjugate more people in order to be rich
and notorious. If in the ancient times more people were peace loving,
it was because not many had the means to raise a battle. If the
children are innocent it is because they are yet to be spoilt. We
cannot idealise, romanticise the helplessness of childhood or poverty
as innocence and purity. Greater access to knowledge and prosperity
will inevitably create greater competition and challenges. The
conflicts will be inevitable in the personal life and will naturally
corrupt the social, political and the religious establishments.
It appears as though these political, social and
religious thoughts corrupt man. The fact is that the individual is
already corrupted by the ignorance of himself where the Limitless
takes himself to be ‘limited’. This fundamental flaw seems to be
exaggerated by the greater information we pick up and seems to
corrupt the individual further. That is why all the attempts to solve
the problem seem to complicate the problem further. Politics divides,
economics creates different classes, religion, philosophies or
beliefs perpetuate divisions. Even the incarnations and messengers
forget that mankind will be further divided after their departure.
They appear in a less divided world and leave behind a world with
greater divisions, with wars fought in the names of beliefs. How then
can religions solve the problem where there is so much
intra-religious and inter-religious fighting? How does a religion
change the mind when an already educated mind can manipulate all
religious beliefs to his own advantage and others’ disadvantage?
The time has come, first, for every individual to
sit down and observe his own mind to know completely about himself
and then all must sit together to share as to how it is important to
resolve the conflicts within one’s own Self before we move out into
the world. The fighting tribes cannot and will not speak the language
of peace as they have accepted the perceived differences as Reality.
As long as we see the differences and the separateness as the Reality
that long we cannot stop the battle. That is why we do not need
religions which preach difference in the name of a faith or a god.
Nor can we rely on a secular science which may not preach differences
but does not know how to reveal the Oneness. There the individual,
the thinker, must think about his true nature. The questioner needs
to be questioned to understand and to ‘be’ himself which is the
ultimate Self-Awareness, the universal self-definition.
Both secular and religious gatherings around the
world must focus on the individual. Democracy as a form of government
has been a tremendous step. But politics by definition does not want
to transcend the view that man is a social animal. Religions have
many, varied definitions according to the various levels of thoughts.
We must sit down to see the subtlest of the revelations about man and
creation and cannot stop at the level of the earth and the moon when
telescopes can point to billions of galaxies in the distant space.
Let us not worship the telescopes, but appreciate the human minds
that have created the instruments to look into distant space.
Similarly, let us not stop at worshipping the books and the bodies
but go deep into the most explored regions within, which is the same
in all beings. We need the explorations and expansion both within and
without where the explorer, the ‘I’, melts away in the discovery of
the Absolute.
While the scientific explorations will make our
life physically comfortable, the exploration into the ‘I’, will help
the individual discover the Nameless Universal Identity which will
use the prosperity of the physical universe to his as well as others’
advantage. If religions do not change their roles as guardians of
unverifiable ‘faiths’ to ultimate self-discovery, the scientific
spirit will make the people inevitably irreligious and, of course,
empty. Either science must include the exploration into ‘I’ or it
must face the emptiness and the disenchantment in spite of long,
prosperous living. Long before that, people will be disillusioned
with the religions that are parochial and do not encourage deep
probing and questioning. The religious festivals will always survive
the faiths as they add to the grand escapades like football, music,
movies and theme parks. The games continue but the stars fall like
meteors in the sky and are forgotten.
If the Parliament of Religions will concentrate on
declaring the superiority of any faith as against the inferiority of
some other faith, then we will have perpetuated the same battle in a
more organised way in an apparently civilised set-up. But the
barbarians in us will still echo and the world will not gain
anything. Let us sit down and share the thoughts in relation to just
three topics –man, creation and God. Let us share how all religions
or belief systems talk about these topics. Even the non-believers of
an existing faith can join as they too have a large following. But
the most important thing is to share the deep thought and to be
prepared to change, to adapt and to propagate not a new ‘belief’ or
an imaginary experience but a discovered fact that the whole humanity
can effortlessly participate in. But it must begin with responsible
people in all walks of life before it catches on to the next
generation. Let the Self-Awareness leading to universal Awareness,
Reality or God, that was a whisper so long, turn to be a significant
voice or presence in and after the meet giving every thought and
belief its due place in the evolution of human thoughts.
Let us do it.
Swami Suddhananda
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