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Swami Suddhananda |
Welcome to the land of prosperity. When one leaves the Indian
shore and flies into Europe on even nearer home Singapore, the
skyline changes. The vegetation changes. The lush green forests,
mountains, beautifully laid roads, organised traffic, the clean and
sprawling airports hit one’s eyes. Even the toilets with rolls and
rolls of papers, fresh toilet covers and bathroom fresheners can
indeed be the place for few moments of relaxation. However many
times one may return, the travel after touching India becomes always
a very deep experience as to how on earth some could reach such
levels of prosperity!
Of course there are pockets of poverty and still more subtle, the
pervasive psychological imbalances, but it must be a small
percentage of people who must have led the countries to such heights
of prosperity.
However much somebody points out the limitations of
the physical or material prosperity, still no one can deny the
enormous advantage that the prosperity can invoke. The first and the
most visible advantage will be the relative smoothness of life
without much manifestation of the deep confusions. It’s like driving
an average vehicle on the road. If the road is like the four-lane,
smooth motorways, a lot of the untuned parts will have muffled
noise. Whereas the same vehicle, plying on a road full of potholes,
can produce exaggerated noises.
However, both prosperity and poverty can cause
imbalances depending upon the types of the minds people enjoy. With
a matured mind rich with information, poverty and prosperity cannot
overtake any emotions. Yet a mind that is immature and poor in
thinking can misuse both the material poverty and the prosperity.
That is why, however alluring the prosperity may
appear, it is extremely important to help the mind mature in
thinking either in the process or training it to exploit the
physical laws of the material universe or help it to understand
itself completely before engaging the mind in any activity.
There are advantages and the disadvantages in both.
When the mind engaged in understanding the creation can lose itself
in the infinite possibilities of tremendous material creativity and
prosperity, the mind engaged in understanding itself can lose itself
in the infinite beauty that it is without caring thereafter to
explore the material universe around. Unless taken to the ultimate
end, living can be extremely deceptive and defective. If the man
with total material prosperity does not care to have the total
insight into his own mind, Self, then he’ll experience the emptiness
of an infinite kind as no amount of finite prosperity can fill the
void of not knowing the Absolute Prosperity. Similarly, a man of
insight into the Absolute prosperity in one’s own Self can suffer
the disadvantages of material poverty at a gross level. He may not
care for the physical discomfort, but that can never be an ideal for
the initiates on the path of life.
Nobody ever begins with the ultimate. All of us
begin with the immediate and the immediate demands a lot of
attention not only for survival but also for the survival in
ever-changing minimum comforts – a humble way or receptive way of
demanding maximum comfort. When the immediate comforts are equated
with happiness, the man ends up in a never ending search for endless
comforts. Rarely, a man pauses to think that in the midst of a lot
of comforts, he or she is ‘comfortably miserable’, ‘forgetfully
happy’ and life seems to be a continuous escapade from that nagging
sense of emptiness which no experience can drown forever.
Such people will either look for the elusive
fulfilment with the same dogged determination with which they have
attained heights of material prosperity or can just drown that voice
within with experiences of different permutations and combinations.
Sometimes looking for absolute fulfilment is barred by cultural
poverty or religious emptiness. If the culture of a society or the
highest thoughts of society fall short of the infinite with
happiness here and now, then the people in that society will be lost
in the immediate with no hope of fulfilment here and now. The
emptiness here and now gets a sanction from the prevailing culture
or religious milieu and people are lost in an unhappy, unfulfilled
merry-go-round.
The living in society with a goal of happiness here
and now in the individual’s own Self can tend to neglect the
immediate. And, in case, they do not discover themselves, they feel
cheated in both the relative and the Absolute realm. If they find
the fulfilment here and now, they may neglect the world around as
their happiness does not depend upon any external conditions. But
the invisible awakening within will have no influence on others
without the visible manifestation of the invisible wisdom. Even
their physical behavior, however noble, will touch only a few
people, but to be really effective to touch hundreds and thousands
of lives, such people must be able to reach out to fulfil many
immediate needs of the average people. That is how the material
prosperity is so powerfully enticing and that is how the cults with
enormous material clout can pass as the religions or the philosophy
of the day.
But it is time to bring the wisdom of the Self and
the all-round prosperity of the material world together in one
package. In fact, they are always together as the finite can never
stay isolated from the Infinite and the Infinite means all
inclusiveness. The exclusivest image of material prosperity or any
religion has overshadowed the ever existing harmony of the creation.
As a result there seems to be a distant clash between the secular
and the religious cults.
We have to isolate the fighters in all of us – the
individuality which has become the victim of one thought or the
other. A prisoner by its own sense of false individuality it tries
to release itself by imprisoning itself with many and varied
notions.
And that is what we see in the world – in the slums
of the poor nations and in the playground of the billionaires in the
exclusive enclaves of the rich nations – the prisoners of different
nations, gods, thoughts and the conditionings. While looking at
that, one can see the emptiness of the prosperity and the hollowness
of the absurd holiness, a façade to hide the incompetence, inaction
and the subtle cravings for the luxury and the recognition, at all
levels of different rich or poor nations. Sufferings of the poor
forces us to look at the comforts of the rich and the misery and the
insecurity of rich force us to look at the other side of poverty –
the simplicity, the helpless leisureliness of it. Which one to
choose? Neither. As neither prosperity nor poverty can cause any
emptiness or fulfilment. It’s the individual who must be aware of
himself to make use of both with the Self awareness one can choose
to be simple, a renunciate, non-possessive human being engaged only
in sharing the vision to those who are ready. Or one can produce
enormous resources in spite of the Self awareness, the ultimate
fulfilment, to reach out to people with different needs and
ultimately to themselves.
In a global scenario, with communications exposing
us to all types of experiences, the time is ripe to recognise the
limits of all experiences and to explore into the nature of ‘the
experiencer’ in all of us so that one is not a helpless prisoner of
individuality, secular thoughts or religious notions but is a
willing player of all roles to live the life well for one’s own Self
and all others at the same time.
When every man recognises this, society, country and
creation will rejoice at the same time.
Let us do it!
Swami Suddhananda
Samvit Sagar Trust
Tiruvannamalai
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