Hari OM
Story-day is for cultural exploration, puraanas and parables and finding out about leading lights in spiritual philosophy.
Words of Gurudev for you today, wherein he discusses the plight which has riven Mankind since ever he became aware of his own 'awareness'. This is a transcript of a talk given by Swami Chinmayananda, and it is not difficult to perceive his voice in the reading.
Stunned stands man today at his own incompetency. In spite of his great and stupendous achievements in all other fields, he is not yet capable of handling satisfactorily his own personal problems, both emotional and intellectual. He is over-whelmed by his own emotional imbalance. He is staggered by the complexities of his own intellectual predicament. He feels paralysed when his intimate personal problems storm the tiny world of his daily existence. Naturally, life becomes a burden to him. Objects of pleasure, which he so laboriously acquired and accumulated, turn bitter to his own taste. In all relationships, he seems to experience a lingering sense of failure at every turn. His entire life thus comes to welter in a pathetic and chronic consciousness of total futility.
The Rsis of yore had recognised the inescapable symptom of acute exhaustion of the individual mind. Our mind is a brilliant instrument. It can soar high to the subtlest peaks of knowledge: it can rig with its endless ingenuity, machinery for actualising its scientific theories into solid contributions to society and people. We have done all these in our own times.
Yet, the very laboriously conceived and ingeniously assembled appliances of power and prosperity, of pleasure and happiness, of productivity and distribution now maliciously turn, as it were, upon the very scientists, who have conceived them and have multiplied the problems for Man to solve. Against these arrayed forces of sorrow and destruction, the very creators of the scientific era and the generation who glorify the achievements of the materialistic age, have no remedy at all, nor have they any known defense scheme so far. Under the pressure of the mounting pile of problems—human, social, national and international—a groaning society is listlessly rolling in voiceless agony, sobbing in tearless pain, tearing themselves in disgust with their naked hands! Is this progress?
Indeed, the individual mind, at moments of its alert quietude and grand poise, can receive intimations from Higher Knowledge, and in such awful moments of electrified attention, the human mind can gain some glimpses of the laws of nature in the orderly universe around it. But the truth still remains that the individual mind is limited. Where this fact is not recognized—either due to man’s vanity or due to his negligent enquiry into the range-of-use of ‘mind’, his tool of investigation—there we have a very miserable exhibition of folly, sorrow and suffering from otherwise easily avoidable pain.
When we recognise that an automobile, which can luxuriously run over highways and super-ways, cannot run over water and cross a river, we are not insulting that vehicle, but are only intelligently recognising its limitations. The human mind has miraculous powers to contact, estimate, recognise and reorganise the objects outside itself. The very same mind, in itself, has its own imperfections and incapacities. Perplexities scatter our mind when it is used for solving our personal problems that threaten the subjective life of the individual in us. When problems regarding the rights and duties arise, challenging our security and comfort, when problems of emotions crop up, when questions of our right relationship with the world of things and beings burst forth in tidal dimensions, when we face our self-ruinous habits, world-destroying ambitions, disturbing lusts, shattering selfishness, or benumbing sorrows, suddenly we realize that we are torn apart within, and we have no answer to these inner problems. Much less we cannot defend ourselves against them, with all the artillery we have created, the machinery we have rigged, the scientific knowledge we have mounted, or the incomparable age of prosperity and pleasure we have inaugurated.
Still, it is a fact that we have no other choice than to live here—and we have to win the purpose of our life in spite of all these odds that stand against us. The only instrument of defence is our apparently powerful, but in actual fact very frail, mind. How are we to strengthen our fortress against the incessant onslaught of the world of challenges around us? In case Man is not capable of meeting these problems, he, being the very creator of it all, will be hounded down by the very ‘Frankenstein’ that he has conceived and created, and has successfully let loose upon himself and his community of fellowmen!
Today the world has no remedy for this excruciating malady of the age. Each problem is diligently met by the modern intellect with yet another and more powerful solution—and each solution instead of confronting the problem and crushing it for us, has been so far joining the array of our enemies and threatening us in added strength, with firmer determination to destroy us, the very creators of them all!
We must, therefore, seek for strength within to marshal our abilities against our self-created enemies, who surround us on every side. This is done by tuning our limited, conditioned mind to the Total-mind, the Universal Creative Energy, and God. This Higher-mind is ever-present, everywhere, for all to partake of Its Infinite strength and endless solace.
This Divine-Mind is ever ready to cooperate; water in a clean lake is ever there for any thirsty pilgrim to partake of its cool comfort. Let us seek and reach this Divine Mind. Let us approach Him through Love. Let us seek Him with Love. Let us surrender unto Him in Love.
When our mind, thus, in love gets tuned up to this Divine Power House we shall get re-charged, and a mind so replenished from His inexhaustible splendour shall feel rejuvenated, replenished, and revived. Once this alliance sacred and divine is made, we shall find how all our actions gain a new lustre, a greater fullness, an added momentum. To live in such a true and dynamic atmosphere of sincere “prayer”, in the sense of at-one-ment with the Lord, is the secret of gaining fuller effectiveness in actions and feeling a greater sense of fulfilment in our life.
Pray we must. Let it be a true prayer—not a clamour for gaining anything from Him. Let us discover a pure love, flooding our bosom and lifting us upon its soaring billows into fresh horizons of the mighty Total-mind…We Must.
Let us reach and claim in love Its Omnipotent power, Will and Knowledge as our own…….We Must.
Let us in prayerful meditation realise what our real nature is, through the grace and strength supplied by the Total-mind, God, the Lord of our Heart…..We Must.
