The War Within - Between Good and Evil by Bheemeswara Challa (e book reader online .txt) 📕

an El Dorado or Utopia, but the crucial challenge before
man is to move from the mind-dominated mindset of ‘money-mindedness’
towards a more just social order and ‘spiritual alchemy’, which, in the words
of Karen-Claire Voss, is “a form of illumination, a means of transmutation, a
method for experiencing levels of reality that are not ordinarily accessible, since
they exist beyond the level of everyday reality”. It is to fundamentally alter the
coordinates that drive human consciousness. What becomes unmistakably clear,
as we struggle with the pressures, pitfalls, and pulls of modern life, is that the
Rubicon that man has to cross is reason itself, what TE Lawrence called ‘thoughtriddled
nature’ (Seven Pillars of Wisdom). The Sufi saint Jalal ad-Din Rumi said
that “it is reason that has destroyed the reputation of the intellect”. It is with a
blend of inductive reasoning (from the specific to the general) and deductive
reasoning (from the general to the specific) that we think through, to deliberate,
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to deduct, to distinguish the real from the unreal, good from evil, to judge and
evaluate the ethical. But the conundrum is that ‘reason’ is not good enough to
reason about reason. It does not allow us to be ‘reasonable’; it tries to exclude every
other source of ‘thought’; it makes us feel so smug and sanctimonious, so humancentric.
For every moral trespass or callous act, it gives us a ‘because’ and prevents
us from learning from our own life. But at some level of conscious reflection we
all, even if grudgingly or fleetingly, admit that there are ‘limits to reason’ and that
we need, in the words of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski18 a ‘deeper
level of engagement with reality’ to live life well and truly. But we do not know
what these limits are in actuality and since no other tool is on hand we stay
faithful to reason and live a life defined—and diminished—by it.
Reason has not even let us be clear-eyed and candid about where man is
currently positioned in his own evolution or as a being in the cosmos. Those that
are expected to exert the highest human intellect—the pundits, the experts, the
specialists—cannot agree among themselves about what is in store for the human
race. A case in point concerns the earth’s atmosphere. Generally it is believed one
of the impending threats to human life on earth is ‘global warming’, that the
planet is dangerously getting hotter and hotter primarily due to human activity.
But there are other scholars who contest that the real danger is ‘global cooling’, not
global warming. For example, according to the geoscientist Shigenori Maruyama,
we are at the terminal point of the warm interglacial period, and the next glacial
age may start at any time, probably by the year 2025.19 With all our expertise,
insights and tools, if we cannot arrive at a consensus on such a life-threatening
issue, how can we take any corrective actions, which will need to be tailored to
the threat perception? Another example is the strategy for poverty reduction.
Some say that the way out is through sustained economic growth; others that it
is through dedicated direct targeted programs. Ironically, or tragically, both sides
on every contentious issue cite the same ‘facts’ yet come to completely different
conclusions! If the experts and specialists who have the necessary tools and skills
cannot come to a consensus, what are we—the novices—supposed to do to take
care of our common future?
We live in an age of specialization, super-specialization, and
miniaturization. We need specialized knowledge, but specialization should not
lead to generalization. We cannot view a human being only in terms of biology
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or geology or psychology. Man is too complex a being to be explained away in
any particular way. While there are many variations, broadly speaking, we are
presented with two diametrically contrasting scenarios. One view is that there
are those who see in the world, in the words of Viktor Frankl, ‘nothing-butness’
20 (as distinct from nihilistic ‘nothingness’), who find nothing right in the
modern world, and believe that our civilization will soon implode; that “humans
in our present form will cease to exist, replaced by other species quite unlike our
present selves. A beautiful doom, but doom for us nonetheless”.21 Others take a
diametrically different view, insisting that ours is a better time than any other,
that we are on the launch pad of a planetary civilization, what Joseph Campbell
calls ‘planetary mythology’, an interplanetary habitation that will make man not
only immortal but also a true master of the universe. Then we have the theory
that whatever is happening is natural and pre-ordained and in that sense we
cannot help our behavior, selfish and destructive as it might be. While we play
our doomed parts, they tell us, stop ‘beating your breast, and instead go with
the flow and try to extract as much juice and joy as you can squeeze while you
can. But what they forget is that it has also been said that precisely because
things are so ‘bad’ it is also possible to make a big difference through very little
effort. Because the world around is so dark, even a tiny candle lit or any small
good deed can light up a larger domain and touch more lives than ever before.
As Helena Blavatsky, cofounder of the Theosophical Society and author of the
classic The Secret Doctrine puts it, “Thus, by bearing all the manifold troubles
of this [Dark] Age and steadily triumphing, the object of [man’s] efforts will
be more quickly realized, for, while the obstacles seem great, the powers to be
invoked can be reached more quickly”. It is also said that the elusive goal of
God-realization, is easiest and fastest in this age by simply chanting the divinename,
nama sankirtana, as it is called in Sanskrit. It means that the very sweep
of immorality in present times can be turned into an opportunity to achieve
what man has long sought. It was said that the great Radha–Krishna devotee
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu often recited this verse from the Bhagavad Gita:22 “…
one who always keeps Your holy name on his tongue becomes greater than an
initiated brahmana. Although he may be born in a family of dog-eaters and may
therefore, by material calculation, be the lowest among men, he is still glorious.
This is the wonderful effect of chanting the holy name of the Lord. It is therefore
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concluded that one who chants the holy name of the Lord should be understood
to have performed all kinds of austerities and great sacrifices mentioned in the
Vedas. He has already taken his bath in all the holy places of pilgrimage, he has
studied all the Vedas, and he is actually an Aryan” (one who does not boast, but
is an actual devotee of God or one who is advanced in spiritual knowledge).
Righteous human conduct can be more productive than at any time in recent
human history. Science can also be a catalyst to dispel darkness. It has already rid
man of much age-old suffering associated with debility and disease.
Money—from Summum malum to Summum bonum
We all know that money is not only the most valued thing in the world, but
human life itself would not be possible without money. On the other hand,
although as the Greek philosopher Protagoras said—‘Man is the measure of all
things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they
are not’—money certainly is the measure of everything human, and its ‘nonexistence’
makes human life functionally meaningless. It, above everything else,
is responsible for the moral meltdown of man. We also know that for the sake of
‘more’ money there is nothing man will not do, no barriers he will not cross, no
relationship beyond sundering, no crime too heinous. But money, in essence, is
only a medium and a tool. It will, like a carriage, take us wherever we want to go,
but it will not replace man as the driver. It will give us the wherewithal to satisfy
our desires, but it will not create our desires. Money gives material shape to the
principle that men who wish to deal with one another, must deal by trade and
give value for value. When we accept money as a return for our effort, we do so
only on the assumption that we will be able to exchange it for the product of the
effort of others.
Money cannot purchase happiness nor can the lack of it lead to
unhappiness. It is also a question of degree. Daniel Goleman says, “The rich
may experience more pleasure than the poor but also require more pleasure to be
equally satisfied”.23 It is the mind that makes the difference. As Ayn Rand puts
it in Atlas Shrugged (1957), “Money will always remain an effect and refuse to
replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you
virtue and it will not redeem your vices”. And, “Money is so noble a medium
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that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality”.
She goes on, “So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal
with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle
of a gun”. It is the mind, not money, that calls the shots. It is the way the mind
manipulates money that is responsible for the ills ascribed to money, such as
the skewed distribution of wealth. For example, it has been reported that ‘the
bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people
in the world’.24 The real problem is that money becomes baneful if it flows in
the wrong direction, from workers to nonworkers, from the poor to the rich,
from the creative to the noncreative. The reality is that the creators are often
impoverished and much of the money is held by the work of others, not their
own. Money itself would be good if it were our servant, not the master as it is for
most of us. Money itself would be a great social stabilizer if it represented goods,
labors, and creativity, but it does not.
But strange as it may seem, in this immoral age, money can be made
sacred too. It could become a potent moral tool and spiritual bridge. Contrary to
popular belief, money per se is not innately evil or dirty. It is the mind that matters.
Money can be anything: power, freedom, temptation, provocation, the root of
all evil, the sum of all blessings. If we use it for the right purpose, it is moral.
We must separate earning from spending; just because the money we possess is
lawfully earned does not mean we can spend it as we wish for our wants. We
must view money too, like morality and mortality, indeed like everything else
in the contemporary social context, which includes the stark reality of abysmal
poverty and awful living conditions of over a billion people. And money alone,
in whoever’s hands it might be in, and however little or large, can alleviate, if
not erase poverty. And making money should not be seen simply as a zero-sum
game. We must revive the spirit of philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie, who
maintained that ‘no man can become rich without himself enriching others’.
In this regard, the rich and poor are alike. The rich can do more but, no one
is too poor to help someone poorer or in greater need. Joseph Murphy says, “I
like money, I love it, I use it wisely, constructively, and judiciously. Money is
constantly circulating in life. I release it with joy, and it returns to me multiplied
in a wonderful way”. For the rich to do more, we need to loosen the grip of what
is called ‘lifestyle money’, money we dispense with to conform and maintain
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our comparative style of living, and the attitudes, activities and habits that
come with it. Indeed much, if not most, of our money goes in that direction,
consumed by what is expected of us by the industry and advertisers. The need
to live up to our lifestyle leaves very little. For money to serve the social good,
we must free ourselves from the assumptions and expectations of a ‘good life.
But then, some tricky issues crop up. For example, is it okay to rob a bank and
distribute the money to the poor? Is corruption justified if we give the money to
charity? What takes precedence, righteous earning or righteous sharing? Do ends
justify the means insofar as money is concerned? Buddhism lays stress on what
it calls ‘Right Livelihood’, which implies that we cannot work for