Where are we heading?

We may increase the knowledge, but I would like to ask-Is happiness increasing? We can see schools and universities multiplying but are happy homes multiplying? Today, the input from the knowledge has taught us to be selfish, speculative and manipulative, more on “my” things are better than yours concept.

Therefore, we cannot see the connection between the “the things as it appears” and “the things in itself” because we can only understand the things as it appears to our sense and understandings. Allen Bradley writes in Future Education: The major portion of human family can see no further than the next meal, the next entertainment thrill, or new acquisitions a new car, flat, TV or the next holiday.

True education should bring the realization that these are a means, not an end. With the help of our sense we can perceive and through our understanding we can conceive. Hegel says, we may indeed arrive at knowledge of the thing in itself through speculative reasoning. Bradley claimed that we cannot come into contact with the thing in itself by reasoning alone, but we can acquire knowledge of it through immediate perception and feeling, by which the thing in itself will appear before us. Reasoning alone is not enough.

These philosophers have tried to approach the ultimate reality with their intellectual arrogance. Philosophy - Philo-sofia - is love of knowledge. Empirical knowledge is acquired by the sense organs, mind and intelligence.

The Gita says mind and intelligence belong to the external potency of the Supreme. That which is transcendental cannot be comprehended by gross or subtle elements. But we are always trying to determine the ultimate reality through empirical processes.

The existence of absolute truth is always existing we cannot approach it but we have to follow the path of Nature of trace it. When one is enlightened by the knowledge that destroys ignorance, all things are revealed in their absolute quality. The sun rises and lights up everything.

As the sun is self-luminous, your attempt to experience it at night will not work because your nature is intrinsically different from the suns. A nature of fire is to burn, nature of water is to cool, nature of Nature itself is to preserve. One has to wait for the rays of the sun to appear before you can see it. Likewise, the Supreme Being is self-effulgent, self-luminous, and by the grace of Nature; alone will we be able to see it.

A study of successful people shows that, self-confidence is the most important factor in life. It can be easily understood by the chair model. Imagine a chair with four legs. If one of its four legs is weak, the chair as a whole will be weak.

The four legs represent self-confidence, which is generated by the following: Good feelings and good social behavior, taking responsibility with being serious, learning and sharing knowledge together with being accountable and developing skills continuously.

Struggle with yourself

The mind is a chooser .It always chooses something against something else. It creates opposition, contradiction in life and extremes; there is a constant inner war, a civil war. Don't choose, remain choice less.

If you repress sex you will be in a constant war, and you can never win. Failure is absolutely certain because the more you fight with sex, the more you give energy to it. The same is the case with anger, jealousy, and greed. Fighting is not the way of wisdom; it is the fool's path, stupid and the mediocre fight.

The intelligent ones transform; they absorb. We have a freedom to choose. We can live an integrated life; we can become an organic unity or we can remain a crowd – many minds, many fragments, and no unity. Each fragment of your mind wants to become the most powerful one. There is constant inner politics.

You cannot find bliss in this constant inner war. When there are many minds there is conflict, discord, a constant civil war. When you are at war within yourself you are at war with existence too; as within, so without. A Deep down in the bottom of your heart, you are one person, pretending on the surface to be somebody else.

There is a constant conflict between the real and the false. The false is appreciated by society, valued, respected, and the real is condemned. You have to learn ways to be two persons.

I don't want the peace of the cemetery. All the graves are silent – no fight, no struggle, no quarrel. I want the peace of a garden in the early morning when birds are singing, flowers are opening, and the sun is rising. My understanding about peacefulness is that it is not a question of being peaceful with anybody. The basic question is being at peace with you. Out of that, peace arises for everybody. Where is the devil?

It is some condemned part of you. There is no enemy but a part of you which has not possibility of spreading from yourself. You can go on fighting, but you will never win. You cannot fight against the devil; you can only play with him. Society is violent, politics is violent, and nations are violent. The state is violent; the church is violent, because they are political games. Even religion is political. Every religion is trying to defeat other religions.

There is a constant struggle going on, a cold war. How long can you go on fighting a cold war? Sooner or later it becomes heated, and then a hot war erupts.

Man has been going through three kinds of wars. One is with nature, another is with other people, and the third is with him. The first war has become science: the war with nature. The second war has become politics: the war with other people. And the third war, unfortunately, has become religion: the war with yourself.