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These are the central problems of mankind
and these are also the problems of one who seeks a universal remedy for all
human suffering, who wishes to contact reality in all its degrees and live
rather than suffer life in this world, which is otherwise a bounty and
abundance. This is really a world of mutual amity, a world of brotherly
cooperation, a world of psychological concord, a world of spiritual unity among
all its contents, sentient as well as insentient. The world appears to be
otherwise due to the aberrations-detailed above. Meditation cuts at the root of
these aberrations in every level and one who is successful in meditation is a
universal man, a citizen of all the worlds. To achieve success in such a
meditation is indeed to solve a large question. It is necessary, at the outset,
for one to seek a meaning in the world which is outwardly chaotic and to
recognise a pattern and purpose in creation as a whole, which, otherwise, for a
casual look, appears to be just heavenly bodies scattered higgledy-piggledy in
space with no organic unity anywhere. The world appears to be purely mechanistic
in the Newtonian sense of the term, or rather in the modern materialistic
sense. This outward view of the world which is taken as the final explanation
of things is today threatening to convert man into a beast, when people are
ready to fly at the throats of each other, seeing no sanctity in human life,
nothing sacred anywhere in the world. This is a glaring error which is brought
into relief by the daily miseries of mankind one sees today in a world bereft
of all spiritual values. The power of love is giving way to the authority of
hatred. And, today, if there is no world war, it is not because people love
each other, but because they hate and fear each other equally. All this is
because life seems to have no meaning other than a hunting game for catching
prey in the night of human ignorance.
The historical process, as philosophers of
history would amply certify, is not an account of dates, kings and wars, but a
study of human values and life's significances, as thinkers like Hegel in the
West, for instance, attempted to explain through a much broader vision of
things than the ordinary man of the street can hope to entertain. There is
ultimately a great rationality behind history, a meaning which is at once
sociological, economic, political, moral, religious and spiritual. All the laws
that operate in any section of society are really invested with a meaning
beyond themselves; everything is a process of the higher discovering itself in
the lower, a veritable self-discovery.
A remedial process should be a keenly
psychological technique of avoiding excesses in everything, steering clear of
stress on one's life, both personally and socially, taking a whole view of
things, as far as possible, when one has to face life daily, and to adopt a
system of the- Yoga of meditation as a panacea for human ills. But man wishes-
to forget himself when he is worried and when he is in pain, rather than
discover himself, which would have been the proper thing to do. People usually
try to drown their worries in large noises such as of the radio, in stirring
and stimulating sights, such as of the cinema, and hope to fill the emptiness
of their lives with hectic activity, moneymaking, power-mongering, increasing
the speed of life, searching for constant excitement of the senses, drinks and
drugs. By these means, one becomes a stranger to one's own self and lives a
most pitiable sort of life of an agony of nerves and of mind, difficult to
explain in language.
No meaning can be sought in life by fleeing
from oneself, but rather by turning towards the true self which is in everyone.
This is the art of self-discovery. This is the way of meditation.
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