Q: In the process of making myself happy, if I make somebody else unhappy is it OK?Well, Well, Well, my fellow netizens. As the character of Francis Dolarhyde says in The Red Dragon, while showing his prowess and while preparing to burn alive his captive, "Do you SEE?"
A: Now, you’re talking about happiness as something that you borrow from people around you. See, you must understand, you being happy has got nothing to do with what is happening outside of you. Right now because your energies are so deeply enslaved to the outside, the outside is deciding your inner happiness. Once it is like this, conflict is inevitable. Please see, the conflict in the world is just my happiness versus your happiness. My happiness is Shiva, your happiness is Allah, we have to fight. Because we have decided, we have become incapable of being happy by our own nature; we have to do something to be happy. When you have to do something in the world to be happy, then others also have to do something else to be happy. Today or tomorrow our paths will cross and we will fight. We may pretend that we are all brothers, but when our happiness is under threat we want to shoot the other man!
Let’s say, right now your happiness is in climbing a pole… Now there is somebody else who is sitting on the pole and saying you should not climb this pole because it is a holy pole. The moment he stops you, you become unhappy. If you are weak, you will go away; if you are strong you will pull him down and climb the pole. It is because your happiness depends on climbing this pole that you want to climb it somehow. Suppose you are already happy, and just like that you want to climb this pole and this man says, “No, please don’t climb this pole”. You will go and climb some other pole, and there will be no problem. If you are already happy in your own nature and your life is an expression of your happiness, then there will be no conflict in the world. But as long as you spend your life in pursuit of happiness, today or tomorrow there will be conflict in this world. It doesn’t matter how much you educate people, how much civilisation you apply to them, they will fight.
If my happiness is within myself, and I have organised my energies in such a way that I am naturally happy, then whatever happens in my life, my happiness is never at stake and I will simply do what is needed for the situation I live in. There is no particular reason that I must be doing something, I can sit here without doing anything. If the situation demands I will act and if the situation doesn’t demand I will sit quietly. In your pursuit of happiness, please see how you are burning up the whole planet.
Fortunately, 50 per cent of the world consists of lazy people. If all the seven billion people were very industrious like you, this world would not last for even 10 more years, it would be finished. This world exists not because of the industrious people, but because of the lazy people. They are the ones who are really saving the world. These so-called industrious people with good intentions and absolute stupidity are uprooting the world in so many ways. They have great intentions for people, but if their intentions are fulfilled, the world itself will not be left. So don’t be in pursuit of happiness, know how to express your happiness in the world. If you look back at your life you will see that the most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.
No wonder, once a Guru strips a man of his meaning, he will have to surrender to Him. How can he go back to his now empty life?
This insistence on absolute, continued, untrammeled, autonomous happiness is the mark of a narcissist, mark my words. He is unable to reconcile with any diminishing in his happiness due to a vagary of circumstance. He wants it all, at his terms, for all the time. Others can die, for all he cares.
Ayn Rand was wrong in so many ways, but she was right about these moochers.
"For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners." (Ayn Rand, The New Intellectual)The problem is not that these people are seeking and finding some "spurious" meaning in their lives. After all, an industrious man is finding meaning in his work etc, driven by mass media, and is enslaved thereby. The problem is that the spiritual "establishing in oneself" depends upon a condemnation of the world outside, the world which you are objectively a part of, and take sustenance from. It is to condemn the very air that one breathes from.
A spiritualist is self-righteous to a rather extreme degree, and looks down upon others' "shallow" lives. He has to do it, that's the path to grandiosity, to "abiding in oneself". His meaning derives from the condemnation of meanings of others. Smug is the word.
In short, a spiritualist's meaning is dependent upon the rejection and condemnation (as above) of others' normal pursuits. A religious man may rail against another religion, but a spiritualist rails against the whole "sorry world".
14 comments:
The primary cause of disorder in ourselves (hence around) is in the seeking of reality promised by another - whether spiritual or industrial or the usual.
@anonymous.
You do realize that the first part of your sentence is by J Krishnamurti, ironically from the book "Freedom from the Known".
He, while claiming to be different, was also peddling similar wares as Mr Vasudev in the marketplace, and living opulently thereby.
UGK comes to mind.
It depends - whether you are just investigating or self-investigating. More important on this journey is freedom from what we know. You seem to have too much on your mind that it again and again brings you to UG or Jaggi or JK or the silence of Mehr Baba. Discard them and be free once and for all if you are really done with them. They have lived their life in the best possible manner known to them and inspired many to do so intentionally or unintentionally is factually hard to know.
Well said Anonymous!
This is what exactly required for this blog writer!
Thanks
@anonymous
More important on this journey is freedom from what we know.
Can you explain what you mean by "freedom from what we know"? As far as I understand, and neurologists would agree, life is an accumulation of knowledge and memories, not a journey towards unknowing.
A child is unknowing. Are you suggesting we live in a more child-like here-and-now way?
If the below explanation fit into your way of thinking -
For example, you invested many years on "AF" and found it is not suitable for you.
If you are free from knowledge - does not mean forget every thing you learned from "AF" - but be free from the knowledge of "AF". In such case, you will not have any need to justify your rejection of "AF" - "AF" is not suitable for you, you just rejected it. You will not have any urge to project that "AF" is unsuitable idea, because you are really free from what you know about "AF", even though the knowledge of "AF" is still in your brain and you may apply it if really a need arises for that application. In such situation, you are free from "AF" knowledge so that the application of its concepts in that particular situation will not bring in any negative feelings with in you. Because you are free from the knowledge of "AF" whether you reject that t or accepted that as a complete concept. Part of it may still applicable to you. In other words, you have gone thru' and transcended the concepts of "AF". Now it will never affect you in any way. This is "Freedom from Known"
Thanks
It is difficult to say it in few words. It is unknowing after using all the faculties of knowing. In another sense it could be disburdening ourselves (both in-favour or against) from everything which is not our experience and be thoroughly open to the possibilities that may be yet be beyond our current experience.
Real freedom would be when we don't need neurologists or spiritualists to testify our experience of life.
Living in the here and now is quite uplifting as per my experience but I will not like to term that as child-like in experience. From a observers point of view it may seem so.
@change:
In such case, you will not have any need to justify your rejection of "AF" - "AF" is not suitable for you, you just rejected it.
I think there is benefit in understanding a rejection and in sharing one's perspective, so that something fruitful, or an alternative may come into view.
@anonymous:
Real freedom would be when we don't need neurologists or spiritualists to testify our experience of life.
That is called "cocooning". :-) I know such people who disregard what others say about them, as "they don't really understand me". This is a slippery slope to narcissism and delusion and self-proclaimed grandeur.
What would you call a godman who says he is free, and who condemns scientists and neurologists as dumb, but who is mooching off his disciples? Should we say that he is in "real freedom" or in "great denial"?
Nope. Slippery it certainly is, but not necessarily self-deluding. There definitely is a caution here!
It needs to be seen that you are blowing the same balloon over and over again. Its seems to be another filtered categorical hang-up of yours with which you see yourself and specially others. Just another 'ist' on your list 'the narcist'.
The only way to have a real conversation on this is if you stick to your own experience than what the Goddamn says.
contd.
And your experience includes your learning too, once its part of your understanding, doesn't matter from where it got initiated, the way Change has suggested as above.
//I think there is benefit in understanding a rejection and in sharing one's perspective, so that something fruitful, or an alternative may come into view.//
It is true and very important, if the intention is as stated above. But from your recent postings, it is evident that the intention is just not that one. But coming out with new theories which have many, many negativities about life. (It is an assumption based on recent postings on this blog. May be wrong also).
Being learned about psychology, brain, philosophies, and so many things, you must be aware about the functioning of conditioned mind. Conditioning is not only for others mind, but our own mind also is conditioned. Due to the knowledge we acquired and the over confidence on that knowledge, we often fail to recognize the conditioning of our own mind. This is where one needs to be free from the knowledge.
Recently, you have written so many negativities of life. Of course the life is like that, but also your writings suggest that to avoid those negativities, cling on to what we are now. It may me a good suggestion, but it needs extraordinary understanding of “what we are now”. If not, it will be pushing oneself into negativity.
Unfortunately, you have not given any such hints about it before making the recent postings. Hence, have a doubt that whether you recognized this fact or not. If you are completely aware about all these traps, it is fine. If not one can never escape from that trap and push one to the ground level at the end.
Hence, it may be fruitful to have a complete re-look on your new path, with complete freedom from what you have learned from all the Gurus or so called Gurus or so called philosophers – eastern or western! The possibilities are that you may proceed on your already selected new path, but on this trial you may leave behind some of the negativities.
Thanks!
Why is it that if someone writes something that someone else doesn't agree with, the person is labeled negative?
Why bash and judge harmanjit when he is obviously using his critical thinking skills?
It seems to me that the very people who judge him and tell him what he should or shouldn't say (or do or write) are the purest example of negativity.
Hey Harman, I have read few of your posts. I would like to disagree with you, and yes I have attended Isha programs. You might dismiss my comment, on the notion that I belong to Isha. All the enlightened beings utter more or less words with similar meanings. Refer Osho or Rumi. If we are too much analytical, we miss the point. May be if you get a chance, please meet him and clarify/argue/debate. Best wishes!
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