|
Need for Balanced Existence
There are not merely two sides to existence. The two sides have to
be balanced if one is to lead a full and productive existence. All of
us live, but few lives have real content, real worth in them. The bulk
of humanity leads an animal existence motivated by lust, inspired by
fear and driven by lower urges and appetites unworthy of being called
even remotely human. So, balance has to be brought into our lives. As
Master says, a bird flies on two wings. Cut off one, and the bird will
crash to the earth. It is immaterial how strong the wings are. No bird
can fly on one wing alone.
What my Master offers in the form of a simple analogy is one of his
profoundest thoughts. When we, in our ignorance or in our one-sided
approach to life, neglect either half of it, we are surely headed for
disaster. It is immaterial whether we neglect the spiritual half or
whether we neglect the material half of life. Both are equally necessary,
in fact vital to our full existence. Without either of them, our lives
are incomplete and such a life can end in nothing but the frustration
and despair of an incomplete situation.
So the spiritual life must have its attention, the material life must
have its attention too. My Master says, "Establish balance between
the two lives - the material and the spiritual." Don't run away
from the material life into the jungle and do not come out here as a
gross materialist forgetting the spiritual existence. Balance it. Because
anything without balance is doomed. A plane which can fly with one wing
dipped, will go round and round. It gets nowhere. This is what we are
doing.
All these ideas of 'Punarjanma' (rebirth) are nothing but our
circling round and round the same environment - no escape. And we blame
God- saying "He is blind. He is not kind, keeping us imprisoned
here." God says, "Balance your existence. Make the two wings
level and even I cannot stop you from flying straight." So this
is the essence of spirituality. In Sahaj Marg, we don't ask you for
the unnatural things demanded in other paths like sleeping on a bed
of nails, and not eating food for 46 days, standing on one's head, impossible
celibacy, things like that. But we do say, "Establish a balance.
Give equal attention to the spiritual as to the material."
Our ancient forefathers neglected the material existence negating it
almost totally. We modern ones today tend to ignore the spiritual life
almost as completely. The pendulum seems to have swung from one extreme
to the other with a vengeance. Our forefathers and we ourselves have
both suffered in the bargain by leading incomplete, truncated lives,
while all the while thinking we are following the correct way of life.
All that we are doing is to do the exact opposite of what our progenitors
did. And that is certainly not a wise way of finding a solution to the
ills besetting humanity. Therefore it is necessary to understand that
it is not important which side of life we neglect. Neglect of either
is wrong and will give us incomplete and unproductive lives. Such a
life will be one of dissatisfaction, misery, insecurity and frustration,
giving one a feeling that one has lost the way somewhere when walking
on the road of life. This is true of all human beings, whether male
or female, rich or poor, sick or healthy, and whether conventionally
a success or not.
We have been having ascetic practices, which say, "No family life,
no house life, go to the jungle, meditate on God, become an ascetic,
become a sanyasi, become a rishi." The other side
of life says, "No spirituality, no morality, no values, no ethics,
forget it; concentrate on material success." But here is a system
which comes, I think, at a very vital moment in our social evolution
- at best in our country, where it is possible to balance the aspiration
in two different fields, under one common heading of personal evolution.
It is my Master's repeated statement that personal evolution cannot
be complete unless it is fully, harmoniously developed existence, embracing
all aspects of existence.
If only one side is developed, it is like a man having a most powerful
right arm, and left arm is polio-struck, and it is dangling by his left
side. He can't use it. We have seen so many instances of these unfortunate
people or like an intellectual giant, whose physical existence has no
meaning whatsoever. Or like some of these mafia people who are enormously
intelligent, have enormous power of wealth, of crime behind them, but
nothing else. Or a philosopher who does not know modern life, who cannot
cross a street. In every case there has been one exaggerated tendency
or power, which has been exaggerated out of all proportions. My Master
gave and it is one of His famous and oft-repeated quotations, a definition
that 'saintliness means balance of all human faculties'. It does
not mean exaggeration. Every faculty in us must be balanced.
|
