To quote Sri Aurobindo:
"There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother. One is then aware of two consciousnesses, the inner one and the outer which has to be changed into its counterpart and instrument-that also must become full of peace, light, union with the Divine. At present you are moving between the two and in this period all the feelings you have are quite natural. You must not be at all anxious about that, but wait for the full development of the inner consciousness in which you will be able to live." |
Moralists and spiritualists argue that if people are transformed and they are guided by love, detachment and compassion they will act only in the interest of society. The Gita, a major source of Hindu ethics, calls it Loksangraha (welfare). On the other hand if people are greedy, impatient, too much competitive, selfish, too much calculative, too much worldly, and lacking in love and compassion, under all kinds of systems power is likely to be more abused for private gains than for social purposes. Systems cannot be thought of in abstraction. Systems are about norms and institutions. To implement those norms and institutions you need committed and dedicated people. That is why all religions lay stress on transforming man. They assume that if man is transformed everything will be transformed. To follow Gita, a person devoted to truth and life of celibacy is a happy person. A person devoted to desires or ill-will towards others can never be happy.
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