WORK WITHIN: THE SPIRITUAL ANSWER TO LIFE'S PROBLEMS
The Master patiently heard a disciple complain about her husband. She ended her complaints with a question asking him how she could make him a better person. He softly answered,
"You would be happier if you were a better wife."
Shocked with this unexpected answer, she asked, "And how should I be a better wife?"
"By giving up," he said with a smile," your efforts to make him a better husband."
Another disciple asked the Master for permission to go and teach others the Truth. The Master simply said, "Wait." A year later he repeated his request and again the Master said, "Wait." Year after year this went on until finally, in exasperation, the disciple said, "But when will I be ready to teach?" The Master answered gently, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you."
After hearing advice that is unpalatable, many disciples leave the company of the Master; the Master, on his part, knows that he has given them the best advice they could hope to get, and yet he also knows that he has simultaneously thwarted their attempts to go around talking down to others by telling them, in effect, to turn their search-light back to themselves. In short, we, like other disciples, love to scapegoat, love to point out faults in others, but refuse to look into ourselves to see the many weak areas that need correction. This habit of scapegoating is not easily given up either; in fact, the advice of the Master infuriates many disciples so much that they go around bad-mouthing him calling him a fake guru. However, the Master keeps his silence: he knows why he is being slandered; he also knows that his silence might be misinterpreted as guilt and yet, he refrains from exposing his disciples. He turns inwards, looking hard to root out his own weaknesses. He swallows his own medicine: he turns the laser-beam on himself. His relentless self-analysis engrosses him. He is a true Master who teaches by example.
When Ramana Maharshi was asked, "What are your opinions about social reform?" he answered quietly,
"Self-reform automatically brings about social reform...Work within."
There is no denying the fact that there are problems such as poverty, over-population, unemployment, break-down of families, suicides, murders, rapes etc and all these need our urgent attention. But as long as we, as individuals, refuse to confront our own demons, and instead use social work to ESCAPE from these demons, it is inevitable that our own unmet, suppressed needs will find their way out in our interactions with others in the form of destructive anger aimed specifically at the weak.This, in turn, creates a new pool of anger where the victim turns upon the next helpless target. And so on. The chain-reaction is inevitable and far-reaching. Instead of SUBTRACTING the problems of the world and making it a better place to live in, we have merely succeeded in SUBSTITUTING the old problem with a new one. Sometimes the substitute might be worse than that which it has attempted to replace. And the world has not healed because the individual has not healed.
Erich Fromm, in his brilliant study of the deviant mind entitled, "The Anantomy of Human Destructiveness" has taken up Hitler as a case in point. Hitler was an abused and neglected child who grew up with powerful feelings of inferiority and loneliness. These emotional disturbances affected him so much that he failed as an artist and that resulted in his becoming even more of a frustrated individual. We know the result of this unhappy unappreciated individual: how his unhappiness shook the foundations of the world and nearly destroyed all Jews from this planet. Again, pedophiles are themselves known to be victims as children of adult rape and abuse; rapists, it is often seen, have themselves suffered adult molestation when they were children; similarly with drug-addicts,etc. Of course, some of us made bad choices but most often it is found by psychologists and social scientists, that the early years were critical in the individual's character-building. Those that went through periods of neglect, abuse, and humiliation at the hands of stronger or older people are inclined to seek out others on whom to pass on their own anger and viciousness. Colin Wilson, in his study of the serial killer entitled, "The Killer Among Us" has shown how these serial killers suffer from so much low self-esteem that they find killing a way of asserting to the world and to themselves that they do exist.
But this is where society comes in: the strange part about society is that we seem to reward only those that seem to be working towards SOLVING the problem and on the contrary, we as society completely ignore those that PREVENT the problem from arising in the first place. It is not unusual for the good parent to go unnoticed by society; society even considers him or her a bore because they prioritise their family needs over going out for a social do. Nobody rewards the scrupulous parent when he refuses an invitation to an exciting evening because he has to do the household chores; nobody pats him on the back when he stays up in the night to periodically watch over his sick wife and cool her forehead with cold packs to help bring the temperature down. When he squeezes her hand lovingly as she gulps down the bitter cough syrup, no applause is heard. He is unexceptional for society: he is focussed on being a good, caring spouse and parent; promotions don't come to him as fast as they do to somebody who neglects his family because he is focussed on " making it" in the world's eyes. Society admires the latter, neglects the former. And society pays the price sooner or later for this cock-eyed valuation.
We as members of society need to think twice before ignoring the silent workers who form the backbone of a healthy society. Society plays its role in the whole macabre drama because it encourages an imbalanced life that leads to the growth of fragmented personalities. Parts of the personality of the achiever are dark, unknown to the public, parts that do dirty deeds in secret. One day it all comes out, but by then the damage is already done. It seems as if society doesn't care if we are murderous Mr Hydes in the privacy of the night so long as we are smiling, philanthropist Mr Jekylls in the day, in public.
When the sage asks us to turn away from the world and look within he appears to be subtly guiding us away from solving other people's problems and start working on ourselves for a change. The sage wants us to be healed holistically, not in fragments. Fragmentation of the personality, which is also a self-alienated persoanlity, however worthwhile and rewarding it might be in specific areas, is a truly dangerous personality waiting to explode. The fanatic, the rabid rabble-rouser, the ruthless rapist all belong to this dark under-belly of society. The sage, therefore, asks us to remain integrated by always examining our conscience before acting so that we may not be alienated from ourselves.
My heroes are not those movers and shakers of society who ruthlessly pursue their goals, to hell with the consequences and responsibilities. I have started saluting the real people: the quiet husband who rushed to the nearby store at mid-night to get baby asprin; the average woman who smiles and hugs her children in the morning when she awakens them before sending them off to school;the elder child who sits next to the younger brother and teaches him how to answer the next day's test paper, the grand-mother who cancelled her lunch kitty party because the child had been crying all night; the grand-father who took his little child to the hardware store to show him what he needs to fix the kitchen-leak, and treats him to an ice-cream for being a good boy. In their hands alone lies the answer to the problems of the world. God is truly in the little things of life. Yes, the meek shall shall inherit the earth
The best index to a person's character is
(a) how he treats people who can't do him any good and
(b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
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Lata Jagtiani
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