The Inevitability of Knowing Thyself
What is Self? The word has a close affinity to Truth.
The internal 'you' devoid of affectations and pigments making you look different is self.
We put on a certain appearance to show ourselves to the people around us and to the society at large.
Beneath this delicate layer lies the unseen true self.
Knowing, recognizing and understanding the inner self is what is understood broadly as spirituality.
Understanding the world begins with an understanding of self.
Self means, among other things:
In the process of knowing the self, we bother about others and we ignore others.
We calculate and forecast the movements of stars.
We analyze the whole plant and animal kingdoms, their idiosyncrasies and specialties.
These are areas with a near total command at our finger tips.
But are we endowed with any outfits to study the self? As we start analyzing our own self, we encounter several curious facts and discover our most primitive instincts.
The wandering self, right from the kickoff, is practically a bundle of desire.
And desires are unending.
Even as one desire is on the verge of getting gratified, some other desire crops up.
The baby cries with a desire to suckle.
And as we grow up, numerous desires haunt us and make us perennially thirsty and restless.
Desire is a universal instinct and the byproducts of desire are also universal.
Just like desire, another basic human instinct is fear.
Cutting across geographical, ethnic and political barriers, all human beings react in a similar fashion when in fear.
If the jungle dwellers are afraid of attacks by wolves, our ultra- sophisticated friends in Mumbai or New York are perennially afraid of the plunge in stock markets.
Confusion is the root of fear.
Focus a torch at the confusion and see the fears vanishing.
An important component of knowing the self is humility.
The ego plays a funny and disturbing game injecting a delusion that we are unique and we have no parallels.
Such arrogance is blasphemy.
No individual is totally only one of his/her kind.
We all mimic our parents, our teachers, our celebrated heroes and in the process acquire some delusive exclusivity.
And a dispassionate analysis amply reveals this and puts us at ease.
The internal 'you' devoid of affectations and pigments making you look different is self.
We put on a certain appearance to show ourselves to the people around us and to the society at large.
Beneath this delicate layer lies the unseen true self.
Knowing, recognizing and understanding the inner self is what is understood broadly as spirituality.
Understanding the world begins with an understanding of self.
Self means, among other things:
- The body
- The mind
- The emotions
- The life force or the vitality that keeps us alive
In the process of knowing the self, we bother about others and we ignore others.
We calculate and forecast the movements of stars.
We analyze the whole plant and animal kingdoms, their idiosyncrasies and specialties.
These are areas with a near total command at our finger tips.
But are we endowed with any outfits to study the self? As we start analyzing our own self, we encounter several curious facts and discover our most primitive instincts.
The wandering self, right from the kickoff, is practically a bundle of desire.
And desires are unending.
Even as one desire is on the verge of getting gratified, some other desire crops up.
The baby cries with a desire to suckle.
And as we grow up, numerous desires haunt us and make us perennially thirsty and restless.
Desire is a universal instinct and the byproducts of desire are also universal.
Just like desire, another basic human instinct is fear.
Cutting across geographical, ethnic and political barriers, all human beings react in a similar fashion when in fear.
If the jungle dwellers are afraid of attacks by wolves, our ultra- sophisticated friends in Mumbai or New York are perennially afraid of the plunge in stock markets.
Confusion is the root of fear.
Focus a torch at the confusion and see the fears vanishing.
An important component of knowing the self is humility.
The ego plays a funny and disturbing game injecting a delusion that we are unique and we have no parallels.
Such arrogance is blasphemy.
No individual is totally only one of his/her kind.
We all mimic our parents, our teachers, our celebrated heroes and in the process acquire some delusive exclusivity.
And a dispassionate analysis amply reveals this and puts us at ease.
Source...