TO IGNORE SRI RAMANA’S CALL OF ‘KNOW YOURSELF’ IS SUICIDAL FOR THE WORLD

[Guest guest]

TO IGNORE SRI RAMANA'S CALL OF `KNOW YOURSELF' IS SUICIDAL FOR THE

WORLD

 

Internationally renowned psychologist Dr. C.G.Jung, who had met the

Maharshi, in his article `The Holy Men of India', published in the

book Psychology and the East (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London)

writes:

 

Sri Ramana is genuine and a phenomenon. He is the whitest spot on a

white surface. His thoughts are beautiful to read. What we find here

is the purest India, the breath of eternity, scorned by the world.

It is the song of ages built upon the one great theme, which

tirelessly and everlastingly rejuvenates itself in the Indian

spirit, whose youngest incarnation is Ramana Maharshi.

 

The Eastern people are threatened with a rapid collapse of their

spiritual values and what replaces them cannot always be counted

among the best that Western civilization has produced… Ramakrishana

and Ramana Maharshi, two modern prophets of India, not only exhort

their compatriots to remember their thousand year old spiritual

culture, they actually embody it. Thus, they serve an impressive

warning, lest the demands of the soul be forgotten amid the

novelties of the Western civilization with its materialistic

technology and commercial acquisitiveness.

 

The breathless drive for power and aggrandizement in the political,

social and intellectual spheres, gnawing at the soul of the

Westerner with apparently insatiable greed, is spreading

irresistibly in the East and threatens to have incalculable

consequences…The materialistic culture may do away with a great many

evils whose removal seems most desirable and beneficial, yet this

step forward, as experience shows, is all too dearly paid for with a

loss of spiritual culture.

 

It is undeniably much more comfortable to live in a well-planned and

hygienically equipped house, but this does not answer the question

of who is the dweller in this house and whether his soul rejoices in

the same order and cleanliness as the house which ministers to his

outer life. The man whose interests are all outside is never

satisfied with what is necessary, but is perpetually hankering after

something more better which, true to his bias, he always seeks

outside himself. He forgets completely that for his all outward

success, he himself remains the same inwardly, and he therefore

laments his poverty if he possesses only one automobile when the

majority have two.

 

To be satisfied with `necessities' is no doubt an inestimable

resource of happiness, yet the inner man continues to raise his

claim, and this can be satisfied with no outward possessions. And

the less this voice is heard in the chase after the brilliant things

of this world, the more the inner man becomes the source of

inexplicable misfortune and uncomprehended unhappiness. The

externalization of life turns to incurable suffering, because no one

can understand why he should suffer from himself. No one wonders at

his insatiability, but regards this as his lawful right, never

thinking that the one-sidedness of this psychic diet leads in the

end to the gravest disturbances of equilibrium. That is the sickness

of the Western man, and he will not rest until he has infected the

whole world with his own greedy restlessness.

 

The wisdom and mysticism of the East have very much to say to us and

to direct our attention to the fate of the inner man, which we sat

aside as a trifling. The life and teaching of Ramana Maharshi are of

significance not only for India, but for the West too. They are a

warning message to a humanity which threatens to lose itself in

unconsciousness and anarchy.

 

prof laxmi narain (prof_narain)

 

Source and courtesy: Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad

This article was published in Sri Ramana Jyothi,

monthly magazine of the Kendram.