The Nature of the True Religious Life - 1.2. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, October 30, 2022. 08:30.

Chapter 1: We are Mysterious Somethings - 2.

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When we begin to get introduced into our relationship with the community outside, education starts. Education begins the moment we begin to realise that we are not confined only to the family—parents, brothers, sisters, etc. The art of conducting ourselves harmoniously in relation to the community and to the people outside the family may be said to be the beginning of education. We know very well how important it is to be harmoniously coordinated with people outside the family also.

Then education expands. It is not enough if we know only our little community. We are introduced into the larger background of the geography and the history of the place in which we are living. Our comprehension expands in two ways. When we go to school and start our educational career, geographical and historical studies are primary. Go back to your school days and remember what you learnt at the very outset. I do not think you studied physics, chemistry and mathematics at the very beginning. There were simpler things, but very important things—a description of the physical location of your own personality: the area, the district, the province in which you live. You were gradually introduced into the geography of your country, and did not study world geography first. Then you were introduced into the historical antecedents of your life—this is India, this is America, this is Europe, etc. So many people lived before you, not only a few family members. You were awakened to a larger dimension of your relationship to people who were before you, and also to the area of land that is around you. This is the kindergarten form, as it were, of the educational career, the beginning or seed form.

As I commenced by saying, our relationships do not exhaust themselves merely with human history, which we may study in our schools and colleges, because the Earth does not contain only human beings. We already know very well that this Earth is inhabited by things other than humans. When I say “things other than humans”, I do not mean merely animals and plants. There are more things on Earth than humans, animals and plants. There are invisible things. Forces which compel the Earth to rotate on its axis and revolve around the Sun are invisible to the eyes. You can imagine the importance of this atmosphere in which you are living. What is it that compels the Earth to move? What is this motive force? Where is the dynamo that pushes it? If the Earth could be pushed with such vehemence by a power or a force that you cannot see with your eyes, can you say that you are not being impacted by this force when you are crawling like an ant on the surface of the Earth? Who can say that this invisible force is not impinging upon you? Can you say that your life is controlled by only your family members or historical personages, or even by the geographical atmosphere?

This little history of humanity, this geography, this family, these great things that are spoken of as world problems and world issues, look so small, petty, meaningless and laughable when we awaken ourselves to the presence of the terrible forces which can push the very Earth in a particular direction. And when the Earth can be pushed with such force, what about human history? Where are our great people, our Napoleons and Caesars? They go like a wisp of wind. They can be blown off like an ant. The great importance that we attach to the phenomenon of human processes in history looks meaningless before these giant forces which we cannot see with our eyes but can only infer by logical deduction.

Education is not merely studying things which we can see with our eyes. That is a gross form of education, but there is a subtle form, which is a study of inferences. For example, mathematics is not an object that we see as something visible to the eyes. We cannot see mathematics with our eyes, but we can conceive what it is. This conceptual learning which is mathematics is more valuable to our lives than the gross things that we see with our eyes. We know very well how important mathematics is in life. This is one example I place before you to indicate that conceptual things and invisible things may be more important than visible things.

Likewise is the case with the powers that determine the life of things. To reiterate what I told you earlier, your life is a bundle of relationships; it is not limited to your physical body. A little common sense will tell you that you exist in this world by coordination, relationships and associations, etc., with other things in the world. Everything that you do, right from the morning to the evening, is nothing but an association that you establish, in some way or the other, with things outside. You cannot exist physically, independently, within your body. No one can exist without some sort of an atmospheric relationship. This atmosphere in which you are integrally placed—not mechanically placed, but very organically placed—is a very vast environment around you.

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To be continued 

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