Materialism – Its Effects On Man And Society

 

1. One tries to fulfill his desires for name, fame, money, power, position and everything else, and after he has done so, a time comes when he realizes that these are all very small things; but until he has fulfilled these desires, has passed through these activities, it is impossible for him to come to a state of calmness, serenity and self-surrender.

2. The greater the indulgence the more is the disenchantment; desires cannot be satisfied by the enjoyment of senses.

3. Man goes after sensual-enjoyments, vanities of the world and like animals he lives only in the senses, lives only for a momentary titillation of nerves. When there comes a blow then for a moment his head reels and everything begins to vanish, and he at last finds that the world is not what he thought it to be, that life is not so smooth. As a result, the desire to sacrifice the whole world to make himself happy, vanishes.

4. Every human being who has tasted the fruits of this world must give up in the latter part of his life and he who does not, is not a man and has no more right to call himself so. The ideal is to give up after seeing and experiencing the vanity of things. After finding out that the heart of the material world is hollow, containing only ashes, one must give it up and go back. The Pravritti has to stop and Nivritti has to begin.

5. Sensual life may be all right in the forenoon of life but in the afternoon spiritual development should be the goal.

6. Vedanta never said, ‘don’t enjoy, don’t satisfy your needs’; what it said is that beyond a certain limit, you should put a check on it. We are asked just to discipline our sensory system, this psychic system to develop a great character. When you leave the mind and the energies of the senses (sense organs) to themselves and not discipline and train them, you become your own enemy.

7. Here it should be noted that when we talk of curtailment of sensual pleasures, it refers only to the ‘Rajasik and Tamsik’ and not to the ‘Satwik’. For example, when you are enjoying the warm sunshine of the cold winter days, it is also a kind of sensual pleasure but it is of the ‘Satwik’ nature, which should be always encouraged as it leads to external and internal-development of the enjoying person.

8. Similarly, the distinction between desires and needs must also be well understood. ‘Needs’ relates to the objects necessary for your survival and basic comforts while the word ‘Desire’ in yoga is used to denote the tendency of running after ‘Rajasik/Tamsik’ sensual pleasures or ego based pleasures namely, name, fame, power, status etc. On the other hand the desire for inner-growth, for knowing the truths of life, are good desires being very much different from the material desires.

9. He alone is wise who can discriminate between necessary and unnecessary.

10. If we consider man to be only a body, then the purpose of living will tantamount to enjoyment of senses, enjoyment of possessions and wealth. Our idea of life will be that of sheer enjoyment.

11. If we seek only bodily comforts, where is the difference between man and animals? Food, sleep, procreation and fear exist in common in them. There is only one difference. Man can control all these and does it. One is the master of senses, another the slave.

12. The people for whom this world is enjoyment of senses and whose whole life is spent in eating and feasting, there is no difference between them and the wild beasts.

13. The man who lives in ignorance and enjoys is no better than a beast. Yet there are many who, though steeped in ignorance and pride, think that they are great sages and go round and round in many crooked ways like the blind led by the blind. They deny this and the other world and again and again undergo the cycle of births and deaths.

14. The ordinary man lives a life of eating, drinking and amassing wealth, perhaps by cheating others, leads a selfish life of pleasure or power for a few years and then one day dies. Whether he lived or not does not make any difference to the world though he thinks too much of himself, as if he is the centre of the world and the world is meant to subserve his ends. Such people too will learn the great lesson after some knocks from life perhaps, that to be alive is not merely to live biologically and that the life of a man is much more than the body. We often forget the great truth that our life is also beyond the body, that this present, this expressed, is only a part of that unexpressed.

15. Then there is the tremendous fact of death. The whole world is going towards death; everything dies. All our progress, our vanities, luxuries, wealth and knowledge, have that one end – death. Death is the end of everything. Death is the end of the life, beauty, wealth and power. We all are inching towards death and yet this tremendous clinging to life exists. Somehow, we do not know why we cling to life; we can not give it up! This is Maya. This world is a hideous world. At best, it is the hell of Tantalus. This indecent clinging to life is the source of all evils and miseries. It causes all this cheating and stealing. It makes money the God and all vices and fears ensue.

16. God has given everything to man but has kept death with himself as
otherwise man would become a demon.

17. Why does a man indulge in vice? By imitation. When he sees another sinner prospering and enjoying the fruits of his sin, he too gets attracted to vice because who knows who will outlast whom, the spectator imitator or the perpetrator. If the first one dies first then he will not be alive to see the ultimate fate of the sinner and hence men, running out of patience, are always heard to repent their adherence to the path of ‘Dharma’ or morality.

18. If one can learn to live with whatever one has, then for him life will be a poem; for most of us life is a prose because even if we are made the kings of the whole world and get possession of all the objects of pleasure, there is no guarantee that we will be happy. Contentment is greater than the attainment of heaven. Satisfaction is the greatest pleasure, there is nothing beyond that pleasure.

19. One, who is born, will surely die. One, who rises high, must fall; that is inevitable. Union and separation is certain and depletion of any accumulated thing is sure. Knowing this, wise people don’t get overwhelmed by pleasure or pain. They maintain a stoic equanimity and are called man of steady wisdom.

20. ‘O Partha, when a man is satisfied in the Self by the Self alone and has completely cast off all desires from the mind then he is said to be of steady wisdom———- When he completely withdraws his sense organs from the objects of senses as a tortoise withdraws its limbs, then his wisdom becomes well established.’

21. “Where it is dark night for the sense-bound, the self-controlled man is awake and where the world is awake, the sage sleeps”. Where is the world awake? In the senses. People want to eat, drink and have children and then they die like dogs. Both perfection and enjoyment present themselves before man. The wise man chooses perfection as being superior to sensual enjoyments but the foolish man chooses the latter and goes to dogs.

22. The self-controlled person who has acquired mastery over the six senses (five sense organs and the sense-bound mind) within himself, he is tainted neither by sin nor by other evils!

23. In wealth is the fear of poverty, in knowledge the fear of ignorance, in beauty the fear of age, in fame the fear of back-biters, in success the fear of jealousy, in body the fear of death. Everything on this earth is fraught with fear. He alone is fearless who has become free of the sensual pleasures.

24. Except truth everything including vice is mortal.

25. He is free, he is great, who turns his back upon the world, who has renounced everything, who has controlled his passions, who is free from greed. One may gain political and social independence, but if one is a slave to his passions and desires, one cannot feel the joy of real freedom.

26. All miseries come from unsatisfied desires. When the senses are held as slaves by the human soul and can no longer disturb the mind then the goal is reached. When one knows that he is perfect then he will be no longer miserable. When all the vain desires of the heart have been given up, all the knots of the heart are cut asunder, then this very mortal will become immortal even in this very body, and be one with God.

27. Behind all the crimes, drug and sex explosions currently rocking our civilization, there are unsatisfied cravings and the absence of seeking for higher values. This is the reason why so many criminals come out of the educated and well-to-do sections of our society. Ironically, people, poor in pocket, are not so criminal, not so psychically distorted as the people who are poor in heart. One is poor and the other is poverty-stricken. Indeed, he is poverty-stricken whose sensual cravings are vast and endless; but when one’s mind is happily contented then it matters very little whether one is rich or poor. One who is dissatisfied even though being rich, he is always the poor; whereas one who is always satisfied even while being poor, he is always the rich. All wealth belongs to one who is satisfied. Who is poor? One who has great desires. Who is rich? One who is fully satisfied!

28. When my desires are endless and honest earnings are not enough to satisfy them, I become poverty-stricken and a thief, a criminal and I have to rob somebody. Most of the acts of wayside robberies and other similar misdeeds or the acts of cheating are done by people with endless desires for material things. They have not learnt to discipline their sense organs and mind and crime is the only way left to them. Today, we are going on extending our knowledge of physical sciences, sociology, politics, economics and psychology and all this knowledge is oriented to stimulate our animal appetite and to stifle the Divinity within us, which does not help in the unfoldment of man beyond his sensory and intellectual dimensions. But it is precisely there, beyond sensory and intellectual dimensions, that exists which is pure, lofty, strengthening, humanising and creative.

29. Don’t involve yourself in the life of senses so much that you forget where you have been, and where you are going. By indulging in sensual-enjoyments man contracts all vices; on the other hand, when they are controlled and regulated, he attains spiritual freedom and fulfillment. Inordinate involvement in the world of senses creates distraction in the mind and is not conducive to your mental peace or spiritual development. So you have to be the master of your mind and senses. Let the mind and senses work as your servants and let them not cross their limits.

30. We are all babies absorbed in seeking money, possessions and all other material things unmindful of the fact that everything that has selfishness as its basis, competition as its right hand and enjoyment as its goal must die sooner or later. Such things must die.

31. The foolery of materialism leads to competition and undue ambitions and finally to death, both for the individual and the nation.

32. The fountain of happiness is right there inside you. Don’t make futile attempts to search for it outside in the world of senses. This phenomenal world is an illusion through which we have to pass to discover our real nature. Our real nature is beyond both pleasure and pain before whom turns the pages of the book of life.

33. He who in this world of evanescence, finds Him who is changeless, who is the one life in this universe of death, who is one in manifold and realizes so in his soul, unto them belongs eternal peace, to none else. Where to find Him? In the external world – suns, moons and stars! There the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars! What to speak of this mortal fire? He shining, everything else shines.

34. When a man finds no peace within, it is useless to seek it outside.

35. If the mind is not under control, there is no use of living in a forest because such a mind will bring all the disturbances there. We will find twenty devils there because the devils are in the mind and not in the forest.

36. The world is neither true nor untrue, it is the shadow of the truth. This world is a relative world, a shadow of the real; still being the plane of equipoise where happiness and misery are near evenly balanced, it is the only plane where man can realize his true Self and become God.

37. Karma-yoga means helping others even at the point of death and that too without any desire for gratitude, name, fame, power or pelf. The true life of work as a householder is indeed as hard as the true life of renunciation of a sage. Therefore, it is irrelevant to say that the man who lives out of the world is a greater man than one who lives in the world; it is much more difficult to live in the world and worship God than to give it up and live a free and easy life. For him whose desires are under control, living in the midst of his family is the same as retiring into the forest for Tapasya.

38. The world should be renounced but not abandoned. To live in the world and not to be of it, is the true test. Do not give up the world; live in the world, imbibe its influences as much as you can, but if it is only for your own enjoyment’s sake, work not at all. Enjoyment is the million headed serpent that we must tread underfoot.

39. Renunciation is not asceticism, not going to the forest; it is a state of mind. When the man is under the control of his senses, he is of this world. When he has controlled the senses, he has renounced. Give up the worldly desires mentally, if not physically. Give up from the core of your heart.

40. It is selfish to think that the whole world is made for our enjoyment. So, we should have a desire to live a long life of helpfulness, blissfulness and activity on this earth. There is no other way. If a man plunges headlong into the foolish luxuries of the world without knowing the truth, he cannot reach the goal. And if a man curses the world, goes into the forest, mortifies his flesh and kills himself little by little of starvation, makes his heart a barren waste, kills out all feelings and becomes harsh, stern and dried up then that man has also missed the way. These are two extremes, the two mistakes on either ends. Both have lost the way, both have missed the goal.

41. There are men who are never attached to anything but at the same time they can never love. They are hard-hearted and apathetic, and though they escape most of the miseries of life, still they are akin to walls which never feel any misery, love or joy but are just walls. It is better to be attached and caught than to be a wall. Therefore, the man who never loves, who is hard and strong, though he escapes most of the miseries of life yet he escapes also its joys. We do not want that because it is weakness, it is death. That is a callous state, we do not want that.

42. Going after wealth is better than to lead an idle and lazy life provided the wealth is for distribution. It is a worship to acquire and spend wealth for a noble cause for a householder who struggles to become rich by good means and for good purpose. He is doing practically the same thing for the attainment of salvation as the anchorite does in his cave when he is praying; for in them we see the different aspects of the same virtues of self-surrender and self-sacrifice.

43. Acquiring wealth for social well-being is not bad. We should use only that minimum of it for ourselves, the denial of which will hamper our capacity to serve.

44. With your good food, nice clothes and your comfortable homes, O sleeping man! Do you ever think of the millions that are starving and dying?

45. The rich man has no time to think of any thing beyond his wealth and power, his comforts and indulgences. They always think that if they become truly religious they will have no more fun in life.

46. “That which is beyond, never arises in the mind of a thoughtless child deluded by the folly of riches. The time of the rich is mostly spent in enjoying their wealth and aping others.”

47. Those whose eyes have been blinded by the glamour of material things, whose whole thrust of life is on eating, drinking and enjoying, whose ideal of possession is lands and gold, whose ideal of pleasure is that of the senses, whose God is money and whose goal in life is a life of ease and comfort in this world and death after that, whose minds never look beyond and who rarely think of anything higher than the objects of senses, in midst of which they live, to whom enlightenment means dress, enjoyment and politics, vain is their human birth; vain have been their years of struggle only to become the men of sensual-enjoyments.

48. Unhappiness is the fate of those who are content to remain as they are, indulgent in the world of senses. But death is better than an ignorant life. It is better to die in the battlefield than to live a life of defeat.

49. While the man from the West tries to possess more to enjoy more, the man from the east thinks that with how little of material possessions he can do with. The one is trying to solve the problem as to how much a man can possess, the other as to on how little a man can live.

50. Those who train themselves to live on the least and control themselves well, will in the end gain the battle and those who run after enjoyments and luxuries, however vigorous they may seem for the moment, will perish and be forgotten. This is why nations after nations have come upon the stage of the world, played their roles vigorously for a few moments and died almost without leaving any mark or ripple on the ocean of time. India has seen mighty nations, rise and fall, whose aim have been only the power of conquest and the glory of this life. There comes a time in the life of every individual as well as every nation when a sort of world-weariness becomes painfully predominant, and at last they find that this race for gold and power is just a vanity of vanities and they become wearied of the competition, the struggle, the brutality of the commercial civilization.

51. Like babies, all of us are absorbed in seeking money and other objects of senses; but a time will come when we will wake up and rush to the Mother. Like the mother-monkey, we hug our “baby” the world, as long as we can, but at last when we are driven to put it under our feet and step on it, then we are ready to come to God.

52. This world is the place for action, not for enjoyment, and every one will go home when his job is done, some earlier, some later, that is all. We are here to work and not on a vacation. When the call comes we will have to leave all. In the evening of life we must all come home, to the arms of the Mother.

53. Unfortunately, most of us have sold ourselves for the acquisition of worldly things though we are expected to work without desire for name or fame or rule over others. We should cast away, as a serpent throws its slough, the triple bond of lust, greed and fame. Every body should know that there is no salvation except by conquering of vain desires and no man is free who is the subject to the bondage of matter.

54. Every day we run after pleasure and before we reach it, we find it gone, it has slipped through our fingers. Still we do not cease from our mad pursuit. How long will you go on? How long will you be like that old man who spent all his life in prison and when let out, begged to be brought back into his dark and filthy dungeon cell? This is the case with all of us. We cling with all our might to this low, dark, filthy cell called the world – this hideous, chimerical existence where we are kicked about like a football by every wind that blows.

55. “Not knowing the power of flame, the insect falls into it.
The fish swallows the bait, not knowing the hook inside.
That well aware of the vanities and dangers of the world,
we cannot give it up – such is the power of delusion.”

56. The senses are powerful they drag us down. We are seeking for pleasure and happiness where it can never be found. Though for countless ages we have been taught that this is futile and vain, there is no happiness here, yet we cannot learn; it is impossible for us to do so except through our own experiences. We try them and a blow comes. Do we learn then? Not even then. Like moths hurling themselves against the flames, we are hurling ourselves again and again into the pleasures of senses, hoping to find satisfaction there. We return again and again with fresh energy; in this way we go on, till crippled and cheated we die.

57. We, the born slaves of nature, money and possessions, wives and children, are always chasing the wisp of straw (a mere chimera) as a bullock in an oil mill. We are going through innumerable rounds of lives without obtaining what we seek. The more we go towards happiness, the more it goes away from us. And in the end, this wild goose chase of happiness and pleasure leads us nowhere.

58. “’Hope’ is the most wonderful thing in the world. Day and night we see people dying around us and yet we think that we shall not die or suffer. Each man thinks that success will be his, hoping against hope, against all odds. Nobody is ever really happy here.”

59. The person whose every moment is occupied with some sort of sensual-enjoyment, even to him death comes and he is compelled to enquire, “Is this life of sense-enjoyment real? Religion begins with this question and ends with its answer. But you cannot hear the voice of your conscience till you silence your sense cravings.

60. Our search for happiness is one of the chief cause of our misery. Happiness is a state of mind, it doesn’t live in material objects; nobody can make us happy except we ourselves.

61. We run after everything to make ourselves happy; we pursue madly the things of sensual-enjoyments in the external world. If you ask a young man, he will declare it real. Perhaps, when the same man grows old and finds fortune ever eluding him, he will then declare it as fate. He finds at last that his desires cannot be fulfilled.

62. The circle of our vision has become so narrow, degraded and beastly that none desires anything beyond this body. People are so engrossed in satisfying their hunger for food and lust that they are forgetting everything. If we deprive them of this blind pursuit they will find their lives empty, meaningless and intolerable. Such are we and such are our minds! It is unabatedly hankering for the ways and means to satisfy the hunger of the stomach and sex. Children forget everything in their play; the young ones are mad after the enjoyment of senses, without caring for anything else; and the old ones are brooding over their past misdeeds or chewing the cud, that is the best what they can do.

63. We are spending all the energies of life in getting things and before we have got them, death comes and we have to leave them all. All the people who just work and labour like machines do not really enjoy life; it is the wise man that enjoys, the ignorant only works for others unconsciously.

64. “Desires are never satisfied by the enjoyment of desires, they only increase the more, as fire, when butter is poured upon it. Desires make slaves of us, it is the insatiable tyrant who gives its victims no respite.”

65. “Desires are like fire, it is better to save oneself from them. Don’t fuel the fire of desires, it will lead to your annihilation.”

66. There are three gates to self-destruction – lust, anger and greed.

67. We become decrepit with age, but not so desires. Even after the body becomes old and dilapidated, our desires continue to be young. This is the dilemma of the human mind.

68. The luxuries of today become the necessities of tomorrow and thus goes on the endless struggle for more and more satisfaction of desires and lust. Material desires and sensual enjoyments have no limit. The more you enjoy, the more you crave for them. Our satisfied desires give rise to a host of other desires and the chain becomes endless.

69. There is a limit to the working power of the human beings but no limit to their desires; so they strive to get hold of the working powers of others and enjoy the fruits of their labour, escaping work themselves. In gratifying their desires, they want more and more without an end and in the process they die with ungratified desires and have to be born again and again in vain search of their satisfaction. The shastras say that we have to journey through eighty-four lacs of bodies before we reach the human form.

70. When we start to consider money, acquired by human exploitation, as the only means of satisfaction of our material desires, we become stagnant.

71. Human needs can be satisfied but not the human greed. Never. If greed operates in a society then millions of people will have to go without elementary needs.

72. This human mind, like the monkey is incessantly active by nature, and when it becomes overwhelmed with the wine of desires, it becomes more turbulent. Possessed by desires man becomes jealous of others and then enters the demon of pride, the delusion of self-importance.

73. An obsessive thinking of the pleasures of the senses pulls one down, to cry one moment, to rejoice the next, to be at the mercy of every breeze, slave to everything. Conquer yourself and the whole universe is yours!

74. As long as we do not subdue our mind, we cannot get rid of our desires, we cannot control our restless mind. Hence the knowledge of truth, subjection of mind and abandonment of desires are the ways of spiritual bliss. So, even while asleep we should keep the sword of discrimination at the head of our bed so that covetousness cannot approach us even in our dreams.

75. At the pre-human stage of evolution organic satisfaction, survival and numerical increase were the three goals for every man, but today they are accepted as relevant only at the pre-human phase of evolution. At the human phase, they become secondary and fulfillment (Qualitative enrichment) is deemed to be the primary goal. It is called in biological terms the ‘psycho-social evolution’.

76. Life of senses will drag us down on the scale of evolution. It is nothing but sheer devolution.

77. Man is supposed to be at the top on the scale of evolution. We are here to know the truths, not for enjoyment. Leave that to the brutes who enjoy as we never can. One who wants to know the truth must give up all desires for gain in this world or in the life to come. So long as there is least desire in the heart for the world, truth will not come. This human body is the vessel given by God to enable us to attain the truth, the vessel in which we are to cross the ocean of our lives and reach the shore of eternal truth.

78. The human being, with an extraordinary instrument called cerebral system, has become stagnant at the sensory level, worldliness; what a tragedy! May Lord make us aware of the danger of lust and greed and help us to get rid of them!

79. It is sheer blasphemy to say or think that His greatest creation the man, has no other end than the free and full enjoyment of all the pleasures of senses. God, while giving us the human bodies, had the presumption that we shall act like human beings, as he has different works for the bullock and the goat. To identify man as a mere bundle of material desires is to equate him with the animals.

80. Either enjoy the pleasure of sensual-life like the brutes and become brutes or renounce these things and become free.

81. What we call heaven or hell are nothing but only the senses; when the senses are controlled and disciplined, it is heaven, when let loose, it is hell!

82. Happiness is not fulfillment of desires but absence of desires. It is the ‘desireless’ who bring great results to pass. The discipline of senses is the only way for man to attain spiritual advancement; its presence or absence is at the root of man’s experience of spiritual enrichment (which is heaven) and impoverishment (which is hell).

83. The cause of all miseries are desires. We desire something, and if the desire is not fulfilled, the result is distress. If there is no desire, there will be no distress. But desirelessness must not lead to inertia. We are not to become like walls, who have no desire but do not suffer also, as they never evolve. As there is a glory in happiness, there is a glory in suffering too. He really works, who is not propelled by any selfish desire for himself. Who is the cause of desire? I myself. Therefore, I, myself, is the cause of all miseries I am in.

84. The first aspect of the pursuit of pleasures is never ending competition; competition to amass the objects of enjoyment. It is a matter of common experience that competition does not remain healthy for long. By its very nature, it cannot remain healthy; very soon it degenerates. Competition which implies bettering one’s performance over others, soon gives way to the urge of becoming better by pulling down others.

The second is coming into being of a permissive society where the individual is left free to indulge in whatever way he chooses to enjoy himself without any restraint of any kind, which in course of time degenerates into unbridled licentious behaviour in respect to sex, food, drinks, dress, family life and social intercourse.

85. The philosophy of permissiveness is destroying our soul and also our happiness and peace. Sex, violence, drunkenness and all other kinds of evils are creeping into our society. In a permissive environment, children suffer psychic and personality privations and distortions, and when the same children grow up, they continue that malady of permissiveness, until the whole society becomes sick, decays and dies. A permissive society is the sign of cheap modernity as there is a vast difference between cheap modernity and being truly modern. To be modern is to be scientific and humanistic in attitude. The modern age is the creation of modern science which has ushered in the modern humanism as well.

86. And once this process starts, there is no end to it. Moral bonds are all snapped, normal human emotions are all dried up. The values and virtues which ought to distinguish man from animals, vanish. Ironically, this process of degeneration of man is concealed in attractive terms as ‘healthy competition’ and ‘raising the standard of human living’.

87. Since modern concept of happiness centres entirely round the satisfaction of sensual desires, the term raising the standard of living has come to mean amassing of more and more objects of physical enjoyment to the exclusion of all other thoughts and aspirations. The result is accumulation of wealth and power outside along with mental unrest and emptiness inside.

88. Man as an animal, is a victim of passions for satisfaction of material desires which gets more intense when gratified. How then will such a dissatisfied man live in peace and harmony in a society with others? And what is the guarantee that even after satisfaction of his individual needs, he will not follow ‘the dog in the manger’ policy?

89. The fruits of wrong philosophy by which contemporary societies live, a crude type of materialism, point only to a dismal future for mankind. If the trend is not changed then the human society will become an animal farm. It is against this background that we have to view the majestic and luminous philosophy of Vedanta and significance of its deep study for man. It does not debar man either from having or satisfying his physical desires or his intellectual aspirations; it merely exhorts man to go deeper and come in touch and unfold, the purer, vaster and more creative energy resources that lie within him. It says, ‘continue your march, don’t stop at the organic or intellectual level and manifest your divinity’.

90. In Upanisads, we find a fearless quest for truth. In them, thought forges ahead under the stimulus of passion for truth in an atmosphere of perfect freedom. It does not preach withdrawal from the world of action. Life is viewed as an adventure of the spirit in the world of time and space. Life is described with the help of an imagery of chariot in Katha upanisad.

91. Today, we see the ever-increasing bitter fruits of crude materialism manifesting themselves not only in the psychic and somatic ailments but also in widespread corruption, bribery and many other forms of social malpractices ailing our society. The strength, which helps to resist an immoral or anti-social temptation, is the spiritual strength. The human intellect, even of highly intellectual persons, by itself, is helpless in the presence of temptations; but if that intellect is lit up by the divine light of the Atman behind, it develops the strength to stand against all temptations, big or small.

92. In human society, the nearer the man to animals, stronger is his pleasure in the senses; and the higher or more cultured he is, the greater is his pleasure in intellectual and other finer pursuits. When a man gets even higher, he comes to the plane of spirituality and divine inspiration. There he finds a state of bliss, compared to which all the pleasures of senses or even of intellect are nothing.

93. We share sensory joys with the animals but the higher joys are uniquely human. Those, who fail to rise to those levels and stagnate only at the sensory level, have failed to achieve their humanness as well. The highest level of human growth is achieved when we realize our divinity. The bliss of this state is pure and more intense than that of any physical or intellectual state, and we can have it eternally.

94. We are making a big mistake in evaluating social progress in terms of better food, better dresses, better cars and better houses etc. In the old times people lived in forests and ate each other, now they live in the society and cheat each other. This is how we have progressed. We have just multiplied our desires oblivious of the fact that whereas the power to satisfy desires increases in arithmetical progression, the power of desires increases in geometrical progression.

95. Abstinence is the root of culture. In the atmosphere of luxury, weakness or imitation, neither culture ameliorates nor there is scope for progress. So material power is not all that is to be coveted as it is not what is meant by progress or civilization.

96. The scope of human growth is not limited to economics of production and distribution or consumption of material goods and services. One may have plenty of these and plenty of money to buy them as well but still one may be unhappy. Lakshmi, does not mean money only, it means creative use of money to enrich and beautify human life, to ensure human welfare.

97. According to the Western thought, the life of a man for all practical purposes is limited to production, distribution and enjoyment of material objects as the means to happiness. Equality of men, as a concept of social co-existence, is based only on the equitable satisfaction of the material requirements of the members of the society. Hence, that society is only deemed perfect which serves best this object of sensual-gratification. But a society based on this concept alone cannot have an enduring peaceful existence or social harmony.

98. Consumerism is a self-defeating process. Sooner or later, we are bound to get away from this system of increasing our wants and their desired satisfaction. This race of wants and their satisfaction cannot continue for a very long time. People become wearied of it after sometime. Production of material objects to satisfy human needs is necessary, but upto a certain degree; beyond a limit, it is not only unnecessary but also bad. It is the means to an end and not an end in itself. It will be wise if, along with material advancement through proper education, we take equally energetic steps to ensure qualitative enrichment of the personal lives of the people by instilling in them the spiritual and the ethical values.

99. Today man, in this age of modern civilization, is feeling inwardly impoverished and empty in an environment of wealth, power and pleasure. He is full of tensions and sorrows, doubts and uncertainties all the time. Juvenile delinquency, drunkenness, suicide and other kinds of individual and social distortions are ever on the increase. Why? Because man is not inwardly satisfied; he is smitten by ennui and boredom arising from his sense-bound life. Such a man becomes a burden to himself. Only spiritual inner-growth and development will enable man to discipline, digest and assimilate the energies released by the progress of scientific technologies. Then and then alone, we shall be able to convert the chaos in our lives into peace, happiness and general welfare.

100. The word development means human development, whether it is in the field of education, economics or politics, industry, science or technology; the main object of all these is to ensure human development. It is strange that in spite of all developments, economic or otherwise, there is so much of anxiety and nervous tension in men, women and even in children today.

101. Tremendous developments have taken place all over the world through the application of physical science and technology. This is good but they are being carried too far and are proving harmful, without the inner-development of man. We are experiencing tensions, privations and psychic distortions in all parts of the world. Something is missing in our understanding of human life and destiny. We can make money, travel far and enjoy endless sensual-pleasures made possible by scientific technology; but in midst of all these pleasures and excitements, some emptiness creeps into us. At no time in the history of the civilized world there has been such an experience of inner-emptiness, fear and instability in the presence of great wealth outside as today. This is today’s problem in the highly developed societies. One does not know what to do; everybody is unhappy and tense and projects all this outside, creating tension and unhappiness all-around.

102. What is the human destiny in all these highly developed and rich societies today? It is nothing but anxiety and frustration, boredom and psychic breakdown. In spite of high levels of achievements, something is missing somewhere!

103. Now-a-days people are indulging in a mad race of earning more and more money by whatever means possible. It has become a sort of addiction with them that they simply have to go on increasing their wealth, irrespective of whether they need it or not and there is no end to this race. They become enmeshed in their own cage and are relieved only at their last breath. Then a new race starts amongst the inheritors to inherit the piled up properties and money of the deceased. It is strange to see that the deceased spent more time in earning than enjoying that money. After a limit the only use of money is to generate more money and more anxieties. Money can give you everything except happiness as that cannot be purchased; that can only be experienced. Why should men decay when wealth accumulates? It is because wealth digests the spiritually weak man instead of man digesting wealth. This spiritual digestion is similar to biological digestion of the food taken in and likewise leads to mental strength and inner-growth.

104. The contemporary tragedy of material affluence co-existing with general human unfulfilment, resulting in crime, sex, drug addictions, increase of suicide rates in so called advanced countries, compels a reconsideration of the direction of the human progress. The way-out of it is the synthesis of physical science and the science of spirituality.

105. Three things should be understood; bhoga, yoga and roga. Bhoga is sensual-pleasure, satisfaction of material desires. Then we have yoga – spiritual growth and development. After you have finished with bhoga, you have the choice – either yoga (spiritual development) or roga (physical or mental-ailments). Bhoga will lead to roga if yoga does not come in between i.e. satisfaction of senses will lead to physical and psychical ailments, if spiritual growth does not intervene.

106. Vedanta identifies three types of energies or strengths namely the physical power including the horse or mechanical power; strength of mind or intellect; and energy of spirituality to which all men are heirs. We need all these three sources of energy to meet the challenges of the modern age; but the third one is the most significant because it is the source of that character-energy and energy of dedication which alone can transform the other two energies and their products to human purposes. Our people need this spiritual energy in ample measure to become the effective instruments of national and human progress, instead of remaining satisfied with other two energies only and becoming a stagnant pool of self-centredness, corruption and spiritual emptiness.

107. Spiritual energy or strength is not any obscurantist’s magical or esoteric power but the strength of character derived from the unfoldment of the divine in the heart of man; and this source of strength in man is unknown to any and every type of materialism even though some professed materialists may manifest such spirituality of character, even while not knowing its source. People, who stagnate at the organic level under the influence of materialism, cannot become the source and sustenance of justice in a society.

108. “By thinking about sense objects, attachment to them is formed; from attachment comes longing and longing breeds anger; from anger comes delusion and from delusion, confused memory; from confused memory comes the ruin of discrimination; and from ruin of discrimination, a man perishes.”

109. Our difficulty in life is that we are guided by the present and not by the future. What gives us a little pleasure now drags us on to follow it, with the result that we always buy a mass of pain in the future for a little of pleasure in the present.

110. Happiness comes to us wearing the crown of misery on its head; one who welcomes happiness, has also to welcome misery as they are the two sides of the same coin. We all have this foolish idea that we can have happiness without misery and it has taken such a possession of us that we have no control over the senses.

111. We pursue pleasure and we are pursued by pain. Every ounce of pleasure brings its pound of pain. Man crosses one river of sorrow and another comes. It is not strange, for sorrows and miseries are the companions of a man.

112. There runs an economic struggle through every religious struggle. Most of us never make a move unless an economic factor is involved. Man is guided by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards. It will take ages for the head to go first.

113. He who desires a comfortable and nice life and at the same time wants to realize the Self is like the fool, who wanting to cross the river, caught hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log of wood.

114. Everybody is seeking for happiness, but the majority in things which are evanescent and unreal. No happiness can be ever found in the objects of sensual pleasures. Happiness is to be found only in the spirit. If we do not find bliss in the life of the spirit, shall we seek satisfaction in the life of the senses? If we cannot get nectar, shall we fall back upon ditch water?

115. We are always obsessed with the idea of finding the ways and means to satisfy our sensual desires. All the time this is going on. There is also endless suffering as these desires of the body bring only momentary satisfaction and unending suffering. It is like drinking a cup of which the surface layer is nectar while underneath is all poison.

116. Social life in India today is like a peal of laughter underneath of which it is all wail. It ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface; really, it is full of tragic intensity.

117. We often speak of zest and enjoyment in the life. Man generally understands by such expressions, only more eating, more drinking and more and more pursuit of sensual excitements. Such a life, if continued too far, will result in the tyranny of entertainment, excitement and exhaustion (three ‘e’s) which we are already experiencing.

118. The happiness of the animals and the lowest human beings who are very much like animals is all in the body. No man can eat with the same pleasure as a famished dog or a wolf.

119. The lower the man, the more delight he finds in the sensual enjoyments. As he rises higher, the goal becomes reason and love. In proportion as these faculties develop, he loses the power of enjoying the objects of sensual pleasures.

120. We should not mistake comforts with civilization. Civilization, the true civilization, should mean the power of taking the animal-man out of his sense bound life.

121. The pleasures obtained by gratification of material desires and sensual enjoyments are short lived and mixed up with pain. Whenever a civilization stagnates at the sensory level, it decays and dies.

122. Today, unfortunately money, and not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations. They are too busy with their meaningless money-making life. They, unaware of the danger that comes through lust and greed, do not even attempt to struggle to get rid of these, even this idea has not entered their minds. Material power is not all that is meant by progress or civilization. Modern money-worship is driving them headlong into the hideous abyss of materialism.

123. No nation can be said to have become civilized only because it has succeeded in increasing the comforts of material life of its people by bringing into use lot of machines and things of that sort. The present-day civilization is only multiplying the wants and distresses of men day by day.

124. When a man chasing his pleasures in money and power achieves the cherished desires, he becomes a problem to himself. His success here results in widespread value erosion and increase in violence in the society.

125. This life of the world is not the goal. To think that this world is the aim and end of life is brutal and degenerating. This little sense-world of three days is not to be made the aim and end of life. Better die than to live that life! Slaves of this world, slaves of the senses, let us rouse ourselves as there is something higher than this sense life. The greatest mistake that men always make is to think that this life alone is true.

126. This world and this body have their own value, a secondary value, as a means to an end; but they are not an end in itself. Unfortunately, too often we make the world the end and God the means. Let us aim at the highest because even if we cannot get to the end, at least we shall come nearer to it.

127. This world is good so far as it helps one to go to the higher world. The objects of the senses are good so far as they help us to attain higher objects. We always forget that this world is a means to an end and not an end in itself. If this were the end, we should be immortal here in our physical body; we should never die. But we see people every moment dying around us and yet foolishly think that we shall never die; and from that delusion, we come to think that this life is the goal. This is the case with ninety nine percent of us.

128. The less the sensual-enjoyments, higher is the life of the man. For illustration’s sake if we take for granted that a certain amount of power is given to man, and that it can be spent either on the body or the mind or the spirit; then all the power that is spent on any one of these leaves just so much less to be expended on the others; it means that if we desire only to have sensual-enjoyments all the time, we shall degrade ourselves to the brute state.