Pearls of Wise

17/02/2019 Ego is the nucleus of our “I” ness around which all thoughts, experiences and feelings revolve. When ego is positive it is truly an extension of the Divinity in us. But a common man’s ego is always tied to his title, fame, power, wealth, relations etc. This faulty ego is always disturbed and suffers when any of these attachments are shaken or challenged. Through the character Bhishma the nature of ego is well explained in Mahabharata. When kauravas are strong, Bhishma sides with them even though he knows he is wrong and feels miserable. Likewise, our ego always knows when we attach to wrong thoughts or actions. But, we act helpless and defend ourselves by saying…..we have no choice but to protect our kingdom, as Bhishma defended all his wrongs as acts for Hastinapur. Bheeshma is said to be invincible and he will die only when he wants to. Even when deeply wounded he does not die. He chooses his time of death and waits Uttarayanam or Northward movement of the Sun. Tod...

17/02/2019 Once, Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda was the Chief Guest in Chinmaya Vidyalaya, New Delhi. It so happened that an important item in his itinerary was overlooked. The person who was in charge was completely flustered and kept apologizing, again and again. That day when Gurudev addressed the audience he said, “We cannot recall the past, to do what we have failed to do. Also, we cannot fly into the *future and carry out *actions there. “Yesterday was. Tomorrow will be. Today is with us."  "Today belongs to us. It is bursting with *opportunities for us to work, serve, love and live."  "To make *life rich and fruitful. If we can LIVE today and USE  today, our country is made, nay, the *world is made.  The world is saved.” ***

16/02/2019 3. Home : Continued .. Secondly, where the women of the house are treated with reverence, where they are put upon the pedestal which they deserve, there is prosperity. Where are we all, where is humanity if it is not for the women? It is the Supreme Mother who is the very source of the whole universe, and where the mothers, the women, are treated with the re verence that is due to them, in that house, there is prosperity. And where women are treated with disrespect, unkindness, harshness, prosperity cannot come. Prosperity does not abide in that house where the wife and the mother are made to weep, where tears of women fall. Prosperity takes wings and flies away from that house where the woman weeps. Thirdly, for the womenfolk themselves, modesty is the magnet of prosperity. For a woman modesty is the highest ornament. The ornament of a woman, the beauty of a lady, is not in the jewellery she wears or in the type of material or the dress she wears—no, that is not be...

16/02/2019 (Spoken on May 1, 1983) 5. Thus, there is a level in our own being which is not merely political, social or even that which is related to our community existence—not merely the physical or the psychic, but there is a rational element in us, and the importance of the reason in us is well known to every one of us. If the reason fails, we know what will happen to us. There is no greater treasure in life then a well-balanced reason which can think correctly, logically, systematically, precisely. If there is a confusion of the working of the reason, all the apparatus of the psyche will topple down and we shall cease to be human beings for any practical purpose, though we may be physically alive. So we can very well understand that the so-called ‘I’ or ‘we’ to which reference is made again and again is not a simple thing which can be swallowed like a pill. It is a highly complicated structure. And in the same way as we do not seem to be exhausted merely by the p...

15/02/2018 3. This life on earth is a halting place on the way to the achievement of the Goal of life. Earthly life is transitory, for it is seen that everything that is born dies. Death is not the end of life, since without a continuation of life t h e r e from the value of the deeds and experiences in this life would be rendered nugatory. There were births and deaths in the past, there will be births and deaths in the future too, until Self-realisation is attained. Life is a long chain of which the recurring births, planetary lives and deaths are links. Birth is caused by desires and actions, and birth becomes the cause of further desires and actions. This present life is, therefore, meant to train the individual to qualify himself for a higher life, viz., to stop births and deaths ultimately. This life is not the goal or the end, even as the path is not the same as the destination. If earthly life were the final goal, none would have died here, there would not have been mut...

15/02/2019   Successful societal groupings, such as the Nation-State in today’s world, rely on a psychological unity to hold together the people within that grouping.  The citizens identify themselves as members of that group, and see the world through the lens of “us” and “them”.  Of course, there are differences within the nations that create some amount of internal stress or centrifugal force, but if the unit is successful, it has enough adherence to more than withstand differences in religion, culture, race, language, that may occur. The issue of transference of psychological unity from the various nations to a world-unifying government is perhaps the most difficult of all the issues to be faced.  Nations coalesced either around the need to defend against common perceived enemies, or due to internal unity of the community which supported close bonds on a number of levels, particularly religious and cultural. Sri Aurobindo observes:  “An authority o...