Your Conscience Is Your Master And Guide

4 June 1976, Summer Course 1976 - Indian Culture and Spirituality, Ooty

Published English.

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The reputation of , which has been known for centuries, has now been sharpened by the teachings of . You young people should take hold of this sharpened reputation and carry it higher. Will the lakes get filled up just by a few drops of rain? Will you be able to quench your thirst by swallowing a little saliva? If you hold your breath, are you going to become big? Can you get coal by burning a little hair?

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For the past fifteen days, we have been engaged in this sacred . Just because you have spent these fifteen days here and because you have received a diploma, it is not correct to think that you will set right the whole world. Your degree or diploma should be within your heart. You should make a determination to serve the country. Man is making an effort to learn and understand many different things and is only partially succeeding in this objective. In fact, man is inventing complicated machines; and with these machines he is trying to conquer the universe. Man is using machines to get service for himself. Man travels into the sky and soars to the very heights of the empty skies. He goes into the depths of the ocean; and in many other ways, man is doing incredible things and is achieving many things. With the help of science and technology, he is discovering and inventing things which are not accessible to common human beings. He is producing many things. But come to think of it, all the achievements of man today are not things which would surpass what was known at the time of .

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After acquiring all these strengths and capacities, if man does not have the wisdom to use them well, all these inventions become useless. told his father that while he possessed the strength to conquer the entire world, he did not possess the strength to conquer his own sense organs. We should conclude that man is able to conquer many things but is unable to understand his own self.

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Today man has three kinds of faiths. One of them is the lowest kind, and the second is of a middle kind, while the third is of the highest kind. If our , our belief and our affection are confined to our nearest kith and kin, that will be called the lowest kind of . On the other hand, if you go a little beyond the narrow region of your family and extend your faith and belief to your country and other people, then we say that it is the intermediate kind of . If you treat the entire world as one and regard all the people living in the entire world as one and extend your faith and sympathy to all of them, then it is the highest kind of .

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Thus, gradually we should move from the limited circle of our family to the wider circle of our country and then move on to the broadest aspect of one world. When we talk of humanity, it should not be confined to a small community or group of people. There is only one caste, and that is the caste of humanity, and when we talk of humanity, we must extend our to the entire caste of humanity.

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If we learn to contain our needs, there is neither effort nor expenditure. This aspect of decreasing our desires and needs has been described as in our Vedantic parlance. The word does not mean that you should run away from your family and sit in a forest and close your nose and put yourself to physical torture. This is not the meaning of . The true meaning of is that you should stay in the society, do your duties, and learn to contain your desires and needs. Our life is like a long journey. In this long journey of life, you should make an effort to diminish your needs and desires. It is part of to see that the food that you take is just sufficient and there is no waste.

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By reading some books, you get the impression that Sathwic food means milk and fruit. Sathwic food should not be interpreted as something which you take by way of your mouth alone. We have five different organs - , , , , and - that is your ears, eyes, mouth, skin, and nose. What you smell, see, hear, touch, and eat will all constitute what you take in as food. It is not right to think that only what you eat is important and that it is enough if that is sathwic. You should take sathwic food through all these organs. You should see only good things, then alone will it be described as sathwic food. If you see bad things, that is also bad. If you smell something bad through your nose, then it is also bad. If you touch something bad with your body, it means that you are taking in something bad.

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Our students should go to the four corners of the country and cleanse the place and keep away from doctors by themselves being clean. If the aim is to do good to others, then God himself will take care of the selfless aim of doing good to others. This is the essence of ’s eighteen .

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To be able to do good to others is a great and to be able to keep away from doing harm to other is also a . Therefore, even if you are not able to do good, just sit quietly and keep silent; but do no harm to others. The students should take care to see that all the five organs are without any blemish. You should not see any bad with your eyes. You should not talk anything unworthy with your mouth; you should not touch anything unclean. You should thus keep all the five organs in a sathwic state.

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