- Pujya Sri K.C.Narayana

         N:           The question of being and doing ‘good’ is  fairly irrelevant in the minds of most men now a days thanks to lopsided value systems of the machanised world. Can you tell why should I be moral?

Dr.K.C.V:          The question has no sense and no positive answer is possible. It is simply unmeaning unless it is equivalent to ‘Is morality an end in itself?’ and if so ‘How and in what way?’

N      Is morality the same as the end for man, so that the two are convertible? Or is it one side or aspect or element of some end which is larger than itself? Say ‘Realisation’? Or is it the whole end from all points of view? Or is it one view of the whole?

Dr.K.C.V:          Morality can be taken as an end in itself when we say something has to be done - a good to be realised. There is not only something to be done but something has to be done by me; I must do the act, must realise the end. Therefore morality implies something to be done and the doing of it by me and if you consider them as end and the means you cannot separate the end from the means. For morality the end implies the act and the act implies self- realisation.

N: What is this self- realisation?

Dr.K.C.V:          The self we try to realise is for us a whole, it is not a mere collection of states the psychologist believes it is. He is totally wrong. The self is a whole-complete, full and One. To realise a self is to realise a whole and more- that is an infinite whole.

N:     Can you explain further?

Dr.K.C.V:          It is an experience. How to explain? Yes. Realise yourself as the self- conscious member of an infinite Whole by realising that whole in yourself.

N:     Life seems to be pleasure producing phenomena. Why not I seek increased pleasure and through that enrich the quality of Life itself?

Dr. K.C.V.:        If our end is to realise the life or the self which is realised in all life and to develop this in more distinctively individual forms, and if we consider that this life to be realised must be realised in living, individuals, we shall be far enough from ascetism. There is no denial of human nature, no sacrifice of detail and fullness of living to a barren formula. The whole is realised only in this free development of the particular – the individual and the individual itself can only develop truly his individuality by specifying in himself, the common life of all – this is the main ground for being moral. As we deny the liberty of ‘individualism’ so we deny the tyranny of the ‘Universal’. In Sahaj Marg there is no permission for particularism or licentiousness nor is there place for tyranny, worst represented by orthodoxy. You should note that the member is no member but a parasitical excrescence, if it does not live with the life of the whole: The whole life however does not exist except in the life of the members. In the moral plane, the members are self conscious. It is in the intensity of the self consciousness of the members that the whole can be intensely realised. This is the real meaning of life. Further note, everything human stands on the basis of animal life and to make self realisation the end not only justifies but demands attention to the well being and happiness of Man as a spiritualised animal, because the feeling of inner harmony is required for, is the psychical condition of, maintenance and progress of function. So far as this we go, and must go and further. We ought not to sacrifice what seems to be maintenance and progress of function to prospect of increased pleasure.

N:     If self-realisation is the end and as the ‘self’ is the negative of ‘Reality’ is not the concept itself a contradiction in terms?

Dr. K.C.V:         Laughs. Yes. To realise means to particularise and this is in flat contradiction to the Universal that is Good will. To act you must will something and something definite. To will the general is impossible and to will the particular is never to will anything but selfish. The clique here is ‘to do the right for sake of right’ but we are never told what right is; This is a matter for meditation and not Logic.