Individual Perfection is the means for Total Perfection

Swami Chinmayananda

oi-Staff

By Staff

Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 17:41

Mankind stands between two worlds - one dying and the other struggling to be born. What form will the new world take ? We alone can choose. We are the makers of our own world and if today the world is an ugly place, it is because we ourselves are ugly. If we cleanse our hearts, we will find that the brilliance in the world is but a reflection of the brilliance within.

This self-cleansing becomes difficult for the average person because it is a subjective process, wherein each has to cleanse himself. Moral living, ethical standards, religious virtues and cultural values are often discussed but of the many people who talk about them, very few come to live them. Unless we decide to bring these known virtues into our own life, the world cannot be improved. Only by readjusting the inner personality can each one of us bring out a greater dynamism, cheer, and fuller love in all our contacts in society.

Without this unfoldment of our inner beauty, the quality of life cannot be improved. Secular and material organizations are necessary; the politicians, the economists, the scientists have a great responsibility to improve the social welfare, organization of production, distribution and administration of justice and thus to improve the conditions of life in society. But the happiness of the community can be assured only when we have a healthy community. A community is healthy only when the members are healthy. If man has the positive virtues of the heart and the creative values of the intellect, his responses to the environment will be healthy and he will gain balance and joy in life.

Individual perfection is the means for the total perfection. For this, man must regenerate himself. He must have an ideology in life by which he can individually and collectively grow to be a healthy individual. All religions are built upon such rejuvenating ideologies. They supply the higher eternal values of life to their followers and nourish them with their various techniques until each individual absorbs them into himself.

The values that religions provide are based on eternal truths of life, and therefore are the permanent values of the changing world. The world may change, but the eternal values will always remain the same. They were good for our ancestors, they were equally good for the people in the Middle Ages and they were again found good for the communities of the last century. Surely they are good for the present century also. They are ever one and the same at all times.

To be continued About the author

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda the great master's lectures were an outpour of wisdom. He introduced the Geetha Gnana Yagna. He wrote a lot of books on spirituality, commentaries to Vedantic texts, children books etc. He then started spreading His teachings globally.....