Sri Ramakrishna Math : The Vedanta Kesari, May 2003

This is further to my last mail on cultivating life skills and coming out of the depression that has seized you for the moment. I hope you have been a little strengthened mentally by the contents of my last mail. In fact, a lot of hope is in store for you, provided, of course, you are prepared to change your attitude towards life. My e-mails to you intend to create a context and background to these changes. In my last mail, I promised to discuss the spectacle of success and how to leverage the forces of râga and dvesha. I shall try to address these issues here.

Allow me to begin by asking a simple question: what is your definition of success? As you attempt to answer, you will find diverse achievements blend to define your concept of success--plenty of money, a fleet of cars, a palatial mansion, an affectionate wife and many more. Well, this might constitute the recipe for success per se, but I would like to lead you a step further. These might, in my opinion, be best described as the indicators of success. In fact, they may not even be milestones for some! Hold on, hold on&& I can already see you revolting against this sweeping statement of mine. Come, let us examine this concept of success patiently, together. I am open to your volley of questions, Suresh!

Success is effectively described as meeting pre-defined goals. We set goals in life to be achieved and whenever we meet them, we define ourselves as successful persons. But, how do these goals originate in us? Through the choices that we make in life. As Swami Vivekananda succinctly puts it--we are the creators of our own destiny. In fact, we are constantly creating short-term and long-term goals as a result of our inter-actions in life. Remember the last time you saw an Opel Corsa cruising along the road beside your school and you began to dream of possessing one premium car when you earn a lot of money in the future. There you are! You have just entered into a psychic contract. You have sowed the seeds of a long-term goal on the fertile imaginary grounds of your mind. If you happen to fulfil this contract in the future, you will define yourself as successful and be happy. Conversely, if this psychic contract is unfulfilled, you will regard yourself as an unsuccessful person and feel dejected. Who asked you to sow that seed and enter into a contractual agreement with your mind? Let us investigate.

'What's wrong in dreaming of a car?' I know, is your repartee! Oh, absolutely right, provided you know how to handle the effects of your dream. To dream is absolutely fine, but to cling on to the dream when the wake-up call is knocking at the door can make one so miserable. Anyway, if you look at any psychic contract that you have struck with your mind so far, you will find that it is the resultant effect of a process. We will look at the classical Indian perspective of this process. In the course of inter-personal transactions in society, we encounter the external world of objects, emotions and ideas. Our sensory system, that is our senses of perception, meet them first. The senses make their own report, of course, according to their level of acuteness and accuracy. We see the world as flat, when it is actually round! This report is presented to the mind and the mind acts on this information. Incidentally, the mind also reviews and colours this information according to its own looking glass or tendencies, known as samskâras. So, Garlic Sausage might sound a mouth-watering idea to you for a Monday Lunch, but it will induce nausea in my steadfast veggie friend Vimal Jain. So, you see, while the Garlic Sausage creates attraction for you, it creates repulsion in Vimal. When the attraction towards any object has become habitual and lasting, we have formed a complex within ourselves called Râga and when the repulsion has become habitual, it gives rise to another complex called Dvesha. You will find that I have a natural tendency to avoid dimly-lit areas or corners, because I find them eerie. Therefore, we don't understand objects and judge situations as they are, but we understand and judge them in the light of our râga and dvesha. Whenever we interact in society, these psychic forces of râga and dvesha compel us to form psychic contracts, called Vâsanâs. Just like you saw the car on the road and the perception of this latest car model almost forced you to create the vâsanâ of possessing a swanky car in the future. How do you know, for sure, that an upmarket car will make you happy in the future? Where is the guarantee card for happiness? Think! Let me also tell you of a friend of mine, Amit, who suffered a fatal accident of road rage and now, on life revisited, detests the very idea of travelling by a car. He finds himself in sweet abandon while travelling by the trolley bus. Dvesha also gives rise to another kind of vaasana. I can create the psychic contract of not willing to speak on stage, because I have the dvesha of facing criticism of my speech later. Râga and Dvesha are constantly swaying us from one pole to another and we are feeling glorious at one moment and depressed the next moment, successful at times and defeated thereafter, so on so forth. Fulfilment still remains elusive!

Are we to suffer life through these incessant ups and downs, then? Is that what success is all about? Swami Vivekananda gives a poetic rebuttal: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions--a powerless, helpless wreck, in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect?&.. The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape?--was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: 'Hear, ye children of immortal bliss! even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again.' 'Children of immortal bliss'--what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name--heirs of immortal bliss. (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. I, pp. 10-11)

Of the above passage, we will have plenty of occasions to discuss the implications. For the moment, let us assure ourselves that there is hope and lots of it! For want of time, I could not convey to you the process of leveraging the forces of râga and dvesha. We shall surely look at that process in the next mail. But, before I do that you can revert to me with your doubts and inquiries on what we have already discussed. I shall await your reply mail.