for godness sake

Though we pervert this inner call to goodness in many ways, it is our closest ally in moving us towards a path of integration and inner righteousness. Perhaps it is the God within us, but something in us weeps and is distraught when we mess up time and again and fail to live up to our own highest self. By far the most moving image I have ever seen on TV was an interview with some peasants in West Bengal, India, on the subject of literacy.

I think this was around the time Kerala (another Indian state) had just managed to achieve 100 per cent literacy and other states were revving up to follow suit. One middle-aged farmer simply wept when he was asked if he would like to learn to read and write. "I cannot do it, much as I would like to do it, for I have become an idiot," he lamented.

What an inner urge this man must have had to read and write to regret his inability so much. What he may have been if someone had taken pity on the youth and taught him the alphabet before he became middle-aged? Here was a graphic example of the sorrow that afflicts us when we cannot live in accordance to the soul's directives.

It is this soul power within us that gives me the greatest hope for the welfare of those who matter to us. One may be away from family, perhaps staying alone in a strange city, but I am convinced that the majority will never take to bad ways no matter what opportunities may besiege them simply because their inner soul will not let them. A friend has been through a number of unhappy relationships, but something in him stopped him from relapsing into promiscuity or despair. "I always acted on the side of caution and sanity," he says.