The War Within - Between Good and Evil, Bheemeswara Challa [books for 7th graders txt] 📗

with
a broken back. It was time to move on, to go with the flow, and wait to wither
away, and get prepared for, in Churchill’s phrase, the ‘meeting with my Maker’,
whether He was prepared or not. But it then seemed that the ‘meeting’ went into
pause mode, either because the Maker was busy, or because He had other plans
for me, other ordeals to put me through before I fulfilled my prarabdha.
Precisely when and how the idea of writing this book germinated is
still a blur. Perhaps it could be the time when I read somewhere that Prophet
Muhammad called the internal jihad—the fight against one’s own self—the
‘Greater Jihad’. This grabbed my attention for two reasons. First, post-9/11,
the word jihad is usually identified with terror and fanaticism; the Prophet’s
interpretation turns it into a positive tool for human transformation. Second, it
seemed to reflect the troubled state of my own consciousness—I too needed to
fight my own inner jihad, to exorcize the malice in my mind. It doesn’t matter
which creed or faith or religion one subscribes to; everyone has to battle his
inner demons, and live with the wrenching sense of ‘I am complicit no matter
what I do’. However distasteful it might be, we must not flinch from facing the
ugly truth that man alone is capable of ‘motiveless malignancy’ and ‘vengeful
violence’. It became clear to me, as scriptures and sages have so tirelessly told
us, that everything is contingent in life—on power, on history, and most of all
on flawed human nature—and good and evil are both intrinsic in our psyche,
and that the way the conflict takes shape, defines our personality. If we can
recognize that, we will also realize that those who commit the darkest deeds, and
whom we so routinely dismiss as monsters, could be anyone: a sleeping partner,
our next door neighbor, or even worse, ourselves, when things get very wrong
in the war within. That is why we sometimes feel a sneaking sympathy, if not
empathy, to schizophrenic villains. We must face the fundamental fact that while
we have, to an alarming extent, succeeded in controlling the elements of nature,
we have woefully failed—indeed made no serious attempt either—to control
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
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our own selves, the world within. Furthermore, there is no such thing as our
‘true self ’: ‘man is not truly one, but truly two’.1 How can we then take sides in
the war within? It all amounts to one jolting insight. While there is much talk
of apocalyptic or ‘existential threats’ like climate change, what is being ignored
is that the most important and immediate of them all comes from our own two
‘selves’, and from the fight between them to control us. In other words, the only
way to prevent or abort the much-debated ‘end of the world’, or a dystopian
future is to ‘win’ the war within.
Once such thoughts caught hold of my mind, I started studiously
searching for sources and similar references, in holy books and classical literature,
on the innate duality of good and evil. It soon became apparent that the conflict
between good and evil is a connecting thread in literature, and is sometimes
considered to be an essential template of the human condition. I realized that to
understand man in all his dimensions, we must recognize, as Will Craig tells us,
that “the life you life is the outward expression of your inner journey” (Living the
Hero’s Journey, 2017). That ‘journey’ must be at the forefront of human thought
and effort, which are now egregiously, almost grotesquely misdirected. But it
also struck me that, more fundamentally, our principal problem is that we try to
control that which is beyond our control. The ancient Greek Stoic philosopher
Epictetus once said, “Some things are up to us and some things are not up to
us”. What is outside us is not ‘up to us’; whereas what is ‘within’ ought to be ‘up
to us’. What we do is the reverse; try to control others and everything around us,
and ignore what is in situ and inside us. And this is the reason why so many of
us feel that life is “terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a
chance”, like Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs Ramsay (To the Lighthouse, 1927). So many
of us today ask, “How could a man ever be sure of any other man?” to recall the
words of Dorothy Hughes (The Davidian Report, 1952). Or, for that matter, of
his own self.
I found out that although such a train of thought has long been a recurring
refrain in the human condition, the scripture that most eloquently exposed
this seminal ‘inner conflict’ was none other than the great Indian epic, the
Mahabharata, and in particular its centerpiece, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which
1. Stevenson, R.L. 1886. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Epigraph
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Einstein said was the main source of his inspiration and guide for the purpose of
scientific investigation and formation of his theories. In the Mahabharata, every
major character was fighting his own ‘war within’ between two opposing moral
imperatives, be it the Kuru grandfather Bhishma, the virtuous Yudhishthira, the
star-crossed but noble Karna, or even the arch-villain Duryodhana. The very
first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is usually rendered as ‘Arjuna’s sorrow’ or
‘Arjuna’s despondency’, which could well be titled Arjuna’s War Within. When
the Pandava prince and mighty warrior Arjuna put aside his celestial bow and
refused to fight, Lord Krishna (his sarathi or charioteer) instantly realized that to
persuade the reluctant master-archer to participate in the horrific but necessary
Kurukshetra war, he had to first help Arjuna ‘win’ his own ‘war within’. For
Arjuna, it was a profound conflict between his dharma (righteous duty) as a
Kshatriya, the warrior class, and his delusions, dilemmas, and doubts about
killing those he venerated. And that too, for something as transient as worldly
gain and ephemeral glory. But for Lord Krishna, the agenda was two-pronged,
and the audience more than Arjuna alone. One, he had to make Arjuna pick up
his bow and fight and kill. But his second, and far more subtle, task was to dispel
the delusions and dilemmas of future generations, to help them to fight and win
their own wars within. In fact, some even say that the Bhagavad Gita was meant
for us mortals, and that Arjuna’s so-called sorrow is our predicament, and that
Arjuna, himself semi-divine, and Lord Krishna the supreme godhead engaged in
the dialogue of the Gita for the sake of humanity.
That is why Krishna’s words of guidance to Arjuna remain just as relevant
today, eons after the Kurukshetra. Krishna knew that we, the people of the most
immoral age, the Kali Yuga, would face even more daunting dilemmas than
Arjuna, and that we would need what Aeschylus called ‘the awful grace of God’
to make choices, even though we may not know what the consequences of those
choices might be. In our own times, as Mahatma Gandhi aptly said, everybody
has a Krishna residing in his heart as the Indwelling Self, a guide who could
be our own charioteer, to not only steer us but save us as we wander around
confused and lost in what Jorge Borges called the ‘labyrinths of life’.
While the Bhagavad Gita was upfront among the scriptures relevant to
this subject, I also realized that the idea of an eternal inner struggle for control
of our consciousness is not confined to any particular religion or ancient culture
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
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or native tradition. A bedrock belief in Christianity is that all Christians are
engaged in a spiritual battle of some sort on a daily basis. Striking a similar note,
Zoroastrianism mentions the two opposing forces, Ahura Mazda (Illuminating
Wisdom) and Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit), which are constantly in
conflict. But the more I persisted, the more I was astonished that the core
thought of a deeper world and of a fierce inner struggle between good and evil—
what Carl Jung called persona and shadow, and William Blake called ‘angels’ and
‘devils’—had crossed the minds of many great sages, thinkers, writers, mystics,
and philosophers almost autonomous of each other. Not only that, many famous
people have openly talked about their own personal struggles, about their own
divided self, their inability to live in sync with any specifically codified life
philosophy. Tolstoy, for instance, experienced and indeed spoke freely about,
a fierce conflict between his insatiable erotic appetite and a deep yearning for
sanctity. Gandhi talked of a streak of cruelty inside him. But the reference each
made was as a lament, something they regretted but could not help. Some of
these utterances find mention in the body of my book. It is baffling but true
that billions of words and thousands of books on an avalanche of subjects have
been written by many gifted and great writers, but not one on a subject of such
importance as the war within—the war for supremacy of our consciousness.
Instead of going within to fix what is internally amiss, we have long tried to
make sense of what is wrong with us by, as it were, ‘passing the buck’ to all
sorts of ideological ‘isms’—capitalism, communism, liberalism, consumerism,
materialism, militarism, etc. That is true cause of the climate crisis that now
threatens human civilization and our planet. Simply put, without consciousnesschange,
we cannot combat climate change, and for consciousness-change, we
need to wage and win the war within. And we need to cultivate qualities like
prema (love in Sanskrit), chesed (benevolence in Hebrew) and maitri (lovingkindness
in Pali), and lead a life of ‘sharing and caring’.
I realized what a titanic task it would be to write a book on such a mystic
subject, as there was nothing in literature for me to use as a launching pad. I
wondered: should I abandon this leap in the dark, spare myself all this trouble
and turmoil? At that stage, perchance or providential, I stumbled upon a Toni
Morrison quote: “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been
written yet, then you must write it”. While I was mulling over the timing of
Epigraph
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this, another piece of sound advice came to my mind: “Don’t write the book
you know you can write. Write the book you know you can’t write yet”. And
there is that fountain of wisdom, the Bible, which tells us that “to everything
there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”. But why were
all these promptings crowding my mind? Was this time the chosen ‘season’ and
the mere me the blessed means? Was this the book that I ‘knew I can’t write yet
write I must’? From the solitary stillness of my soul, an inner voice whispered:
Yes, yes ! So I scrambled and started. I was off and running. Yet it wasn’t easy to,
so to speak, alchemize lightning into light, to transform a stray thought into a
scholarly story, and breathe life into humdrum prose.
In the absence of any firm footing, I was forced to fall back on my
imagination, which Einstein said ‘is everything; a preview of life’s coming
attractions’. It was daunting and draining, exhausting and exhilarating. Down the
road, many a time I felt like crying a halt; and doubted my ability to undertake
such a monumental venture, to single-handedly write on something no one ever
did. I asked myself: Who do you really think you are? Stick to your strengths,
don’t await a rude awakening of your limitations! Still, I hung on. Guidance and
help came from whom we might call the ‘supreme ghost-writer’, and sources and
supplies came tumbling down like an avalanche. Like in the case of my previous
book. In all honesty, I did not write that book too; the book got written by me. As
it always happens, one source led to another, one search to many others. It also
straightaway struck me that although the subject is essentially metaphysical and
mystical, this attempt had to be firmly anchored around the ground realties. And
whatever I suggested had to be ‘doable’ sans any special skills. For, human nature
being what it is, however critical and crucial it might be, if there is nothing in it
for a doer, nothing will get done. This meant that the book had to be, in one go,
transcendental and topical, intellectually invigorating and physically practical.
It has sometimes been said that ‘there is a time to venture out, and a time
to journey within’. Now is the time for both; we have to ‘venture out of our
cocoons of convenience and comfort’, and ‘journey within’. While embarking on
this journey, we must recognize that it is indispensable but not easy.
And let us be crystal clear: the thrust of consciousness-change is