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

free will,
or of Fate or God. Yet, they do play a part, pull a string or two in the ‘karmic
kathputli’ (the karmic puppets), but they do that in the internal theater. All that
we witness in the world—all the terrible horrors, insanity, cruelty, terrorism—
are but a display of the state of the war within and the perpetrators. And all
the wars, conflicts, wickedness and viciousness in the world are but sparks and
skirmishes in comparison with this insidious internal incinerator. Being at war
has been the state of the world. According to one estimate, during the last 3,000
years, the world has been at peace for only 240 years; that is less than 10% of
the time. This is but an enlarged reflection and extension of the internal war. We
must understand that there is no question of winning this internal war. We need
the negative as much as the positive to continue to exist within us to survive
in the world outside. The ideal state of this war is a state of stalemate, with the
virtuous forces having an edge in most of the daily battles within the war. If
we somehow manage to ensure that the good that is in us prevails in these
mini-wars, then all the intractable problems we are grappling with will become
manageable.
The universe within, we variously call mind, consciousness, subconsciousness,
soul inside, and so on. The locus and focus of our effort has to be
in that bounded but limitless space. That ‘space’ is also sometimes compared to
dry quicksand; every step we take to get out gets us deeper down. As Jess Scott
says, “It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all
kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were,
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inside” (The Other Side of Life). Without such cathartic cleansing and churning
and looking within, we cannot morph the fundamentals of what it entails to be
human on earth. We cannot go forward on any of the problems and issues, or
mend our behavior unless we recognize that the greatest and most tenacious of
all wars is taking place right within each of us, and we are barely even conscious
of it. Even ‘external’ wars and ‘natural disasters’ are brought about by the inner
vibratory balance of good and evil being disturbed by an ascendancy of harmful
vibrations and resultant human actions. If we can rectify and restore the ‘inner
equilibrium’ in each of us, or at least in the ‘critical mass’ of mankind, then
such outbreaks will be far fewer. But we need minimal but sufficient numbers
to succeed, to change the direction of human endeavor. Swami Vivekananda
said, “A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more
in a year than a mob in a century”. How many are those ‘few’, and what the
threshold is, crossing which unleashes an unstoppable momentum, we do not
know, and perhaps will never know. That ‘threshold’ can be any of us, and so
we must believe and behave. There is also an important change in the dynamics
which we must take note of. Human evolution has entered a new phase, a new
direction: the blurring of the boundary between individual and community.
Henceforth, things can get done, problems get resolved only through men living
in tandem for the common good. Even the next ‘avatar’, the cosmic savior, might
be a conglomerate, not an individual entity. The Buddhist monk and author
Thich Nhat Hanh in fact foresees that: “it is possible that the next Buddha will
not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of
a community—a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a
community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we
can do for the survival of the earth”. An individual is necessary but not sufficient
for human transformation.
The most ‘negative’ of all—the main malaise of man—is malice, which is
the most destructive of all emotions, distinct from envy and jealousy, and perhaps
the only truly ‘unique’ thing about this animal. There is nothing ‘self ’, or even
‘selfish’ about malice; it is all about ‘others’; wishing them ill without any selfgain;
capable of feeling unhappy about others’ happiness; of rejoicing in another’s
misfortune. In that sense, unless we can get rid of the malice in our mind, we
are not even equal to other animals emotionally. Recent neurological research
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has revealed that in many individuals, the amygdala and its associated systems
in the brain, which are responsible for the ‘negative’ emotions, are becoming
prominently enlarged, at the expense of other areas such as the hypothalamus,
which is responsible for people’s sense of well-being and happiness. We have
always had within both the ‘negative’ as well as the ‘positive’ emotions like love,
kindness, tenderness, compassion, sharing, solidarity, and connection to others.
But they were for long in large measure evenly matched, in a state of balance.
It is the breaking of the balance, starting a few millenniums ago, that marked
the beginning of corruption of the human condition, alienation from nature
and solidification of the sense of separateness. The tragedy is that although, as
neuroscience tells us, our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn
into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person,
our competitive culture has come to identify our very identity with separateness.
In a practical sense, we have different bodies; therefore we are ‘separate’. There
is inevitably some ‘distance’ between any of us, but that gives an opportunity to
share the space in between. But it has become a crippling disability that deters
complementing each other. We exist, work, and live always with other people,
but we have not found a way to build bridges between being ‘near each other’
and being ‘together’.
The madness and mayhem on this planet is largely due to our inability
to achieve a balance within, and with, ourselves. For a more harmonious and
happier human being, the restoration of this ‘balance’ is an imperative. For better
human behavior, we have to ensure that the ‘positive’ emotions prevail in the
process of decision-making. The only way for that is to alter the course of this
eternal internal war. Outwardly, the ‘war within’ manifests as a moral injury or
trauma, which is the clutch of the throat, twitch in the stomach, which we feel
whenever we violate what each of us considers right or wrong. But we quickly put
it away, lest it become too bothersome. That, in turn, translates into the plethora
of ills that we experience in everyday life: indifference, intolerance, injustice,
callousness, cruelty. All or some of them have existed in human society from time
immemorial, but never before have all found a safe haven at the same time in our
‘within’, nor has their virulence been so scorching. The war is fought not only
between two forces; its influence and impact are also two-fold. The war, and the
myriad battles within, affects, even determines the content of our consciousness
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as well as our earthly conduct. And, on the side, we can influence the course of
the war through our will and behavior.
Another contributing and complicating factor is that the very ‘intelligence’
that propels our personality itself is not of the right kind. The paradox is that it
was the evolution of ‘intelligence’ that marked the arrival, and eventual ascent of
man. Other non-human animals too had brains, some even bigger (dinosaurs,
for example). It is the relative proportions of brain and body that matters. It
was the ‘neocortex’, the so-called ‘gray matter’, which enabled the human to
perform complex functions, sensory perception, logical and deductive reasoning,
and conscious thought. While that kind of ‘intelligence’ empowered man to
survive, prevail and ultimately acquire the power to lord over all other forms of
life on earth, once that stage was reached, it became not entirely appropriate for
his further growth and stability of the human world. One of our paradoxical
perplexities lies in that part of our consciousness which gives rise to what is
often called ‘collective intelligence’, the ‘combined intelligence’ we bring to bear
as members of a group, or community. Although we are not fully aware of it,
the fact is that we are the sum total of our previous past and of the people we
interface and interact with in the world, our family, peers, or co-workers, even
the man on the street. And what we learn, all comes through the doors that
other people open for us. It is also being said that a sense of shared identity—
that thinking as we, rather than as I—is good for our mind and body. Lifeexpectancy
is reported to have declined in modern societies in which people
live isolated lives. On the other hand, the reality also is that although we are
often described as ‘social animals’ we lag far behind other social organisms like
ants and termites in the way we organize and live communally. In our case,
unlike ants, for example, the whole, or the cumulative energy and intelligence,
has often been less than the sum of the parts. Not only have we fallen short in
converting individual energy into social synergy; we expend a good chunk of
our energy to undermine others. That is the primary reason why we have never
found a perfect formula, or model for a ‘just’ society. We are ‘social animals’, but
we also fail most as constituent parts of society, of a collective whole. And that
is why every ‘constitution’, which often ironically starts with soaring but shallow
words, ‘We, the people’, have all been found wanting. From the ‘city-state’
to ‘nation-state’, from kingdoms to empires, from oligarchies to ochlocracies,
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theocracies to dictatorships, to democracies, they have all failed. That is because
there is no way to predict, preempt human wantonness and wickedness, no way
to curb individual avarice and evil while giving autonomous ‘social space’ to
every individual. Man cannot be trusted with any ‘authority’ or power over other
people. The conundrum is that the human being is too complex a form of life to
be contained, but contained he must be, for the good of others. That ‘complexity’
also stems from the fact that we have no clue or control over what happens inside
each of us. While the arena for action, change and control is inside, we focus
on our external behavior. Although scientists and theologians might argue why
there is something rather than nothing and what is it that proves or disproves,
nothing for sure comes from naught and the fluctuating fortunes of the ‘war
within’ determine how we act and react, how we treat each other. And if we, as
individuals, have no hold on our own behavior, how then can we be ‘governed’
externally, which essentially calls for sharing and complementing and willingly
subjecting ourselves to external controls for the larger good. In the words of
Swami Vivekananda, “external nature is only internal nature writ large”. If we
do not have internal coherence and internal peace, we cannot have peace and
order in the world. The Buddha said, “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it
without”. The men that ‘govern’ as well those being ‘governed’ are human, subject
to the same foibles and limitations. For, as James Madison once noted, “If men
were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary”. While
external governance depends on internal governance, internal ‘good’ governance
hinges on the course of the ‘war within’.
Some of us can be ‘super men’, or even achieve ‘supra-mental intelligence’;
but we can never become a super-organism (broadly described as a collection
of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the
collective, phenomena being any activity that ‘the hive wants’, such as ants
collecting food or bees choosing a new nest site). We are essentially unable to ‘get
it all together’, what we have within each of us as a species; or, ‘get along with
each other’ synergistically. Adding to our woes, we make use of, in the words
of William James, “only a small part of our mental and physical resources”—
one might add of our spiritual potential. Nor have we achieved ‘intelligent’
internal coherence. Our ‘intelligence’ is fractured inside and fratricidal outside.
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Human ‘intelligence’, or intellect’ as some like to call it, is multidimensional and
includes not only the cognitive power, but also emotional intelligence, intuitive
intelligence, and spiritual intelligence. We are way off the mark even with regard
to the source of our innate and operative ‘intelligences’. It is, contrary to the
popular view, not all centered in the brain; the heart has its own independent but
interdependent intelligence; the gut has its