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If Man Does Not Know Himself, How Can His Life Be Lived Successfully? – Swami Chidananda

When we observe mankind itself, we see vast masses of people in different parts of the globe with an improved material lot, but without corresponding satisfaction and happiness, which ought to have been the result of this external progress.

If man is to truly improve and advance, he must do so on all levels and in all spheres of life and activity. Man’s possessions have been increased, but not his joy of living.

Emami Temple Balasore Odisha

The imbalance between outward advancements and the basic degeneracy undergone by the human individual is the root-cause of the unhappy state in which humanity finds itself today, fraught with fear, uncertainty and with a sense of insecurity.

People do not want to think of the present. Either they project themselves into a future when man will perhaps have solved all his present problems, or they think wistfully of the past when things seem to have been better. This is due to the basic error that the entire power of man’s mind, his perceptions and his senses have been totally externalized. He has not started from the proper point, his own nature. If man does not know himself, how can his life be lived successfully?

Swami Chidananda Saraswati (1916 – 2008) was the president of the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh – associated with the Swami Sivananda Ashram