Man awaken thy soul

The epochal truth is that man has come out of the stone age. But the psychological reality is that the stone age has still not come out of man. And look what we are witnessing today. Aeons after humanity began it’s march towards civilization we are still barbarians, lacking the refinements that should have come with social evolution. What better proof do we need to confirm this assertion than to see all around ourselves and find that we continue to live in an era of violent conflict. And for just one reason. To satisfy the ego of a handful of people euphemistically called leaders, who actually are the misleaders. The problem is that many who don’t want a fight are also fighting. This has been happening since times immemorial. The tyranny of a few causes the misery of the most. A few people fool most of the people, most of the time. There is no such thing as democracy, only hypocrisy. The irony is that wars have done no good to either the victors or the vanquished. But the fights continue. Humans rarely learn from experience. The ego blinds human beings from reason and they continue to experiment on their road to disaster. Where have we gone wrong? The senses are greater than the flesh; greater than the sense is the mind; greater than the mind is the intellect; and greater than the intellect is the soul. This eternal wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita (chapter 3 verse 42) provides the answer to our question. There is need to awaken the soul and for this some soul searching is needed. Agnostics and sceptics, notwithstanding, the soul is there in every human being though in different stages of awakening. The Indian philosophical thought has given considerable emphasis on the primacy of the soul. This soul is the sole means of communion with the Supreme Reality. Complete awakening of the soul is the goal of spirituality that helps mankind transcend the problems of the mundane and merge with the divine, achieving supreme bliss. The problems of the world, including the wars, mostly arise out of ignorance that leads to egotism. The way out is awakening the soul. And it does awaken. Only it takes much longer in many cases as the realisation about the futility of ego doesn’t come easily. How to get that realisation is the important question. The Indian philosophy suggests three ways. They are Gyan marga or through knowledge, Bhakti marg or through devotion, and karm marg or through dispassionate duty. The problem with the present times is that everything is driven by logic which is governed by ego. So most of the human beings are confused about what is right and what is wrong. There is a need to go beyond the ego centric logic and look for reason centric wisdom. But it can only come from within. There is a need for arousal. It is possible because there is a soul in every human being waiting for the arousal. It has an inner craving for awakening as it’s essential nature is being good. The difficulty is in understanding what is good. This can come from self-awareness by looking inwards. The right knowledge can be attained by self-realisation. Finding the right Guru can also help. Self which is an attribute of the soul is in the process of continuous evolution. But to attain the realisation one has to pursue looking inwards consistently and objectively.