Innate Goodness and its Limits
By Karmayogi
A German husband was mean and
perverse. Also he was tyrannical. He fell ill and no cure was in sight. The
wife was a devotee and was fully devoted to him in spite of what he was to her.
Man or woman is social. Better men are moral and ethical. The desire to do GOOD
takes possession of such souls at times of crises. Especially when a rival or
enemy is in inextricable trouble, it is a sight to see such good persons
straining every nerve to go all out to help the undeserving scoundrel of a man.
Still the urge is insurmountable. Suppose one is saved from a gang of bandits
in the forest by a robber. An emotion of gratitude for the robber emerges. What
is the immediate outcome. If you happen to have a few valuables, the first
impulse of the robber is to murder you so that he may rob you.
Gratitude is divine. But one needs to have precise discrimination. Otherwise
grateful emotions to robbers or bandits or even valueless men will kill you. On
our moral personality, this idea jars. Looking at the innumerable events of our
scripture, history and fiction, this will be found to be a RULE without
exception. Basmasuran, having received a boon from Shiva, tried to kill him! I
have in my life of 75 years NEVER had a single trouble or problem. It was
grace. But everyone who knows me knows of my life teeming with minor and major
tragedies. Every one of them came exactly out of my foolish impulse to help
those whom I considered friends but who were those who harboured intense ill will.
Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri says we invite our enemies as guests to
our house. The German lady mentioned above intensely prayed. Her husband was
saved. AT ONCE he started tyrannising her more than ever. She wrote to Mother. Mother
replied, ‘‘A dying man can be saved, but blatant foolishness cannot
be saved even by grace.''
Grace is a pure neutral FORCE. It is powerful, capable of moving mountains. An
intense unbearable stomach pain that persists after strong medication instantly
disappears on invoking Grace. A huge debt collected over decades, several times
the value of the property, NOW presented to Grace with a heart repenting of the
erring past, vanishes in a trice. But it is powerless against wilful folly that
enjoys its comprehensive perfection. This whole analysis will be found to be
exact when we analyse the tyranny meted out to us by others. Its real yogic use
lies in discovering our own propensities of such nature to our parents,
children, friends and benefactors. There lies the CLUE to spirituality.