The Right & The Wrong

Please read my book on spirituality which is available on Amazon.com.

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I was inspired to write this article after recent incidents in India wherein the justices of the Supreme Court have been accused of sexual harassment of interns who are old enough to be their grandchildren. Considering that these judges come from the highest strata of society and are supposed to be upholding right societal behavior, what makes them stoop to such low level acts? I looked for examples in ancient Indian history since that is what I am familiar with.

In the famous Ramayana, there is a character Ravana who is an emperor. He is knowledgeable, very well versed in scriptures and God fearing. But when his eyes fall on Sita, the wife of Rama, the banished prince of Ayodhya, he is mesmerized and kidnaps her and tries to force her into marriage. Then we have the character, Duryodhana, the prince of Hastinapura who was also well educated. He infamously made the following statement, “ I know what is right, but cannot bring myself to do it. I know what is wrong, but cannot bring myself to avoid it.” I am sure such examples will be there in every culture wherein seemingly educated people who are held up as models end up doing wrong things.

Before we proceed further we need to understand what is right and what is wrong from various perspectives. Let us say, a married man looks at Miss World and desires her. Is this right or wrong? People would shockingly tell me that as a married man, desiring another is a bad thing. Let us consider this from different planes. On the emotional plane, it is wrong for a married man to even think of another woman disrespecting the institution of marriage. But is this sufficient justification? There are some cultures in the world where the institution of marriage does not exist and everyone belongs to everyone. Even in ancient Indian history, there are references to a woman having multiple husbands and each of these men to have their own separate wives. So if one of the husbands desires his “common” wife, in effect, he desires another man’s wife. So the argument about marriage being a sacred institution may not stand the test that a thing that is right or wrong has to be that in every situation anywhere. What then is the basis to define a wrong act? For this I will take a hypothetical situation and build up the case for right or wrong.

Assume you are in a huge exhibition place, the size of a mini city. As one sees one shop after another, we are enamored by the brightness and attraction of various objects. I go into one shop full of latest electronic items and buy what I think is the best and come out and after walking couple of steps, see another shop offering an even more advanced version of products I bought. I am already heart-broken. Let us assume that I bought this special item also and as I am walking, someone bumped against me and the product fell down and is damaged. I am totally grief stricken. Point to note is that possession of a product gave me momentary happiness till I saw another product and even that was lost when I damaged the product. Now, when I am in this dejected state, assume someone comes and tells me about a mystery shop that will make everyone happy with something that is guaranteed to give everlasting happiness.



Just like many other people, I start walking in that direction only to notice that the road is
now a dirt road. Many people who were eager are now dropping off. I continue on the
dirt path tell I see another obstruction in the form of a dirty pond. I look sideways and
notice a bright shop selling flashy clothes and am tempted to go there rather than
continue to cross the pond. Assume I did not continue and bought some clothes and
went home and the next day they announced that no one had reached till the end and if
they had, they would have met Mr. Billionaire who wanted to bequeath all his wealth to
anyone who came there. I would have cursed myself and said it was wrong on my part
not to have continued on the path.

In exactly the same way, we as human beings are constantly being reminded that there
is a path which leads to eternal happiness and that path is reached by giving up any
binding desires to worldly objects and focusing on attaining that infinite Oneness.
However just like in the example above, we are attracted by the shiny objects of the
world and do not continue on the right path. This act of becoming astray from the right
path is the only sinful act. Using this, let us try to rationalize why one should not do the
wrong things mentioned above.

Let us take this judge who is trying to sexually harass a young girl. Thinking about him
and the girl as two separate entities is the original wrong act. As a consequence of this
wrong thinking, he has developed an attraction for her and wants to possess her. That
is very similar to the example above, wherein when an obstacle came in my path and I
saw a bright shop, I went into the shop and did not continue on my journey to Mr.
Billionaire. Here also, every human being is on a path to attain Infinite happiness, but
the judge on seeing the girl, forgot the path and lusted after her. As a consequence,
legally whatever is to happen will surely happen. But more crucially, he has fallen far
away from the path where Oneness of life is recognized. This is a far greater sin as a
human being and this logic will stand the test of time and place anywhere.

In summary, any act that I do, any thought that I entertain that negates the Oneness
principle; when I see another individual as separate causing lust, anger etc.,, and thirst
for objects of the world to bring me temporary happiness, I am indulging in the true sin
or wrong act. I as a human being who had the unique intellect to realize the Oneness
principle am doing the wrong thing by negating that principle and going on a wrong
path.

Please purchase my book on spirituality to get more insights.

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.


1. My Humble Understanding  Of Spirituality


My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

2. Attain Infinite Bliss

Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide

3. The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Spirit Of Spirituality

Rise From The Depths Of Sin

This is one of the articles in a book I have written on spirituality. The book is available on Amazon.com.


The Spirit Of Spirituality

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Every religion in the world talks of the concept of sin. In the Indian belief, a dip in the hoy Ganges is seen as a way to remove all accumulated sins. I am sure every religion has similar beliefs about sin and its removal. Several belief systems start with the assumption that our birth in this world is an act of sin and we need to look up to some mysterious super power to redeem us from this sin. These concepts of sin are ingrained us right from childhood and rarely do we ever grow out of these. While we mature in age and thoughts, we learn to discard many beliefs of childhood. We no longer as adults believe that the moon is a big piece of cheese as we were told in childhood, nor do we believe that Santa Claus really comes down the chimney and gives us whatever gifts we had asked. But for some unknown reason we refuse to grow out of our childhood ingrained concepts of sin.

Let us start off with what is sin. We can answer this from a worldly perspective and a spiritual perspective. Let me start off with a worldly perspective. I believe a sinful act is something that knowingly causes hurt/harm to someone or something without any reasonable reason. Let us take a few illustrations to conceptualize this.

Imagine a scene where a young child is catching butterflies in a garden and tearing off the wings of the butterfly. Is this a sinful act? All of us unanimously will say that the child is ignorant and innocent and does not know what it is doing. Hence it is not a sinful act. Now, let us move the canvas so we get a better picture. As the child is removing the wings of the butterfly, its mother is happily capturing it on the camcorder. Is this an act of sin? We may hesitate to answer. But going by the definition above, the mother is knowingly causing harm to a butterfly by not asking the child to stop. This clearly is a sinful act.

Let us look at another illustration. We see a room where Joe, a big burly man is standing with his back to us. There is a lot of noise in the room. As we watch, we see John holding a knife coming from the side and plunging it into Joe. Is John’s act a sinful act? Duh, I hear people say. It surely is a sinful act.  Let us now shift the canvas so we know what is happening in the room. The big man Joe is actually holding a young child and is trying to snatch away her gold ear-ring. John is the child’s father and he has knifed Joe. Now, is John’s act a sinful act? Now I hear people say, not at all. John did the right thing. Now, going by above definition John is knowingly causing harm, but the reason is valid. He is trying to protect his child. Hence it is not a sinful act.

Let us see one more illustration. We see Tom on his back and several people are holding him. Pete comes into the room and starts hammering away at Tom’s chest. After Pete hammers a couple of shots, Tom dies. Is Pete’s act a sinful act? Let us see the bigger picture and find out. Tom has a heart attack and Pete is the doctor. Pete is trying to revive his failing heart by beating it. Unfortunately the heart does not respond and Tom dies. Pete has knowingly caused harm to Tom. But the reason was to try and save him. Hence it is not a sinful act.

There are several stages of doing a sinful act and in parallel several stages of withdrawing from it.

The most sinful act is of knowing causing harm to another and repeating the same. In our first example, the mother could have stopped the child from hurting the butterfly. But she did not. This is the worst form of a sinful act when one knows that an act is wrong, but still cannot stop doing it.

The next less sinful act is when an act is done, but not repeated again. In the above example, if after the child hurt the first butterfly, even if the mother felt the desire to let the child play, if she stopped the child, that would be a less sinful act. Please note here that she still had the desire to let the child hurt the butterfly, but she used a little bit of her intellect to prevent it.

The least sinful act or a “non-sin” act is when even the desire to do such an act does not arise. As soon as the mother sees the child doing the act, she immediately stops the child from doing it realizing that it is the right thing to do. She had no desire to see her child enjoying it or capturing it on her video.

So, what is a sin from a spiritual perspective? Any act or thought that derails us from the act of realizing our true nature is a sin. Why is it a sin? From a spiritual perspective, we have been given a human life with its highest intellect for only one reason and that reason is to understand our true self, which readers by now know. If in spite of being given the faculty of a superior intellect compared to other life forms, we are unable to use it to find our true nature, but go outside in search of objects of desire, that is a sin. We are then like filthy animals searching in the gutter for filth and not realizing a golden jewel even if we see it. Just as a filthy animal would prefer to eat the filth in a gutter and ignore the gold, we in our ignorance are doing the cardinal sin of not going on the road to spirituality.

Our true self is nothing but Absolute Truth or Brahman or God or Divinity. Any other living form does not have the intellectual capability to be able to realize this and be free from suffering. Only a human being has this capability. However most of us associate ourselves with a limited existence consisting of our individual identity, body, mind and intellect. This is the individual Jiva. As individuals with a distinct identity separate from Divinity, we do acts which take us away from the purpose of life. We desire worldly objects not realizing that we in our Divinity own everything and do not need to desire anything. We fear another person thinking he or she will prevent us from getting what we want or will take away what we have. We do not realize that in our infinite Divinity, there is no second entity that can take away what we have. Can an ocean be worried that a wave is taking away some of its water? However we are like the little wave always thinking of the bigger wave which will crush us and never realizing that a wave is also in reality the ocean and does not have to fear the bigger wave.

Due to this ignorance of our true nature, we indulge in activities like acquiring worldly objects or desiring them to fill a void we feel within ourselves. Each unfulfilled desire attaches to our “separate identity” and ensure that we take birth after birth to experience what we desired. Again, the law of nature is very strict and principled. If I as an individual, thinking my identity as the limited ego, perform an act, the fruits of that act will come to the same limited ego in some form. If I plant a mango tree in my backyard, I can be sure that after several years I will get mango fruits. If I plant a cactus, I can be sure I will get pricks after several years. Similarly, the limited ego or Jiva plants a desire/thought that will give exactly the same fruit. If the desire/act is something to do with realizing the true divinity, then the fruit wil be true divinity. If the desire/act is worldly with its accompanying impact of good/bad, the result to the ego or Jiva will be good/bad.

In summary, no individual is born a sinner without reason. Nobody is born a cripple or poor or blind. There is a reason behind it. There must have been some act done at some point of time and the fruit of that action is a wretched birth. Similarly for someone born to a rich, well to do, pious family, there must have been an equivalent act at some point. But we as humans have the ability to change our destiny. If we realize that our purpose is to realize our divinity and all thoughts/actions are in that direction, we will become divine rather than being condemned to be sinners forever. Even a wretched birth, if one realizes why he is in a wretched birth and takes necessary action/thoughts to realize the truth, he will no more be wretched and will attain divinity.

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.


1. My Humble Understanding  Of Spirituality


My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

2. Attain Infinite Bliss

Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide

3. The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Spirit Of Spirituality

Getting rid of all accumulated sins

Most of us, who are normal people, are God fearing and worry about the consequences of actions we take. We unknowingly do a wrong act, feel bad and repent for it. Sometimes we knowingly do a wrong thing and repent for it. At the back of our minds, based on the particular family and religious systems we have been exposed to, we think about the consequence of the sinful act in hell. In a typical Hindu system of belief we worry about the type of punishment awaiting us in hell for the wrong acts. Then we hear someone tell us that there is a chance of reducing the sin by doing good acts or by going to a temple or by doing some religious ceremony etc. We go through the motions of doing those and feel relieved that maybe our sins have now come down. We then are told that if we have a bath in the holy rivers, our sins will get washed away. So we make a pilgrimage to all the holy places, making sure that we bathe in all the named holy rivers like the Ganga, Cauvery, and Narmada etc. I am sure other religions have similar type of actions to do to enable a sin to be glossed over and guarantee a place in Heaven.

Let’s try to examine the above behavior using an illustration. Let’s think of a robber who has been robbing in several places and has amassed a wealth of 100,000 USD. Assuming that he gave away 10,000 USD as charity, if he is caught, will he be charged for an offence of stealing $90,000 USD, just because he gave away a portion of his stolen wealth as charity? As ridiculous as this looks, our act of trying to atone for our sins by doing good acts is equally ridiculous. An action once done has sowed the seed for the fruit of that action. So, if we have sinned, no amount of charity, pilgrimage or dipping in holy rivers can cure us of our sinful act. We have to bear the consequence.

Now take the same situation as above where a thief has stolen $100,000. What If the thief was a young innocent child who was directed by his father to steal? The child has not willfully stolen, but has been directed to steal by a cunning father. Will the child be punished? I am sure no court in the world would punish the child for an act done under pressure without any intention of actually doing it. In exactly, the same way any sinful act that we do unintentionally will have absolutely no karmic consequences. A motorist driving on a dark road accidentally hits and kills a deer. This is not at all a sinful act because the driver did not intend to kill. However a hunter killing a deer will face karmic consequence of his sinful act because he willfully killed a deer. So an action will have a karmic influence when we are the willful doers of actions and do an act knowing its consequence.

If all the charities, pilgrimages etc. will not help us get rid of our sinful consequences, what will? Again, let us take the case of the man who willfully has stolen money. Assume that he is caught and is charged with the crime and sentenced to punishment. Before the punishment begins, if he dies, obviously there is no punishment. So, if the doer of an act is no more in the scene where punishment can take place, there is no punishment. In the same way, if the doer of a sinful act is not there in the scene where punishment can take place, there is no karmic reaction.

Doesn’t this sound silly? How can there be a place in the universe where the doer of a sinful act goes to escape the consequences? Now we return to our familiar topic of who is the doer of a karmic action. It obviously is not the body, because the body is just a vehicle which does something at the behest of something else. This something else is not the mind or the intellect, because these are also instruments of emotion and thought. An instrument cannot be charged for a mistake. It is as ludicrous as charging a gun for a murder. So who is the doer behind the body/mind/intellect? We are aware that the cause for any action of a physical body is a desire in the mind which is caused by a thought in the intellect which in turn arises from the vasanas which belong to the ego. The ego here is that sense of identity that each living being has. This is what causes a feeling of doing and causes an act. Any action that we do belongs to the ego. So any karmic influence of any action can only be for the ego. We have seen earlier in the article on reincarnation that due to the unfulfilled desires/actions, the ego/vasana drives the subtle body to take a form to experience the results of the action.

Just as we saw that when a thief dies, his connection with the crime he has committed ends, in the same way, any connection of an entity with karmic influence for an action done ends when the ego which is the real doer of the action dies. This then is the only way to end the consequences of sinful acts or any act. The ego has to die. That feeling of a separate identity from the original and only source, which is Brahman, has to end. The end of ego is nothing but the dawn of consciousness and enlightenment.  The instance we realize that we are nothing but the shining Brahman and our ego dies, all our connection with action ends.

Man – ego = God

Man – ego = Brahman or pure consciousness

When one becomes Brahman or God or pure consciousness, there is no more any karmic influence. Just as a cave which has been dark for several thousand years becomes bright as soon as a light is lit, several births of karmic accumulations vanish at the instant, the ego dies.

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.


1. My Humble Understanding  Of Spirituality


My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

2. Attain Infinite Bliss

Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide

3. The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Spirit Of Spirituality