MAN’S MISERIES AND GREATNESS

The text below was taken from a lecture given by Professor Huberto Rohden on Greatness and Human Misery, in 1970.

“Man is a mix of miseries and greatness. His miseries have appeared all; his greatness is still unknown; his sensitivity to small matters and his indifference to large ones indicate a strange reversal.” Blaise Pascal

 

MISERIES: Tragic possessiveness! Takes everything, even what he doesn't need. Steals others, kills others to seize what belongs to them, not for his own need, but for his luxury. The law condemns death crimes, but the law does not prohibit the commercial and industrial killings that are part of the abominable exploitation perpetrated by commercial and industrial societies, and even governments, which end up killing men. These are within the law. Industrial and commercial organizations can kill anyone; actions that come even from great honest citizens of their countries. Because the law only prohibits the crimes of death but does not prohibit other types of exploitation that ends in deaths.

Humanity is in a permanent commercial, industrial, and social killing. To satisfy the greed of the intellectualized and tyrannical ego, reckless man kills others, throws others into misery. It does not hurt that others die as long as one lives in abundance.

Imagine how far the hypertrophy of this possessiveness has come: in the most powerful countries on earth there are huge factories producing deadly weapons capable of annihilating millions of people in a blink of an eye. As an example, two major countries on earth manufacture weapons for the Arabs to kill the Jews in Palestine, and manufacture weapons for the Jews to kill the Arabs.

Why? To make money! Because the war industry is one of the largest industries in existence; nothing is more lucrative than the war industry. Wars are really big business! To kill others, unimaginable fortunes are made. Up to this point, greed and human possessiveness have come. No nonhuman being does this. Man, the intellectualized animal, is the worst of animals.

 

GREATNESS: And why is human greatness so unknown? Since it is in the depths of this nature and man is just spinning around its peripheries! One always walks on the surface of this nature, which is called ego and cannot penetrate the centre of the inner nature, which is called the divine Self.

If man could dive into the centre of his nature, fully realizing "Who am I?" and acting upon this awareness of the truth, man would be his own liberator. If he did so, he would be free from all debts, all karma, all negative factors of his nature. There would be no more guilt, but the acquittal of old debts that would never be committed again. This is redemption. This is self-knowledge, this is liberation, this is self-realization, this is entering the realm of truth and happiness.