Beyond Egocentrism

 

Truth and Detachment

 

The ideal of spiritual detachment has been contemplated and practised, by countless people, for a few millennia, yet the organisations which people have created in our modern societies reflect the complexity of a deeply traumatic age in which attachment to materialist theories has dominated Western actions and corporate thinking. If complex, modern organisations are to be fully understood, and now more carefully managed by people, then the underlying human relationships, systems processes, and themes and patterns of behaviour, must be reflected upon with a much deeper psychological insight than the current traditional methods of mental dissection by rational scientific analysis.

 

      Indeed, the limited, subtle action of mental processing, rather than helping to guide or enlighten human organisational actions, can occlude understanding, when communicated in an egocentric, power-based way. Such corporate working can obstruct a full awareness of the whole picture, when its purpose and direction is confined only to the limited realm of the mind, leading to self-interested decision-making that can sometimes be based upon a quite inhumane rationality. When truth and quality are integrated within the psyche, however, much apparent complexity can be understood with intuitive insight, whilst careful, detached action can carry forward personally responsible decision-making. If, therefore, as citizens, or as individuals in leadership positions, we would wish to understand nations, society, organisations, or ourselves, it is necessary to be alert and sensitive to reason and quality in the light of Truth, rather than to culturally clutch on to our main preoccupation with military power, money, and the foul commitment to error. Seeing through the errors that have been made, and also the consequences of them, should provide each of us with routes out of the states of impasse that so often prevail when self-interested concerns predominate.

     

      The idea that to comprehend absolute Truth involves the need to go beyond everyday concepts about ourselves might be perceived, by some, to be a strange, absurd, or even a subversive notion. To a range of other people that knowledge will already be understood. A spiritual view that embraces this understanding is one which realizes that our real Identity is not limited to egocentric concepts, and is not bound up in human reactions, opinions, and tendencies. Conscious self-knowledge, however, does require a deep faith in God.

 

Those in the past who have attempted to understand and explain spiritual experience have often tried to do so with reference to language contained in the major religions. Unfortunately, the dogmatic use of such language has caused many rational people in the West to close their minds to truths that might have been communicated.  If a religious opinion, or, indeed, if any view is held in too dogmatic a fashion, then the natural reaction of a great many people is to reject. If one observes a true spiritual perspective, however, rather than limited, scientific views of human potential and psychology, then the hard and vexed problems of conflicting theological and scientific doctrines, and of wrong political dogma, too, can, in time, be overcome. In Truth, real understanding between people is silent: it is simply the level of harmony that has been made manifest after the words have ceased to flow. The words which pass, in between periods of silence, simply move the communicating parties from relative levels of love and understanding, to deeper states of Love.

 

      Thinking is not the acme of human psychological development. The human mind can reach only so far in its ultimate quest to uncover Truth. Once the limitations of the mind have been fully understood, through introspection, study and yoga, the soul then becomes ready for the next stage of internal development. Working and family life, with all the lessons which that provides, can bring to us the wealth of experience through which mental working can be brought to a head. To get beyond mental working, and the strictures and sufferings of karma, is the goal of human existence. The roles we play, in our social existences, can be transcended once this transformation to the spirit is complete.

 

      Detachment has traditionally been defined as acting without regard for the fruit of action. This does not mean that the individual does not care about what he or she is doing at any given moment. On the contrary, acting in a detached way means that the individual is released to care wholeheartedly because the mind is not dwelling upon “what’s in it for me”. One is satisfied with the experience of the moment, rather than some imagined better financial or personal position which might accrue to the ego as a consequence of a particular act. Detached action reflects the realization that the objects of the senses have a temporary nature, with each object being subject to change and eventual decay. As one develops a greater sense of awareness of God, and the transient nature of the world, the attachment felt towards the sense objects which come into view, or which are used in everyday life, is gradually relinquished. Life is lived in a way which neither accepts nor rejects the objects that present themselves during its course. The developing renunciation is thus an internal experience, rather than a refusal to live in the world. It is a point of view which reflects the deep understanding that the source of human suffering is a sense of being which is tied to feelings of self-interest and possessiveness, bound to particular people or things. Renunciation is thus a natural expression of wisdom, rather than an unthinking acceptance of an injunction delivered from without.