The Cause of Human Misery And Suffering

Thought waves cause ripples on the surface of the lake of our mind.

The ancient heritage of India  - Yoga – teaches us that we are souls, not the body. Soul is eternal and the fragment of God, which is undying and indestructible by any means. This is not only detailed in the Yogic literatures like Patanjali Yog Sutra, but also also in all the sacred scriptures and Upanishads including Bhagavad Gita and Shrimad Bhagavatam.  As we have forgotten ourselves as souls and considered as the physical bodies, we have trapped ourselves into the bondage of Maya (Prakriti). The soul is the seer and when it does not abide in in its true nature as the fragment/son of God, it appears to take the shape of whatever the content of mind is.

Meditating on God and His area is the only path to happiness.

Take for example – when thought waves cause ripples on the surface of the lake of the mind, the color and form of those objects are superimposed onto our true nature, which is soul or awareness or consciousness. The mind attracts objects like metal to a magnet, and causes erroneous impressions. Since these objects and thoughts possess color, form, structure, and quality, the soul/awareness that illuminates these objects is wrongly perceived as having those attributes. This is the cause of human misery and suffering.

Our many different thoughts and personalities are like little voices in our heads. They can become problem if we erroneously link these thoughts with “I-am-ness” (asmita), which is also called ego. For example – the thousands of thoughts we have every day do not trouble us as long as we do not attach ourselves to them or own them. The problem starts when a person identifies himself with the objects and the situations. This identification or attachment is the wrong knowledge (viparyaya) of us being the phenomena. If this identification persists, there is nothing that stops us from listening to the voices in our heads. The voices told Adolf Hitler to kill six million Jews; similar voices told Josef Stalin to kill twenty million of his own people, and the next similar voices told Christians to kill millions of “infidels/non-Chirstians” via the Inquisition and Crusades.

No more listening to the voice of the mind

All of these acts were, and continue to be, committed today because we identify ourselves with the body, our relationship with the people, caste, nationality, religion, etc. As mind is a survival tool, it always tries to dominate others in order to pre-empt an attack. The mind leads us to competition and warfare. To project with oneself out and become one with the fluctuations of the mind leads to mental slavery.

So the wise are those who understand the life changing message of Yoga, theme of the scriptures and the preaching of the Saints –who are God realized - and follow them practically in daily life in order to get a true happiness that is eternal.