Experience the joy of doing things the new way

That was the caption of Ms Office XP. Relevant too for what am going to say. Just reminding you of Ranjini's lines in one of her posts - the inspiration behind this post..!! "....... is not a problem which is identified today but then long time back and a vivid solution to all such things were also proposed by eminent writers to be followed by all! " A phrase that needs to be looked upon with utmost care and caution. There is always a tendency for everyone to "accept" something from someone who is "eminent" (and "eminent" is a relative term). The human mind is so much attuned to "follow" the "greats" that we often tend to forget our ordinability in life... That stems from the fact that we feel that we know "lesser" compared to some people who are accepted to be eminent across times... Not completely untrue... I don't say we know "more".. but that, we have the power of discretion and of course the "common sense" that is expected to ring the horns on our heads to whatever the mind tries to perceive. What was stated as "this" by the 'eminent' person may not be "that" for me. But the mind often forces us to reject our thoughts and rather falls upon what the 'eminent' person has said, just because we feel "I can never be as right as that 'eminent' person. After all, the whole world agrees he's eminent...". This same theory can be extended to religion and religious practices. We do things just because some 'knowledgeable' person has said it should be done. I take you back to one of my earlier post about superstitions.. and am precisely referring to those same aspects. There is also a demarcation between being spiritual and being religious.. (I'll devote a separate post to that last line later, may be next week)... Religiousness is, among other things, predominantly confined to practices laid down my "eminent" and "knowledgeable" persons of the ancient/medieval times, while spirituality is beyond the realms of religious practices. If Galileo had accepted Aristotle's (who was an "eminent" scholar himself) Geo-centric theory, we would still be languishing and puzzling over a maze called "space". If Einstein did not dare to "assume" that nothing can travel faster than light, we would not have got the Relativity theory. These people became eminent because they had the guts to reject eminent people of their times. The bottomline is.. Of course, listen to your elders, teachers, sacred books, philosophy or the deemed eminent personalities.. but do remember, its not in reading sacred books or listening to 'eminent' people, that one gains wisdom... But, Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any one of these differ from what you've been told by your teachers or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth. And you have to dare to do that...!! ----------------------------- Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." - H.L. Mencken