LIVING ONLY ON NEED TO KNOW BASIS
Do people really know what they need? The answer as far as most of us are concerned is, yes, but only up to a point. Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who was instrumental in the formation of the humanistic movement, drew up what he called a “Hierarchy of Human Needs”. These he presented in the form of a five-layered pyramid with increasingly basic needs at the bottom and more rarefied ones stacked one on the top of the other up to the pinnacle.
On the first layer at the base are the physiological needs such as air, food, water and shelter which are necessary for survival and must first be met before a person can aspire to any other level of existence. Once they are taken care of, an individual can concentrate on the second layer, the need for safety, security and protection from danger. The third layer is the need for love and belonging and social needs such as friendship and acceptance by one’s peers. This is followed by the penultimate fourth layer which is the need for respect and esteem in order to achieve status and self-confidence. And finally, at the apex, is the need for self-actualization.
In Maslow’s scheme the first four layers are called deficiency or D-needs. If they are not filled, you feel anxiety, and attempt to fill them. However, interestingly, if they are filled, you fill nothing because you feel only their lack. Each layer also takes precedence over the layer above it. For example, you don’t feel the lack of safety and security until your physiological needs are taken care of. Or, in Maslow’s terminology, a need does not become salient until the needs below are met.
The self-actualization needs beyond the Maslow called “being values” or B-needs. If and when fulfilled, they don’t go away; rather, they motivate you further. Maslow outlined about 14 of these values or B-needs, including beauty, meaning truth, whleness, order, simplicity and harmony. Unfortunately, as mentioned, a great majority of us don’t necessarily feel the lack of self-actualization. Therefore, we don’t feel it needs to be fulfilled. And therefore, we don’t even know what we are missing. There’s something deadening about meeting the first four layers of needs which stop us from realizing our full potential. It seems like only the discontented and the restless among us take final step to fulfill an ultimate and greater need.
Mukul Sharma
Focus on what you have to enjoy bliss
Someone once said, ”The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.” But these are the easiest things in the world if you haven’t identified with the “me.” You can say things like “I am wrong! If you knew better, you’d see how often I’m wrong. What you would expect from an ass?” But if haven’t identified with these aspects of “me,” you can’t hurt me. Initially, the old conditioning will kick in and you’ll be depressed and anxious. You’ll grieve, cry and so on. ”Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be so. “But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore. Do you know what a big difference that is?
You step outside of yourself and look at that depression. And don’t identify with it. You don’t do a thing to make it go away; you are perfectly willing to go on with your life while it passes through you and disappears. If you don’t know what that means, you really have something to look forward to. And anxiety? There it comes and you are not troubled. How strange! You’re anxious but you are not troubled.
Isn’t that a paradox? And you’re willing to let this cloud come in, because the more you fight it, the more power you give it. You’re willing to observe it as it passes by. You can be happy in your anxiety. Isn’t that crazy? You can be happy in your depression. But you can’t have the wrong notion of happiness. Did you think happiness was excitement and thrills? That’s what causes the depression. Didn’t anyone tell you that? You are thrilled, all right, but you’re just preparing the way for your next depression…..
We were told that happiness is a smooth complexion, a holiday resort. It isn’t these things, but we have subtle ways of making our happiness depend
on other things, both within us and outside us. We say, “I refuse to be happy until my neurosis goes.” I have good news for you: You can be happy right now, with the neurosis. You want even better news? There’s only one reason why you are not experiencing bliss at this moment, and it’s because you are thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. Otherwise you would be experiencing bliss.
ANTHONY DE MELLO, SJ
SETTING AN EXAMPLE BY BEING AUTHENTIC
In a song sung by Vani Jayaram for the Hindi film Guddi, beginning with Hum ko man ki shakti dena data, the second line coveys a powerful message for all aspiring humanity-Doosaronki ki jai ke pehle khud ki jai kare, meaning, ‘before attempting to improve others, may we improve ourselves.” Indeed there are many who reel out prescriptions for others when their own ills have not been resolved! In this context, the Bible conceives of the concept, “Physician heal thyself” (Luke IV, 23).
It is common knowledge that only when one has evolved into clarity and authenticity by resolving the conflicts, confusion and self-doubt and various kindered afflictions, is he accepted and listened to. The virtue of practicing what one preaches is the primary requisite to becoming a leader of men. In this context an anecdote concerning the life of Gandhiji is relevant. The parents of an indulgent boy requested him to advise the boy not to eat only limited sweets. Gandhiji asked them to visit him again after ten days. During the visit, he gave this advice to the boy. When asked why he didn’t tell him so even in the first meeting, Gandhiji replied to say that first he wanted to impose upon himself this self-discipline and having observed that he had succeeded, he became convinced that he was qualified enough to impart the needed advice.
No wonder this great man, who wrought many changes through the power of example, had the courage of conviction to declare, when asked to convey his message to mankind, ”My life is my message.’ This is authenticity and credibility obtaining for the person concerned a vast following and respect from all over. This credibility obtained through living a worthwhile and authentic life obtains its source from the evolved self within, radiating thus peace and goodwill and invariably obtaining this instinctive following and respect.
The other end of the spectrum involves those who volunteer to advise, criticize and suggest when they are far from being qualified to do so-as in the case of an obese offering panacea for slimness or one who treats his family harshly waxing eloquent on love, goodness and tolerance. In this regard, the observation of Eric Hoffer is noteworthy, “It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbour.” Indeed charity begins at home!
K Vijayaraghavan
NEED TO REKINDLE THE WOLF SPIRIT
By Vithal C Nadkarni
The Indian desert wolf seems as elusive as the Prairie wind at Maharashtra’s Nannaj sanctuary. Most people I met here speak about the endangered animal with some wistfulness. It embodies an older way of life, marked with courage and camaraderie. It evokes the grassland more powerfully than the placid black-buck that relies on speed rather than smarts for survival.
Should we take such sentiments at face value? The wolf is pitied rather than feared today because humans feel secure. If it were not for government protection, the last ‘Landga’ would long ago have been howling in the HAPPY hunting Grounds in Sky.
The wolf sparks strong reactions across cultures. One is the new best-selling novel from China that demands that readers seek their ‘inner wolf’. Telling your audience that they are culturally sheep and need to rediscover the sense of the wild to avoid global disaster is the ploy employed by Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem. It has taken China by storm. Business houses have bought it in stacks for their staff and questions are being asked on the internet as to why the Communist Party bosses have failed to ban the book, when woven through its narrative is a plea to the Chinese people to struggle in a wolf-like manner for their personal freedom.
Wolf Totem is an autobiographical tale of a young student from Beijing who’s “sent to the country to learn from the peasants” during the Cultural Revolution in 1967. As he herds sheep on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, the protagonist considers the fate of the ethnic nomads who are his companions and the wolves with whom they share their land. Although the nomads and wolves are traditional adversaries, he realizes that both share an identical free spirit that is gradually being crushed as ethnic Han settlers like himself systematically destroy the wild ways of the wolf and the nomas. Incidentally, the tribal name of Genghis Khan –Borjigin- mens ‘Master of the blue wolf’, a reference to Mongolia’s creation myth in which a divine blue wolf mated with a fallow deer to give birth to the first Mongolian. Harmonizing deer-wolf qualities, his children conquered the world, without destroying the environment. The moral of the story is that in the Deccan too, you need both the blackbuck and the wolf for optimal health of the grassland and the farm.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SLEEPER AWAKES?
In dreams a sleeper unconditionally accepts everything perceived as real. The events or situations may be irrational, imaginary or totally implausible but nothing is questioned- no matter how outlandish. A subtle patina of most convoluted logic is applied over the whole episode which immediately soothes doubts, smoothens rough edges and softens disbelief. Even if the dream experience degrades into a terrifying nightmare, the same belief structure endures to ensure its continuance. This is what most of our waking lives are like too- an unquestioning and hallucinatory acceptance of everything.
Interestingly, there’s another class of dreams called ‘lucid’ ones where such childlike acceptance is missing. These are dreams in which the person suddenly becomes aware that he or she is dreaming. The lucidity usually begins when the dreamer realizes that the experience is not occurring in reality, but is something happening in sleep while the physical body is actually in bed with the eyes shut. Often this realization is triggered by the dreamer noticing some impossible or unlikely occurrence such as flying or meeting the dead. Sometimes people become lucid without noticing any particular clue in the dream; they just abruptly become conscious they are in a dream which has no connect with the true reality.
In real life too there are people who suddenly become aware of some fundamental underlying reality on which the entire dreamlike cover-up of the world exists. Usually we think of them as mystics, sages or shamans who have somehow seen through the maya of existence. We refer to them as people who have “woken up” and are free from the sleep of phenomena living.
But ironically, even during a lucid dream there is something called a “false awakening” where the dreamer dreams that he or she has woken, even though the dream is, in fact, still continuing. Only when the person encounters an absurd incongruity does the false awakening give way to a real one. Yet other times- though this happens less frequently – a person can fall into a series of false awakenings, each time thinking it to be real; only to wake up again and again. Which is why it’s so difficult to know who is truly enlightened and who is not. For if the person himself cannot be sure then how can we? We could merely be part of someone’s dream. So what happens when that person finally awakes?
MUKUL SHARMA
