Salient Thoughts in Concise Form for Students
By Dr. S.G. Eghian
LOOKING FOR REWARD
No man is free of duty, or responsibility. Every man, no matter in what station of life he may be, is bound to his fellow men by certain obligations. These obligations must be regarded as privileges given to man. In the fulfilling of these obligations man should not look for reward or recognition, but he must regard it as a thanksgiving for privileges given him.
By looking for reward in performing his duties man descends, no matter how exalted his standing is, from a high position of a privileged man to a hireling. By seeking for reward or recognition or fame, is always led into selfish ambition of self aggrandizement. He attracts to himself jealous, envious, hateful and unscrupulous men. They will pull him down sooner or later with themselves into degradation, and at the end to disgrace. Looking for reward in performing his duties man always meets disappointment.
The higher a man stands among his fellow men with his power or knowledge, the greater he is charged with responsibilities and duties, and when he fulfills them unselfishly he receives an internal increase and expansion and higher privileges.
MAN’S ENEMY
Man’s enemy is his mirror. In him man sees himself reflected. Man’s enemy is a lesson book from which he can learn his own vices and virtues. Man learns from his enemy the bitterness and destructiveness of lower passions, such as anger, hatred, jealousy, and envy.
Man’s enemy is his ill-matched part. By preparing misery for his enemy, he prepares it for himself, by gossiping ill of his enemy man gossips ill of himself, and by trying to annihilate his enemy by mere force, he tries to annihilate his own self.
Love your enemy is not a mere ethical or religious phrase or just a sentimental saying, but it is a truth and man must learn it in spite of himself.
Man and his enemy is not an accident. Man’s enemy is a mystery and man must go deep into his own consciousness to unravel the mystery.
To turn an enmity into a normal relation, man must trace back and discover all the errors that have made the enemy and correct them one by one.
Until man conquers all his passions and rids himself of all selfish tendencies, he is subject to enemies.
The Heart of Man
All the emotions of man, his love and hatred, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, faith and doubt, his aspirations and his ambitions, have their birth in his heart and leave also their grave there.
The heart of man is the archive of all doing and undoing. It is a sort of man’s hall of records. The mystery of life can be read within these records. They are the records of ages.
The surging activity of humanity is the prompting of the heart of men. One and the same life vibration pulsates through the heart of all men, and each man, according to the contents of his heart gives it a color and a form.
According to the quality of the strings stretched through the heart of man this universal life vibration gives a melody. The purer and finer are the strings, the diviner is the melody they send out into the world.
Experience
The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. Man evolves in consciousness through his experiences. Man’s knowledge is the sum total of his experiences. No matter how trifling may be an experience, it has its intrinsic value. No experience passes away without affecting man in some way or other. Great many functions which man performs without a moment’s thought have been acquired by repeated experiences.
Habits are the products of experiences and again through experiences man comes into knowledge of the habits being good or bad.
Bitter and painful experiences are correctors of man’s wrong actions, and bad habits educate man to become master of his tendencies. Sorrow and suffering must be regarded as experiences and must be valued as educators.
A perfect man is the product of the experiences of ages.
Fear Thoughts
Fear thoughts are the creation of an immature mind. They are constantly sent out into space from almost every mind. The most common of all fear thoughts are those of ill health, or of failure or losses in business or in undertaking.
Man is surrounded in every minute of his life by these fear thoughts, and if man has not a trained mind and is not watchful, he unconsciously receives them and he falls into their current.
Fear is as powerful an impulse as desire. It directs man’s efforts and brings into existence exactly the same condition he fears and thus fear becomes the prolific creator of evil.
To train the mind to become fear-proof is one of the attainments that man must acquire during his life. To be fear-free is not alone a quality beneficent to man himself, but also to the good of his fellow men.
When man understands the facts about fear, then he will feel the responsibility of the fear thoughts he sends out of his mind into space. He will regard fear as sin.
Ambition
Ambition is a propelling power that urges man to create and excel others in his creation.
True ambition is a virtue. It leads man to a greater efficiency. But ambition ruled by lower desires becomes a vice that leads man to destructive tendencies, and actions. It breeds in man selfishness, greed and cruelty, and carries him to degradation.
To excel in power, or in wealth, or in fame, at the expense of others is just like ascending in a balloon that is tied to earth with a heavy cord; it leaves behind an unbreakable tie that will pull man down sooner or later.
To kill ambition is a wrong effort. The desire to excel others is a process of evolution. But man must redeem his ambition by killing his lower desires and egoism.
To excel others in higher aspirations is an ambition of higher order. It lifts man from an ordinary to a divine level.
Cruelty
To cause others physical or mental suffering is cruelty. No action is as evil as cruelty, and no evil is as detrimental to man’s unfoldment as cruelty. It bars man’s way to spiritual progress. No man can enter into the path of spiritual unfoldment with the slightest impulse of cruelty remaining in him.
No act of evil brings upon man as intense retribution as the act of cruelty. Through retribution man learns every detail of his cruel impulses. The state of a man who is born with a physical infirmity, or of a man who is led into a physical infirmity in later life, or of a man who is carried into a cruel fate of torture, physical or mental, in the hand of an oppressor or of a cruel master, or of a husband or wife, are all traceable to acts of cruelty in their past or present lives. By suffering man purifies and cleanses himself of his cruel tendencies.
Causing physical harm should not alone be considered cruelty, but neglecting a duty or breaking a promise for a selfish purpose and causing keen disappointment to others, or passing a word, even without intention of harm, that causes unhappiness in some one; or profiteering from other’s discomfort, or utilizing another’s toil for self aggrandizement, or exploiting child labor, or the labor of unfit persons, or causing suffering to animals under the pretext of sport or science, are all acts of cruelty.
The law of compensation does not consider the intentions. No matter how lofty the intentions may be for an act of cruelty, it brings about its due penalty with the same exactness.
Intentional cruelty degrades man lower than the lowest animal. It extinguishes in man the last flickering spark of divine quality.
Selfishness
Selfishness and benevolence are two opposite qualities. One is an animal quality of first order, and the other a divine quality. At the back of every selfish act there is an animal impulse. It impels man to usurp the rights of others, or to grasp their property. It guides man to build his happiness or comfort, or power, or wealth at the expense of others, regardless of the pain, sorrow or misery he gives them.
Selfishness will not change its character of being a quality of lower human evolution no matter under what pretense it is committed. Patriotism, tradition, religious fervor, self-defense are vain words for individuals or nations with which to injure other individuals or nations.
Benevolence is attained by spiritual growth. Education, intellectual growth, and all sorts of material advancement cannot lift man to benevolence. They may remove from him some of the gross phases of selfishness, but alone they cannot lift him to benevolence.
Every selfish act carries with it its due retribution. Sooner or later it brings upon man sorrow and pain.
Man learns benevolence by the path of sorrow.
The Aim of Life
The run of events that shapes man’s destiny is intended to bring him face to face with his aim of life.
The discovery of man’s aim of life lifts his discontent from his work and place. They do not oppress him any more as a heavy burden. The world around him seems no more pushing him to despair.
The aim of life that man must discover is service. The very service that man must give is centered in the very work and in the very place that he finds himself.
Man must consider his place and work as a trust given to him by the Supreme Creator and must serve to the best interest of all created things and beings.
The man that discovers his aim in life and serves faithfully discovers his higher self.
Self-confidence
Within each man there is a creative power. This power is something independent of the function of man’s physical body, but for its expression it uses the body.
Man’s creative power is the function of his Higher Self, his “inner-man” and is omnipotent and omniscient in its essence. Creative power in its potentiality is the same in every man; what one man can do so can the others. To know this fact, and trust to it is self-confidence.
The degree of man’s ability does not depend upon his power of creativeness, but upon the ability of his physical body to express it.
The aim of evolution is to refine and purify man’s physical body for the fuller expression of his Higher Self, the “Inner-man.”
The belief that man’s body is all he is and his creative power nothing but the functioning of his body and brain, creates fear and doubt and impotence.
Man’s destiny is to become a master of all the conditions that surround him – a master that can rule a universe.
Man has the potentiality to become such a master.