The average citizen who has earned the title of a ‘good man' universally is one who attends to his affairs assiduously. He is not one who interferes in others' affairs. He does not interest himself in anyone other than himself. Normally such people will be selfish and not endowed with any particular capacity. There are others who take a lively interest in others and their affairs. They will be popular. Such people know the sensitivity of others and would not cross that border.

The Vedantic Rishis discovered the Self and tried to understand the world through Self. For us, the ego is the self. For the Rishi, the inner Divine, the Brahman is the Self. Tapas or yoga shifts Man from the egoistic self or desire soul of the surface mind to the inner Self, the witness Purusha.  The Rishi can know the world through his Self because the entire world is in the Self. The yogi reaches the Self by concentrating on his mind and detaching the Spirit from the mind. The pure mind leads to the pure Spirit.

In the eighties, the phrase Moment of Truth became popular when someone turned around a losing airline company in North Europe. When he wrote a book on it, he gave the book this title. Truth is powerful. In anyone's life, a Moment arrives where his own innate goodness surfaces and offers all the circumstances he needs to flower into a full-blown Personality. Generally, in the professions, particularly in the legal profession, there is a belief that the profession does not let anyone down fully.

Our ideas of affection sometimes touch the Ideal. A young woman who was deserted by her womanising husband drifted to political patronage which assigned her to their woman's wing. That asylum saw her through her old age. In her old age, after a long interval, the truant husband sought refuge in her. She was delighted that at least at that late hour she had the opportunity to serve her abandoned husband. Shortly he died of incurable sickness, a result of his dissipation. His funeral procession was attended by hundreds of women whom the wife faithfully served.

The neo-rich, the filthy rich are current phrases in India. They are usually obese people who squander money, waste scarce resources, corrupt the officials and are described as a curse on the society. This is more than true. Many of them are erstwhile shop assistants, orphans, or street children. Tons of money has come into their possession, often by efficient, resourceful hard work, and often by dubious methods. Their families constantly go on tour or pilgrimage, to all kinds of places in India and outside.

In Western life when a Man is confronted with the alternative of life or death, he will try his best to overcome it by his own ingenuity. When he fails, he gives up. He rarely, if ever, turns to God for relief through a prayer. It is that Mind and its individuality that has achieved what we know as the splendours of human accomplishment. Most Indians settled in the West do not want their child to grow up there. If possible, they send the children to India for education so that they might miss the evils of Western society during their formative years.

In the field of spirituality, the phrase ‘the Infinite emerges out of the finite' occurs constantly. In human life, such a phenomenon is understood as a miracle. Sri Aurobindo says miracles can become commonplace. This is achieved in a variety of ways. One such method is to reach perfection and make it flawless at all points of work. Such a method will apply to a losing concern, a booming company, a household, an office, in agriculture or any work anywhere. This is a well known method widely practised, but rarely elevated to perfection, especially flawless perfection.

Whatever is flawless is adorable. At that point, it becomes Perfect. Indian scholarship enjoyed that eminence. Western scholarship always aimed at it. While scholarship in the West is out of physical labour, Indian scholarship was, in those heydays of the Spirit, based on Intuition that is spiritual. The thinker excels the scholar. The poet exceeds the thinking philosopher. In English, the word poet stands for one who writes inspired poetry. In Sanskrit, the poet is denoted by the word kavi, which means one who sees, a seer. Only the yogi goes beyond the kavi.

Tradition is very powerful. Traditional beliefs that have no truth in them are still more powerful. We appreciate goodness; we frown upon bad people. Therefore, the creative MIND assumes not out of its own experience, but out of its own expectations that good people should prosper and bad people should suffer. Sometimes we see events in our lives that become a punishment and we understand that it is due to a recent wrong we have committed. The sense of mental justice is satisfied. At other times, a sudden punishment descends on us. We are baffled.

Understanding means to know more about something or to know what you have not known. Mind understands by reading; the body understands by doing; a child understands by growing. It is by experience one understands. I am talking here about the strange experience of Mind when it seeks for its greater understanding by courting the opposite. That leads to a greater understanding. We can call it the understanding of the mental emotion. For this purpose, Mind consciously seeks the very opposite.