When is a Good Man at its Best

It is not the good behaviour that matters. It is the courage that we bring to it.

A good man is at the lowest when his good behaviour is ‘FEAR INSPIRED’. Individual differences and social stimuli in the form of public disapprovals and punishments make a large group of people fear-dominated. This fear domination leads such group of people to exaggerate the consequences of deviation from social customs and laws and thus makes them shrink from the temptation of deviating from them. It leads them to fear the physical consequences of their action, fear the loss of reputation, fear the discovery of the deviation of their conduct, fear the loss of some one’s affection, fear their own self. Such persons’ good behaviour is an open cover for cowardice. Their chief value for society is, at best, that they are not a social nuisance. They are goody goody people who do not disturb the social law and order. From purely moral point of view they cannot be regarded except as imitations of goodness. Unfortunately, there is more in the sphere of goodness than in the sphere of evil. So much of evil masquerades as goodness that some thinkers , in disgust, declare goodness as non-existent and un-natural to man.

How far anyone of us belongs to this level can be best known by introduction. Such a class of good men never gives giants for goodness, where as the class of people called evil has given great moral giants. Goodness inspired by fear or cowardice can never rise beyond its dust level. An evil man who openly does evil, has at least courage, because evil is condemned by society. Such a man when converted can be source of strength to the cause of goodness.

Goodness must be positively founded. Cowardice is the worst  foundation for it. Courage is the highest foundation for it. But what is courage?

Courage is the capacity to take risks, face risks, even perish in the risks. It involves some detachments from our individuality as individuals.

When one is detached from money, one can show courage of losing it if it is involved in doing something held right by him. But this very man may fail to show courage in standing by this right if his wife and children are threatned to whom he is attached. It is said that every man has a price. If we know a man’s attachment and we threaten them, we can ‘PURCHASE’ that man. We all have vested interests we can never rise to the best level, when compromise with evils becomes impossible.

It is commanplace to say that basic urge of biological life is survival. This survival is possible under certain conditions, i.e.conditions of getting food, sex and home, place of residence, self-assertion.Desires for these conditions, i.e. means of livelihood, woman, children, place of residence, group life, self-assertion are multi-functions of the desire to live. These desires when repeatedly given the object of their gratification, become independent of the main desire and come to have independent existence to the detriment of the main urge. When this stage is reached, we have a low-love. When money becomes the END rather than the MEANS to self-preservation, it becomes low-love of greed. When self-assertion takes the from of vanity and power lust, it comes to be independent of self-preservation.

A good man shows courage in the case of right to the extent it is detached from these low-loves. Every low-attachment or every vested interest makes compromise with evil. Though detachment from vested interests of life is not in itself a motive power for good, yet it is basic to free and full flow of good.

Freedom from low-love of money, sex, ease, place, wife, children, vanity etc., will take a man sky high if he has positive love for good. But even then its highest stage is not reached. Detachment from the greed of life itself is essential to the final dedication for it.

The path of history is strewn with instances of how vested interests had to compromise with evil. Religion has provided us some of the best instances of most daring leadership. The religious leadership in contrast to the political leadership does not play to the tune of the people it leads. It accuses a man of his wickedness and compels him to change the currents of his passions. It calls upon people to give up their old beliefs and old ways of living. It challenges evil in society. And yet religions have in course of time become the ally of the strong and the wicked. When a rich man makes a temple to a spiritual man, he makes a tomb for him, for he creates a vested interest for him. He (the spiritual man) must protect the temple for he starts to think that to protect the temple is to protect the cause of goodness he holds dear. This identification leads to covered and open compromises. In established religion survival of the organisation becomes an end in itself and since this is threatened by evil powers, it compromises with them. Wordly wisdom, which essentially consists in calculated compromise with evil, becomes dominant.

Great thinkers in the past realized that the Subtlest enemy of goodness is the lust of survival. It was realized that unless this was conquered, the victory of good can never be made sure. Buddha saw the evil in man to arise out of attachment to means of self-preservation and self itself. His ideal of Nirvana was nir-moha for one’s individual entity.

The Master Devatma expressed his wonderful state of detachment from his individual entity in the following words in his Autobiography..as I mentioned in the last article.

“It is imperative for me to stand by Truth and silently fade away. I cannot be disloyal to my love of truth. I cannot show my back in this battle. Though unknown, ignored , disrespected and hated, I can die in peace only if I remain loyal to my Life vow and die struggling for it.”

Yes…even if my physical death proves the end of my individual entity, I cannot go astray from the path of my mission.”

Master  Devatma wanted that:

  “I consider it a supreme ideal of my unique life to bring about that day, and to produce men of very high character who can prove a leaven to raise their own countrymen to spread untold blessings for them and for other kingdoms of Nature.

 I want to produce heaven on earth. I want to herald a religion on this earth which will be destructive of all sins and evils and which will produce men of trust and Character through whom human relations will be in all respects sweet and blessed. I want to establish a religion which gives true Salvation to human souls and so fashions high character in them that they prove a complete blessing not only for fellow human beings but for all living beings with whom they have beneficial relationship. If such high-charactermen are evolved and their noble life becomes a creative and dynamic tradition, then not only my mission in life will be fulfilled but it will also establish its own uniqueness.”

Unfortunately, a good man shows far greater weakness for greed of life than an evil man. Recoiling from the attachment to external objects, fastens one on one’s own individual existence more tenaciously than before.

Therefore, there is no comparison between the miserly sacrifice of the good men for goodness and the unlimited abundance of sacrifice of the evil men for evil. The liberal daring or courage of evil men puts to shame the calculated courage of good men. Only if goodness had as many as daring devotees as evil has, evil would have long become a fossil rather than a flourishing monster.

Goodness awaits and yearns for the day when man will show on its behalf the same dare-devilness, the same martyrdom. Then and then alone will man be at his best, librated and fully evolved. Secondly if one develops vision and love for such sublime life who is completly lover of truth and goodness and hater of untruth, evil and unjustice etc., man will be good at his best.