Holiness within us is waiting to be experienced

The Holy Man
by Susan Trott

Review by Lee Ambrose

What do you do when sleep eludes you? Many "count sheep" but, Susan Trott chose a different way to deal with her insomnia. She began to envision a "Holy Man" and the pilgrims who would make their trek to see him to gain wisdom and understanding. Woven with bits of Buddhist philosophy, this engaging little book is a set of thirty four vignettes—each depicting a different character flaw in mankind. Each character flaw in turn becomes the perfect springboard for a story of enlightenment.

Author Susan Trott has written several novels including The Housewife and the Assassin, Don't Tell Laura,Incognito, and Sightings to name just a few. Her work has received praise from The San Francisco Chronicle and The Bloomsbury Review. Her writing is published around the world. Some has been optioned for motion pictures.

Joe is a quiet soul. He lives with several other monks in a hermitage on a nameless mountain top. Every summer, he welcomes the many pilgrims who travel to the mountain top to see him. Every year, more pilgrims come and the wait to see The Holy Man becomes longer. During the waiting period, human nature being what it is, stories within the story unfold. Sometimes a pilgrim has already learned a valuable lesson by the time he or she arrives at the door of the hermitage to see Joe.

The grandmother who never receives thank you notes from grandchildren, the man whose jealousy is all-consuming, the alcoholic, the veteran who can't forgive himself for the loss of life he contributed to during the war, the impatient woman, the self-absorbed "famous person"—all of these characters and many more make up a cast of incredibly human individuals. Readers are sure to see a bit of themselves or someone they know within these brief chapters.

Each character's story and redemption is told in an engaging manner reminiscent of a fable. Human frailties are exposed, character flaws are mended, and pilgrims go back out into the world as changed beings because of their experiences along to path to The Holy Man. Everyday concerns are examined with gentle wit, profound wisdom, and simplicity.

When the days become shorter and the temperatures become too cold for people to wait for days and days to see The Holy Man, Joe begins his own period of silence, solitude and reflection. He envisions the people who passed through his home during the summer—he imagines the changed lives they are living and creating.

As Trott brings this delightful tale to a close, she leaves her reader with a sense that there just has to be a sequel in the making... and, in fact, she did write a sequel (The Holy Man's Journey) which was published in 1997. It too is an engaging little book—but that is a book review for another day! 

Excerpts from: "The Holy Man" by Susan Trott

There was a holy man who lived in a hermitage on a mountain. Although solitary, it was not strictly a hermitage because some monks lived there with him. Even before the world began to seek him out, he was rarely alone.
When word got out about him, people came to see him during the summer months when the hermitage was accessible, firs t a few people, then more and more until there was a long line climbing the steep mountain path single file - tens, hundreds, and then thousands, some of whom never made it to his door before the snows forced their return..........
When the door opened wide, the next pilgrim in line, waiting beyond the gate, would be summoned forth by a man in a wheat colored robe, a small, non-descript-looking person.

"Yes?" he would ask when the pilgrim reached the threshold.
"I have come to see the holy man."
"Follow me, please."
He or she would follow the small man through the house, along a hallway with doorways open to various rooms into which the pilgrim would peek hastily, but the monk ahead was already moving so very quickly through the house that the pilgrim couldn't linger but literally had to rush after him.
In no time at all they had passed through the entire first floor of the house and were at a large door similar to the one the pilgrim had entered. It was the back door. The monk opened it wide and said "Goodbye".
"But I have come to see the holy man!" said the visitor plaintively.
"You have seen me," he gently replied.
And the next thing the pilgrim knew he would be outside, the door solidly closed behind him.

This is why the line moved so rapidly and how the holy man got to see so many people - or so many people got to see him. The trip through the house was twenty seconds, add another twenty for greetings and partings, another twenty for returning to the front door, and what you have is a person a minute.
Most times the holy man would add, "If you look on everyone you meet as a holy person, you will be happy," which added seven seconds.
Rarely, but sometimes, which were happy times for him, he sat down and talked to a pilgrim. ...........

[

What did pilgrims feel about being given such short shrift after their long inchworm trudge up the mountain? .....
.....even the nicest amongst them, when the door shut on their departure, felt some of these feelings: wronged, hurt, cheated, disappointed, betrayed, ill-used, angry.
But it was amazing how fleeting this letdown was, because, as they stood outside the door, somewhat dazed, feeling any or all of the above, they began to review their visit to the holy man and to understand. The door had been opened to them.

How many places would this happen in a world of peepholes, locks, bolts, and bars?
The door had been opened wide and the one-man reception committee had stood there, eyes alight, a small smile, saying, "Yes?" -a "how may I help you?" sort of yes.
Whereas the pilgrim had not greeted him at all, had not introduced himself, said hello, how are you, may I please come in, but, instead, full of his own importance, his own mission, had treated the door-opener as the lowliest servant, saying, "I've come to see the holy man."

And the door-opener, realizing the visitor's mission had already been accomplished, showed him out. Thinking this, the pilgrim felt very sorry about his behavior and vowed that he would come again next summer and do differently.

He tried to remember what the holy man looked like and couldn't, because he hadn't looked at him. He wouldn't recognize him if the same man opened the door next year, but no matter. He would be courteous and respectful to whoever opened the door. In fact, he would be gracious to everyone from now on, imagining that everyone was the holy man, that everyone indeed had holiness in him. This would be very hard. Still he would try. Because that was what he had learned from the holy man, and it was a huge, wonderful, staggering lesson.

And it meant, yes, it meant that even he himself was a holy person somewhat.

The Great Quest for Truth:

The Great Quest for Truth:

The Quest for Truth begins at the moment of birth with the struggle for life in strange surroundings. Bewildered by the expulsion from the dark, watery nourishing home of the Womb into the starkly lighted harsh external world with a violent push and the severance of the vital link with the sharp blade of the knife, the newborn cries out for air to breathe and nourishment to hang on to life. The initial struggle for life ends with the tender and loving hugs from the mother who forgets her labor pains to welcome God's gift of the bundle of joy, throbbing with life and demanding ever more care and attention which she is always willing to give. In return, the child rewards the mother with warmth and a joyful life and its first words "amma", "maa".

Our struggle for life and with life continues for decades without our understanding the Truth behind our lives: what is this thing called life that we are living, what is the purpose of our life, where are we going as the years fly past us and finally, who is it that is living this life. Who is this "I" that claims my life and determines how it should be lived, who shouts with joy at successes and cries with pain at failures? The puzzle becomes more complicated with age and we despair at the absence of answers satisfactory to the "I" who poses the questions and rejects the answers given by other wise men.

Until one Wise Sage appears on the scene and tells us plainly: your quest for the Truth shall end only when your questions cease and you look inside yourself and experience who you are. 'That thous art', you have learned from the sacred scriptures; the moment you experience the truth of this statement, you have truly realized and there is nothing more to learn or know.

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Ramana Maharishi's Upadesa Saram: slokas 26-30

Learning from the Wisdom of the Body

Learning from the Wisdom of the Body

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.                                            -- Henry David Thoreau

Learning from the Wisdom of the Body

--by Viral Mehta, Original Story, Jul 12, 2012

Every time I watch it, I get goosebumps. The one-minute "Power of One" video combines evocative visuals of people who've impacted the world by working toward the greater good, inspiring us by their example. Gandhi. Mother Teresa. Ruby Bridges (the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in 1960).

It's amazing that our interpretation of experiences can generate such a visceral response. The fact that we get goosebumps when we are inspired or afraid is one of many everyday indicators of just how deeply and intricately connected our minds and bodies are. In fact, the mind and body are an intertwined whole -- and there is great wisdom in the totality of our mind-body experience.

There are sparks of this recognition even in the world of technology. An increasing number of tools leverage something called "feedback loops”.  Some of these are bio-feedback devices that work by helping us become more aware of the body, giving us real-time feedback about physiological functions so that we can learn to consciously change them. They've been effective in improving many conditions, including stress, depression and even pain.

But there are even more powerful feedback loops at work within ourselves. We are actually sub-consciously picking up on certain internal signals that orient us toward balance and optimal well-being. It's what, for instance, makes pregnant mothers naturally hungry for foods rich in the specific vitamins that they need. And it's this ability that allows us to, say, walk into a troubled meeting, and immediately sense that "the tension in the air is so thick you can cut it with a knife."

There's a reason why we describe that tension as being palpable enough to cut. We can physically feel it. Most of the time, we think of the body as a mechanical system on auto-pilot, and we don't pay much attention to it. But if we sensitize ourselves enough, we can become aware of the body's aliveness. With every breath, the heart pumps fresh oxygen and blood, continually rejuvenating every part of the body. We know that every cell of our being is in flux, and a massively interdependent set of systems are at work constantly.

But these aren't all strictly physical processes. We perceive and interpret through our minds, which in turn affect our bodies. The brain assembles neurohormones based on our emotional states, which get pumped into our bloodstream. And all of our cells have receptors for these chemicals, so we end up experiencing our mental states throughout our bodies. Though this process is constantly at play, we can go beyond being passive spectators to the whole phenomenon -- we can be active participants.

Think about how anger works. Let's say that my friend is supposed to meet me somewhere, and she is late. Initially, there's a mild feeling of annoyance. "She's always running late." That mild annoyance triggers a subtle, unpleasant, bodily feeling. But let's say I'm not aware of it. Beneath the surface, then, my habituated mental response kicks in, which only increases the intensity of that bodily feeling. The mild annoyance soon becomes full-fledged anger. So mind affects matter, which in-turn affects the mind, forming an unconscious cycle.

The body actually reflects the mind right away and can help lead us back to balance. Of course, it's not as simple as turning on a switch, but with practice, this "feedback loop" can start serving us. We can inject more choice into any situation. In every experience, we can learn to tune back into the ongoing stream of our inner experience, remain centered and choose our response. Even in simple things, like managing our emotional state when a friend is late.

This feedback loop goes well beyond just improving our physical health -- it points us to greater truths. At its core, it allows us to tap into our inherent drive, to keep improving and learning from our experiences, to continue evolving. The term "homo sapiens" comes from the Latin verb sapere, which means "to taste, to be wise, to know." Wisdom itself is defined by psychologists as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being."

In fact, we are hardwired to grow in wisdom. Actively learning from our experiences is what makes us quintessentially human, and when this experiential learning is rooted in an integration of mind and body, we are leveraging a natural feedback loop. By using this built-in technology, we become better students of cause and effect, finding more and more windows of opportunity to be aware and to make better decisions. Best of all, this technology is a gift -- it requires no purchase, and can be activated at any time, waking us up to our own innate wisdom.
Source:  http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=273 

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Renunciation In Action

Renunciation in Action

By: Swami Parthasarathy
http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-articles/science-of-spirituality/renunciation-in-action?track=1&uid=34555&date=20120704

Action is the insignia of life. The law of life proclaims that none can remain without performing activity. Everyone is made to act according to one’s own inner temperament. If you choose to remain idle, you lead yourself to destruction. Look at Nature. Observe the stagnant pool and the running brook. Where water stagnates it turns filthy and dirty, whereas running water is clear and pure.

If you are to succeed in life, if you wish to be prosperous and peaceful, you must adopt the principle of running waters. Follow their line of action. The river keeps moving, overcoming all obstacles, ever-progressing. It never stops until it reaches the ocean. So must you pursue the path of action until you reach the abode of Truth. Vedanta highlights the gospel of karma action. It emphasises the importance of fulfilling your obligatory functions in life.

Scriptures caution us that even to maintain your body, you must be active. If any part of your body remains inactive for a period of time it loses its strength and vitality. Your body needs to be kept in constant repair. You must exercise daily. But people detest the idea of physical exercise. Instead, they choose to indulge in sensual pleasure. But even enjoyment of sensual pleasures needs proper maintenance of the physical body. Neglect of physical exercise would prove detrimental to your material and spiritual wellbeing. Hence, the first spiritual lesson Swami Vivekananda gave to his followers was: ‘Go, play football!’

Vedanta insists on work, work and work. Equally so, it glorifies renunciation. There is an apparent contradiction. How can action and renunciation go together? The answer is: Real work is founded on renunciation of the ego -- which is work performed without the egoistic feeling, ‘I-am-the-doer. I am the sole architect of all that I do.’ Real work is turned out when the body plunges into action while the mind is attuned to an ideal set for it. A true worker is one who pours out his efforts for a higher cause beyond his selfish interest. It has to be done without an egoistic arrogation of doership. That is the spirit of renunciation to be practised. Such work commands success and prosperity concurrently with peace and bliss. You can practise it in your home, in business, in society, everywhere. There is no need to retire to the forests for living a life of renunciation.

The idea of working in a spirit of renunciation has confused people. People either become attached, entangled in their work or turn cowardly and seek escape from it. Realise that action is inevitable. You cannot avoid your obligatory functions. In the epic Mahabharata, a great battle was fought between two royal forces. Arjuna was a warrior-prince leading one of the armies. He aimed at destroying unrighteousness and resurrecting righteousness in the country.  The stage was set for the battle to commence. At that crucial moment Arjuna wanted to withdraw from the scene. The warrior declined to fight. He shrank from his obligatory duty. It was then that Krishna gave Arjuna the sermon of theBhagwad Gita. He advised him of the necessity and art of right action and how action embraces the principle of renunciation. He asked  Arjuna to renounce his ego and fight the battle impersonally for the welfare of the people. Empowered by this knowledge, Arjuna fulfilled his obligation as a warrior and won the battle.

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Yield that you may not Break

Cogitation on a Quote from Lao Tsu:

Yield, that you may not break.
Bent, you may straighten.
Emptied, you may hold.      --   Lao Tsu

Whenever we are attached to having something a certain way, better than it already is, we are engaged in a losing battle. Rather than being content and grateful for what we have, we are focused on what's wrong with something and our need to fix it. When we are zeroed in on what's wrong, it implies that we are dissatisfied, discontented.

Whether it's related to ourselves – a disorganized closet, a scratch on the car, an imperfect accomplishment, a few pounds we would like to lose – or some one else's 'imperfections' – the way someone looks, behaves, or lives his/her life – the very act of focusing on imperfection pulls us away from our goal of being kind and gentle. This strategy has nothing to do with ceasing to do your very best but with being overly attached and focused on what's wrong with your life. It's about revealing that while there's always a better way to do something, this doesn't mean that you can't enjoy and appreciate the way things already are.

The solution here is to catch yourself when you fall into your habit of insisting that things should be other than they are. Gently remind yourself that life is okay the way it is, right now. In the absence of your judgment, everything would be fine. As you begin to eliminate your need for perfection in all areas of your life, you'll begin to discover the perfection in life itself.

In this context, we may recall the story of Procrusteus in Greek mythology. He seized weary travelers, tied them to a bedstead, and either stretched them or cut off parts of their body to make them fit in his bed! He had this rigid rule: If you do not fit right in my bed, you shall be sized to fit!

Substitute 'mind' for 'bed' and you get the perfectionist’s rigid, unyielding attitude of mind.

The dictionary-meaning for the word "Procrustean" is:
'acting to secure conformity at any cost - drastic or ruthless".
Many perfectionists, lacking in sensitivity, act in the Procrustean mode and corrupt a relationship through a judgmental attitude about the other person in the relationship. Most are not even aware that they are guilty of this act and will not accept that they are the cause for the resulting pain. They may profit much by Lao Tsu's advice on yielding:

Yield, that you may not break.
Bent, you may straighten.
Emptied, you may hold.

By the term 'yield', Lao Tzu is not suggesting a compromise with evil or a surrender in the struggle for justice. He is merely emphasizing upon the need for a change in one's attitude of mind; this change will happen once there is an acceptance that others may not and need not conform to one's own perceptions and standards. Insistence that they should, will lead to disappointment and consequent deterioration in relationships.

As Saint Purandara Dasa aptly stated in one of his kirtans: "the more your expectations, the more your disappointments." (Aashaigal yeshtto niraashaigal inneshtto -- Kannada)

The bending due to an yielding attitude of the mind enables us to straighten later, when the burden of negative feelings created in us by our own rigidity have dropped off. Emptied, the mind becomes receptive to a holistic perception of the world in which we live and will lead us to find harmony, peace and joy in our lives.
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When Absolutely Nothing Matters - Mukul Sharma

When Absolutely Nothing Matters

By: Mukul Sharma 

If it’s true that a vacuum can create virtual particles, did our universe materialise out of nothing, asks MUKUL SHARMA

Nothing can come out of nothing — ex nihilo nihil — is something most people would agree with intuitively because it seems to pack such a punch of commonsense. In fact, the first thermodynamic law of energy conservation which underpins all of physics says basically the same thing — that matter (or energy) cannot be created or destroyed. The same argument has also frequently been invoked by detractors of the Big Bang theory to discredit it. How could all of space, time and matter, they ask, be created out of nothing unless some supernatural agency intervened.

However, all is not lost. That’s because funnily enough, other laws of modern physics do permit the creation of matter — albeit at a subatomic level — to take place spontaneously if it does so for a small enough period of time, so long as it vanishes back into the nothingness it sprang out of before that infinitesimally tiny bit of time expires.

Electrons, for instance, are allowed to pop in and out of existence and the fact that they do — all the time and everywhere in the vacuum of space — is something that has been experimentally verified thousands of times. They’re called “virtual particles” and form an integral part of physical equations and calculations because they produce effects that can be measured.

As the cosmologist Paul Davies puts it: “Even though we can’t see them, we know that these virtual particles are ‘really there’ in empty space because they leave a detectable trace of their activities.... These minute but significant alterations have been very accurately measured using spectroscopic techniques.”

So, what’s going on here? Something can come out of nothing? Physicists have now come to believe that empty space is never really empty and classify such phenomenon as “vacuum fluctuations” responsible for giving rise to virtual particles. That is, far from being empty with an absence of everything, even a perfect vacuum is filled with wave-like fields that fluctuate constantly, producing a multitude of ephemeral particles that continually arise out of nowhere, only to disappear into nowhere again.

This inevitably leads to the awesome conclusion that nothingness doesn’t exist and, back in 1948, the physicist Hendrik Cassimir virtually proved it. He found that if two metal plates in a vacuum were positioned extremely close to each other, maybe like only a hundred atoms apart, they were drawn together as if something was pushing them from the outside. And, indeed, there was as scientists soon found out: the vacuum fluctuations between the plates were too small compared to the vacuum fluctuations that existed outside of them and that was creating the attractive force. Apparently, nothingness was suddenly a force to reckon with.

Suddenly, other people began rethinking the Big Bang in a different way. Why, they wondered, couldn’t the first tiny bit of space, time and matter that initially came into being and became our entire universe later, itself be a massive vacuum fluctuation that began its existence as a virtual particle? It could of course, but there’s a small problem.

What came into existence in the Big Bang should in that case have lasted less than a trillion, trillion, trillionth of a second — if not less — and winked out immediately. But here it all is so many billions of years later and still going strong.

Some say the reason is because the infant universe went through a period of extreme inflation just after the Big Bang which ballooned out exponentially almost instantly causing the vacuum fluctuations to also behave in the same manner, thus stretching their timeline and lifetimes.

Others question the nature of time itself. Does a fraction of a second remain the same everywhere and mean the same thing to all observers? One day in the life of Brahma, for example, is said to equal some four billion years — which is how long the universe endures before it’s destroyed and recreated out of nothingness that doesn’t exist!

mukul.mindsport@gmail.com

http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-articles/science-of-spirituality/when-absolutely-nothing-matters?track=1&uid=34555&date=20120330

Einstein On Socialism (1949)

Einstein's foresight as recorded in an article published in the year 1949 in the Monthly Review magazine:

"The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital, the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature."

This observation made in the year 1949 is valid now in 2012 as an accurate and scientific analysis of the present state of society in India and elsewhere too.
Reproduced from: http://monthlyreview.org/archives/2009/volume-61-issue-01-may-2009 

Albert Einstein is the world-famous physicist. This article was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949). It was subsequently published in May 1998 to commemorate the first issue of MR‘s fiftieth year.—The Editors

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?”

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. 


The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.

Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
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