Our social life is a life
of relationships - relationships of all types, within the family,
among friends, in the workplace and in the general environment.
In such a situation there are bound to be frictions, misunderstandings,
situations where we hurt others or are deeply hurt ourselves. Some
times we take them as natural and inevitable parts of life. At other
times we wonder why this is so and whether we can do something to
overcome them and bring more harmony and beauty in our lives.
We have received a question
in our section "Onlife Online" directly related to this
topic which we feel is of great interest to many of us. We give
below the question and an answer drafted in the light of Sri Aurobindo's
yogic psychology.
Question: Why do human
beings hurt each other? How do we get rid of all our previous (and
future) hurts? How do we prevent further hurts (to ourselves and
others)?
Your question raises
a very important issue of the basis of human relationship. Human
relationship is so much full of quarrels, misunderstandings and
hurts because it is based upon selfishness and centered on the fulfillment
of desires. Human love burns low and is so full of smoke because
it is a flame of the ego, which is ever engaged in eating up the
fuel that feeds it. It thrives upon return of some kind or the other
and when the need is not satisfied or the return diminishes, human
love tends to die or exists merely as a habitual remnant of the
past or a duty to be fulfilled, as a social or religious obligation.
Love and selfishness are by their nature self-contradictory movements
and therefore cannot co-exist. But true love is extremely rare.
Normally what passes off in its name is a strange mixture of greed
and lust applied at the emotional level. Yet while none of us are
able to love truly we expect the other person to truly love and
understand. This is a fundamental error since the ego-bound consciousness
of human beings cannot love truly since it dwells so much on division
rather than identity and oneness, which is what love seeks.
Relationships and
Expectations
Another problem
in a relationship arises because of wrong expectations. So long
as there are expectations there will always remain a vulnerability
to get hurt and hurt others. These expectations exist because we
all make the fundamental error of believing that others think and
feel the same way as we do. In reality each one of us is different
despite certain commonality. In any argument we have to try focusing
on these commonalities. However we should avoid the error of believing
that anyone else would think and feel like us and therefore understand
us. Points of divergences are best avoided in a relationship unless
they are crucial to one's aim. Thus before rushing to react one
can see how a particular reaction will help or hinder the central
aim of one's life. The expectations may not always be gross; it
may be just the expectation of acknowledgement of one's love by
the other person, yet it is enough to create turbulence in a relationship
some time or the other.
This is not to say that
relationships that last and appear happy and smooth are free of
expectations. Many relationships last out of habit or mutual dependence,
others stick along due to social or moral reasons as a duty and
a ritual even when the flame of love has become tepid. Still others
curiously last despite quarrels and heartburns because of a peculiar
need in the human vital for drama and its love for tragedy, as if
the drama could not endure without the exchange of these strong
emotions. Unfortunately the vital of most human beings needs the
food of anger etc to thrive. If one knows how to cut off the supply
of this fuel then much can change for better. To respond to anger
with anger is like getting caught up in the same hole as the other
person. Anger helps none but injures both. When the other partner
is angry it is better to detach oneself or simply walk away from
the scene or (if possible) remember that this is not the total person
but only a part of him/her. After all none of us is made up of one
piece and many factors could be operating in any given relationship.
And even if everything was going smooth, it is unfortunately the
very nature of the restless human vital to get easily dis-satisfied
with one's established position and turn towards other seemingly
greener pastures only to be frustrated again. For, ultimately the
source of happiness and fulfillment lies within and not outside
us. It lies in discovering that part or entity in us that can love
truly; give truly and thereby fulfil us truly. For, in the end we
realize that the love that makes us happy is not the love we receive
but the love we give. But most of our time and energy is spent in
observing what we have not received from others. We seldom pause
to consider what we have given to this world and others. This generosity
of the mind and heart becomes possible only when we have discovered
the source of love that lies within us, our true soul.
The true and lasting
Solution
To discover this secret
soul in us is therefore the one true and lasting remedy against
all previous and future hurts. The ego sense in us takes a strange
pleasure in dwelling upon the real and unreal defects of others.
We see things and often attribute motives, which are not there leading
to avoidable hurt and pain. The closer we get to our true soul and
allow our emotional nature to be governed by it, the sooner we develop
a more generous and luminous understanding of others. True, we cannot
undo the past, but we can always understand it in a truer light.
As we grow in our consciousness we naturally begin to be more forebearing
and truly forgiving of others since we see that all of us are what
we are because of the unique constitution of our human nature. We
also begin to be more tolerant of the folly of others since we have
sincerely struggled within ourselves and know what it means to try
to change oneself. And since we cannot really change another human
being we begin to work upon ourselves to make ourselves immune to
the hurts and depressions, to discover joy and hope and freedom
amidst death and disaster. So long as we depend upon others to change
for us we can never be fully free in our happiness, as we have given
it in other's hands. We have to discover the joy and strength we
need in life from within us and then in proportion to our discovery
distribute and share it with others. The only lasting remedy to
hurts in human relationships is to learn to give love rather than
want to receive it.
This however is not easy
and takes time and effort. In the meantime we can do several other
things. For example when we get hurt, we can take it as an opportunity
to become a little more conscious of those parts in us that childishly
crave for affection. If we are sincere in our probe we can make
many useful discoveries about human nature and ourselves. For example,
we may find that the source of our hurt is not really in the other
person but in our self. We can also try to widen ourselves intellectually
and emotionally to accommodate the ideas, opinions and feelings
of others rather than focusing only on our own grievances. Kindness
and considerateness of others sensitivities go a long way towards
improving relationships. Of course all these things can come much
more readily in friendship than in a structured and closed relationship
where two people have to live in a defined manner under the same
roof. Friendship lasts mainly because it is not so much based on
the expectation that others should change for our sake. Defined
relationships however suffer this difficulty that the roles and
rules are already fixed by the society and others for us thereby
creating an external pressure of expectations. That is one reason
why the spirit of our times is breaking the fixed moulds and established
roles while encouraging friendship and undefined relatedness independent
of outer circumstances of birth, environment, society, etc. Future
relationships are likely to be less and less fixed and more open
ended to allow enough room and space for each other's growth. The
future is going to encourage only those relationships, which are
helpful in evolution. All the moulds fixed by our past are going
to be broken since they have served their term and utility and must
be replaced by a newer consciousness, the consciousness of the soul
rather than of the ego. This is the true solution and the solution
of the future. To live in and by the soul rather than for the ego
is the final solution to all our miseries including those that hurt
and bruise us. To live in the ego is to be forever vulnerable. To
live in the soul is to be secure and free.
We end with some revealing
quotes from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother full of a deep insight
into human psychology.
Some Quotes from Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother
The phenomenon of which
you speak is normal to human nature. People are drawn together
or one is drawn to another by a certain feeling of affinity, of
agreement or of attraction between some part of one's own nature
and some part of the other's nature. At first this only is felt;
one sees all that is good or pleasant to one in the other's nature
and even attributes, perhaps, qualities to him that are not there
or not so much there as one thinks. But with closer acquaintance
other parts of the nature are felt with which one is not in affinity
- perhaps there is a clash of ideas or opposition of feelings
or conflict of two egos. If there is a strong love or friendship
of a lasting character, then one may overcome these difficulties
of contact and arrive at a harmonising or accommodation; but very
often this is not there or the disagreement is so acute as to
counteract the tendency of accommodation or else the ego gets
so hurt as to recoil. Then it is quite possible for one to begin
to see too much and exaggerate the faults of the other or to attribute
things to him of a bad or unpleasant character that are not there.
The whole view can change, the good feeling change into ill-feeling,
alienation, even enmity or antipathy. This is always happening
in human life. The opposite also happens, but less easily - i.e.
the change from ill feeling to good feeling, from opposition to
harmony. But of course ill-opinion or ill-feeling towards a person
need not arise from this cause alone. It happens from many causes,
instinctive dislike, jealousy, conflicting interests, etc.
One must try to look
calmly on others, not overstress either virtues or defects, without
ill-feeling or misunderstanding or injustice, with a calm mind
and vision.
*
Human affection is
obviously unreliable because it is so much based upon selfishness
and desire; it is a flame of the ego sometimes turbid and misty,
sometimes more clear and brightly coloured - sometimes tamasic
based on instinct and habit, sometimes rajasic and fed by passion
or the cry for vital interchange, sometimes more sattwic and trying
to be or look to itself disinterested. But fundamentally it depends
on a personal need or a return of some kind inward or outward
and when the need is not satisfied or the return ceases or is
not given, it most often diminishes or dies or exists only as
a tepid or troubled remnant of habit from the past or else turns
for satisfaction elsewhere. The more intense it is, the more it
is apt to be troubled by tumults, clashes, quarrels, egoistic
disturbances of all kinds, selfishness, exactions, lapses even
to rage and hatred, ruptures. It is not that these affections
cannot last-tamasic instinctive affections last because of habit
in spite of everything dividing the persons, e.g. certain family
affections; rajasic affections can last sometimes in spite of
all disturbances and incompatibilities and furious ruptures because
one has a vital need of the other and clings because of that or
because both have that need and are constantly separating to return
and returning to separate or proceeding from quarrel to reconciliation
and from reconciliation to quarrel; sattwic affections last very
often from duty to the ideal or with some other support though
they may lose their keenness or intensity or brightness. But the
true reliability is there only when the psychic element in human
affections becomes strong enough to colour or dominate the rest.
For that reason friendship is or rather can oftenest be the most
durable of the human affections because there there is less interference
of the vital and even though a flame of the ego it can be a quiet
and pure fire giving always its warmth and light. Nevertheless
reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have
a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon
so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion... In any case
human affection whatever its value has its place, because through
it the psychic being gets the emotional experiences it needs until
it is ready to prefer the true to the apparent, the perfect to
the imperfect, the divine to the human.
- Sri
Aurobindo
Certainly one has the
right to love and true love carries in itself its joy, but unhappily
human beings are egoistic and immediately mix with their love the
desire to be loved in return, and this desire is contrary to spiritual
truth and the cause of passions and sufferings.
*
The Rungs of
Love
At first one loves
only when one is loved.
Next, one loves spontaneously,
but one wants to be loved in return.
Then one loves even
if one is not loved, but one still wants one's love to be accepted.
And finally one loves
purely and simply, without any other need or joy than that of
loving.
- The
Mother
