I have repeatedly seen that just faith or purusharth is not enough to make a person good, make his actions bear good fruit. Faith in the right direction helps, but is insufficient. How good we can be is often limited by our knowledge. How good we can be in our feelings and self assessment is another matter and often not the correct measure of how good we are in an objective sense. I have seen people with very good intentions, kindness, empathy, doing stupid things.
On Symbolism
There are things written on a piece of paper, which feels to be right, working. And then there is man, who is subject to not only the cold reality on piece of paper, but also to dark world of emotions, feelings, brain mechanisms/workings, about which he has very little knowledge, about which very little has been written, and even less has been read. So an ordinary person knows extremely less. To control or intervene is even more difficult, but knowing is the first step.
Materialists reduce the whole world to things on piece of paper, to material objects. They define yes and no, rules, (and they like to dictate the rules of debate based on their limited knowledge) when reality is gray. You cant create a better quality copy image from a poor quality. And to improve quality, you need to improve first image, your vision, and to do that you also need to look within.
I said in blog https://danasurdanu.blogspot.com/2021/06/why-polytheism-makes-sense.html
"It is not God that is worshipped but the authority that claims to speak in His name. "And that authority can be without any form or God imaginable. It might just be physical processes. It is abstraction. For example say name of a company say Microsoft. Now there is no Microsoft human or animal or bird, or tree; Microsoft has no life. But we say things like "Microsoft shares dropped" "Microsoft is doing well", "Microsoft is best company to work at", "Microsoft will go very high". Now who is Microsoft? It is just an abstraction. Same way I think about Hindu deities. They are useful symbols towards that unknown.
Symbolism works, and it is good as long as you work with goals in mind, with first principles, as long as symbols don't become a goal in themselves (due to ignorance, inertia of dark mental habits), it works very well. I am more efficient, my thinking is more efficient and developed when I am writing to real beings, when I am talking in my mind. Abstraction takes little more energy even for a person like me who is very good at abstractions. Brain doesn't likes to waste energy. And to brain real entities, idols, images of God, feels more real. If a person can't imagine something, he will not be able to spend energy on it. If a person can't visualize something, he will quit it. Just like people quit mathematics, but even a poor man can admire a painting. We like to have images of our ancestors, we like to recall their name. We put flowers on photographs of martyrs. What is in name? Name is another symbol. So according to Islam name should also be haram. And according to leftists everything which is not related to bread and butter is haram (with convenient exceptions). Reducing a live entity sensitive creature to that is not wise.
Infact many of the Devas' of Aryans were ancestors and those ancestors they elevated with time to the level of Deva (Deva is not God, both have different qualities). So we Vedas talk about 33000 Devas. Adi Shankara mostly propagated Nirgun Brahman (Brahman without image/idol etc.) Ramanuja and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu propagated Saguna Brahman, (Brahman with symbols, artistic expressions, idols/images). And even though debates and logic-wise Shankara was better than anyone except Buddha and Mahavira, but it was Ramanuja who got more done. Abstraction worked for an intelligent man like Adi Shankara. But even Shankara used symbols (as a secondary). As Lin Yutang said something like, "a western man looks into something and thinks this idea will work or not. Chinese wisdom will also require, that idea suits to human nature or not, and then only idea can qualify."
We can see the result that Bhakti movements made significant contribution in India's (common mans) spiritual development. Advaita is limited to intellectuals. Swami Dayanad Saraswati tried it, but Iskcon is more successful than Arya Samaj. Global effect is that religion in its most developed form can be found in India, more than any place else. There are 36 Gitas, 110 upanishad, 18 Puranas, Aranyaks, Shrutis, Smriti.....add to that works of Jain and Buddhism. Each of the guru in Nalanda and Vikramshila Universities used to be author of several books, and that was there for 1300 years. Buddhism uses symbolism in form of stories, metaphors, abstract philosophies. There are more terminologies related to psychology in Buddhism and Jainism than terms developed in the entire world and field of psychology outside of India. It is efficient and hence man here developed much broader developed detailed imagination. As I believed even our thinking is simulation, our perception is simulation/symbolic. Brain works that way.
Compare to that, so far nobody has probably written any commentary on Quran, to explain it to 21st century and all the centuries in between. Because Muslims take it as final word. They cant allow a single alphabet to go here and there, they like to recite it in pure Arabic as it was in 7th century, even if they don't understand the meaning. There is one advantage, they are less confused. They read only one book, and that makes whole thing lot easier.
Commentaries on Bhagwad Gita, Upanishad were written in every century, to make it accessible to that time and situation etc. In the past Greek and Roman philosophy, spirituality was much more developed.
Another highly developed religion is Judaism. Judaism is religion of one God. But their theology developed in the historical past which was much more diverse, before their kings finally zeroed on one God. There was diversity of views. A lot of work was done for many centuries before it was finalized. There are 24 books in Hebrew Bible. Old testament has 39 books. They did not cut things on the first day.
There was some possibility in Islam with Sufis. But Sufis were cut down by Deobandis, Salafis, Barelwi.....Taliban...etc. To the effect that very limited independence of thought exists in present so called Sufis.
But let us also look at another aspect.
Indians have rigid judgmental habits. They judge a person based on what he is today and his status etc, and they expect little change. India sees changes slowly. They don't expect people to change, people to have potential. Caste system is one such thing, people are expected to be like that person as they were born. Sometimes something is very simple but make it mountain; we have a story in mind completely disconnected from the reality and that story makes very simple things, extremely complex. That story being fed by everyone, and we feeding to everyone.
There is extreme desire to label, somebody as good, somebody as dumb. People start that early in childhood and it is at peak around age of 25. Biggest examination is held during marriage proposals. This judgment has a negative side directed to self as well. A person judges his own place in society based on what others say and that becomes his world and his own voice.
Indian people think that what works for Europeans, white people will not work for us. So intelligent Indian guys from rural or lower middle class backgrounds end up doing mediocre jobs. My mother always says "Don't compare yourself with XYZ, he is millionaire, his parents have already made fortunes". Millions of times, my parents always said I am worth nothing, and they still believe in that. They projected their own misfortune, failure and poverty on me.
When the thing is that computers, books, labs, the external world, trees, mountains, they are all neutral. They don't care whether a person is me or those XYZ. I will end up better than them in everything on any day. But that didn't convince my parents. It is same with most people. They take these superstitious beliefs seriously. They kind of make up that this is their fate. Less belief in action, more belief in fate. People feel their fate has already been fixed by actions of past births etc, effort will not help them overcome that. This way people are very less likely to challenge the view, prevalence of mediocrity etc.
Reality is that the son of Mukesh Ambani (richest man in India, in top 10 globally) and a poor man in remote village has has equal probability in everything at time of birth. People had weird customs of untouchability, which ruined millions of lives.
First principles are important. Accidents do happen. People forget about first principles when they don't see accidents happening. We don't know why the helicopter of late Bipin Rawat Ji (Chief of Defense Staff) suffered accident, 12 deaths. Last month one of my juniors died in ship in fire. When we were doing fire drills some ten years back in a dummy structure, replicating ship superstructure, one of the most important challenges was not to forget where you entered, how you entered so that you can come back after extinguishing the fire, or saving some dome body. And alert people made use of their fire resistant long ropes, some liked to go without rope. When nothing happens people become careless.
Same way, happens in spirituality, when people forget the first principles, where it came from, why and how. They get into the labyrinth, to find the nectar, but they are lost in it. At least some people ought to remember it. To correct others when they go wrong. So we have this belief in fait accompli, in previous births etc.
In ship there is no support, ship might be 5000 kms away from coast and by the time any help arrives, you are dead. Same way we are alone in our brains, before things are explained, before some might reach there, it might be late.
First principles allow you to connect to the roots, to keep goal in sight, to correct and judge overall process. Otherwise, in the dark alleys of the brain you will be lost. It is very easy to get lost. Like I get lost in book cleaning, hoarding, and room cleaning. Indians get lost in religion very often, as Lin Yutang said, the problem of India is too much of religion. It is not too much of religion that is the problem, but too much of religion not well connected from reality. First principles allow people to cut and trim, and re-orient.
We find the same request to youth, in messages from Vivekananda again and again, to not listen to weak minds, to break the bonds of weak society. Only those who have fought they understand the value of first principles. Tilak wrote Gita rahasya, better commentaries on Gita.
It is like you go to a friends wedding and you start playing cards. Which is O.K. you are not disturbing others. But then you become so busy with cards, that you forget everything and your life is now playing card, barat has returned but you are still playing card.
Religion is important, and it is good to let it develop. But then religion in itself became purpose, disconnected from the reality. So people instead of connecting it to reality, started being guided by religion. It became a secondary source of truth (everyone feeding everyone else, despite the thing itself being unreal, but thing exists in the imagination). That is a dangerous thing.
Like some person born in wealthy family, say he takes sanyas. Then he develops some more art, develops some old scripture or writes new. It is like you enter into some labyrinth and then you find how good the labyrinth is, and you lose yourself in that labyrinth. But you continue to have real needs, which are being fulfilled by others. That is a difficult situation.
That is what has happened in India. People have forgot habit of verification, connecting. And have developed a parallel world of reality. I don't feel afraid of science, because I always use science to correct myself.
It is like doing computer simulations, suppose you start enjoying simulations and you keep making ship models and simulating them in virtual ocean in computer.
(something like this)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH0l5CkY_aY
But you don't make any simulations for real yards, you have become incompetent of relating your simulations to reality. You are simulating because you enjoy it. But your simulations are disconnected from physics, it is only good for sight. Then you have a real problem. If you make real ships (in sense that it reflects the physics) and then in spare time you also do it for sake of art, because you like it, then it is OK.
First principles are important, because human brain has proved to be very unreliable and secondary things always go into wrong directions. People need to be directly told again and again. It is a great intellectual challenge to code same message which was told previously in metaphors, in direct words and to get the desired response as well. Metaphors by nature will always be susceptible to manipulation, twisting, due to ignorance or by vested interests. Main message is lost soon, and only rituals stay.
Only when the main message is directly coded there in the form which become rituals, and will stay as a part of rituals then message will stay.
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Psychology
(Terms and explanations used below are for my own convenience, I don't claim to be knowledgeable in the field of psychology.)
There can be roughly two kinds of people.
One who are old people (not age-wise, but following say 1000 years old.....), devout Vaishnava, Iranians, Tibetan Buddhist, Haredi Jews.
other second one who are new people, as somebody born in San Francisco, California, in an athiest materialistic family.
Now the second one, new one is using less of secondary loop and more of building primary loops. He observes and decides he likes it or not.
He does not derive his truths from stories (does so less).
They will have a fresh approach to everything. That is their advantage.
We shouldn't just reject them, but engage with them.
First one is following his secondary loop.
He has a truth circuit in his mind, based on stories he learned from books, family, society.
Many of which were not told in words, but demonstrated in live examples.
That secondary loop may still have qualities of the primary loop (one developed by direct experience, but that also becomes a story afterwards and a lot of it might be getting stored and retrieved in the same way as stories get).
Because most of the things we know, we know by hearing.
I didn't do experiments which Newton did, still I believe in his theory and I have used it and it works.
Our brain can't differentiate between story and reality by knowing the content of the story.
Our brain can only differentiate between plausible and implausible. (With things we have seen with eyes and senses, we also have sensory memory, and associated stories.)
So something can be a plausible and fictional story but come to us as a real.
And reality also comes to us in the form of stories.
Suppose I know something to be historically true, it feels as if it is primary reality, not copied reality.
It may be a secondary reality as it is possible that those things might have happened differently or never happened,
but since it is plausible, and I have a bias through my upbringing or emotional bias which makes me like that story and take it as real. There is no way to go back and verify many things.
Now how to discriminate whether it is reality or secondary brain circuit framed on some untruth?
Now why this secondary loop is important is because people don't have time to redo.
It is learning and experience of 10000 years in case of Hindus.
If you leave a person on his own, he/she may not be able to do much. He/she may be lost.
If something is too difficult then nobody will be able to do it.
But the negative side is that many of the stories need modification.
Time keeps changing.
It is like novel writing or story writing, authors write real and imagined fiction, they mix it in such coherent way that it seems like real,
and then it starts affecting character, thinking of the reader. It brings to him the possibilities which didn't exist before.
If these stories/novel he didn't read, these possibilities may not exist.
You develop characters of your novel/story, you add new characters, you and say 1000 more people over several generations, add every conceivable human problem.
These stories become the lifeline of the people.
But after 5000 years, even though you did great work, your stories have become less relevant, then people need to find that out and improve your stories, add new ones.
What is also important is to also develop tools of discrimination.
To know until where to follow and what to follow. To be able to know how much and which part is real which is not.
Even the demonstration we see, can have wrong conclusions, wrong understanding. So what we know to be real by demonstration, may also be a false story. The Only thing additional would be sensory experience, in addition to story. Only difference is the extra memory of sensory experience which adds to the story.
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That mukti of the form of life, we see in ourselves, can be completely achieved only at the end of life.
But within the life there are two ways of mukti:
1. Through knowledge, demystifying the maya, developing the ability to come out of the stories in which we normally dwell.
It is not easy, as stories can be as complex as they can possibly be.
2. Through prem, seeing everything (pleasant and unpleasant) as manifestation of the will of the God, and loving the God.
Second one is hard as well, it requires certain combination of chemicals in mind, and it is hard, as situations will turn to bad some times.
What is bondage? Bondage of body and bondage of story.
What is freedom? The ability to come out of the story at our will.
Not being subject to tyranny of a single story which fate has imposed on us; family we are born, house, family, village, race, religion, situations.
It Comes from knowledge, experience.
Bhakti helps, in the sense that life is no longer prison, It is a beautiful home;
Story is no longer story, it is the will of the Gods.
So things are acceptable, fights are less painful, as responsibility is ultimately on Gods.
There is a problem in this. With every interaction at a deeper level with a person ...be it parents, brother, sister, husband, wife....is created a bondage;
even if we don't want to...an unconscious bondage is created...
Can one can go beyond this bondage? I don't know.
For me it is hard to believe that even very accomplished people like Vivekananda are truly free of bondage.....
they might not accept it....but deep down it may exists in some weak form.
That is human characteristic....to be social and create bondages......we do it all over life.
We can avoid creating bonds consciously, but unconsciously there is always some form of bond, either love or hate.
And a person can only be relatively free or able.
No person can come out of the stories unscathed.
Same with bhakti (devotion), many people will be put in situations where it is unbearable.
To deal better with unconscious bonding, one has to know workings of conscious and unconscious mind at much deeper level.
