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<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center; line-height:150%;margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><b
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><font size="4">Life and Self-Control</font><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<div class=Section1>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>(A Letter)<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>THERE is no doubt that <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>
knows very well the art of life which in our country is totally lacking. In the
East it is only <st1:country-region><st1:place>Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region>
that knows it and knows it well enough. Our country on the whole and most of
the East is at present steeped in inertia.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>You
have asked me the exact meaning of control of the senses and what is its
necessity in life. For, in <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>
we have held up this ideal on an elaborate scale, but to what effect? <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>
cares little for it, yet she rules the world.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Firstly,
whether self-control is necessary or not depends on the nature of our ideal.
Self-control is only a particular means to a particular end. If the meaning of
life is to live the life of nature, to possess power and influence – if the aim
of life is to live in accordance with its impulses, then the question of
self-control can never arise. In such a case the indulgence of the senses is
the motive force.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>There
are two approaches to life: one is to follow the lead of the senses, to enrich
life as much as possible by giving them full play and acquiring means for their
satisfaction; the other is to move away from their range to a region inward or
upward. Those who have taken to this path are unanimous that this path leads
to the realm of supreme Peace, Light and Truth and that in fact the real
character of life, its true fulfilment lie in this realm. In their view the
sense-world is a world of deformations, narrow and full of impurities. Its
material resources, however rich and vast, are really<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 310<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE>worth</span>
little. But man has also his inner senses which can help him to return to his
home in the infinite Vast as a child of Immortality. This is the real sense of
self-mastery: instead of swimming down the sense-current, one must swim back in
the opposite direction. Instead of slipping down from the source of life one
has to climb up into it.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>You
may ask: to what good? Suppose, one goes beyond the sphere of life to
Vaikuntha, to Heaven, attains Nirvana and gets merged in the Brahman; in that
case life is lost. And it is really what has happened in <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
There has been no dearth of saints, seers and Avatars. But they live in their
own worlds. The dwellers on our realistic plane are poor, distressed and miserable.
True, there is a class of men who are not in the least perturbed at this state
of things. Time was when from the mouth of a daughter of <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>
rose the ringing voice:<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&quot;Of
what use to me are the things that cannot make me immortal?&quot;<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Of
course, there is no hard arid fast rule that there must be a barrier between life
and beyond-life, between self-restraint and self-indulgence. A synthesis
between the two may be difficult, but not impossible. Indeed, it was in <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>
again that there developed such lines of synthetic sadhana. Rather it was <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>
that gave evidence <i>of </i>this conflict and duality much more than <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
We may remember the motto: &quot;Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,
etc.&quot; By pointing to the path of self-restraint Christianity holds that it
leads to the <st1:place><st1:PlaceType>Kingdom</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName>Christ</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>
and those who would remain chained down to their senses will remain in their
low, unrefined state of nature. In <st1:place>Europe</st1:place> this conflict
has led to two extremes. Self-restraint in Christianity has become self-mortification:
but, on the other hand, when Europeans do not think it harmful to give a long
rope to the senses, they have gone to the excess of unbridled license. In <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>
there<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 311<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE>has</span>
been an attempt at a synthesis of these two aspects of life. Worldly life was
taken as a preparation for or as a stepping-stone to the world beyond. So
self-restraint was given a place not only in the sphere of sadhana for
liberation, but also in the field of enjoyment. Hence we see in <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>
as much preponderance of sattwic qualities as we see in <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>
preponderance of rajasic dynamism. No doubt, the sattwic state easily lapses
into the inertia of tamas. As a matter of fact, such has been the case in <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
But <span class=GramE>rajas also meets</span> the same end. The one slowly
slides to extinction; the other shoots up like a rocket and falls like a burnt
stick. Thus both suffer the same fate.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.7pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>In
general, life is the play-field of the senses. If self-control implies moving
away from the senses, then it is not possible for it to have a place in life.
But self-control may mean keeping the senses under control, under a system of
rule and discipline. This is the popular sense of self-control: it is a graded
withdrawal, a first step towards detachment. This is also how it developed in <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
But, as a matter of fact, this popular approach to self-control is not <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
speciality alone. <st1:place>Europe</st1:place> has given it a recognised
place, not only in the Christian religious life but in her worldly life too.
But it will not do to forget that the untrammelled <span class=GramE>freedom
of the senses and their unbridled license have</span> been accepted as an ideal
specially in modern times, and it is confined to a particular community. What
they are now attempting to reject as a bourgeois trait was one day an aid in
the building up of the Euorpean society. To be sure, <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>
was not <span class=GramE>so</span> inclined towards detachment as <st1:country-region><st1:place>India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
<st1:place>Europe</st1:place> has gone in for the cultivation of the senses,
but that does not mean that she has been sticking to an excessive and
disorderly play of the senses. Neither Byron nor Oscar Wilde is the ultimate
ideal of <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>. When the famous novelist Balzac used to
sit down to write he would do so in a lonely place in a monk's tunic in order
to help his one-pointed concentration. Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander were <span
style='font-family:"Arial Narrow";mso-bidi-font-family:"Arial Narrow"'>no</span><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 312<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE>helpless</span>
slaves of their senses. In fact, no country or race can build its greatness
except on the foundation of self-control. It is not that self-control must
necessarily be self-mortification. There can be a <i>via media, </i>and in
ordinary life this is a necessity. Self-indulgence is the debit side. True,
this side of <st1:place>Europe</st1:place> is much to the fore, but that leads
one to think that she is living on her old capital, and it is not long before
her capital runs short. The root of the capital is self-restraint, and it is
the credit side, the side of accumulated power.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>It
may certainly be that the social, moral and other kinds of injunctions
regarding control of the senses do not strictly apply any more to our modern life.
Man's consciousness demands a wider and more liberal existence. Not a religion
of mental conventions but a universal one founded on truth is what he wants.
But that is altogether another matter. This problem and its solution will lead
us into deeper waters. Hence we have to stop here.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 313<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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