Saturday, October 8, 2011

Books

This essay is a part of my research on Impact of civilization over individual human life and is not a direct response to the any other post under this subject.

There has been some inquisitiveness in me regarding the self-help books that have been marketed as "life-Changing", more by the publishers than Authors themselves, A great example of such a book which has been also a great best-seller is "7 habits of highly effective people" by Stephen R. Covey, the book comes across as a solution to all our major pains and sufferings in life, infact one of my high-school teacher took keen interest in making me go through the experience when she saw in me bouts of depression as I came to know that we human beings are just one billionth part of the universe in terms of both space and time. 
She told me, that the book would anyway help, perhaps not realizing that Bhagwat Gita would have been a better self help book in the conditions that I was in. 

But then in the years that passed by, i realized books don't generally help, they could change a habit or two in you, or attitudes that bring you down, but never your experience of life, most of the books simply target your brain, arousing in it the ability to question the existing norms, bring you on a brink of your own personal renaissance and then let you go, leave you, allowing you to form your own experiences. 

But no-one can be truly driven by brain, thinking brain can drive your plans when you tend to keep your emotions at bay, but never your reactions to spontaneous situations, they are specifically governed by sub-conscious which not many books tend to as much as touch. 

Of the more famous books I can recall Ayn Rand's fountainhead which had the ability to drive sub-conscious of some people, it strikes deeper, but then not always for good, because Ayan Rand was driven by her hate for Soviet Era governance and loathed almost everything that Communists stood for. 

On the other hand we have a certain commentaries by OSHO, whose talks are also meant to strike deeper but give a very hateful preview of the world, I remember not coming out of my room for two days after reading his commentary "Einstein the Buddha", and even after those depressing days I did not really like the world for an year or so.

Besides everyone knows from the childhood that one has to be "good" to other people, one has to be "compassionate", "incorruptible", "human", but its not just the illiterate pirates of Somalia who do wrong stuff, but people like us who commit heinous anti-civilization crimes every day, and wonder at our own ability to grasp religions and moral science, which has been taught to us from the start of our life.  

To be good, one needs a guru, to come out of pain and suffering one needs an environment which strikes deeper than the superficial thought but in its intrinsic nature drives us towards love, if such an environment does not exist around one, one has no option but to pray and build it, with-in and with-out, books shall help, improve your vocabulary and understanding of the language, they'd help you to communicate and debate, argue and prosper, books can help you become a hero, a scholar, but books alone can never get you out of pain and suffering.

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