Inner Transformation Needs Inner Governance

Governments across countries want to make their nation a great place to live for its citizens -- through good governance, aimed at integrated development of its citizens. Corporations want to become great by pursuing a mission, which is made possible by a set of governance principles.

It, therefore, naturally follows that the goal of every person should be to become a great human being.

But that is not the goal that drives us. Our lives are mostly guided by the motive force of achieving fame and fortune.

This desire for achievement compels us to pursue all that is outside of ourselves, thinking it will impart a sense of fulfilment. But it often results in making us feel unfulfilled. We understand that there is something deeper that is to be discovered, but do not have the patience to pursue it. And yet again we throw ourselves into the world, little knowing its futility.

Swami Vivekananda says, “The majority of us cannot see beyond a few years, just as animals cannot see beyond a few steps. Just a little narrow circle, which is our world… With every breadth, every pulsation of the heart we feel we are free, and in the very same moment we are shown we are not. We are nature’s bonded slaves in body, mind, in all our thoughts, in all our feelings.”

The inner motive force that drives us in this direction is extremely powerful. A spiritual orientation is the only way out. This journey will start when there is clarity that chasing happiness outside is like chasing a mirage. And there is conviction in the pursuit of the highest ideal of realising our human potential.

The way to this ideal is through a process of inner transformation. Like corporations going through transformation programmes through governance frameworks, the process of inner transformation of a human being has to be through a self-governance framework. Frameworks designed to stabilise our minds, draw the mind inwards, build various introspection practices and enhance our faith in the Divine force with the conviction that all the impulses for work, all the capacities for work come from the divine.

We will need to take up practices laid out in our shastras to break out of the limited boundaries we have created around our small group of families and friends, to include more and more people. This expansion of the individual personality into the expansive, universal personality is the blueprint for our inner transformation. Without a self-governance model, we will be unable to alter our physical habits and mental attitudes.

Swami Ranganathananda, who served as the 13th president of the RK Mission order, would say, “Humanity needs a re-education to be roused from the hypnotised state.” And Vedanta is the knowledge to de-hypnotise mankind, says Swami Vivekananda. Gathering, reading, internalising and practising the Vedantic ideal of oneness has to be the platform of our self-governance model.

So, as Swami Vivekananda says, “arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached,” let us undertake the greatest journey of inner transformation. The nectar of immortal bliss is lying within us, waiting to be tasted.