Jnana-Yoga : - 1-8.

CHAPTER  : I - THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION-8.

Ethics always says, "Not I, but thou."

Its motto is, "Not self, but non-self."

The vain ideas of individualism, to which man clings when he is trying to find that Infinite Power or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up — say the laws of ethics.

You have to put yourself last, and others before you.

The senses say, "Myself first."

Ethics says, "I must hold myself last."

Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane.

That Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable.



So, man has to give up the plane of matter and rise to other spheres to seek a deeper expression of that Infinite.

In this way the various ethical laws are being moulded, but all have that one central idea, eternal self-abnegation.

Perfect self-annihilation is the ideal of ethics.

People are startled if they are asked not to think of their individualities.

They seem so very much afraid of losing what they call their individuality.

At the same time, the same men would declare the highest ideals of ethics to be right, never for a moment thinking that the scope, the goal, the idea of all ethics is the destruction, and not the building up, of the individual.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued  ...