In2-MeC

Timisoara, Romania
15 July, 2003

These essays have focused on subjects that are traditionally illuminated by Vedantic knowledge. And in this essay too I intend to keep that brilliant searchlight of timeless wisdom ablaze; but now we must turn its beam away from classical formulas of explanation and shine it into the dark corners of the modern modes of thinking, feeling and willing. We're all to some extent or other conditioned by modernity. Most of us are very deeply conditioned by it. I will show in this essay that if we do not identify and eradicate this conditioning in our own psychology, it will have a deleterious effect on our spiritual lives.

I was greatly helped in my writing of this essay by an article published in the magazine Humanitas, vol. X no. 2, 1997 (copyright held by the National Humanities Institute, Washington D. C. USA). The author is Professor Claes G. Ryn of the Catholic University of America. The title is "Imaginative Origins of Modernity: Life as a Daydream and Nightmare".

Modernity is far removed from the context of traditional Indian culture. In Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Adi-lila 7. 119p, Srila Prabhupada writes:

It is the statement of Carvaka Muni that one should beg, borrow or steal money to purchase ghee and enjoy life (rnam krtva ghrtam pibet). Thus even the greatest atheist of India recommends that one eat ghee, not meat. No one could conceive of human beings' eating meat like tigers and dogs, but men have become so degraded that they are just like animals and can no longer claim to have a human civilization.

Carvaka Muni was an atheist-materialist of ancient India. Although he was at odds with much of Vedic philosophy, his advice to people was that they should fully enjoy their senses within the context of Vedic culture. He did not concoct a "new" culture (which is what modernity is all about) out of his own mind, a culture of vicious bestiality.

Modernity as Manic-Depression

Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a physician of the second century A. D. , described the condition that we now know as manic-depressive disorder. Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), a German psychiatrist, gave a modern definition of manic- depression that is still valid today.

Basic to manic-depressive disorder are conflicting moods of high elation and low despondency. The patient may swing between the two moods, or he may be beset with both moods simultaneously. One mood may be more prominent than the other. When the moods are extreme, the condition is called bipolar disorder; when less extreme, it is called cyclothymia.

It is not difficult to predict how manic-depressive disorder would be analyzed from the Vedic perspective. Mania is defined in the dictionary as "an excessively intense enthusiasm, interest or desire. " That is clearly rajo-guna. Depression is defined as "the condition of feeling sad or despondent; a reduction in activity or force; a reduction in physiological vigor or activity. " That is clearly tamo-guna.

When the Scindia steamer Jaladuta docked in Boston Harbor on September 18, 1965, Srila Prabhupada wrote Boro Krpa Koile Krsna (Markine Bhagavata Dharma). In verse 3 of this poem is the line

rajas tamo gune era sabai acchanna

All of the people here are covered over by the modes of passion and ignorance.

Professor Ryn remarks about the modern type of personality:

On the one hand, modern man uses his imagination to an unparalleled extent to evade the hard and painful task of moral responsibility up close: He always dreams of happiness on entirely different, far easier terms, of a life that can satisfy all of his pent-up desires. As long as he indulges this imagination he is intoxicated, inspired. But just as often the dark side of life seems to him to be all there is, and he despairs of happiness. Bitterness and pessimism torture him.

The coming together of these two moods is not paradoxical or puzzling. On the contrary, they are inseparable. They are two sides of one and the same modern personality. That personality moves, for fully intelligible reasons, between elation and dark depression. The person is up, or he is down, rarely in- between, and the swings tend to get more violent.

Ryn observes that mankind today has on one side a grossly inflated idea of his position in the world. On the other side he is cast down into deep despair when the position he imagines for himself is not given due respect by the world. Modern man is therefore, Ryn concludes, manic-depressive.

The manic-depressive temperament under scrutiny is self-generated, which is not to deny that it sometimes blurs into what is commonly called mental illness. To see how this temperament is formed, it is helpful to ask: who is the cynic, that person who sneers at life and suspects all others of having the most foul of motives? Who is he but the disillusioned, repeatedly disappointed dreamer, a person who bears other human beings and life in general a deep grudge for defeating his cherished longings? The artificial exhilaration created by the romantic imagination must inevitably bring on grim resentment.

Depression: A World-Wide Mental Health Problem

Thirty years ago (8 January 1973) the news magazine Newsweek featured a cover story on depression. It was proclaimed America's number one mental illness and an epidemic that too often ends in suicide. Depression is now recognized as the number one mental illness in the world.

But there is a difference between depression and manic-depression, isn't there? The depressive is down in the dumps. The manic-depressive sometimes exhibits a side of himself that is wildly exhilarated. Manic-depression is considerably less a world health problem than depression. Is it really accurate for Professor Ryn to characterize modernity as a condition of manic-depression? Why not just say modernity is depression?

Ryn admits he uses the term manic-depressive "in protest against the kind of psychologism that tends to reduce the individual to a product of forces he cannot control"; as we shall see, excusing one's personal weaknesses as being really the strengths of outside forces that one can't possibly control is a key symptom of the modernity that Professor Ryn is, in a sense, ridiculing with the name manic-depression.

Even if, for the sake of statistical accuracy, we were to go with straight depression as the representative mental disorder for modern times, we would still benefit from Professor Ryn's analysis. It is said in some psychiatric circles that depression has two phases: overt and covert. Overt depression, of course, exhibits all the expected symptoms of melancholia. But covert depression is depression in disguise. It is how a person imagines himself, and what he does, to systematically hide his depressed condition even from himself. Often the mask he puts over his depression is a silent dutifulness, a compulsion to work hard, an emotional toughness, a disconnection from the world, and/or a dependency upon alcohol or other intoxicants. Depression may even be masked by a strong urge to succeed, to surpass others, to please an authority figure, or by a starry-eyed hope in a better future world, or by extreme idealism, or by religious enthusiasm--all of which have overtones of mania. Later in this essay I will have more to say about the ties that bind covert depression and manic-depression. For right now let us just agree that there is enough similarity to warrant Professor Ryn a listen. Covert depression, like mania, is symptomatic of the mode of passion.

A question may be raised at this point: are these urges--the urge to succeed and so on--always coverups for depression? The simple answer is no. The more complete answer is that there are many ways to become mired in addiction to a fantasy self ("the enjoyer") instead of moving forward to heal the real self ("the servant"). Therefore, dear reader, please note that later in this essay we will be discussing addiction as the one single thread that links together all the many ways that people blind themselves to their depressed state of consciousness. Religion--even "Krsna consciousness"--can be addictive in this sense if we use it to evade having to come to grips with our individual spiritual disease, which is our particular taste for sense gratification. Then again, Srila Prabhupada recommended that we become addicted to Krsna. Thus there is addiction to illusion and addiction to reality.

Modern Values and Low Self-Esteem

Most psychologists and psychiatrists tell us that depression (which, to repeat, appears as overt depression, covert depression and manic-depression) is a disorder of self-esteem. Healthy self-esteem is a kind of self-realization, for it presupposes that in back of one's gifts and limitations there is a core self of constant value, a value that is neither better nor worse than the core selves of other human beings. Self-esteem is said to be picked up in childhood from the "unconditional positive regard" of parents for their offspring. In other words, when parents show their children that the core of their love is constant even when the children perform poorly, the children internalize that parental regard. It becomes the seed of their own self- esteem. But when children perceive that the love of their parents hinges on whether, for example, they do well at school or not, they develop issues of low self-esteem at an early age. Even children who were valued by their parents may have problems with low self-esteem as they become exposed to the society beyond the family circle. Modern society does not at all reinforce a person's inherent self-worth. It gauges the value of the individual on a scale of external trappings: wealth, beauty, status, fame. A person who discards his sense of inner self-worth to pursue the standards of value set by modern society is a person afflicted by covert depression. He is depressed, but he does not see it because he is too busy chasing false goals. It is to be expected that at some point his depression will become overt. This is when all the life runs out of his strenuous endeavors to be something he is not.

The Premodern Personality

Before he goes into dissecting the personality of modern man, Professor Ryn tells us about the premodern type of personality. In this there are two subdivisions, Christian and classical (the second consists of persons who gravitate to the values of ancient Greece and Rome). The premodern type is still with us today, at least in part. In fact any individual will be a mixture of types, premodern and modern.

The old classical and Christian outlook is deeply rooted; it has not entirely disappeared even today. Neither can we point to particular individuals in the modern world whose personalities are entirely clear-cut embodiments of the new moral-imaginative momentum. All human beings contain both old and new. Much neurosis in contemporary society is intrinsic to the cultural dynamic under investigation, but additional anxiety and confusion are due to individuals' harboring not only that dynamic but other strains of personality with which it is incompatible.

In significant ways, the premodern European described by Professor Ryn resembles the Aryan, the member of classical Vedic culture. His world-view is religious. He is aware of mankind's fallen state. Premodern man believes he can be elevated by moral-intellectual effort, or by divine grace, but he accepts that some limitation will always remain. Mankind is not God. Premodern man therefore holds self-criticism to be a virtue. Suffering is not unexpected by him, nor does he resent it as undeserved. Well-being and happiness are not taken for granted but are reasons to give thanks to God. Premodern man is acutely aware of his own weaknesses because he measures himself by high moral standards that lead away from conception of the self as an enjoyer. The ethics of Aristotle and Cicero are ascetic; Christ's Sermon on the Mount is otherworldly. Premodern man accepts that his moral shortcomings are his own; he, and he alone, is responsible for improving his character. Problems in life are seen as the consequence of moral failure. To solve problems he should strain his utmost to better his character; and even if he makes some progress, plenty of imperfections will remain, requiring yet more effort. Christian society was knitted together by the perception that one's neighbors' problems are one's own.

Constrasting modern man with premodern man, Professor Ryn writes:

His demeanor is very different from that of premodern man. Far from discounting the opportunities of a worldly existence, this person entertains great expectations. Francis Bacon was only one of the first to believe in endless progress. He thought that, with the disappearance of old superstitions and a full application of the methods of experimental science, a vastly improved human existence would be possible. The Enlightenment extended these expectations. The hope for a new and better world was not necessarily based on faith in science and reason. The most fundamental longing, discernible behind scientism itself, was for a basic transformation of human existence, for a great liberation, expansion and deepening, making life infinitely more satisfying. Rousseau is but an early and prominent example of one who believed that classical and Christian civilization was based on a profound misconception and who also believed that the resulting oppression can be ended and that mankind can achieve a new, superior existence.

A key difference between premodern and modern attitudes is seen in the notion of the rights of man.

Modern man does not regard a good life as an undeserved gift. He is more likely to see it as an entitlement. Human beings, so it is asserted, have rights. The "natural rights of man" proclaimed by such theorists as Locke and Rousseau have been made more elaborate and specific in our own century by the United Nations. For taking the trouble to be born, human beings have rights to food, housing, health care, etc. There has been no announcement of corresponding duties.

From within the pillared halls of the grand temple of Natural Human Rights, a fierce white marble goddess holding a bronze sword on high beckons mankind to lay their chains at her feet, that she may chop them asunder. Her name is Social Issues.

Although demanding his rights, modern man places no particular demands on his own person. He is not inclined to see anything wrong with self. In the words of that reassuring slogan, "I'm OK, and you're OK," Rousseau proclaimed the goodness of man already in the eighteenth century, dismissing the doctrine of original sin as an affront to human nature. What is to blame for life's deep and numerous disappointments is not some flaw or perversity within man or nature but oppressive, distorting social institutions and conventions. The remedy, Rousseau argues, is for humanity to cast off the chains that harness its goodness.

The World is Not Enough

Unfortunately, life in the material world remains essential the same for the moderns as it was for the premoderns.

We come here to a great problem facing modern man. With all his rights and expectations, modern man must still live in the existing, historical world, and that world stubbornly remains the kind of place it has always tended to be: a mixture of ups and downs and full of imperfections. The difficulty for modern man, given his high hopes, is that he will experience the disappointments of a typical human life, suffer his share of unfairness, economic pressures and illness. People close to him will die. Society will display greed, intolerance, ruthlessness, and crime. There may be wars or other painful social disruptions. Much of life will be merely boring.

As he comes to understand that the material world around him does not care about his so-called importance as a child born of a New Age, modern man is greatly let down. Wrote the poet Stephen Crane (1871- 1900), "A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation. '"

Having been led to expect a satisfying life, happiness even, modern man looks in vain for the world to deliver on the promise. His daily life is often painted in rather drab colors or grays, sometimes in black. Since his actual existence falls far short of his hopes, he begins to feel mistreated, cheated of his due. He soon nurses a grudge against life. He starts to suspect, and is encouraged by ideologues to believe, that he is being deprived of his entitlement. Each new disappointment intensifies a feeling of betrayal. The time comes when society--indeed, all of human existence--appears to him unjust and oppressive, as if manipulated by sinister forces. Rousseau gives early and paradigmatic expression to the modern feeling of disappointment and defeat. Toward the end of his life he writes, "I was created to live, and I am dying without having lived. " He bemoans having to give back to his maker a host of "frustrated good intentions. "

Rousseau and the Dream of a World Remade

Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was the founding father of Romanticism. Romanticism was a reaction to the so-called Enlightenment Project, which was a French school of rationalism in the 1600's and 1700's. Rationalism means any doctrine that teaches the supremacy of the human intellect over all other considerations. The French philosophes of the Enlightenment--Diderot, d'Alembert, La Mettrie, Condillac, Helvetius, d'Holbach, Turgot and Condorcet, among others--propagated "the rational society" as an ideal. But there was a limit to people's appetite for science, abstraction, and impersonal reason. Creeping dissatisfaction with sterile intellectualism burst out as a revolt: the Romantic movement. The Romantics rediscovered art, mystery, and irrationality. And they rediscovered emotions. In fact, they elevated emotion to a position it had never before held in the history of thought.

Rousseau paid much lip service to the emotion-soaked virtues of compassion, friendliness and loving kindness, but his own character was undisciplined and shockingly deficient in truthfulness, purity and honesty. Other philosophers of his time, who were sympathetic at first to his message, soon soured as they came to know the dark side of Rousseau's personality. Hume and Voltaire dismissed Rousseau as a monster. Diderot called him "deceitful, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical and full of malice. " A woman with whom Rousseau was intimate summed him up as "an interesting madman. "

About Rousseau, Paul Johnson writes in Intellectuals (1988), Chapter One: "He was the prototype of that characteristic figure of the modern age, the Angry Young Man. " Plus, Rousseau was the first to combine all the salient characteristics of the modern Promethean: the assertion of his right to reject the existing order in its entirety; confidence in his capacity to refashion it from the bottom in accordance with principles of his own devising; belief that this could be achieved by the political process; and, not least, recognition of the huge part instinct, intuition and impulse play in human conduct. Rousseau's fascination with his own imagination is clear from the following excerpts of a letter he wrote at age fifty-five:

I love to dream, but freely allowing my mind to wander without enslaving myself to any subject. . . this idle and contemplative life. . . becomes to me daily more delicious; to wander alone endlessly and ceaselessly among the trees and rocks about my dwelling, to muse or rather to be as irresponsible as I please. . . finally to give myself up unconstrainedly to my fantasies. . . that, sir, is for me the supreme enjoyment. . .

"If we wish to understand the kind of outlook that began to replace classical and Christian civilization in the West," writes Professor Ryn, "we do well to study Rousseau. "

He is convinced that he has seen more deeply into human nature than has any previous observer and that he has discovered the secret of happiness. But the world as it is is unfriendly to that truth and to him personally as the messenger. Especially in his later autobiographical writings, Rousseau expresses his deep hurt at being wronged by life in general and at having been "cast out" from society--this despite his being, by his own account, "the most sociable and loving of men. " He has not been treated as he thinks befits a person of his deep insight and benevolence but feels himself the victim of cruel persecution. He takes to a paranoid extreme a dissatisfaction with life that was to become chronic in the modern world.

Rousseau became a prophet of unrequited daydreaming, of idle longings never to be fulfilled by appropriate work. He did not see a need to work, as he was convinced that what he longed for, he deserved.

Starting a powerful trend in Western culture, Rousseau attributes greater significance to life lived in the imagination than to the world of action. "I abstain from acting," Rousseau writes. He gets to taste real life in his pastoral reveries. Modern man's flight from the concrete practical responsibilities of the here and now, specifically, from the duty of making the best of self and caring for family and neighbor, assumes different forms depending on the personality of the dreamer. What is common and constant is the longing for glorious fulfillment, and the theme that some fundamental change is necessary for happiness to become possible: "Life would be so much better, if only. . . . " "If only I could get a fresh start, real life would finally begin. "

Rousseau admitted no obligation to society, and demanded every obligation of society to him. Similarly, he admitted no obligation to history. To put it in the language of today, "History is just 'his story'. " So-called facts of the past are less important than the possibilities of the future. The "truth" of such facts ties us to authorities, social systems and cultural traditions that we need to break free of in order to realize our dreams. We have every right to discard historical facts and truths as yesterday's baggage.

Rousseau's notion of a new society is based on an imagined human past when life was truly "natural. " That past bears little resemblance to what is known of human history. Significantly, the author of the immensely influential Discourse on the Origins of Inequality tells his readers in one of the opening paragraphs that his "investigations" into the past "should not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings. " As if to concede that mankind's actual past does not support his assumptions about human nature, he writes, "Let us therefore begin by putting aside all the facts, for they have no bearing on the question. " Rousseau's readers are invited to change their view of man and society in the light of his imaginative construction of the past, one that is unencumbered by demands for historical accuracy. Uncomfortable facts of human experience must not be allowed to interfere with beguiling possibilities.

He freely fashioned an account of the world around him from out of his own inner frustrations, and was convinced he had every right to impose his personal point of view everywhere.

Rousseau's deep alienation from existing society permeates all his writing. Already in the First Discourse he attacks the "vile and deceitful uniformity" that condemns man to "perpetual constraint. " Everywhere society suppresses naturalness. "Without ceasing, politeness makes demands, propriety gives orders; without ceasing, common customs are followed, never one's own lights. " Such comments are indistinguishable from Rousseau's ubiquitous autobiographical theme, in the words of The Reveries of the Solitary Walker: "I have never been truly fitted for social life, where there is nothing but irksome duty and obligation. " Happiness is possible only if the individual can be free of restraint. He writes of a short period of happiness in his youth: "I was perfectly free, or better than free because I was subject only to my own affections and did only what I wanted to do. " He remembers with joy "when I was myself, completely myself, unmixed and unimpeded, and when I can genuinely claim to have lived. " Since being "unmixed" and free of all restraint is out of the question in the world of action known to man, Rousseau has constructed the sharpest possible contrast between happiness and what now exists.

Rousseau's ideal society is that of the Noble Savage, the pre-civilized man of his own imagination.

The new society about which Rousseau dreams will not receive its cohesion from difficult and protracted moral struggle and self-discipline on the part of citizens. That notion belongs to an ancient but wholly mistaken conception of human nature. The political order that Rousseau envisions will flow spontaneously from man's true nature once society has been cleansed of traditional structures and refounded on the basis of equality. Liberated, "unimpeded" nature will then shape society, as once it formed the happy but primitive state of nature. It will give the people a common purpose, a "general will. " True popular rule is incompatible with constitutionalism. As the spontaneous force of nature, the general will can manifest itself only in uninhibited freedom.

Modernity as Daydream and Nightmare

"An interesting madman. " After reading about Rousseau and his ideas, it is amazing that such a deranged personality could have the impact he did. But indeed the infantile dualism of fantasy and frustration he gave voice to nearly three centuries ago crops up again and again in our modern world. Ryn's portrayal of Soviet communism in the light of Rousseau's legacy is most instructive.

In our own century communism has inspired its followers with the dream of a classless and stateless society in which human beings will finally develop the full range of their potential in perfect freedom. The drudgery of boring, mechanical, routinized work will be overcome. But that wonderful future stands in sharp contrast to a darkly depressing present: ever worsening exploitation, greed, cruel competition, misery and alienation. So abominable is capitalist society that revolution is inevitable. In Marxism the conspirators against liberation are the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie. Needless to say, realizing the dream will necessitate suffering. Something so great cannot be born without birth pangs. The communists turn ruthlessly against opponents. "If you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs," says Lenin. The paranoia that forms an integral part of the manic- depressive dynamic leads to the discovery of enemies not just among the capitalists. Stalin comes to see enemies of the people everywhere, even within the Communist Party. Never-resting vigilance against counterrevolution sends millions to the Gulag. As is typical of the manic-depressive ideological movements, the inspiring vision is all benevolent concern for the downtrodden, but the actual practice is almost unbelievable inhumanity.

Arthur Koestler, writing in The God that Failed about his own engagement with communism during the 1930's, compares it to addiction.

The addiction to the Soviet myth is as tenacious and difficult to cure as any other addiction. After the Lost Weekend in Utopia the temptation is strong to have just one last drop, even if watered down and sold under a different label.

Koestler calls the different labels "Peace, Democracy, Progress or what you will. " The vocabulary of persons who worship the avenging goddess of Social Issues is replete with words and phrases that hark back to the glory days of revolutionary communism: "empowerment" and "disempowerment", "chauvinism", "politically correct", and so on. (I've chosen those four terms deliberately; I have personally heard them used by ISKCON devotees, some of whom sit on the GBC. ) A person who speaks in such terms is not necessarily a communist; he or she is probably just parroting what Professor Ryn calls "boosterish affirmations of human 'rights'". But this sort of talk does not come to grips with the real cause of suffering.

Western man has not learnt much from this large body of evidence, not even from the great man-made disasters of this century, including two world wars and the extermination of millions of human beings--disasters which can be shown to be substantially related to the moral-imaginative disposition under discussion. To head off such catastrophes in the future Western man resorts to boosterish affirmations of human "rights" and campaigns of "never again," while the deeper causes of the inhumanity and suffering are left largely unexplored and unattended. This failure to face uncomfortable facts bespeaks a stubborn willfulness and is striking proof of moral-imaginative escapism within the Western world. Our society remains strongly attracted to that temperament. Many continue to attribute moral superiority to people with ambitious and allegedly beautiful visions for remaking human existence.

What does Ryn mean by "moral-imaginitive"? The following sentences selected from his article bring out his intention.

What most deeply shapes typically modern man and guides even his more strictly philosophical efforts is a new way of imagining the world.

Examining the imaginative basis of theoretical formulations is always important to discerning their meaning.

Of special interest in the present context is that personal character gives human beings particular intuitive predilections. The transformation of the imagination that will be examined here is intimately connected with a transformation of the moral life, so that we may refer to the dynamic in question as moral-imaginative.

Kalpana

In other words, the modern moral-imaginitive tendency looks for moral values, or personal character, in the realm of imagination. You'll recall that premodern man understood that a moral process was going on at the back of his life: because there are moral failings in his past, at present he has problems. For example, one who honestly understands the law of karma will perceive the difficulties he is having at present as prarabdha, the full- blown result of his past sinful acts. "Man is the architect of his own destiny," Srila Prabhupada often said.

For European premodern man, human actions are measured by an objective moral standard taught in scripture and by wise men of old. Similarly, a follower of Vedic culture knows that sinful acts are deviations from the moral standard taught by sastra, sadhu and guru. The cure for the reactions of sinful acts (prarabdha-karma) is to strictly follow sastra, sadhu and guru. Sastra-caksusa, the eye of sastra, gives us the intellectual vision to analyze problems and find solutions. When the cognitive mind operates according to that vision the result is viveka, discrimination. Sripad Ramanujacarya states that viveka is one of the great blessings of bhakti-yoga upon the cognitive mind. But modern man is inclined to be guided by imagination.

So far in this series on psychology, imagination is a function of the mind we have only slightly touched upon. In Essay Two, part two, manaso-vrtti (the eleven material engagements of the mind) were explained. One of these is abhimana-vrtti, which is false identification (ahamkara) and misconception (Srila Prabhupada translates abhimana as "misconceptions" in Srimad-Bhagavatam 5. 1. 15). An example of misconception is Mayavadi philosophy, which Srila Prabhupada repeatedly argues is rooted in the false ego conception, not in the pure spiritual conception. Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Madhya 6. 134 states that to interpret sastra in the Mayavadi manner is gauna-vrtti. We may take this vrtti (mental function) to be a feature of abhimana-vrtti. Similarly, C. c. Madhya 6. 134 uses the term gaunartha kalpana for the misconceptions of Mayavada. The word kalpana means "imagination. " Kalpana is an acceptable method of knowledge for the Mayavadis, the philosophers of maya.

Sadakanam hitarthaya brahmano rupo-kalpanah. The Mayavadi philosophers, they say that kalpana, "You just imagine any form. " [Lecture on Bhagavad- gita, Bombay, 9 April 1974]

As a function of abhimana-vrtti (the engagement of the mind in false ego) Mayavadis imagine themselves to be God and concoct imaginary meanings for the scriptures. At least traditional Indian Mayavada is restrained by sattvic discipline, but Western speculators, being extremely sinful, furiously expand nirvisesa and sunyavadi ideology in all manner of harmful ways.

Modern daydreamers inspired by Rousseau flee away from premodern man's humble admission that his problems are caused by his own moral failings. They flee toward a fantasy in which they themselves are new gods, pure and sinless. As gods, they have a moral right to remake the world as they like. But their daydream is threatened by a nightmarish conspiracy of anti-imaginitive traditionists who want to force upon the world the archaic superstition that morality is defined by the one Supreme Godhead, and not by so many gods newly hatched from the egg of speculation.

At its core, the modern moral-imaginative dynamic is a rebellion against whatever interferes with our favorite desires. It is an expression of a great self-indulgence. We do not want to rein in our desires, and the imagination helps us to justify living as we would like to live. The imagination assists us in disparaging and avoiding the nagging, onerous moral conscience that calls our desires into question.

The modern moral-imaginitive philosopy, like the Mayavada philosophy of India, aspires to 1) negate the realities of the human condition in the material world and to 2) propel any ordinary man to the position of God.

Besides moral conscience, the fundamental obstacle to realizing our fondest dreams is historically existing reality itself. The modern dynamic is a willful evasion of that obstacle. It tries to undo the real terms of human existence, including the need to accept our primary duties as human beings. A chief responsibility of the individual is not to inflict too much of his own conceit and arbitrariness on others. The longing for liberation here discussed is a desire for unlimited self-indulgence. Under the guise of pretty phrases about a better world, many are trying to throw off outer as well as inner checks. Some barely bother to deceive themselves regarding their innermost motives but advance their noble-sounding schemes in a blatant, cynical pursuit of power. At the extreme, the visionary wants the entire world to cater to his desires.

A Closer Look at Self-Esteem

We now return to our examination of the root cause of the different strains of depression (manic-depression, overt depression and covert depression). The phrase "low self-esteem" is in very wide use these days. Pick up any book about depression and you are almost certain to find low self-esteem cited as a main cause if not the main cause.

In this essay I want to touch on two components of real self-esteem. By component I mean simply, "If you want genuine self-esteem, you need these two ingredients in your life. " They are not the only components, but they are essential. One is knowledge of the self as spirit soul. Now, this component is quite openly recognized in many of the present-day books on depression. A German Catholic monk named Anselm Gruen is the author of Building Self- Esteem (Crossroad, 2000); in Chapter One he writes that people need to get in touch with "the spiritual you," which he defines as "a self that can survive all external wounds and destruction because it comes from the hand of God. "

In the Bhagavat Dharma Discourses given in New Vrndaban, September 1972, Srila Prabhupada said:

Bhagavata-dharma means that we have to transcend both the gross and subtle bcdy; come to the spiritual body. It is very scientific. And, as soon as we come to the spiritual body, mukta sanga, being freed from the gross and subtle body, we come to our real body, spiritual body, then actually we feel happiness and independence. So this process of Krsna consciousness is the highest benediction for the human society because it is trying to bring the human being to the platform of spiritual body. Transcending the gross and subtle material body.

The next component is likewise widely acknowledged--people need worthwhile life-goals, long-term and short-term. In How to Win Over Depression, Tim LaHaye writes:

Human beings are clearly goal-driven creatures; without goals we cease to struggle. That is the way our minds were created. But whenever we let a project become our primary goal, we inevitably experience a letdown after its attainment. For that reason we need to maintain long-range, as well as short- range, goals, frequently reassessing and modifying them. Extremely goal- conscious people are rarely depressed.

One self-pitying woman used to wail, "I have nothing to look forward to. " Obviously she was spending too much time thinking about herself. A world so filled with moodly, problem-laden people documents the fact that too many individuals lack worthwhile goals.

In his discourses in New Vrndaban, Srila Prabhupada explained how bhagavat- dharma combines both components of self-esteem (realization of self as spirit soul, and occupational duties) for the satisfaction of Krsna.

The point is that if we want a successful life, peace of mind and satisfaction, we should concern ourselves with how to advance in devotional service to the Lord. This striving is actually the life of dharma. However, if one executes his duties but does not become Krsna conscious, then all his striving is in vain. "Duties (dharma) executed by men, regardless of occupation, are only so much useless labor if they do not provoke attraction for the message of the Supreme Lord. " [Bhag. 1. 2. 8]

In Laguna Beach on 26 July, 1975, Srila Prabhupada spoke thus about the mentality of the hippies.

In America the boys are rich man's son, and therefore so many boys are not working. They have got easy income, and they are not working. And because there is no proper work, they are becoming hippies. They are manufacturing independence. "Idle brain is a devil's workshop. " This human psychology is the same everywhere.

Rousseau is often styled as an archetype of hippiedom. His father was a watchmaker who wooed and married a higher-class woman. The son imbibed from his father pretensions of aristocracy. As an adult, Rousseau often lived off of admiring femmes du monde who supported him in return for his sexual favors. Thus for much of his life he had "no proper work," and could devote himself to his favorite activity: dreaming. In spiritual matters, he professed a relationship with God in nature, and disdained the moral directives of both Christianity and civil law. Out of "the devil's workshop" of his idle imagination, Rousseau manufactured a philosophy of personal independence. His indolent self-absorption, his "arrogance of the self- taught," and his outrage at the unwillingness of others to fall in as much love with his ideas as he had, are flags of Rousseau's low self-esteem.

From Anselm Gruen's book we learn that some of the key indicators of low self- esteem are: an artificial grandiosity that is just a vain attempt to cover up inner feelings of inferiority; arrogance; and chronic dissatisfaction expressed as a drone of whining about the unfairness of life. The psychiatrist Terence Real, writing in I Don't Want to Talk About It (Fireside 1998), states that men often "medicate" themselves against depression by a raging illusion of inordinate power. "The grandiose entitlement to lash out at another human being rights their floundering sense of self-worth--and they strike. " The imagination is obviously very much at work in these desperate compensations for low self-esteem. These compensations were very much evident in the life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Loss of self-esteem means nothing other than the process of "conditioning" as explained in Essay Two. One is conditioned who forms a sense of identity that is less than pure spirit soul, and who devotes himself to life-values that are less than pure Krsna consciousness. He hopes this imaginary new self-image will yield greater fulfillment of self. But he is just cheating himself. He is letting himself down by lowering his sights from spirit to matter.

Imagination Addiction

As I mentioned earlier in this essay, there are so many addictions that one may accept in trying to fill a heart made empty by lack of Krsna consciousness. The "Rousseau type" of addiction to a political remaking of the world is just one. The many addictions that covert depressives resort to are classified by some psychiatrists under two headings: merging and elevating.

In Chapter Three of I Don't Want to Talk About It, Terence Real defines these two kinds of addiction thusly. In merging,

the usual boundaries around the self are relaxed or even dissolved, causing feelings of boundlessness and abundance. In psychoanalysis this experience is called "oceanic bliss. " The relaxation of self-boundaries lies at the core of intoxication with drugs like alcohol, morphine, and heroin. Various forms of bingeing--eating, spending, sex--can provide this same sense of expansion. Such ecstacy can also be achieved in love addiction, where the love object is felt to be godlike and thus fusion with that person brings rapture.

In elevation,

the man's sense of power becomes inflated, so that he feels supremely gifted, special, even godlike.

You'll recall that I mentioned earlier a bond of similarity between the covert depressive and the manic-depressive. Real explains that similarity thus.

The purest form of this type of intoxication is mania. The elevating intoxication in covert depression differs from mania primarily in that mania requires no external object to trigger the grandiose defense against shame. While the covertly depressed man must consume something or do something to shift the state of his self-esteem, a man with manic-depressive illness flips back and forth between grandiosity in the manic phase and shame in the depressed phase at the seeming whim of the disease. Manic-depression is otherwise simply a more extreme version of elevation in covert depression, in that both rely on the rush of inflated self-esteem to ward off depression.

As examples of elevating addiction, Real lists gambling, sex addiction, child molestation, wife battering and political torture. Restated, the difference between merging and elevating is that the first entails a fusion, a oneness with the object of addiction, and the second entails addiction to lording over, controlling, and exploiting.

It is quite remarkable that these two overarching categories of addiction show such congruence with the mentalities of karmis and jnanis. Karmis want elevation, jnanis want to merge. Don't forget, though, that karma and jnana are Vedic paths of piety, whereas the modern addictions to elevation and merging are sinful.

Accepting Professor Ryn's argument that modernity is manic-depressive, we ought to look at the problem of addiction, which plays a big role in depressive behavior.

From the "Stanton Peele Addiction Web Site" on the Internet:

. . . we need no longer think of addiction exclusively in terms of drugs. We are concerned with the larger question of why some people seek to close off their experience through a comforting, but artificial and self-consuming relationship with something external to themselves. In itself, the choice of object is irrelevant to this universal process of becoming dependent. Anything that people use to release their consciousness can be addictively misused.

Our analysis of addiction starts with the addict's low opinion of himself and his lack of genuine involvement in life, and examines how this malaise progresses into the deepening spiral which is at the center of the psychology of addiction. The person who becomes an addict has not learned to accomplish things he can regard as worthwhile, or even simply to enjoy life. Feeling incapable of engaging himself in an activity that he finds meaningful, he naturally turns away from any opportunities to do so. His lack of self-respect causes this pessimism. A result, too, of the addict's low self-esteem is his belief that he cannot stand alone, that he must have outside support to survive. Thus his life assumes the shape of a series of dependencies, whether approved (such as family, school, or work) or disapproved (such as drugs, prisons, or mental institutions).

There is a paradoxical cost extracted, however, as fee for this relief from consciousness. In turning away from his world to the addictive object, which he values increasingly for its safe, predictable effects, the addict ceases to cope with that world. As he becomes more involved with the drug or other addictive experience, he becomes progressively less able to deal with the anxieties and uncertainties that drove him to it in the first place. He realizes this, and his having resorted to escape and intoxication only exacerbates his self-doubt. When a person does something in response to his anxiety that he doesn't respect (like getting drunk or overeating), his disgust with himself causes his anxiety to increase. As a result, and now also faced by a bleaker objective situation, he is even more needful of the reassurance the addictive experience offers him. This is the cycle of addiction. Eventually, the addict depends totally on the addiction for his gratifications in life, and nothing else can interest him. He has given up hope of managing his existence; forgetfulness is the one aim he is capable of pursuing wholeheartedly.

This explanation of addiction is very helpful. But I think it does not put its finger on the core problem. It argues that addiction is excessive dependence upon something in the external world. From all we have seen from Srila Prabhupada's books in this series of essays, we must conclude that addiction begins within the mind. In short, before the mind connects to anything outside, addiction is a spiritually unhealthy dependence upon the imagination, or mental speculation.

"These living entities," Krsna says, "They are My part and parcels. But foolish rascals, they're creating concoction, mental speculation, to become happy. " Manah sasthanindriyani. And according to their mentality they are getting a different type of body, indriyani. . . . So indriyani. Manah sasthanindriyani. First of all with subtle mind we create a different type of indriya. If we live like dogs and hogs, then that mentality will give me similar senses, the body of a dog and hog. And we change our taste according to dog and hog. Similarly, we can change our taste according to the body of demigods. But the subject matter of tasting or enjoyment is the same. Eating, sleeping, sex and defense. [Bhagavad-gita lecture, 20 June 1976 in Toronto]

We manufacture plans by our mental concoction. That should be given up. Yada prajahati kaman sarvan. All kinds of mental concoction, mental speculation, should be given up. That is the science. That is the beginning of our spiritual life, that "I shall not use my mind for my activities. I shall wait for the direction from the higher authority, supreme consciousness. Then I shall act. " [Bhagavad-gita lecture, 27 April 1966 in New York]

In the early days in New York, Srila Prabhupada used to sometimes quote a line from Shakespeare:

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

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