Right and Wrong
When I first started teaching my friends son, who is about 9, about spirituality.. I was a bit afraid that he might take things literally and not concentrate on the real world. So I made it a point to tell him at the start itself that it is important to be spiritual but it was equally important to understand that we have to live in the real world.
I started with the concept of spiritual beings around us. It is said that the human form is limited in its experience because we have only 5 senses. The more we proceed along the current time line, the more people will be limited by the experience given by their five senses and they will ignore anything that can exist outside of our five senses namely touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Therefore, ppl will not accept that there are spiritual beings all around us.
I went on to say that these spiritual beings or fairies, although present all over the place, usually congregate in places of worship and the pooja room in our house. The more strict your mother is, the better your pooja room and therefore, more the number of spiritual beings in your house.
Now, these spiritual beings go around saying thathasthu to just about everything you say – irrespective of whether it is good or bad, right or wrong. Thathasthu basically means ‘so be it’. So you have to be careful what you wish for.. especially in the temple where there are a lot more spiritual beings and all of them together will say thathasthu to your wish and make it come true. That is why you should not use cell phones and other distractions in places of worship. So you can concentrate on the right things and get it granted by the spiritual beings.
From the above comes the question of why would the spiritual beings say thathasthu to everything? Are they not intelligent? Can they not say thathasthu to only the right things or the good things?
For this, the answer is that Good and Bad as also Right and Wrong is only in the realm of man. The spiritual beings know that there is no Right and Wrong because Right and Wrong is determined by three things.. time, place and who we are. Do you realize that online method of teaching is right and acceptable now because people no more have the time to go to college and get a full 3 or 4 year degree? Would this have been acceptable in the 18th century or the 19th century? In those times, you would have been required to compulsorily spend time completing a prescribed course is it not? So what is right now is not right in the 19th century. Therefore, time determines whether something is right or wrong. Similarly, where you are and who you are also determines whether something is right or wrong. Something which is right to a Japanese (unquestioned work ethics at the job) will not be right to someone in India (Work ethics are not so strict and we can chat or have lunch during work times as we desire). So you see whether you are in Japan or India (place) and whether you are japanese or indian (who you are) determines what is right or wrong for you.
Since right or wrong is forced/determined by more than one factor, there is no ‘fixed’ right or ‘fixed’ wrong. The spiritual beings who understand this therefore just go around saying thathasthu. But we in the realm of mankind do have right and wrong because we perceive it as such. Therefore, we have to be careful what we wish for.
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