If We Gauge How Good We Are Solely By How Good We Feel About Ourselves We Risk Losing Our Goodness

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. To gauge our goodness solely by how good we feel about ourselves is to go down the path to godlessness.
We live in a age where often the primary concern of most people is to not, is to get rid of uncomfortable feelings as quickly as possible and to surround themselves by comforting stimuli. And therefore, people are interested in even religion or spirituality to the extent it makes them feel good about themselves. It makes them feel calm, comfortable.
But as soon as it starts making them feel uncomfortable, maybe because there are certain moral standards in which they are unable to meet and they feel judged by those standards and they come out feeling inadequate and therefore they feel bad about themselves. Then they want to do away with that. Now, of course, we human beings inevitably, consciously or unconsciously need to gauge ourselves.
And if we gauge how good we are by how good we feel about ourselves, then we, especially if our conscience has been deadened, then we might live in a self-congratulatory illusion where we feel as if we are doing well, but we may not be. This leads to moral relativism and different people may have very different ideas about their goodness. For example, communists were so indoctrinated and brainwashed by their ideology that they killed millions.
And because they felt they were fulfilling the communist dream to bring about equality in humanity, they actually committed brutality against humanity. And many of them felt good about it. So, the Bhagavad Gita cautions, asatyam patishtham te jagadahur aneshwaram aparas parasambhutam kimanyat kama hai tukam that when we reject the idea of any ultimate reality, any foundational reality, any God in control, then what are we left with? Just our own feelings, our own desires.
And then the previous verse states, parottam chanivruttam cha jananavidur asurah vishavacham naapichacharona satyam teshu vidyate There is no parameter for deciding what is to be done, what is not to be done. And then cleanliness, truthfulness, proper behavior are all lost and thus people end up enormously distressed. The only way out of such distress is by purification.
And it is only when we are purified, then when we evaluate ourselves and we feel good about ourselves, then actually we are pure and that’s why we feel good. If we are sometimes so impure that we don’t even find the impure impure, then using our own feelings as the barometer and not the God-given standards in scripture as the barometer is the path to self-destruction. That’s why pasmachastram pramanam te karyakarya-vyavasthitau khyatva-shastra-vidhanoktam karma-kartumihahase Therefore we need shastra as a guideline to help us decide what is to be done and what is not to be done.
And thus, of course, scripture can be combined with our conscience for doing things, but we need to keep scripture as our primary parameter. Then we can truly go toward goodness and godliness. Thank you.