The Real Nature of Man

Every object in this world has peculiar characteristics of its own. They distinguish it from others and give it an individuality. These characteristics which give it its individuality are called its nature. So if one knows the nature of an object, one knows the object fully. Such knowledge of an object is called true knowledge. To have true knowledge of an object, therefore, one must know its nature. This nature manifests as attraction and repulsion. It likes to acquire something and repulse certain other things. With some it is, so to say, eternally bound in love, and with some others it bears eternal hatred. All objects are divided into two classes, viz inanimate objects and animate objects. Even among inanimate objects, we find these forces of attraction and repulsion. As for example, darkness is compatible with darkness and not with light. Thus objects of similar nature combine and not those of contrary natures. Watery things do not get mixed with oily substances, because their natures differ. Watery substances get mixed with watery substances, and oily substances with oily ones. Even in the vegetable kingdom, one finds these forces of attraction and repulsion.

It will not be too much to say that the animal world also is guided by these two forces of attraction and repulsion, of love and hatred. Cows and other herbivorous animals take green grass, creepers and leaves but carnivorous animals, like the tiger, are not fond of them. Every animal is guided by these likes and dislikes, we have to fix their nature by this likes and dislikes.

Though we see two forces, love and hatred, yet in reality they are but the two aspects of a single force, love. It is because we like light, we hate darkness, the reverse of it. So, as hatred is also due to love, we have to say that hatred is nothing but another aspect of love. Love attracts, hatred repels; love is something positive while hatred is something negative; in other words, love is reality while hatred is unreal. So the nature of everything is love. What one wants is his nature, and what one hates is contrary to his nature. Fish want to live in water, so it is their nature. Again, life out of water they hate, so it contrary to their nature.

Likewise, if we examine human nature, we find that it is also made up of love and hatred. Love for happiness and hatred for misery, who does not possess? Similarly everyone is seen to love life and fear death. Again, an intelligent man ever thirsts after knowledge.  He hates ignorance even as the sun hates darkness. His nature is to love knowledge and hate ignorance. From these likes of his, we easily find that his nature is happiness and not misery; life is his nature and not death; and again, knowledge is his nature and not ignorance. Enjoyment is bliss, life is existence  and  knowledge is consciousness. So the Rishis(saint) arrived at the conclusion that man's true nature is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

If man is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, it follows that which undergoes change or destruction is not man. The embodied individual undergoes birth and death, and so is not real man. So also who he works and thinks, he who is the agent and the knower is not the real man, because he does not exists in deep sleep; for that which is existence itself can never be destroyed or become non-existent. So the seers say that the real man is bound the five koshas (physical sheaths). The man who is circumscribed by the five sheaths is only and apparent man. The real man, because he is not limited by the five sheaths, is infinity, all-prevading, greater than the greatest. This is the conclusion of the Aryan Rishis.

Though man, in his real nature, is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss, yet all men think of themselves as having name and form, as Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so, possessing attributes, subject to death, and they are satisfied with this view about them. They do not look as being eternal, without parts, and full of bliss, Like pots and other objects, they too are destructible, subject to their environment, tossed to and fro by happiness and misery, ever craving - in short, objects of pity. All their energy is spent up in eating, drinking, and sleeping and they are always subject to fear. If anyone among them wants to lead a different life, he has to give it up at once, seeing the attitude of his wife, children, relations, and friends.  So this world has been going on unbroken from time without beginning with these people wholly addicted to eating and drinking. Only now and then at great intervals, a few individuals raise their heads high above the billows of the world and call out at the top of their voice:  "To live like brutes is not the aim of human life. Realize your true Self and save yourselves from the ocean of misery". Hearing this, some rouse themselves from their sleep; and seeing the benign face of such enlightened souls and hearing their teaching which are easy of understanding, they get new life and strength in them. They too raise themselves above this world of misery and, from the words of these great souls, realize that the only object which can give them freedom from bondage is shinning before them; that in search of it they have been suffering in this unreal world so long; and that, that object exists beyond this world of the senses which is full of fear and misery: thus knowing the truth, they too become blessed. Now and then the people of this miserable world get beyond it through the help of some enlightened soul or other. Such great souls also come now and then for the salvation of these miserable creatures. It is because such great souls, whose hearts feel for the misery of others, come now and then to this world, that there is and end to the suffering of these miserable creatures. Otherwise this world would have been a regular hell, and the darkness of ignorance would never have been dispelled.

Swami Ramkrishnananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic