This article will be about two of the most essential general principles to live by. I can do no better than to quote the philosopher, Paul Brunton, in his own words. The following passage is taken from his book The Secret Path.
I would have liked to live in Athens at the time when one could wander into the marketplace and hear a certain snub nosed and pugnacious man, one Socrates, cross question the public men in the city, and repeatedly pose there this favourite question of his. A man like Socrates does not die and his sublime character outlives the grave.
When all the latest literatures have been examined and the earliest papyrus have been exhumed we shall find no wiser precept than the Delphic Oracle’s injunction – Know Thyself and the Indian Rishi’s counsel to “Inquire into the Self.” These words though older than the Mummies in the British Museum might have come from the typewriter of a modern thinker. The ages cannot kill a truth and the first man who phrased it will find his echo right down through the centuries.
Paul Brunton’s book, The Secret Path, is available as a free pdf download at archive.org.
The second principle is contained in another passage, also by Paul Brunton, this time from his Notebooks. These Notebooks are also available as a free download at paulbrunton.org
Being true to oneself brings happiness. Being indifferent to the criticisms of those who misunderstand brings freedom from anxiety on their account.
These words have their echoes in another philosopher whom I have read – Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mahatma Gandhi had read Emerson when he was young and had stated that Emerson’s essays contain within them the essential teachings of the Upanishads. Here are a few of Emerson’s views on being misunderstood and being true to oneself:
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
I should warn the young and impressionable amongst you however that it may be true that to be great is to be misunderstood but it is also true that to be misunderstood is not necessarily to be great. I got into a hell of a lot of trouble when I was young after reading Emerson because I did not heed the wise dictum of the Bible – “When in Rome do as Romans do.”
I think that this is quite enough philosophy for one day.
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