Simple Living High Thinking free essay sample

If one is truly serious about achieving the ultimate goal of human life by perfecting his spiritual inquiry, he must adopt a life style that is conducive to the cultivation of self-realizing knowledge. This life style can be beautifully summarized in the phrase simple living and high thinking. Here simple living is in relation to maintenance of the body, and high thinking is in relation to the aim of ones intellectual pursuits. In order to exist in this world it is necessary to maintain ones bodily existence, but as ill be shown in later lessons, maintenance of the body is not progress towards the goal of life. Maintenance Just allows one to perform the activity of existing in a particular body, which does not denote any accomplishment of a goal. This maintenance of the body involving mainly our activities of eating, sleeping, mating and defending is not in itself any great feat opportunity achievement. We will write a custom essay sample on Simple Living High Thinking or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Even the animals are engaging in these activities of bodily maintenance. The cows also eat, the irds also mate, the hogs also sleep and the dogs also defend. Simply engaging in these activities of maintenance does not actually make one human. For this reason, one who is interested in achieving the real, permanent goal of life does not focus solely on these activities of bodily maintenance, but he rather focuses primarily on the path of perfection. This is why he adopts the process of simple living. The basic principle of simple living is accepting whatever is necessary for maintaining the body, o that we can use the energized body for higher philosophical pursuits directed towards our pure self identity. One only accepts that which is necessary for existence and does not take anything that is an unnecessary complication to life. In this way, by the process of living simply, one will be able to, if properly directed, arrive at the point of high thinking, the actual human essence. What exactly is the meaning of high thinking? High thinking entils the comprehension of the self as distinct from the temporary material body. Why should such an understanding be considered high? The first reason is because it is the factual reality of existence. Secondly, ones vision is not focused simply on the low activities of bodily maintenance but on the higher realm of the eternal self. The soul is the actual energy source of the entire body. The soul is constitutionally superior to the dull, unconscious matter. Thus, the understanding of the superior energy, the conscious soul, is higher than the understanding of the inferior energy, the unconscious matter. This body that we generally identify with is exactly like a vehicle being driven by a conscious driver. A car by itself is nothing but dead matter, but when a driver operates the vehicle; it appears to produce life symptoms (movement, production of by-products, signs of intellectual control, etc. ) In the same manner, when the conscious soul makes contact with the material vehicle known as the body, the body appears to be possessing life. Factually, it is the soul within the body that is producing the life-symptoms.