What stands in the way of the goal?

The first question of this circle started from a plain fact: everyone wants happiness, and nobody wants it to end. Ananda Marga philosophy distinguishes two kinds. Sukha is ordinary happiness, the pleasant feeling when the mind meets something it likes: a good meal, praise, a raise, a new phone. Ánanda is bliss, a happiness without limit, which the first question traced to the Infinite itself.

The difference is not in how sukha feels. It is in how long it lasts and how far it reaches. Sukha depends on an object, and every object is finite. The meal is eaten, the praise is forgotten, the phone gets old. Ánanda does not depend on any object, so nothing can take it away.

Both are sought by the same longing. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti, the founder of Ananda Marga, observes that every human being runs after happiness, knowingly or unknowingly, and that this is simply human nature. The trouble starts when a longing made for ánanda is spent entirely on sukha.

Suppose a person looks for ánanda outside: in money, power, comfort or pleasure. The first question showed what follows. Whoever has a hundred wants a thousand, and whoever has a thousand wants a million. Each gain is real, but it leaves the want bigger than before.

The reason is simple arithmetic. The longing is infinite. Physical things are finite: a house, a fortune, a country, even the whole planet. A finite amount of anything cannot fill an infinite hunger, so a person who looks for fulfillment there is never full. Such people are not greedy by nature. They are hungry in the wrong place.

Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti describes human longing as working on three levels: physical, psychic and spiritual. Physical needs are real and limited, since a body needs only so much food and shelter. Psychic and spiritual longings have no limit, and they need none, because knowledge, love and the Infinite are not used up by being shared. The chase goes wrong when the infinite longing is poured into the physical level, where everything is limited. (In the quote below, “microcosm” means the individual being.)

First, to the person. Because no amount is ever enough, the urge keeps asking for more of whatever gave pleasure last time. A drink becomes a habit, a meal becomes overeating, attraction becomes a lust that uses other people, a game becomes an addiction. The mind takes the shape of what it runs after (question 4 explains this), so a mind that keeps running after crude pleasures grows crude, restless and weak. The person suffers, often without knowing why.

Then, to others. Some people pour the same hunger into money and power, and here the harm spreads, because the physical wealth of the world is limited. If one person takes far more than they need, someone else gets less than they need. A ruler who wants more power needs other people to have less of it. So the endless hunger of one becomes the hunger, fear and humiliation of many.

Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti draws the conclusion quoted below. When many minds run outward at once, the result is a whole society shaped by that hunger. That is why the problems on the rest of this page, from poverty to corruption to the loss of forests, are not separate accidents. They grow from one root. (“Psychic pabula” in the quote means the objects the mind feeds on and runs after.)

The root has a second strand. Love, too, wants to grow without limit. A child loves its mother, then its family, its friends, its town. Left free, that love would keep widening until it took in every person, every animal and every plant.

Often it stops at a line instead: my family, my caste, my religion, my nation, my species. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti calls this sentiment, meaning an affection that is real but confined to a group, so that everyone outside the group counts for less. Inside the line, people help one another. Across it, they compete, look down, or take. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti is blunt about it: the same weakness is at work whether the circle is a family or a nation. Only the size differs.

Put the two strands together and you have the engine of most collective suffering. The outward hunger supplies the wanting, and the narrowed love decides whose loss does not count. Each problem below has both in it.

Now look at what the root does inside one mind. Ananda Marga philosophy names six inborn tendencies the śad́ripu, the six enemies. They get that name for one reason: each pulls the mind toward crude things and stops its movement toward the subtle. Nobody chose them, and nobody is bad for having them. Every human mind carries them, the way every body carries hunger.

Set them beside the root and they make sense. Káma and lobha are the outward hunger itself. Krodha flares when something blocks it. Moha clings to whatever gave pleasure before. Mada and mátsarya measure the self against others: pride when we have more, envy when they do.

The second group, the aśt́apásha or eight fetters, is not inborn. It is put on us from outside. We pick these up from family, school, caste, nation and religion: a shame we were taught, a fear we were told to keep, a pride in who our grandparents were. A fetter does not push the mind the wrong way. It ties the mind’s feet, so it cannot move at all.

These fetters are the narrowed love seen from inside. Hatred of a group, fear of what people will say, pride of birth or culture: each one draws a line around the mind. This is where a personal problem turns into a collective one, which is the subject of the rest of this page.

What it is. A few people hold far more of the world’s goods than they could ever use, while others lack the minimum needed to live. Ánanda Sútram names that minimum: food, clothing, medical care, housing and education, which every age must guarantee to all.

An everyday example. A city has apartments standing empty, bought as investments, and families who cannot pay the rent. Grain is stored to wait for higher prices while people nearby go hungry. A company cuts wages and raises its owners’ dividends in the same year. Nobody here needs to be cruel. Each is following the rule “more for me,” and in a world of limited goods, more for one means less for another.

Its root. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti calls the ambition to grow rich by depriving others a psychic disease, and says where it comes from: an infinite longing that has not found its proper field. The usual defense, that anyone with talent and effort could do the same, forgets that the goods of the earth are limited while the need for them is common to all.

What it is. Here the exploitation passes through the mind. Instead of taking from people directly, the seller first creates a want they did not have, then sells them its satisfaction. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti gives psycho-economics, the study of the economy’s effect on the mind, the task of showing people how this is done.

An everyday example. An advertisement shows a happy family around a new car and quietly suggests that yours is not happy without one. A snack is engineered so that one is never enough. An app is designed to keep a thumb scrolling for hours. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling and pornography are sold with great skill, often to the people least able to resist. The buyer pays twice: once in money, and again in health, time and peace of mind.

Its root. This works only because of the infinite hunger described above. A real need can be met, and then it stops. A manufactured want can be grown without end, which makes it the perfect product for a seller who also wants without end. One person’s endless hunger for profit feeds on another’s endless hunger for pleasure.

What it is. The hunger for more does not stop at money. Power gives control over money, laws and other people, so it is wanted in the same endless way: the leader of a district wants a province, then the nation. When power is sought for its own sake, it is used to keep power and to enrich those who hold it.

An everyday example. A party buys votes before an election and repays its funders with contracts afterward. An official demands a bribe for a permit that should be free. A law is written so that one company’s rival goes out of business. Between countries, Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti describes politico-economic exploitation: a powerful state dominates a weaker one, takes its raw materials, and turns it into a market for its own finished goods.

Its root. Democracy, Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti argues, works only where voters are educated, moral and politically aware. Where they are not, power goes to those who want it most, and wanting it most is exactly the endless outward hunger. The narrowed love then supplies the excuse: our party, our region, our people first.

What it is. One group declares itself higher by birth or by color and keeps the advantages that come with it. In India this took the form of caste: for centuries the so-called lower castes were kept away from temples, schools, wells and better work, and were told that this was their destiny. Elsewhere it takes the form of race: segregated neighborhoods, jobs closed to people of some colors, laws written for one group.

An everyday example. Two equally qualified people apply for the same job or apartment, and the one with the “wrong” surname or skin is turned away. A marriage is forbidden because the families belong to different castes. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti points out how empty the idea is: a mother may have one fair child and one dark child, and she does not start a racial war between them. The human race is one.

Its root. Caste and racial privilege are a way of keeping more for one’s own group: more land, better posts, more respect. They need both strands of the root, the wish to hold on to an advantage and a love that stops at the group’s border. And they last because the people kept down are taught to believe they deserve less.

What it is. As Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti tells the history, power over a long period became concentrated in the hands of men, and women were gradually deprived of their rights: social, cultural, religious, political and economic. Some religious authorities then declared, in the name of God, that women were inferior to men.

An everyday example. A woman does most of the work in a home or on a farm, yet owns nothing and has no say. She is paid less than a man for the same job. She is told that certain studies, careers or spiritual practices are not for her. If she depends on her husband for money, she cannot leave even when she is mistreated. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti lists the restrictions that keep women economically dependent on men among the methods of psycho-economic exploitation.

Its root. Control over another person is one more possession, and the endless hunger wants it as it wants everything else. The narrowed love draws the line, my sex first, and dogma supplies the fear that keeps the line in place.

What it is. Before one group can take from another for long, the people being taken from must accept it. So they are first taught that they are inferior: their language crude, their customs backward, their birth or skin unworthy. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti calls this psychic exploitation, and finds it at the foundation of the other kinds. It first weakens and paralyzes people psychologically, and then exploits them economically.

An everyday example. Road signs and official forms are printed in the rulers’ language, with the local language in small letters underneath, or not at all. Children are punished for speaking their mother tongue at school. A person who speaks the official language badly feels stupid in a government office, and is easier to cheat. Over time people come to believe that anything from their own culture is second-rate and anything from the dominant one is better.

Its root. A complex is cheaper than an army. It lets the hunger for other people’s land, labor and markets proceed with little resistance, and the narrowed love of the ruling group makes the arrangement feel natural.

What it is. Culture, as Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti uses the word, means the subtler and sweeter expressions of human life: music, literature, art, manners. Pseudo-culture imitates culture but pulls the mind down instead of up. It is made for profit, and what sells fastest is whatever appeals to the crudest instincts.

An everyday example. Films, shows and feeds built on violence, sex and envy, aimed at the young because they are the easiest to capture. Local songs and crafts pushed aside by mass products made far away. Newspapers, radio and television owned by a few wealthy people who decide what the public will hear. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti counts this ownership of the media among the methods of psycho-economic exploitation.

Its root. The mind, Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti observes, flows downward more easily than upward, and a seller hungry for profit uses that slope. A people whose minds have been made crude and passive can no longer stand up against any other kind of exploitation.

What it is. A dogma is an idea with a fence around it and a sign that says: do not think past this line. In religion the fence is usually guarded by fear: question this and you will burn, be cursed, or be born again lower. Around the dogma grows a class of professionals who stand between people and God, sell rituals, and charge for blessings.

An everyday example. A family that can barely eat pays for an expensive ritual to protect a sick child. A young widow is told she may never remarry. Two communities that pray facing different directions go to war over it. A believer is told that asking a question is itself a sin. The longing for the Infinite is real. Dogma takes it and sells it back in a smaller, priced form.

Its root. Spiritual longing is the most valuable thing a person has, which makes it the most profitable thing to exploit, and Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti notes that religious exploiters have often worked hand in hand with economic ones. The narrowed love draws its line once more: our God, our chosen people, everyone else cursed. Holding beliefs is not the problem. A border that may never move is, because the human mind lives by moving.

What it is. Geo-sentiment is love of one’s own land turned into a wall. From it grow geo-patriotism (my country first, at others’ cost), geo-economics (my region’s profit from another region’s loss) and geo-religion. Socio-sentiment draws the same wall around a group rather than a territory: a caste, a race, a class, a religious community. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti names its forms as well: socio-religion, socio-patriotism, socio-economics.

An everyday example. A war fought for “our” land. A trade policy that floods a poorer neighbor with cheap goods and ruins its farmers. A riot between two religious communities in the same town. A textbook that teaches children their nation was always right and its neighbor always wrong.

Its root. Each starts from real affection and then stops it at a line. That is why these sentiments stand in the way of the purpose itself. The purpose is infinite, and each of them says “stop here.” A mind trained to care only for its own group cannot keep expanding, and expanding is what it most wants to do.

What it is. Humanism, care for all human beings, is wider than any nation or group. But it can also be worn as a mask. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti calls this pseudo-humanism: help given with a hidden purpose, so that those who are helped become dependent.

An everyday example. A rich country sends food aid to a poor one, and in return the poor country must sell it raw materials cheaply and buy its manufactured goods. A literacy campaign teaches people to read and, along with the alphabet, teaches them that their own culture is backward. A speaker weeps for the world’s poor in public and runs a business that pays starvation wages.

Its root. The hunger for markets and raw materials has learned to speak the language of kindness. And even sincere humanism has a limit: it usually stops at the human species, as the section on animals and nature shows.

What it is. Education, in Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti’s view, should liberate. It should develop body, mind and spirit, and widen a student’s love to take in the whole world. It is limited when it teaches only the skills for a job, and politicized when those in power use schools to make supporters instead of free thinkers.

An everyday example. A new government rewrites the history textbooks. A university that depends on state money keeps quiet about what the state does. Children learn to pass exams and earn a salary, and nobody ever asks them who they are or what life is for. Children from poor families cannot afford school at all.

Its root. Whoever controls what children learn controls what the next generation will want and whom it will obey, which is why the hunger for power reaches for the schools. The narrowed love does the rest, teaching each generation that its own group is the center of the world.

What it is. Human beings have the strongest intellect on earth, and they use it to take from every other form of life. Forests are cleared, rivers poisoned, species hunted out, and animals raised in constant suffering, all for human profit or convenience.

An everyday example. A forest is cut down for a plantation. The elephants that lived there raid the nearby villages, and then they are shot as pests. Hens spend their lives in cages too small to turn around in. A river is dammed or polluted, and the fishing villages downstream lose their living along with the fish. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti points out that we usually value a creature only for its use to us, while every creature also has an existential value, a worth in its own existence.

Its root. This is the endless hunger at its widest, and the narrowed love at its last border, the line of the species. Because all life is connected, the damage comes back. In destroying the balance of nature, human beings endanger themselves as well.

Seen together, the problems on this page are not a random list. They grow from two things: a longing for the Infinite that runs outward after limited objects, and a love that stops at a border. Within a person these show up as the six enemies and the eight fetters. In society they show up as exploitation in every sphere, from the economy to the forest.

So the remedy has two sides as well. The longing does not need to be suppressed. It needs to be turned toward the field where it can actually be satisfied, the psychic and the spiritual, where one person’s gain is nobody’s loss. The love does not need to be invented either. It needs to be freed from its borders. And none of this is a reason to despair: a sútra of Ánanda Sútram (3-10) calls obstacles helping forces, because the effort against them is what carries a person to the goal.

That is the subject of the last two questions. Question 4 is the individual way: how conduct, meditation and service turn the same longing inward. Question 5 is the collective way: how Neohumanism widens love past every border, and how PROUT arranges the economy so that everyone has enough.