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THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING
finds himself menaced by others. Man is possessed of greed, and greed gives rise to fear. If a man were not avaricious, he would not be afraid of anything. The root cause of fear is greed. There are great passions and impulses and there are passions and impulses subordinate to these. Greed is the primary impulse, and fear is secondary to it. Where there is grecd, there is fear; without avarice fear cannot exist. A greedy man is solely interested in grinding his own axe, and where self-interest dominates, it creates fear all around. Fear is the inevitable accompaniment of preoccupation with self-fulfilment. Why after all, one may ask, is our society afflicted with aggression? What sustains the imperialistic mentality? Thefts, robberies, plunder, betrayals and frauds--all improper conduct flows directly from avarice. These are the breakers from the ocean of greed that rise high up the sky. As long as greed lasts, selfishness endures and one man becomes a danger to another. All talk of going beyond danger becomes unreal in such a context. No trust subsists between man and man. That is why there is such lack of trust in our world. One cannot trust even one's close relatives — father, son or wife. Fear pervades all relationship. Nobody has faith in another; everyone has reservations, secrets, covert schemes, rituals and ways of conduct which are ultimately unshareable. Even a teacher does not part with the ultimate secret; he wants to keep it to himself. That is why many ancient techniques in India have been irrecoverably lost. The master would not share the secret even with his most promising pupil, and the skill was inevitably lost after the master's death. Nobody trusts another. How to create an atmosphere of trust is the compelling challenge faced by man today.
A master-tantrik once saw a rat writhing in fear. Moved by pity, he turned it into a lion. A small rat transformed into a powerful lion! A rat that lived in constant fear of the cat suddenly changed into the king of the jungle, feared by all other animals! Now, as soon as the rat sound itself transformed into a big lion, its hunger for food also grew and its first thought was how to appease that growing hunger. The great tantrik, its benefactor, still stood before it. "Here is my food," the rat-turned-into-lion thought, and it leapt towards the man. “What an ungrateful wretch!", said the master of spells, “I changed this fearful rat into a powerful lion, and it is now out to destroy me!" Immediately he cast a counter-spell and the lion once again turned into a rat.
Such is the state of the world we live in! Whom to trust? Even the benefactor who turns a rat into a lion cannot trust his beneficiary.
Life is like that. The world being full of greed and selfishness, how can one man trust another? Faith is just not possible in such a world. That is why our most intimate relationships are characterised
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