Truth About Untouchability
Man is filled with darkness and falsehood, yet his propensity is to discover the darkness and falsehood in others while ignoring it within himself. Communities do the same. Untouchability is based on the premise that people from another community are inherently low, dark and impure, so they must be avoided at all cost. Experience proves that contact with those communities does bring misfortune. It never occurs to the victim that the contact with what is low is only raising the impurities in his own nature. Having identified the other as the source of the problem, one rises in his own estimation and takes no initiative to remove his own darkness and impurities. The sense of superiority grows with each negative encounter, while one's own inner darkness grows as well, because it is left unobserved and unattended. This leads to the paradox that those who feel themselves most elevated in consciousness and in social status are usually the very ones with the greatest inner darkness and falsehood. By shunning the untouchable, they become untouchable.
The right attitude for a sincere devotee is to understand that all the impurities, darkness and falsehood he discovers in those around him are a reflection of what lies within himself. All that offends or irritates or disturbs does so because it touches a corresponding point in our own personality. Each negative encounter should help him become more conscious of his own inner falsehood, which is essential in order to reject and overcome it. Blaming others for our problems is the surest way to reinforce the false prestige of the ego and suppress knowledge of our own nature.
Similarly, individuals or communities that are oppressed by others acquire the viewpoint that all their problems are external and they refuse to look inwardly for the cause of their oppressive circumstances. The more they blame external forces and circumstances, the more they turn away from true knowledge and the true solution to their problems.
Those that accept the formula of consciousness responsibility see all negativity that occurs around them as a reflection of something in them that needs to change. With each circumstance, they grow self-awareness, purity and humility.
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