Theos-Talk Archives (September 1994 Message tl00023)

To Lewis, Aki, and Others,

Re Lewis's comments on unselfishness, I recommend I.K.  Taimni's
discussion of this topic.  It appears in either Self-Development
or Man, God, and the Universe.  Essentially he says that true
unselfishness corresponds to the Vedantic (or Kashmir Shaivism)
notion of nishkama karma, i.e.  performing actions (karma) with
no trace of personal desire (kama) as motive.  Dr.  Taimni views
this as a *capacity* to be developed at a rather high level of
spiritual attainment, and clearly not something that we can
choose to do at will.  If at our (well, for most of us ;-{)>)
present stage of development we feel that we have performed some
action completely altruistically, we are probably deluding
ourselves.

BTW, this can cause a greqat deal of trouble if we aren't
careful.  I once had a patient, a very religiously devout man,
who tried to live a completely unselfish, saintly life.  Needless
to say, he was repeatedly frustrated in this endeavor, and he
eventually became so frustrated by his "failure" that he gave it
up as a bad job and embezzled a huge sum of money.  Obviously,
there were other complex motives at work, but the disappointment
over not being able to live a saintly life was indeed an
important factor supporting the criminal behavior.  His karma was
nicht nishkama!

Peace,
Frank