Deciding How To Act Amidst Conflicting Value Sets

People frequently have to wrestle with conflicting emotions, unclear and confusing thoughts and the need to balance duties, demands or considerations that appear to be opposed to one another. In some cases, we obtain facts which, if expressed to another person, will presumably cause them suffering, yet withholding that information can have negative consequences. How frequently we have to deal with someone who has a serious health issue or who has a relationship issue which we learn about but feel reticent to share. Is it better to speak with the individual, or to remain quiet? We see someone being verbally or physically abused, or bullied on the street. Do we intervene or walk by and not involve ourselves? We see an employer wrongfully browbeating an employee and we have to choose whether to intervene and perhaps endanger our own employment, or to let the ire fall on the other person and remain quiet and hope to not be noticed? We may hear a person being maligned and undercut behind their back, about things we know to be untrue. Do we respond and counter the malicious claims being made?

We see underlying all these situations a variety of potential responses, some dictated by fear, some by a desire not to cause pain, some to hide some indiscretion, etc. We make decisions in all kinds of situations based on some kind of internal process, possibly a balancing act between conflicting moral or ethical requirements, possibly due to fear or unwillingness to stand up and oppose an injustice as it would require getting involved when all we want is to have peace, and ‘live and let live’. There may be an element of physical fear involved, or the thought that intervention would not help, or possibly that it is not our role to intervene in the karma of others.

As long as we are acting from the physical, vital, emotional, mental planes, or some mix of them and the needs, expectations or fears of the external being, we find that we can become paralysed into inaction as we cannot decide what exactly is the right course of action. These levels are not founded in knowledge, as they judge things from outside and as separate without a complete sense of what is really taking place, which can only be known through a knowledge by identity.

Knowledge by identity occurs through the unification with the soul-consciousness that is connected to the one consciousness that permeates and manifests the entire created universe and transcends it. From this level, the knowledge of exactly what needs to be said or done arises and there is no conflict as it is a truth-awareness that goes beyond all the moral and ethical codes, all the fears, emotions, biases, instinctive behaviours or mental logic.

The Mother observes: 

“For example, you are in contact with someone, you have very good feelings for this person; you find yourself in a slightly difficult circumstance and want to do the best possible. If you act spontaneously, there is no problem before you because you act like that, one thing trailing another, and without reflecting. And you consciously want to do the best… On what will you base your judgment? What knowledge will allow you to decide: ‘I must do this or I must do that, I must say this or I must say that or I must not say anything’ — all the countless possibilities which come before you? And on what will you base your judgment? If you look at it sincerely, you will find out that at each step you do not know.

“It is only if you have been in the habit of going within yourself, of referring to the inner psychic consciousness and letting it decide in yourself what you want to do, that you do it with certitude, without hesitation, without a question, nothing. You know that this is what must be done and there is no question about it; but that’s the only case. Therefore it is only when you let your psychic guide you consciously, constantly, that you are able to do consciously and constantly the right thing; but that’s the only case.”

- Santosh Krinsky (USA)

Institute for Wholistic Education, and, Lotus Press

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 2 Role, Function and Action of the Psychic, pp. 62-63