Humphreys, with his inquiring mind, used to visit
Arunachala as often as his official duties permitted him, to learn from the Master.
Here is a conversational piece.
Humphreys: Master can I help the world?
Ramana: Help yourself; you will help the world.
Humphreys: I wish to help the world.Shall I not be
helpful ?
Ramana: Yes, helping yourself you help the world. You
are in the world, you are the world. You are not different from the world, nor
is the world different from you.
Jokes apart, some of us, along with Humphreys, would be hard pressed to understand what Ramana meant when he said first help yourself. All the knowledge that we have accumulated in the past either through our limited range of experiences or through various hooks have not helped us clearly visualize the motives behind our actions. Some of our actions are blatantly selfish and that is quite obvious to us. That we continue with such actions is proof enough that we feel quite justified in our selfishness. But the so-called nobler ones amongst us, the 'idealists', those who feel fulfilled only by serving others, are very confident that this is the real work that a human being should attend to. If some one wiser were to tell them that it is much more important to know the motive behind such an idealistic action, they would be shocked. To them, it is quite obvious that they are motivated by the highest of human concerns, service to those who need it the most.
But ask them to delve deeper into their motive, and to their surprise they may find that they have chosen this activity because they were inherently lonely, unhappy, and consequently totally dissatisfied with themselves and with the world in which they were living. In order to overcome this unhappiness, this misery, man wants to busy himself in an activity which he thinks is worthwhile i.e.., service to humanity. And he now concludes that such help rendered to the helpless, such service to mankind, is service to God.
But the motive is the removal of the sorrow and the suffering of one's own self and to forget oneself in such service, to cover up the deep wound which is oneself. The festering wound that is the self however, is not covered up that easily, and has to be surgically operated. The self must be seen in all its ramifications, how it is now hiding behind the noble ideal of 'service to humanity'. It has done this, so that no one would dare to search for it in such a respectable place. But please see that however much it has reduced itself in size, however well hidden, the self continues to operate behind the veil, unabated. This is knowing the self and the very act of knowing, the looking and the keen observing, will bring the self to a halt. And this has to be done day in and day out, so that action without motive can arise spontaneously. Such motiveless action by the human being in any sphere of activity, is bound to be wholesome, holy and beneficial to the entire creation.
So when Ramana tells Humphreys, and through him to the rest of us, - 'Help yourself', he is suggesting that one know oneself first before setting out to act. And Ramana says that 'you are the world' which means that it is the motivated action of all of us that has produced this world, not the world of nature which man has not created, but the world of competition, hate, inequity, exploitation and war, which all of us together have brought about.
If we can drop our motivated actions, we can certainly have a different world
where, with our modern and improved methods of agriculture and technology, we
should be able to feed, clothe and house everyone; but this demands an essential
pre-requisite that each one of us knows himself or herself in daily action.