Vedanta

Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by moment, of our existence.

The first two Hebrew words in the Book of Psalms are: Ashre ha-ish—“Happy is the man;” then there follow the conditions to be fulfilled for a person to achieve true happiness. These two words set the tone of the entire book, for in effect they announce the two main characteristics that predominate in almost all the one-hundred and fifty psalms found in this book.

Another agent of transformation of ego-consciousness is the ideal. An ideal is a psychological phenomenon, which serves as a model of perfection and stimulates goal-oriented activity in the soul. Ideals are of two types, subjective and objective.

Abraham Maslow, a pioneer in humanistic psychology, has narrated a beautiful anecdote about a small American-Indian boy:

The removal of the distinction between the sacred and the secular does not at all mean the removal of the distinction between morality and immorality, between virtue and vice, between truth and falsehood. There is a universal moral law known as dharma governing both the sacred and secular aspects of human life. The compelling power of yajna itself is derived from this law, and any violation of it will destroy the sacrificial nature of life and will bring its own retribution sooner or later.