What is the reason for dishonest people prospering and progressing while honest are suffering?

Consider the following:

We always find someone or the other as a reason for our problems.  We do not look inside ourselves and see if the problem lies within us.

My conclusion is that it lies with us. Unless we UNDERSTAND and AGREE, we will not be able to neither correct it nor will we succeed. As long as we remain IGNORANT, we will continue to point fingers in some other direction.

We all wonder why the dishonest prosper, while the honest suffer. This is a general grievance with all of us. We all meekly resign it to fate, without realising that it is not our fate, it is some other reason for this paradox in life (Paradox is good suffering in the hands of bad).

To reach to the reason, we will have to analyse and understand what and how human activities are propelled. We have a body which cannot act on its own. It is directed by the mind and the mind acts as per our desires and emotions.  Up to this we are all fine. But we stop here and do not realise that if our mind has to act rationally and intelligently, someone somewhere has to question our desires and emotions, someone has to question the motives, desires and emotions of the other person, someone else who is creating those desires/ emotions in such person, their motives have to be questioned and post that we have to carefully plan our action(s). All our actions are required to be questioned by ourselves and carefully analysed and if required we need to change our actions.

This comes from QUESTIONING - questioning your own mind, questioning your own actions. Analyse all happenings and this cannot be done by our mind (99 per cent humans stop at mind) without realising that we possess something more powerful than mind and that is our INTELLECT. Intellect develops only by questioning, contemplating and controlling our desires and emotions, thereby controlling our mind from making wrong decisions, from making immature decisions, from making decisions which meets with failure, etc.

Most of us humans fall in two categories:

The AGGRESSIVE  

The PASSIVE

The Aggressive are those who use their intellect in life’s activities, while the Passive operate from the level of their minds. Each of these is further classified as good or bad. Hence, there are the aggressive good and aggressive bad persons. Likewise, there are Passive good and Passive bad.

The term aggressive and passive have a special connotation derived by the use or non-use of intellect. The mind and intellect are two different equipments possessed by a human being to drive its activities. The actions are processed from either the mind or the intellect. A person is considered passive when he acts from his mind without the guidance/ directions of the intellect. Whereas, he who uses his/ her intellect to direct his mind and body to act is classified as aggressive.

A passive person functioning from the mental level lives by his feeling rather than reason and judgment. He does not think or discriminate with his intellect nor does he scrutinize, analyse his actions, much less question their merit or demerit. He lives a routine, mechanical pattern of life, follows blindly the life of his family and predecessors. Environment, situation and circumstance shape his individuality rather than his individuality shaping them. By and large, he lives an unintelligent, dogged life of passive acceptance of whatever has gone before him. He lacks the intellect and initiative to use his human resources to rise above the external influences and steer himself to a meaningful, purposeful life.

Such passivity may lean towards good or bad. A passively bad person leads a wrongful, immoral life without really intending to do so. He does not willfully, guilefully plan or scheme activities to meet his private ends. He does not mean to be bad. He continues to live a wrong way of life usually inherited from his past. His intellect does not consciously examine the nature of his activity and its repercussion. He is caught up in a mode of living which happens to be bad.

So it is with the passively good person. He is involved in a way of life which happens to be good, moral without even realising it to be so. He merely leads his life based on good impulses. He does not plan and execute a virtuous way of living. His intellect has not gone through the process of analysing and determining a right course of life. He carries on unmindful of the repercussion of his action. Such indiscriminate action, however good, may at times prove detrimental to himself and his society.

The aggressive nature is the opposite of the passive. An aggressively bad person viciously plans and schemes, manipulates and maneovers immoral, corrupt ways of life for pursuing his selfish motives. He observes no scruples, breaks custom and tradition, rule and regulation all for his self-centred, personal aggrandizement. The aggressive constantly employ their intellect in programming their life, whereas the passive never do so. Consequently, the aggressive are more powerful. The aggressive bad dominate over the passive good and bad. And freely exploit them to serve their personal interests.

The fourth cadre is the aggressively good person. Rare indeed is one in this category. The aggressive good is inherently virtuous and divine. He uses his intellect to plan and programme his course of life for the benefit of one and all. He never functions impulsively. His reason and judgment steer every activity directed to the well-being of the community. He studies facts, foresees consequences and works towards the best interest of the people. A single aggressively good person can bring about peace and harmony in the community.

The proportion of the passive far exceeds the aggressive everywhere, the reason being that human beings hardly use their intellect. They live at the level of their mind and its emotions, feelings, likes and dislikes. And suffer the consequences. They do not care to exert or strive for bettering themselves. The passive are rising in numbers.

Among the aggressive, the good are indeed very rare. So the aggressive bad exploit the weakness of the passive good and bad. The passive become victims of the vicious practices of the aggressive bad. This explains why the honest suffer while the dishonest prosper. It is the intellect scoring over the mind. It is a law of human nature. The passive do not realise their weakness and make no attempt to strengthen their intellect. They choose to remain in their mental and emotional frame. They are overpowered by those who operate from the level of the intellect and complain of the world being corrupt. To solve this problem they must shed their complacency and develop their intellect. Until they fortify themselves, they may need to seek intellectual guidance from others to combat the viciousness of the aggressive bad. Thus must the passive turn into aggressive bad elements in the society. There is not other way to it.

The epic Mahabharata presents a picture of the passive and aggressive natures of human beings. The royal cousins, Pandavas and Kauravas, in the epic represent these two categories. The Pandava princes were distinct in their passive goodness and the Kauravas in their aggressive badness. Consequently, the Pandavas suffered untold humiliation at the hands of the Kaurava prince, Duryodhana. He was a clear specimen of aggressive badness. He schemed and planned the destruction of his passively good cousins.

The Pandavas sought the guidance of Lord Krishna. Krishna was a personification of aggressive goodness. He employed his intellect effectively to destroy the vicious plans of Duryodhana and the rest. The aggressive good prevailed over the aggressive bad. Krishna relieved the suffering of the Pandavas and resurrected righteousness in the country.

The moral of the story is that we will have to become an Aggressive Good than only the forces which are at work are Aggressive Bad and that is the only way to win the battle. So far we have been Passive Good due to our basic nature.

Subhash Chandra