What Really Brings a Person Down

51 year-old Mr. P.V. Venkateswaran was the chief marketing manager in a government organization. It was the evening of the 29th of May 1982. He had attended a meeting, which was held on the eighth floor of a building in Delhi. After this, he stepped out of the office, and, along with his colleagues, went towards the elevator. He saw that the elevator door was open. He thought that the elevator had arrived, although actually the elevator was on the ninth floor.

Mr. Venkateswaran went towards the elevator door. He was very pleased with the decisions that had been taken at the meeting. He put one foot out, meaning to enter the elevator. But since it was empty, he went crashing down all the way from the eighth floor! His doctor was present then, but at this time all the he could do was to rush down and see his corpse and announce that he had died.

Mr. Venkateswaran was a very successful officer. A government journal described him in these words:

A thoroughbred professional and a dashing, innovative manager with fire in his belly and ideas in his mind, an astute general.

Mr. Venkateswaran’s story is a rare, almost unique, one if you see it from the point of view of this world. But if you look at it from the point of view of the Hereafter, everyone is doing precisely the same thing as Mr. Venkateswaran did on that fateful day. Every person is, in the enthusiasm of intelligence and success, putting his foot on a spot that is going to drop him straight into the pit of the Hereafter.

To speak in a disrespectful way to someone, to torment him, to take revenge against him, to oppress him or to mock him—all these are, as it were, putting your foot on the empty ‘eighth floor’. All such actions will take you straight down into the pit of devastation, and then no one can help you—no companion and no wishful thinking of any sort.

Every person is putting his foot into the pit, although he imagines that he is actually stepping onto a safe platform.