CONTENTS CRITIQUE OF RELIGION

Page. Nos. Contents 385

Publisher's Note
1. Philosophy of Religion 386 - 401
The Author 1-4
2. Psychology of Religion 402 - 410
LIVING TEACHING OF VEDANTA
Preface 6-7 3. Religion as Value 411 - 415
Living Teaching of Vedanta 8 - 46 4. Religion as a philosophicial problem 416 - 420
COMPARITIVE PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
5. Theories about God 421 - 425
Preface 48
6. Ways of knowing God 426 - 429
Introductory 50
Contents 52 7. The problem of belief in God 430 - 432

1. Quest for Universal Religion 54 - 79 8. Is God a Person ? 433 - 435

2. Patterns of Religion 80 - 106
3. Synthesis of Religions and Spirituality 107 - 130
4. Svami Vivekananda and Universal
Religion - Equality of all Religions 131 - 152
5. Svami Vivekananda & Universal
Religion - Lecture - I 153 - 186
6. Svami Vivekananda and Universal
Religion - Lecture - II 187 - 207
7. Svami Vivekananda's Religion of
Service 208 - 237
8. Comparitive Religion 238 - 279
9. Universal Religion and
Mahatma Gandhi 280 - 301
10. Sri Aurobindo and Universal Religion 302 - 334
11. Sri Radhakrishnan and Comparitive
Religion 335 - 361
12. Post Vivekananda Religion 362 - 316
 The Author
Dr. KC. Varadachari, born on 14th August, 1902, had
distinguished academic career. Having graduated with a
B.A.(Hon.) Degree, securing Gold Medal, he took Ph.D.
from the University of Madras in the year 1932. After
occupying several important positions he ended his active
professional life with the Vivekananda Professorship on
Comparitive Religion, Ethics and Philosophy at the
University of Madras in 1966.
He has written profusely on the Visistadvita system
of Philosophy of Vedantha, Sri Arabindo and later on the
system of Sahaj Marg, the new system of Raja Yoga
propouned by Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj of Shahjahanpur,
U.P., India. Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh considered:
‘With a disarming simplicity and an effortless dignity that
characterizes his written works Dr. KC.Varadachari has
consistently and persistently yoked the services of his
philosophical acumen towards the errors of a purely
intellectual approach of life, and has sought to defend and
advance with adequate persuasion and power the claims
of higher and spiritual values both for the attainment of
deeper philosophical insights into the nature of the
individual, the World and the Ultimate Reality as also for
the perfection and integration of the individual personality
in a scheme of living that results in the fullest enjoyment of
the prizes of this world and the gifts of the world beyond.”
Dr. KC.Varadachari’s talks on the system of Sri
Ramachandra’s Raja Yoga carry a depth of understanding
1 2
of the subject and deep concern and commitment to the
persons to whom they were addressed. In his own words,
as recorded in his diary, his understanding of the system
led him to remake himself in a new way. His approach to
the system and the subject is best expressed by himself.
“Thus I found myself made to adjure the old theoretical
ways of approach. I had to remake myself in a new way. I
had to take stock of my whole past. All sectarian and caste
conceptions had to be rethought. Philosophies help bind
people to set notions. Thus I was to meet the challenge of
the New.
It happened that I should meet Shri Ramchandraji.
Firstly his views were clearly different from my whole past.
(i) The conception of the Ultimate as Zero was quite
against my philosophic inclination. Having failed with
the positive concept it is time to experiment with this
- Is it likely to be true? The Zero has to be understood
as the Beginning or Origin of all possibilities being
nothing of what it becomes.
(ii) The concept of Invertendo shows how the
deformation of evolution is natural and the power
inherent in Zero (nirguna). I began understanding the
meaning of Vivarta. All flow necessitates the
inversion and it is natural.
(iii) The formations of the descent are clearly on this
principle of inversions.
(iv) The vast Brahman extends up to our knowledge of it. (viii) The yogic process is this transmission from the
Thus Truth, Consciousness and Bliss themselves are Ultimate which alone can shape the entire being, of
attributes which get transcended in higher approaches. the abhyasi for the experience and realisation of
Sachidananda are not the Ultimate Reality, they too one's oneness with the Ultimate and experience it in
being terms of knowing - Sankara too gets one’s own physical, vital, mental and supramental
transcended. levels - called by Sri Ramchandraji, the Pinda,
Brahmanda, Para Brahmanda and Central Regions
(v) The individual is continuous with the Universal and the
working under the direct force of the Centre”
Ultimate, and is not abolished. The Pralaya or mergence
is cosmic and supracosmic and then all are withdrawn He was Director of the Sahaj Marg Research Institute
into the Ultimate. started at Tirupati in 1965 and continued in that capacity
till his Maha Samadhi on 31st January 1971. According
(vi) The individual ray of the Ultimate has created for itself
to Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj he has attained a state of
an organic organisation of physical, vital, mental and
negation and was in total mergence with his Master.
supramental centres and organs. These may well be
the knots which have demarcated the several systems
known as the physical, vital, mental or the bonal,
muscular, circulatory, alimentary, harmonic, nervous,
supranervous and psychic etc. They have become
autonomous in a sense but have to be opened up for
higher control. This is possible only by bringing down
the highest power of the centre and not merely the
higher power just above the human. It is the necessity
to mount the lower in terms of highest through the higher
which has also to mould itself to receive the highest.
That leads to going beyond Sri Aurobindonian Vijnana
moulding of the mental, vital and physical.

(vii) This is done by means of the transmission or descent

of the highest consciousness or condition (zero) itself
into the lowest region of the human heart or the
organism as it is.
3 4
 PREFACE

A preface to this short essay is relevant. It was

delivered in lecture-form on the July 1933 at Bellary.
It does not pretend to be an exhaustive survey. In fact,
several problems of utmost metaphysical importance have
been left out. The nature of the external world of objects
has not been considered at all. The goal of man has been
taken to be the only consideration. It is that that
distinguishes the East from the West, religion from mere
philosophy. The present essay is a thorough-going attempt
to view the several systems of Vedanta as forming a
LIVING TEACHING OF VEDANTA synthetic movement of Spirit. The author refuses to view
the several systems as steps in the ladder to the Absolute’s
Heaven. It is rather the other way about. To hold that Dvaita
and Visistadvaita are less real, less intuitive and less true
than the edifying doctrine of Absolute Advaita is a very
unsatisfactory way of explanation. The theory of Lila, has
not been paid any attention to by any of these schools. In
brushing aside this supreme problem of creative history
of the Divine, they have thoroughly and irremediably ruled
Dr. K.C. VARADACHARI out a very considerable portion of the life of Spirit. It is
high time that this problem is faced and dealt with in a
distinctive manner. The essay is a preliminary effort in that
direction.

The author takes this opportunity to pay his humble

tribute to all thinkers, past and present, who have inspired
him to live the life of Spirit. He is most beholden to Sri
Aurobindo Ghose whose writings suggested to him the
supreme mystery of Lila. He also makes this the occasion

6
to discharge his deep debt of gratitude to Dr. A.G. Hogg THE LIVING TEACHING OF VEDANTA
and Prof. P.N.Srinivasacharya, who had guided him in his OR
philosophical studies. May they accept this work, however What is living and what is dead in vedantic Thought
meagre, faulty and trifling.
The criterion of what is living and what is dead has
Gandhinagar. been one of the most vital concerns of mankind, and in
Bellary. ancient thought all over the world, the criterion is that if a
Oct. 1934. K.C.VARADACHARI man knows the real and the true, he lives, and if he does
not know this, he is, as it were, dead (jivat-sava). This
criterion is sufficiently all-embracive for our purpose. But
what does this criterion essentially mean? In other words,
the problem is of deciding as to what is real and what
unreal. That reality and living are bound together in an
inseparable unity, this certainly is .the criterion, and it only
means that living-ness is the essential characteristic of
reality. A dynamic life based on knowledge is the real life,
and because reality is dynamic, it lives. To separate these
two as some philosophers are to do, would be not to know
the truth. To live is to be real.

This ought to be the general approach to the problem

of Indian thought, and in this essay, it is applied to the three
schools of Vedanta. The Vedantic theory is peculiarly
placed in India. It had absorbed the very best of all the
systems, and is fairly synthetic in its comprehensive
adaptation of these systems. Vedanta began, as
all thinkers of India excepting the scholastic world-builders
and word-splitters started, with the solution of the
problem of individual unhappiness and suffering. 1
They rightly held that once the individual knows
1
Athato Brahma Jijnasa, I, i, 1, may be interpreted in this manner.
7 8
the truth of his existence, he would become immortal, and problem for Advaita, Visishtadvaita, and Dvaita thinkers
absolutely happy. To refer this to a metaphysical approach was the discovery of the nature of each individual in his
would be in the highest degree utterly insufficient relation to the total All, through the realisation of the
explanation of Indian thought. At the outset, therefore, the individual of himself.
problem of Indian thought was individual and practical, and
The Advaitic, or the absolute monistic view in its most
not merely metaphysical. Metaphysics had to enter in, and
characteristic phase is seen in the earliest exponent of
when it did, it meant that it was more or less an obtrusion,
that system, Mandukya 1 , which undertakes the
an inevitable theorising.
investigation into the nature of consciousness.
The ancients had early enough recognised that there
The life of every person reveals three states of
can be no ultimate perfection in the universe, unless each
consciousness (avasthatraya), namely jagrat, the waking,
individual in the universe attained self-realisation, and was
svapna, the dreaming, and sushupti the deep sleeping.
perfect in his knowledge, and complete in his happiness.
By these three states, our entire life is rounded. We are
Since most types of metaphysics ended in different
all wheeled from one state of consciousness to another in
conceptions of Reality, it was insisted by the ancients that
a continuous series. This is the cycle of samsara, from
the world at least should be maintained in an orderly
which we are unable to get out. This is bondage, because
manner, for which purpose schemes of laws and
the states of consciousness not only do not give us truth
restrictions were drawn up and run1 Thus, in Indian thought,
. of experience, but also do not allow us to get out of them.
one can think as one likes, but one cannot disobey the
In other words, they are irrational. The waking and the
social regulations, achara. But such schemes of state-
dream consciousness taken individually as such, are
organisation are bound to be temporary expedients till the
irrational. They mislead us in our activities and cause
final realisation of harmony on the basis of the self-
confusion and illusion. The deep sleep state is neither a
realisation of all individuals. Really, therefore, the question
state of knowledge nor a state of action. It is the state of
was not what the total whole was like, but what the
quiescence. Behind all these three states, or rather over
individual was like, ‘knowing which one may be said to
and above all these three states, is the real consciousness
know all.’ To know the Atman was to know the Brahman,
which functions for its own purposes of existence and
and though the lure of the All was greater than the
sustains these three. The something of the real that we
discovery of each, finally, the latter became the most
know and are aware of even in these three states we owe
important factor in spiritual realisation. Thus the main
1
1
Cf. Manu’s laws and other laws are no more eternal than the human Muktikopanishad says ‘ Mandukya up. alone is enough to lead
bodies and certainly less perfect. aspirants to liberation.’

9 10
 1
to the functioning of the highest consciousness, the turiya, subjective and the objective dulality . This state of rest then
the fourth of our nature. It is truth, reality and bliss. It is the is interpreted by them to be a restive state instead of a
Atman-consciousness, and is quite unlike the other three state of rest. Goudapada calls this state, the state of
in that it does not divide itself into waking, dreaming and unsettledness or indeterminateness aniscaya.
sleeping. It is continuous and integral, of which the three
The three states reveal no coherency with each other, nor
are parts. But the turiya does not even accept these
could they be considered to give knowledge directly as
distinctions as its parts, constituents or effects. The
the channels through which one can get at reality. They
Atman, the turiya, does not recognise the trichotomy of its
are not the self, for a self must be capable of coherent
nature. It is the whole self, integral and therefore complete
existence, must be capable of initiating living. The waking
in its reality. This is the Advaita-consciousness. This is
and the dream states are receptors of experience in the
the Atman beyond which nothing exists either as of the
sense that the waking life of a person is a reactive and
nature of .the states or as something of which this is an
responsive existence to stimuli coming from the objective
effect. It has neither a cause, nor does it cause any of these
world, and the dream is merely the ideational reflex of
states.
waking life, and, therefore, also a reaction dependent upon
Between the three states of waking, dreaming, and the environment. A self, on the other hand, being a creative
sleeping, there is the possibility of predicating causality, existence tries to bring about harmony and coherence and
because they seem to succeed each other. The waking perfection of individual expression.
and the dreaming states of individual life reveal this mutual
Therefore, it is necessary to recognise that there is a self
dependence, the former being as it were a consequence
because we are creative in spite of being more and more
of the latter. Without imagination one cannot even grasp
reactive. The self functions for the most part through the
the knowledge of objects. It is only at a later state of man’s
three, or rather two, states of waking and dream. The self
life the dream becomes predominantly the subjective after-
alone is what functions, for it alone can function, and we
effect of the objective waking existence. The waking
are selves more and more when we function integrally and
becomes more important than the dreaming, which is the
not when we live merely the reactive experience of the three
imaginative effort to know objective reality. Imagination
states which are irrational and uncreative of true harmony
instead of becoming knowledge becomes memory, and
and freedom.
more and more a ‘reaction - a compensatory mechanism
1
in its function. The third state, sushupti, is the state of rest Samkhya Karika 3. Goudapada points out the similarity in the subjective
sphere what Kapila had done in the objective, by using similar
for the self. This state is considered by some thinkers to
appellations. Cf. Goudapada Karika on the Mandukya. 1.11-13.
be the causal state, karana, Prakriti, the beginning of the
11 12
 It is because the three states of our experience are
considered to be the whole of our existence, and we do
not recognise that there is a self, dynamic in its character,
sustaining the three states of existence, we are constantly
prone to commit error and are ignorant of our true life as
creative individuals. We are unhappy because we have a
house divided against itself- a waking consciousness
which interferes with the dream or imagination, or an
imagination simulating the waking and the actual. The
deep sleep is a period of cessation of these rivalries, an
armistice born out of fatigue, peace, call it what you will.
The fourth, which is the self and not a state of
consciousness, recognises none of these states but simply
is. It is the most simple because it is integral. The waking
vanishes in it in the sense that there is then the expressing
of the self, the dream equally vanishes in it because
between creating and imagining there can be no division.
The ideal and the actual lose their meaning. There is no
sleep because there is no need for an armistice between
the two counteracting states of existence. The self is
therefore neither the cause nor the effect nor is it in any
doubt as to what it shall be or create.
This is the central doctrine of the Mandukya
Upanishad as seen in the highly illustrative example of the
fusion of the three sounds AUM into one completely
integrated sound OM. Just as the three separately,
recognisable sounds A, U, M, are rounded in the single
integral OM losing their separate character, or have so
completely and intimately coalesced within this unity of
OM, so also the three states of our consciousness are
also intimately related or rather fused in the self which is
13
the real unit of Spirit. To say that these three are partials
of the total Self, or that they are states of the whole, would
be false description. It will only lead to illogical ways of
thought. This does not mean that one cannot view them by
separating them, but to view them in such a manner is not
conductive to maintaining its integral essence, will be
intellectualisation, to use a much abused word of modern
times. In fact, it will mean an effective way by which one
can forget and finally annihilate the whole, the self.
Therefore the perspective of the self cannot be available
through anyone of the states of consciousness for they
cannot intimate, much less interpret, the real quality of the
whole which is the Self. The whole is a different pattern. A
new quality reveals itself. It is the absolute, individual,
simple Self. The parts, or states, have no capacity to reveal
the self. They are false in so far as they do not reveal the
self, and its character of creative initiation of action. But
in so far as they are integrated with the whole self in a
unique and legitimate way they are real.
A careful and intelligent reading of the Mandukya
Upanishad along with the brilliant commentary of
Goudapada will reveal that the Advaita of the Upanishads
is not identical with Mayavada. In fact Goudapada
criticises the view of Mayavada by using the arguments of
Mayavadic writers against them. If it is said that the objects
of consciousness have a beginning and therefore an end
and as such unreal, it equally follows that having an end
involves a beginning ‘- maya also1. The rule that everything
1
. Cf. Goudapada Karika 17-18. The 17m has to be taken as
Purvapaksha and the 18th as the Siddhanta of Goudapada who pleads
for non-creationism(ajativada).
14
that has a beginning has an end is an entirely reversible
relation. The self has neither beginning nor end, has neither
a cause nor an effect. It is untouched by anything because
it is simple, complete and whole.
Maya is a cognisable psychological fact of confusion
which perpetuates the dissociation of the whole by fixing
one’s attention on the states instead of the whole, on the
parts as in themselves not as related to the whole.
Goudapada condemned any dychotomising of experience,
and equally abhorred yielding to causal explanations of
consciousness and of the states. He wanted the integral
explanation of the self which contains every state, within
which there is no confusion, no parts as such. To him
between the expression and the expressor, there is
possible no causal explanation, since there can be -no
disintegration of consciousness. The states of
consciousness become patent only when there is doubt
and unsettledness as to expression, when there is ‘lag’ of
spontaneity or the flow of life. This ‘lag’ occurs when there
is abstraction from the expressing, when one clings to the
expression or identifies oneself with one’s expression.
When this identification of the individual with his
expression takes place or rather when one tries to eat
upon his past and contemplate it, there arises later on the
problems of causal explanation as to whether the dream
or deep sleep or the waking is the causal prius of
individual life. Goudapada answers this by putting a return
query, which shall be born first, the seed or the tree? One
cannot dismiss this argument as infinite regress, and,
therefore, as false- an error into which idealists fumble
15
constantly. It is a fact that seeds produce trees and trees
1
produce seeds . The way of looking at these things is not,
therefore, through the distressingly faulty apparatus of
intellectual dialectic, but through an appeal to the fact that
there is a whole within which these functions are carried
on. This final argument is not a refutation of either
philosophic realism or idealism, both of which are content
to be abstractionistic or sensationally abstractionistic.
They are content to deal with the dead exudation of
experience. It is an argument for an integral individual life,
which means a life of intense expression of the Self,
completely, perfectly, and spontaneously.
When there is this free functioning of consciousness
which is integral or Self, there is no division within. One is
at peace within oneself. One is simply happy. This dynamic
poise of being which is intelligence and creation, when it
functions within the waking and the dream with reference
to the objects contained therein, does not divide it self. It
functions in both of them with thoroughness and enjoys
them fully without impediment. Mandukya mentions the
2
triumphs of the spirit in the three states of its
consciousness, the three planes or levels of individual life.
That is the promise held out to those who becomes selves.
It is the fulfilment of the journey. It is the annihilation of
contradiction, bheda, within and without. Thus the
affirmation of the integral self is the truth of Advaita. Such
a self alone can be truth, bliss and dynamic existence. That
alone can stand without confusion and division as the
1.
Goudapada Karika, Alatasanti Prakarana, 13-20.
2.
Mandukya Upanishad, x-xi. Ct. Invention and the Unconscious,
Montmasson, pp. 216-17.
16
master of Maya. That alone can be really happy for it does
not derive its enjoyment from another. It is not lonely even
when alone. That alone can effectively negate suffering,
since it does not know evolution or purpose, does not know
diminution or destruction of itself. For how can a whole
evolve into something that is not a whole? A whole only
can express itself, being a unity. It cannot be a product of
another, cannot be a step to another. It is perfect
awareness.
Advaita in its purest form and highest aspiration is
concerned, thus, with the individual integral
consciousness. It describes this as an integral spirit which
functions and sustains and transforms the three states
which constitute its expressing (dharma) into one
continuous stream of its own expressing completely and”
When it is sensible, it unites itself with objects in the
external world; when it is aesthetic it becomes
disinterested or playful contemplation: When it is affective,
it is painful or joyous; when it is moral, it becomes our
personal work, we devotes ourselves to it; when it is
mystical it is the devination of the profound meaning......”
perfectly, without any confusion or interference1. It pleads
that no individual should cling to anyone of the states
(forms, rupam) as that would begin the circle of ignorance
again. But once an individual recognises his unitary nature,
there can be no falling away from integrality. Every person,
therefore, must realise that he is a whole, and not a series
of states, nor even a series of functions nor faculties as
the Alayavijnana theory and the modern behaviorists
1.
Goudapada Karika on Mandukya iv,98.
17
describe him to be. The individual in his unitary or self-
character is an exponent or creator of beauty, truth and
harmony which is bliss. This is the truth about all selves.
This is the living teaching of Advaita, eternally valuable to
thought and living.
Such a truth about the integral individual may be
extended to express the reality and integrality of the total
whole, the Universal All. But the chief danger of such an
extension lies in the absolutely unrecognisable abstraction
to which it lends itself. The followers of Advaita following
the lines of Samkhya, which really developed its
metaphysics from the subjective consciousness, wanted
to show that the transcendental contact between the self
and Prakriti may be identified with the beginning of Avidya
or ignorance through the over-laying of Maya (conceived
as illusion) on the individual or the universal Brahman so
as to bring about this world of unmeaning falsity. They used
the Samkhyan analysis of evolution for the description of
the external world of objects, but finally connected this to
a psychological loss of equilibrium on the part of Brahman.
This adaptation of Samkhyan psychology and metaphysics
was certainly facilitated by Goudapada’s brief but
significant commentary on the Samkhya Karika2. Maya
becoming identical with the universal Prakriti, next became
a universal defect. What was a psychological fact became
a qualitative metaphysical fiction.
2.
Goudapada’s commentary on the Samkhya is considered to be of
doubtful authenticity. But is significant that Sarvadarsana Samgraha
places Samkhya nearest to Advaita.
18
 We may affirm that between integrality and but be of universal significance. The attainment of selfness,
metaphysics there can be no common ground. A svarupa avadharana is the essence of true religious
metaphysic which asks for wholeness, a complete experience. This is dynamic existence not Samkhyan
geographical planning of reality as if it were a continent or passivity, which is but a thinly-veiled abstract existence of
a planet is asking for something that is not real at all. Again isolation, kevalatva.
it insists (and it may not know it) upon a spatio-temporal
Later Vedanta of the Advaita-type has brought much
explanation which can never be done with a being that
more of the samkhyan futilities to the forefront of its thought
has no concern with it - or even refutes. it - for an integral
than the germ of spiritual living. As we have shown, Maya
reality is a whole existence, an entire action, which is the
really means the power of expressing. But it was meant to
very stem of spatio-temporal being. Therefore it follows
mean the erroneous functioning of an individual in anyone
that they belong to it as its past or history. They belong to
of the states by clinging to it as if it were the prop of
the created than to the creating, which is the self. It would
existence. That is, it is represented to mean the activity of
be meaningless to ask then about the integral whether it
the individual, who clings to his creations instead of being
is a Universal reality or a particular existence, whether it
the unfettered free actor or expressor of his integral
is the total reality of finite parts. It would be more right to
perfection as a self. In other words, Maya is the tendency
say that such considerations are of absolutely no worth to
to live in the created, to possess and to live in its shadow.
integral existence which is truth, which is individual.
This tendency to live in the forms created previously
Buddha’s answer to metaphysicians is mainly this.
generates a kind of release from consciousness, and
In Advaita the existence of gods or Isvara is a matter makes one more and more unconscious, or mechanical.
of utter inconsequence - fictions which may be true or false. In order to get rid of this tendency, seriously it has been
Indian seers were more concerned with the living rather suggested that all expressing should stop, and that one
than the dead. History was never their main business. It should cease to perform action.
meant to them only the contemplation of the dead from
The real manner by which one could get over. the
which significant inferences may be drawn, or a moral
defect, namely, the tendency to live in the created is to be
derived. The reality of the self involves a complete
constantly aware of oneself without falling into either
refutation of all metaphysical speculation qua speculation,
agrahana, non-receptivity, or anyathagrahana, perverse
all historical retrospect which is a delving into the past.
receptivity. These are the causes of fall from the integral
On the other hand, it affirms the existence of freedom
spirituality. Plato similarly holds that the two primary causes
jivanmukti which is the creative life of spirit, liIa. In so far,
for a man’s fall from his perfection of integral selfness are
then, a self is prepared to be a unitary existence, it cannot
19 20
ignorance(amathia) and indolence(rhathymia). Indolence
is the effeminate slackness of the soul itself, which falls
away from complete awareness of its archetypal existence
at every moment of its life. Alas, the forms which we have
created, physically and psychically, become our destroyers
when we become their slaves, though they are expressions
of our creative activity!
Advaita as representing the integral realisation of the
individual, does not mean static identity or evolutionary
illusionism, but dynamic integrality and creative realism. It
is not mere unity but integral unit, simple, undivided,
consummate intelligence, which can tolerate no
distinctions. To divide consciousness is to kill it, to make
it static is to petrify it, and to abstract it from its integral
nature is to benumb it. It is an unquestionable principle
that consciousness is in constant peril of becoming
unconscious, and this peril can only be overcome when
the individual creatively expresses himself always, rather
than responsively and reactively adjusts himself to the
environment. This is the highest responsibility of the self.
This is its truth. This is the intensification of individual life.
This is true morality. In other words, this is the starting-
point of all definitive action which is the revelation of
perfection.
21
II
To achieve the integral consciousness, the self, which
is perfect harmony of the three avasthas, waking,
dreaming, and sleep, in terms of the whole which is the
self, is to recognise the fulness of spiritual life. But man is
not spirit alone, but a spirit with a body that he utilises for
his own purposes of action and enjoyment. The body is
dependent on just one self, whose presence within it gives
it the status of a body. From the recognition of the body, it
follows that not only the three states of consciousness need
to be integralised in the self, but also the body with its
entire series of functions. The body has been functioning
through ages in terms of the divided experience of the
states of consciousness, that it is now ill-adapted to true
living. In its efforts to adapt itself to changing conditions, it
had created or brought into being compensatory
mechanisms, psychograms, and neurograms. To abolish
many of these formations and to restore the true status of
the body, it would be necessary once again to assume
the integral nature of body-soul and act. Ramanuja’s
greatest contribution lies in the efficient manner he uses
adhyatma yoga for this purpose.1
It would be valuable at this stage to mention one
problem of absolute importance. Why are the selves many?
Could selves be born at all? The second and the last
questions are specially intriguing, because we have
1
The school of yoga paid more attention to the synthesis of the levels by
the control of the lower levels. Hatha, and Raja Yoga try to control the
pranic, the physical, and the intellectual levels.
22
already denied any casual relation with regard to selves.
But these three questions are in fact one only.
In a metaphysical sense we may affirm with the sutra
‘janmadyasya yatah’ that the souls also originate from
Brahman. But spirit can never be born. The tantric theory
mentions that Brahman became focal, bindu, before He
manifested himself1 Brahman tending toWards expression
of himself, being spirit ,became infinitely many and
assumed the focal existence of himself in many ways.*
The focal points of Brahman are the Atmans or jivas. Thus
the Atman or the jiva is Brahman in expression. It is a
recognised fact in psychology that focalisation of
consciousness is attention, which is the beginning of either
thought or action. It is the beginning of all integral activity.
It is the necessary preliminary to creative activity. To
become focal then is the prime necessity on the part of
Brahman the vast and the infinite Being. Being infinitely
perfect and possessing infinite perfections, he is focal in
as many ways as there are perfections. Each perfection
of his focalises itself as a self or Atman completely spiritual
* Sri Aurobindo holds that the Divine one is an eternally manyness.
Leibniz held that the total is a system of monads so interrelated interiorly.
or intensively as to be capable of being. in each ideally, which presence
makes for the internal appetition towards cleaner and cleaner perception
of the Total, mirror without confusion and ignorance. This eterni many
represented in infinite perspectives of the whole which includes the
perceiving monad as well as the perceived whole of monads comes
nearer the focalisation of the Infinite One in many. Each then is an
embodiment of the whole, within which the whole uniquely seeks clarity
and is at the same moment in the whole. Evolution too there is but it is,
an evolution in knowledge from confused to clear perception. All progress
is thus from unclear and confused to Perfect Vision.
Cf.Nadabindu Up. Kashmirian saivism: Chatterjee. Philosophy of
Bhedabheda: P.N.Srinivasacharya.
23
and absolutely integral. Just as in the theory of vyuhas in
pancaratra*, the absolute Brahman fulgurates as
Samkarshana, Pradyumna and Aniruddha, who are but his
perfect qualities, in an identical manner it will be necessary
to treat every soul, Atman, as a focalisation of a perfection
of Brahman, an amsa of the All-perfect, as a vibhuti.
It may be suggested that there is creation of the soul
1
here . But the apparent creationism of the soul is not really
creationism, except in metaphysical sense. Brahman
being dynamic eternally, cannot but be focal eternally. His
infinity of perfections entails his being eternally many. His
spiritual dynamic nature as also his infinite perfections
determine his eternal multiplicity. The immortality of
Brahman guarantees the immortality of the souls as also
their uncreated character. The ikshati2, the desire to be
many on the part of Brahman is an eternal desire to
express Himself, to enjoy Himself in expression, and to
manifest His perfections which are the souls. Thus is He
the supreme Antaryamin. The ikshati is the eternal desire.
Thus from the very beginning souls existed, and the body
manifests itself for each self according to the perfection
each soul has to express or fulfill.
In the foregoing it does not mean that Brahman is
finite, it only means that the infinite is the stem of the finite,
and exists and expresses itself as the finites.
* Pancaratra is the consumnate doctrine of the five scriptures too, veda,
vedanta, samkhya, yoga and purana
1
Vedanta sutras ILii.40-43
2
Vedanta Sutras I.i.4
24
 The desire to manifest expresses itself first as the
ego, with the vibrant (spandana) movement. This vibratory
movement becomes gradually the movement of sound, of
touch, of form or sight, of taste and of smell. The gamut of
movement thus finds its differentiations. Interpreting this
description in psychological terms, with which alone we
are .pre-eminently concerned here, the spirit or self,
becomes the concentred existence flowing into action, and
as it progresses it fashions the etheric, the pranic, the
neural, the endocrinic, and the muscular and bone
structures of the body.* Thus the entire development of the
body is expressed in terms of the expression of the self,
and the consciousness that fashions this body is the
integral focal consciousness which now utilises this for its
own purposes. But the price paid by the integral
consciousness in its attempt at formation of the physical
body has been the loss of consciousness due to
automatisation of functions, due to the tendency of the self
to live in its creations. This latter feature had also made
some souls not to try to get out of their prior creations,
thus confining them to instinctive and mechanical or
tropistic actions for ever.
Thus we find that once there is spirit, that is dynamic
intelligence, it cannot but become monadic, because its
main thrust is towards its own expression (action), and,
therefore, the body becomes the one inevitable formation
for the purposes of expression of its perfection. The body
is the perfect instrument of the spirit, and has a perfect
right to be, and we cannot conceive of any spirit without
being in action. And thus it follows that all selves are
25
psycho-physical organisms and not mere psyches. The
world of Prakriti (matter) could be likewise conceived as
the body of Brahman.
III
It is exactly at this point that Ramanuja’s theory
comes in. Brought up in the lore of pancaratra he had
accepted the usefulness of the body for the purpose of
the Divine. He maintains without accepting the creationism
of the body by the individual self, that the body ab initio is
completely subservient to the self, and functions for the
purposes of the self absolutely, and is in fact an ornament
rather than an impediment. But he also affirms that such
an absolute case of body is only for the Divine Universal
Being or God. Our bodies are only in a lesser degree
absolutely ours because we are not aware of our true self,
our archetypal existence. We have not got complete
truth-consciousness. In order to arrive at that
truth-consciousness, which is the constant awareness of
being, Ramanuja asks us to surrender ourselves to God,
whose consciousness is auspicious and integral. He
affirms that Divine Consciousness would lead us on to
absolute perfection, and happiness. Vedanta Desika,
the most brilliant expounder of Ramanuja’s thought,
1
in his last and greatest work, Rahasyatrayasara
expounds the attainment of the Divine Consciousness
by the individual soul through Bhara-nyasa-yoga
(offering of all impediments of body, action, etc.,
* Cf. Garbha Up. and other physiological Upanishads.
1
. Specially in Svanishtabhyadi karana.
26
to God). When this offering happens intelligently and
constantly, the body becomes more and more a creative
instrument of the Divine Integral Consciousness, more and
more aware of its integral character with the self, and not
a source of misery and limitation. Such then is the goal of
the body, which becomes the perfect medium of the
individual self, and the instrument of integral
consciousness, the Divine All.
Thus it happens that Ramanuja has already brought
into his thought the Universal Being, the turiyatita which
Goudapada and Mandukya thoroughly refrained from
speaking about. Mandukya is being supplemented by the
2
Isavasyopanishad.
Ramanuja does not enter into discussions concerning
the existence of parallelism or interactionism,- those
profoundly modem problems-between the body and the
soul. He does not bother himself with the epistemological
questions of representative perception, or how knowledge
of the objects or the body takes place-at least not with the
purposiveness of modem philosophers. He merely accepts
the common-sense position, an entirely unsatisfactory
position according to some thinkers, and says that the fact
that the self knows is there, and the fact that the self has a
body to be an effective existence is also there. The function
of the body is to display the perfect workings of the Divine
Consciousness, and not to be an impediment to the spirit.*
2
. It is interesting to note (hat Sri Vedanta Desika commented only on
one Upanishad and that is significantly the Isa Up.
* Yasya chetanasya yad dravyam, sarvaatmana svartha niyantam,
dharayitum ca sakyam, yacchesataika svarupam ca tat tasya sariram iti
sarira lakshanam.
27
Just as Goudapada had shown that the three stages of
consciousness veil the fourth, or rather feed on the fourth
without allowing it to function effectively, and instead of
expressing the fourth, impede its expression by distorting its
functioning, and finally forget that there is such a thing as the
fourth, the self or Atman, so also by constant pampering the
body seems to, and, in fact, does, become the only prominent
experience, and the self a mere epiphenomenon. The main
intention of Goudapada was to make the integral
consciousness, Atman, the real centre of individual life,
Ramanuja’s was to make the Atman a real being, not merely
a body with a soul but a soul with a body.
His intention to remove the primacy which the body
had usurped, thanks to carvakas, is the first step in
establishing spirit in the core of our psycho-physical life.
But whilst Goudapada felt that the integral consciousness
knew no distinction between its individual and universal
character, to Ramanuja it became very important. He felt
that the Universal integral consciousness has a more
satisfactory authority and assurance from the Upanishads,
which because it is universal can be considered to have
more power and perfection than the individual finite self.
He related, therefore, the individual soul and its body to
the divine Universal God in the same manner as the body
is related to it. Not only is the body to be made an
instrument of the individual consciousness, but also it must
in turn surrender itself to the Highest Universal Being.
There is one continuous action of the Divine thus
established.
28
 Thus it comes to this, that the individual soul
becomes an absolute servant of the Universal Being, the
integral self becomes an exponent of the universal purpose:
it firmly establishes its connection with the totality of the
perfection of God. It begins to act as the servant of the
Divine Consciousness, dasa, in order that it may act in
consonance with the world-purpose of the creative action
of the Supreme Brahman. Ramanuja thus brought to the
forefront the purpose of the Divine expression or
manisfestation, the Lila, the vibhuti. The social-character
of the individual Self is here brought out clearly. The
existence of other selves makes it clear that the individual
integral self is not the final destiny. It is not enough to
recognize the individual, it is necessary to meet to
recognize the lila-vibhuti, the world of souls and this
recognition forces one to surrender to the Universal All
because that is the only link with which one can truly relate
oneself with another.1
Now one may ask whether the transformation with
the help of the total All is not better than the mere
transformation of the individual as a first step, and then
link with the world of souls. Such a question is legitimate,
but one must possess the consciousness of oneself as
self* and not merely as a series of states or functions, or
merely as a body with functions of volition, intellection,
emotion, and motion, which are all reactions. One cannot
1
Brih. Up., ILiv .5. The turiyatita conception plays a very important
role in the minor yoga and mystic Upanishads. There the integral
individual self is the turiya and the Universal All is the turiyatita.
* Rahasyatraya sara Ch.x upayavibhagadhikara which mentions
that atmasaksatkara precedes Brahmasaksatkara.
29
be aware of the All unless one is aware of oneself as a self,
as the ultimate unit of existence. Units alone can be, can act
and integrate, and till the unity of individual existence is known
or gained, there can possibly be no relation at all in the real
sense of the term.
Secondly, Ramanuja’s view tends, though it does not
intend, to place the Universal a little more distant than the
self itself. Intuitive Consciousness, which is self-
consciousness, is the first recognition of integrality. It
makes the several levels of our life spontaneous.
Ramanuja’s main intention is to make the individual
organic with the Universal. He makes the body of the
individual and the individual himself the temple of the Divine
All. The intuitive consciousness is the perfect divine
consciousness working in the individual as its self, a focus
of the Divine, and as such is the universal consciousness
itself. The question does not arise whether it is the All-the
Universal God - that functions, or the individual self.* We have
implicated the Universal in the individuals, and the individuals
are now the body of the Universal Spirit; the two are related
to each other as soul and body, as spirit and its focus, as
prakari and prakara.
The value of Ramanuja’s thesis consists in - his insi
tence that the Divine consciousness, with whom all selves s
are eternally integrated is also their inmost con sciousness
and self. It could be expressed fully and com pletely by the
conscious invitation on the part of the indi viduals by their
* Lord in the Gita mentions that five are the ingredients of a Cause in
each action- and the fifth is Daivam- daivam tu panchamam.
30
surrender to the Universal Spirit. This Univ rsal Spirit is Ramanuja avers, then it is legitimate to expect Ramanuja
capable of becoming immanent in a more powerful way to accept jivanmukti and not merely videhamukti, freedom
than what is usually thought of. That is, he not only pervades in the body, and not freedom only after death. If the
and possesses, but can be made actually to express mayavadic fault had been compared with the general’s
himself in the self in completeness. march up the hill inorder to march down again, the
Visishtadvaitic fault can well be compared to the same,
But Ramanuja’s weakness for placing the Divine outward
for it places God inside the individual in order to place
manifests itself strongly when he creates or rather accepts
Him outside again. Man gets a body in order to get rid of
another world- the ideal world of Vaikuntha*- where he
it as soon as possible and hasten to heaven to get a better
places God always, and tries to reconcile His existence
one, since he cannot but have a body of some kind. To
within us (antaryamin) by the theory of pervation of power.
have attempted the problem of transmutation or
These tendency to construct another world of perfect
transfiguration elsewhere is a way of escaping from the
peace (though the construction of another perfect world
1 stress of life, and to abandon life even in the imperfect
was not any more his than others’ special vocation), also
manner that we know it, is to reach an abstraction however
made him place the Divine Integral Consciousness both
speciously it may be called the most real and true.
outside the individual as God, and inside as Antaryamin
Spinoza, the pantheist, was perfectly right when he
and more prominently the former, made him also
affirmed that there is only one whole with all its distinctions,
disembody man in order to make him free in Heaven
within which everything lives and moves and has its being.
(videhamukti). If the world is lila, a perect manifestation
To seek evolution here or purpose or end, is a frailty of the
of the perfections, infinite and auspicious of the Divine,
human mind which wants to believe that there is a goal
and if the individual body of man is capabl of being
somewhere, ‘a far-off event to which all creation moves’,
a perfect instrument of the Divine Consciousness as
afar and aloof from the world that we know.
* Madam Blavatsky: Isis Unveiled II .p.287 “ The fourth degree of the
Buddhist dhyana, the fruit of samadhi which leads to the utmost If we see the whole with the vision eternal, sub
perfection to Viconddham, a term correctly rendered by Bourunkwouf in
specise etemitatis-a vision of the perfect integral
the verb perfected ..”
consciousness, then every problem of causality, of ends
1
. It is not Ramanuja only that created the heaven and described it so
as to have ‘a hand in the making of it’ or personally assited at the
and purposes, vanishes. One simply is. To attain to an
origination of the world (ct. S.Radhakrishnan. Indian Philosophy absolute somewhere, absolutely transcendent, a happy
Voll.p720). Descriptions of heaven are found to be a fascination hobby
of almost all seers. Plato had his archetypal world of benches and chairs
consciousness or happy world. would be merely delusion
and truths, which are ‘mirrored’ in this world of phantoms. Dante had and ignorance-a postponement of the problem of living, and
also his medieval heaven. pregnant with all the possibilities of eternal recurrence.
31 32
To see it here and now with that eternal vision is the goal realm of matter as different from mind, he could not but
of human life and personality. Ramanuja’s greatest posit parallelism between them. It was due to the
aspirtion is the establishment of that supreme spiritual metaphysical approach that started with the Cartesian
vision, the vision of the whole under the speculum of dualism that culminated in the parallelism and its inherent
eternity in the individual. Hence his affirmation of the defects of representationalism. It was only by holding to a
Universal integrity of Narayana. psychologism or mentalism that Bosanquet and other
idealists could get rid of dualism, but even then, the
In the Advaita we have the subjective integrity of the
subjects-objects remained, and remain, as incurable
individual affirmed, and to understand the individual as a
aspects of the mind-body problem, reminding us that
self, a whole which finds its consummate existence in itself
though we may run away to altitudes of epistemological
is freedom. There is no surrender to anything external or
mountains, the ground underneath is the same earth
transcendental to the self but to the inner integral
everywhere and trees thrive on the ground and are never
consciousness that leads to the expression of itself. In
suspended from the sky. As Dr. MacTaggart* showed we
Ramanuja, this self is in its turn led to surrender itself to
need not trouble ourselves with the world of matter, but
the Universal All which it finds to be its significant source.
should concern ourselves with the individuals (minds) who
In both cases is recognized that integral organization,
people the world. Our business is to find a metaphysical
individual or universal, knows no development or purpose,
basis for their harmony. The world with its prallel
but mere expressing of its eternal essence or perfection.
movements can be treated as iIIusion-a concern not of us,
Integral consciousness, individual or universal, is a creator
because time and space do not enter into us though they
of harmony or establisher of unity, and never of division
may enter into our creations. The problem was in a sense
and separation (bheda). The problem raised by Leibniz
waived, abandoned, or simply raised and left in despair,
of the Civitas Dei is a fact inherent in the very nature of
or finally some felt that they had got over it by converting it
integral consciousness which is universal. The law of pre-
into one of different kind as they thought, but which really
established harmony is the very essence of integral
is the same with a new name.
existence of the individuals. They are necessary to each
other and cannot be viewed separately. Ramanuja is more right when he linked the mind and
body in an inseparable unity as modes, inseparable again
Spinoza recognized that every body which is in an
from the total Reality or God. One must only remember in
intimate manner related to a self, and that an innate
this connection that it is not merely a metaphorical
parallelism remains between the organic functions and the
psychical functions. But starting as he did with one entire * Some Dogmas of Religion.

33 34
description, for the nature of the organism must certainly
manifest in quite a different manner from what is available
in the human or animal forms. The definition of the body is
whatever substance, mind, matter, forms even, which
subserves the purpose of spirit for the latter’s purposes.**
Thus in the relation of master and servant, it may happen
that the servant is merely the body, an absolute instrument
of his master. It does not degrade the individual when he
is acting absolutely as an instrument of an integral
consciousness, provided of course the acts are performed
with full understanding and intelligence. Thus an
integral individual may subserve the purposes of another
integral individual or the Supreme Integral Consciousness
and be a body without ceasing to be a self.
In spite of these living factors in the philosophy of
Ramanuja, viz. The stress which it lays upon the dynamic
character of reality as contrasted with the staticism to which
later Advaita condemned it; secondly, its assurance that
the body is a temple of the integral consciousness which
can find its fullest expression in it, that, at bottom, it is the
creation of spirit in action; thirdly, that this universe of Lila
is a world of delight of Brahman - a thought so purely Indian
as contrasted with the pessimism of the West1, when it affirms
that this spiritual consciousness as such cannot perfectly act
through the medium of this body, that freedom and creation
in the fullest sense are impossible within this body, and must
** Yasya cetanasya yat drayam, sarvatmana svartha niyantum
dharayitum ca sakyam, yatccheshataika svaroopam ca tat tasyasariram.
1
Cf. Rabindranath Tagore: E. J. Thompson, p.102. ‘The West has
never taken this joy into its belief.’
35
be expected to happen elsewhere,1 that is nothing short of a
contradiction of its own main positions of value.
The inevitable explanation of such contradictions and
logical pitfalls lies in the scripture, and Ramanuja and his
followers do fully utilize the armoury of scripture, just as
any one else, to defend their positions. “Inspite, therefore,
of his comprehensive humanism he forsakes it for the sake
of the future he could not contemplate without sacrificing the
present which is the meridian of existence. His concept of
the other. and better world, the ideal and unchanging world
of Vaikuntha, recalls strongly the Platonic world, ‘the Utopia
of ’ Ingenuous philosophers outside history 2. There, in the
other world, each individual has an individuality which marks
him out from others.3 But then he finds that when the
individuals are away in the world of terrestrial existence some
must be attending on the transcendent God. And therefore,
Visishtadvaita postulates the existence of eternal selves
(nityas) who attend upon the Lord, such as Garuda,
Adisesha, etc. The individuals when they reach Vaikuntha
identify themselves with those permanent inhabitants and
take delight in seeing and enjoying the spectacle of Divine
service in the eternal world and are united in Spirit
unchanging calm and beatific,
1
Cf. Vedanta Sutra. Jagadvyapara varjam, . . . is intended to mean that man
gets all powers except the creation, sustension, and destruction of the
entire world of creation after he reaches Vaikuntha.
“Plato was right when he declared that infinite life on this earth for human
beings, even if it were possible would not be desirable.
1
Cf. Plato holds that the individual archetypes never make sojourn in this
world of shadows, unlike Ramanuja’s nityas.
2
Kalki, Sir Radhakrishnan: p.66. ‘All men are exceptional
beings...Uniqueness is a quality which all of us share’.
36
content to so observe rather than aspire to assume roles
of such eternal Beings. The usual utsavas (festivals) that
are celebrated to the highest Gods are but feeble
imitations of the eternal City, and to attend these festivalsis
to partake of the Divine company at least in the shadow
as a foretaste of what might happen when men hasten
there.
It is easy to exaggerate the situation and condemn
these as fanciful imagery of the best kind, but still imagery.
But at least it does not create a bleak monument of barren
minds, the Absolute. The aim of Lila is to create a world
on the pattern of the Eternal with all its eternal distinctions
of functions and purposes which will not collide or ‘cast a
shadow on the face of others’. Ramanuja in describing
the Vaikuntha does not any more than Plato sketch a
Utopia. In laying stress on the factor of Lila, the harmony
of existence to which all creation must move, he is pleading
in reality for a world of creative adventure. But as in the
case of the possible perfection of the body here and now,
he surrenders this concept of infinite value to harmonious
society no sooner than he has stated it.
It appears that the after-life is a more pre-occupying
concern of the mind here at least than to affirm and carry
out the function of transformation of present existence. Or
it may be due to the fact that the minds of the many are so
much blind to the truth of existence, that Ramanuja turns
away to the distance and hopes, hopes which may, alas,
never come true. The perish-ability at least of the body
seems to be a dominant reminder of the other world with
37
all its pregnant hopes hustled into darkness and the future.
Whatever the spiritual riches heaped out of the bottom of
individual realization, they lit the distant shore and not the
undergrowth and the near spaces where one has to walk
and work. The kingdom of God is only a promise to be
kept in heaven: the kingdom of God on earth unfortunately
impossible.
IV
It is at this point we come across the last and the
most misunderstood of philosophers, Ananda Tirtha,
Purna Prajna, the fully enlightened.
The doctrine of Dvaita may be taken to be an affirmation
of absolute distinctions. It is the recognition of individual
difference and the affirmation of practical experience. We
have said that Ramanuja stood for practical action coupled
with the Universal consciousness or at one with the
universal consciousness which is social in its character
involving as it does the many. Since it is the social Utopia
of the Vaikuntha that is sought to be established in this
world of Lila-history, Madhva went one step farther, and
insisted that this realization of the social Utopia is entirely
grounded on the discovery by each individual of his functions
in the total whole. This means that the aspiration of the
individuals should not be the assumptions of identities with
the total whole or with other individuals, but the maintenance
and sustenance of the distinctions without, however,
sacrificing the harmony. of the whole, or rather the
maintenance of distinctions should be determined by the
harmony of the whole.
38
 In Lila which is carried on under the aegis of Sprit it
is futile to ask for the return to meaningless homogeneity
of the Absolute, which certainly is no better, if not nothing
other, than the Void, Sunya. It is the business of individuals
to unfold dynamic heterogeneity of Brahman. The
recognition of this heterogeneity is the beginning of the
creative dynamism which is the society. Later Advaita by
its harping cry to the beginning of creation or the abstract
homogeneity of the One was trying to frustrate the flow of
spiritual life towards the social, which is the terminus of all
individual existence. Visishtadvaita tried to affirm the
psychological distinctions of the individual and its eternal
character, but its pull was again backward, and it resiled
on the social side to the primitivity that Advaita counselled,
though it hoped to make good this loss in the great society
after life. Ananda Tirtha continued the social aspects
farther than anyone, and made it the final expression of
the Spirit in Lila. Thus the true realism of Madhva consists
in his treating the world as real, and as the terminus of
existence wherein the significance of the Vaikuntha-the
ideal-should be brought: It is not merely the realism of the
metaphysical kind that is valuable, but the truer realism of
the living kind that is of supreme value and significance.
Madhva affirms that every individual is capable of
being happy and free when he fulfils the law of his being,
svadharma, in the society which is but the reflection of
the divine order, the perfect Vaikuntha. If here we miss to
see the goal of individual life, which is to become a perfect
exponent of the life we have taken here, then, it is highly
39
tragic. This acceptance of life as service of the Divine,
the all-sustaining Vishnu, is the beginning of our true life.
This acceptance alone can lead to the harmony of our
existence with the total whole. This service is freedom of
giving our all to the purpose of God. In love, thraldom is as
glorious as freedom.’ And service is true love.
The most important factor that is to be analysed here
is the nature of the svadharma or the function of the
individual in this world. It is possible to view svadharma
in three ways, which are not alternatives but imply each
other.
1. A dharma is one’s own function according to one’s
status, caste, profession, accidental or natural.
2. A dharma is one’s own according to one’s
evolutionary type, such as man, animal, as god, etc.
3. A dharma is one’s own when it is the affirmation of
one’s eternal inseparable character or essence, such
as intelligence, activity, unique creative existence,
and integral selfness.
1. The first is a social definition as to functions which each
individual has to perform and pursue if he takes upon
himself such a vocation or is born into it to fulfil his
duties. This being born into a status or caste where the
caste has been established as caturvarnya, four-caste,
is feature that has been determined according to Hindu
thought by conduct in previous life. The birth which a
man takes is merely a continuation of the previous life-
course he has been pursuing (karma), and to be born
40
 in a particular caste is to have gained that status whch
will make the surroundings or environment conducive
to the development he has at heart. In one sense, it
may be said to be the best possible environment he
has fallen into or entered upon, a fact that is determined
in a causal manner of determinism or free-will. Or it
may happen by the fiat of God. Or else it may be by
implication the form that an individual as a perfection
of the Divine, as an archetype of His existence,
manifests in a definite and individual fashion. Thus the
dharma or function that a man ought to perform for the
realization of the true order has to be realized.
2. The second definition is more individual. Each
individual has a specific distinctive form that cannot be
taken away from him. Each individual possesses a type
of body, of man, animal or god. The perfection of that
type consists in following that type to its fullest
expression rather than aspire to be something else, or
some other type. In other words, the aspiration of a
horse should be not to become a centaur but to become
the perfect exponent of the horse-type, since perfection
is the splendid exemplification of one’s highest-type.
Therefore, each individual should become the
archetype of his existence. Man should strive to
exemplify the perfect Manhood, and not aspire to
become the demiurge and God. It is one thing to ask
for being more than oneself as one is, to ask for
1
perfection of oneself in ones’ own line of
development, quite another to confuse this aspiration
1
ICf. Leibniz, ‘Perfection is measured by the quantity of essence’.
41
with the otherness which is not of one’s type and to
ask for a perfection that belongs to quite another
type. If there is confusion (dharmasankara) of
dharma then there is no progress. This confusion is
of the same kind as the initial confusion as to the
integral consciousness where the states of
consciousness usurp the fundamental functions of the
integral self, and do not recognize their limitations.
The knowledge of our limitation is the knowledge of
our possible perfection. Whilst Plato suggested the
truth that there are archetypes of every existence in
the ideal world, and that these archetypes are
mirrored on the canvas of the temporal, Ananda
Tirtha believing in the doctrine of1 joy of existence
holds that all souls are archetypes themselves who
shall manifest their perfection here and now. The
question of possibility does not arise. For the spirit
nothing is impossible. Thus the consummation of
each one of the individuals in the world of Lila is to
become actually perfect (not in the ideal heaven
though), a distinction which Absolutists exploited on
behalf of absolutism. Thus every individual as a mind-
body becomes a unit, perfect in his directional
strength, and capable of initiation of a course of
action uniquely complementing that of rest.
3. The third definition of svadharma is not either the
social or the psychological but it may be identified in
1
Ananda Tirtha holds that some souls are etemally doomed to perdition.
Perhaps he means that some souls are the archetypes of the ugly and
the sinful. Cf. Croce’s criticism of such negative types.
42
 metaphysics with what is called a quality or guna, an
adjective describing the essence. It is the dharma
of an individual soul to think, to be integral, to be
intelligent, to be active and creative.
We may denote these three definitions as the social,
the formal, and the essential descriptions of the dharma
of an individual. The first two, the social and the formal
are usually mixed up. There is a clear-cut distinction
between the individual as an integral being seeking his
completion and perfection according to his innate
tendencies or powers, and the same in relation to the total
whole. To sacrifice the individual purpose for the sake of
the total whole, or the society for the sake of the individual
are the two alternatives proposed by politico-sociological
thinkers. Absolutism and liberalism seem to be their only
alternatives. But that is not the right kind of alternative at
all. The alternatives proposed do not give full value to the
perspective of the individual’s life which is expressing itself
in terms of temporality. The individual is a vehicle of an
immortal essence, is a channel of spiritual life moving
towards universal harmony. The individuals conceiving
their individual goal as an expression of their ideal
perfection and dynamically living it, would find that the order
is not formed by any outer restraint or edict of caste or
birth or vocation but comes into being spontaneously and
effortlessly. Then all individuals function in terms of the
internal immortal essence whose goal is the Human
Society of selves. Then the individuals do not see the
2.
Communism and Fascism are developments of the absolutistic thought
in politics
43
distinctions between the three different levels of their
existence, for they are all fused in one spirit of purposive
and perfecting expression.
Summarizing briefly, the truths or the living factors
that have been stressed by the three schools are firstly,
the individual is a dynamic existence and not a divided
unity with chaos within. In other words, the individual is a
self, not a series of states. Secondly, this individual integral
self has a wonderful, pliable and perfect instrument as its
body. It is not a barren existence, a ghost floating in the
void, somehow and sometimes caught within the meshes
of body and held in bondage. Thirdly, this individual self-
body is a social entity. It has to exemplify a unique function,
a function which is a perfection of the Divine, inalienable
and thoroughly distinct from every other, being an
1
archetype. It also means that there can be only distinct
functions and not superiority or inferiority in functions.
To reveal this unique character in all the three levels
of life is to have, in some measure fulfilled the universal
life purpose of Divine harmony or Lila. Thus does the world
exist for the sake of the Lila of God and the freedom of the
individuals2 From the integral self-hood to the integral self-
body, and then the same in relation to the society which is
the nisus of Identity, is the history of the spirit. Identity of
the Universal Brahman manifests itself as the harmony of
1
Sankara, Ramanuja, Ananda Tirtha, and Vedanta Desika held
themselves to be incarnations of Siva, Adisesha, Hanuman, and
Ghantavatar, the divine bell-avatar. The conclusion that they are
archetypes is irresistible.
2
Lokavatlu liIa Kaivalyam. ( cf: my paper on this topic in Journal ofthe
Benares Hindu University Vo1.l1936)
44
the manifold. This is the continuous, uninterrupted progress
of Advaita to Dvaita understood as the Great Society-the
Utopia of political philosophers.
The faults of this last position are apparent as in the
other two. In trying to insist upon the duties of the station
and in the emphasis it places on the ritualistic phase of
human life it has by its very seriousness spoiled the
individual and the society to which he belongs, at one
breath. Rites are the beginnings of creative art. True art is
social, and it has a seriousness and a purpose which
cannot be described in terms of the seriousness and the
purpose of pedants in art and philosophy. There is an inner
rhythm and vision, a fluid integral character, a throb of
harmony and humanity that reveals the artist that all the
formal purposiveness of the unartistic can never reveal.
To divine the archetype and to express it uniquely so as to
contribute beauty and radiate joy, is the uniqueness
characteristic of each self.
It is unfortunate that Madhva’s philosophy which is
the highest statement of the goal of man, has not been
understood by most expounders. The destiny and the
unique character of every individual are guaranteed by his
theory of eternal distinctions. The distinctions indeed are
perfections. But this beautiful theory has been surrendered
to unhealthy adoration of false values of conservatism, and
ritualism, and prejudice.
The one thing which has, more than any other,
contributed to the failure of these systems is that the
individual personalities have been worshipped beyond all
measure much to the detriment of the truth that is behind
45
them. Instead of mutually complementing their labours, they
established unhealthy and nauseating rivalries between
them and their gods. Instead of an integral spirituality
coming to its own on all levels of human experience and
unfolding the Unique Society, it has led to the antithesis of
spirituality, pure materialism of forms and ritualism and
brute mechanism of orthodoxy.
There is a fatality that when thought tries to expand
and influence many, it simply shrinks into nothingness.
Quantity .and quality refuse to go together. The doctrine
of Reason of Buddha led strangely to the doctrine of
licence, indifferentism and nihilism; the doctrine of integral
dynamic consciousness (Advaita) led to a thorough-going
staticism and hypocrisy, the doctrine of an integral
individual existence continuous with the Universal Divine
Life to meaningless unworldiness; and the doctrine of lila,
creative Harmony of the Society (Dvaita), to a chaotic mass
of superstition and social rigidity parading itself as
orthodoxy. But to know their living teaching is to be
established in integral consciousness or self (sthitaprajna)
which is happiness, action and perfection, that nothing can
disturb or annihilate. It is the service of the Universal God-
head, with full knowledge, for the sake of the realization of
universal Beauty (ananda-rasa). This is true synthetic
Yoga, the fulfilment of knowledge and action in devotion,
the bhagavata-dharma of Love of God in each and in All
which is known as Lila.
To the mind that sees warily, truth gleams like a star,
but how many. And scanning the sky our time is past, and
the Day finds another morning.
46

COMPARITIVE RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
DR. K.C. VARADACHARI
PREFACE
Dr. K.C. Varadachari, an international scholar in
comparitive Religion, Ethics and Philosophy, has made an
indelible mark in his field. I feel immensely happy to go through
his Lecturers on the Indian Approach to comparitive Religion
as comprehended by Swamy Vivekananda. He correctiy
observes, “. . . .. an approach to the problems of religion which
is in the making towards universal upsurgence and
emancipation of humanity from the narrow walls which have
tended to confine, it from the point of view of Eastern insights
has been found necessary to counteract, if not to supplment,
the western approaches to them”.
One has to agree when Dr. Varadachari says in his first
lecture on “Quest. for Universal Religion”. “As Swamy
Vivekananda pointed out, the ideal.of, having one religion and
one Church however ecumencial, Cannot be, for the goal
seems to be a religion for each individual, and this constitutes
unversity. When every individual discovers for himself a
religion, that in the direct experience of this Ground or Creator
or God, then that religion would be really universal. The
transcendental ontact or oneness is what all types of Vedanta
assert in their religious or spiritual concern. In the Supreme
comprehensiveness of its theism as well as supratheism,
Hinduism reveals its realistic and empericistic acceptances
of the several way of union with the Divine in manifestation
as it is in essence always”. Swamy Vivekananda indeed
offered Hinduism in this sense to the World.
The lectures of Dr. Varadachari reflect his deep insight
and profound scholarship and great skill in communication.
48
I am extremely happy to appreciate and write a few lines on INTRODUCTORY
this scholastic work. The then Vice-chancellor of the Madras
On an occasion like this I feel profoundly thankful to
University will be fondly remembered by the Indologists all
the Syndicate of the University of Madras and its illustrious
over and world for being instrumental in bringing out these
ViceChancellor, who has been at the Helm for more than
Lecture series. These Lectures deserves a very detailed
quarter of a century, for having chosen me to fill the
study and research and that would be fittest tribute to this
Vivekananda Chair of Comparitive Religion, Ethics and
scholar whose parallel is difficult to be found in many years
Philosophy as the first incumbent. It fills me with a sense
to come.
of humility and responsibility. I am fully aware that there
are great scholars and exponents of Svami Vivekananda’s
Prof. S.B. Raghunathacharya universally beneficent teaching, who have made it their life-
study. However, an approach to the problems of religion
Tirupati Director General
which is in the making towards universal upsurgence and
Dt. 9/8/1999 Sri Venkateswaral Insitute of
emancipation of humanity from the narrow walls which
Higher Vedic Studies
have tended to confine it, from the point of view of Eastern
insights, has been found necessary to counteract, if not to
supplement, the Western approaches to them. Our Vice
Chancellor is deeply imbued with piety and understanding,
as well as wide knowledge and penetrative insight into
such problems. I have been humble working in these fields
of religion during the past few decades, and have laboured
to understand and practise the methods of spirituality in
order to have a glimpse of the dimensions of spirituality,
both eastern and western. My approach has been
threefold: primarily a spiritual awakening of the
consciousness in religion and through religion; secondly,
it has been synthetical in the sense that no religion is, as
such, out of place in the scheme of spirituality and
realisation; lastly, the goal of universal religion is
spirituality which is the sense of consciousness of the One
Eternal Reality integrally present in each individual, and
49 50
sustaining the diversity or manyness uniquely. In India, CONTENTS
where we have many of the world problems in miniature, Page. Nos.
and in the individual, in whom we have an image of the
Ultimate, we shall meet with problems of universal concern. 1. Quest for Universal Religion 54 - 79
2. Patterns of Religion 80 - 106
Though Religion as such includes philosophy, ethics,
mythology and symbolism, yet it is spirituality that brings 3. Synthesis of Religions and Spirituality 107 - 130
meaning to each one of them. We understand them 4. Svami Vivekananda and Universal
through spiritual awareness or Experience, lacking which Religion Equality of all Religions 131 - 152
they become just inane and empty forms which carry the
5. Svami Vivekananda & Universal
fragrance of spirituality but are not that at all. In these Religion Lecture - II 153 - 186
lectures I shall mainly try to draw out the spiritual and
6. Svami Vivekananda and Universal
universal elements of religion, and leave the other
Religion Lecture - III 187 - 207
problems for the next series if I am given the opportunity
to deal with them. 7. Svami Vivekananda's Religion of
Service 208 - 237
I am deeply obliged to the revered
8. Comparitive Religion 238 - 279
Dharmasikhamani K. Balasubramanya Aiyer whose
encouragement has not a little made me undertake this 9. Universal Religion and
Mahatma Gandhi 280 - 301
task. He was kind enough to chalk out the general lines
of my lectures. He is a vast mine of erudition and 10. Sri Aurobindo and Universal Religion 302 - 334
catholicity in matters pertaining to Hinduism and its 11. Sri Radhakrishnan and Comparitive
traditions and I am sincerely greatful to him Religion 335 - 361

My debt of gratitude to Dr. T.M.P.Mahadevan, Head 12. Post Vivekananda Religion 362 - 316
of the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Centre
for Advanced Research, is great and so too my obligations
to Professor Dr.V.A.Devasenapathi. Both of them have
helped me with their invaluable suggestions.

51 52
 QUEST FOR UNIVERSAL RELIGION

From the dawn of history man has been seeking

to achieve uniformity in his dealings with Nature and
society, into both of which he has bee born. That this
uniformity should be immanent in both these it is
needless to emphasize, for it is almost axiomatic that
the laws of nature and social existence are those, which
are inherent in both. They are not imposed from without
or from above, but from within.

The naturalistic religion should exemplify this

inherent law-abidingness in all Nature, and the
discovery of these laws of nature would be amply helpful
in making man’s life in Nature both useful and happy.
The earliest thinkers therefore sought to know Nature
and her Laws so that they could live in accordance with
the laws of nature. This also is a rational mode of
adaptation or adjustment, and since the laws are
universal, or rather must be considered to be universal,
it follows that natural reverence for laws of nature would
be the basic background of a naturalistic religion – a
religion of science so to speak. This could be called
universal, but not religion because religion has the
unique quality of sublimity and holiness, and is the
connection with or experience of the Spirit behind all
nature as a whole and as self.

As a rational method of discerning the Uiversal

behind all Nature, science is capable of producing a
sense of wholeness of the Abstract One law behind all
the phenomena of external nature. But it gives only the
53 54
form of Nature, and not the Spirit behind and underlying
all Nature. We have seen that Swami Vivekananda
speaks of the Experience of the Abstract Oneness
underlying all the varied manifestations or our
phenomenal existence. He speaks about the
impersonal as supremely exciting, much more than that
of the personal, and the many, which are but the surface
natures of the Impersonal and the One. However, Reality
in being reduced to this abstract Experience loses
much of the supreme Values which are demands of the
religious consciousness, which are to be had fully in a
deeper personal relation than the impersonal or the
superficial personal.
The Scientific Universal or the rational universal
is external and abstract, though the abstract itself
cannot be realised apart from the many which it governs
as law or being.
Religion of Science, therefore, cannot be truly
religious except that one beholds in the laws a thing
that provokes admiration and delight. But it therefore
also follows that attempts to arrive at a Universal usually
end up in conceiving an abstraction rather than a reality.
However the abstraction can be the greatest common
measure of all that exists, though it is distinguished by
being called the essence rather than existence.
Professor A.N. Whitehead in his work has spoken of
the greatest generality that mathematics arrives at, and
reveals that this greatest generality is capable of
helping us to unravel the inmost secrets of the most
55
concrete. Indeed it is even possible to conjecture that
the more general a concept is, the more dynamic it is
in the understanding of the functions of the particular.
Mathematics becomes most capable of revealing the
microcosmic levels of knowedge just as well as it does
those of the macrocosmic. All knowledge is being,
reduced to the level of general formulae. Philosophy
may rejoice over this discovery of the potentialities of
mathematical knowing, and it has also used it for the
furtherance of its own exactness. But there are limits
to this truth of the generality. And therefore it may not
help the experience of the concrete as the
manifestation of the Abstrct; of existence as the
expression of the essence. Whilst philosophy may
afford to arrive at the general and the impersonal, and
this is its goal, religion is practically dedicated to an
understanding and union with the individual and the
particular in its relation to the whole or the All. The
Universal becomes the All.
Thus, a rational religion may arrive at the General
form of Reality without realizing the significance of the
concrete, or rather by denying it. It is usually stated that
Vedanta of Advaita is the most rational religion
because it is the religion of the greatest generality, the
most common features being present in it. That, by
itself, would not make for religion though it would be a
very important feature about it, its most philosophic or
scientific feature about it. Critics there are who do not
see how religion, which is a matter of emotion or
unitedness or union with the Ultimate (which may be
56
the most General or Universal), could go with it. So
much so there are thinkers who feel that religion and
rationality are impossible. They would say a rational
religion would be neither rational nor a religion, Religion
has to deal with the supra-rational reality and with
perhaps a supra-rational existence. Therefore in a
sense it appears to be beyond the natural. It is therefore
called the experience of the supra-natural, of course
within the bounds of Nature.
If it is claimed that we could arrive at a really
religious experience only for and by the human
individual, it would be a psychological problem rather
than a natural one. It is to use the word natural in a
different sense, natural for man to have religious
experience rather than experience of Nature. The Study
of psychology of religious experience has been most
fully taken up by modern pshychologists. No doubt
Freud has claimed that religion is an illusion, and of
course illusion have no future, what with the growing
world and the wealth of scientific knowledge. Religion
might be abolished by dialectical materialism and
economism but it clings on to the individual however
much scientised to might be. That religion of the society
could be universal religion is a modern myth. Society
cannot be a supernatural concern but a natural concern,
and external to the individual in so far it does what one
has to do with other fellow human beings. The world
has been too much with us, as the poet wordsworth
said, and no doubt however much social welfare
programmes or dharmas or duties to the other
57
individuals loom large for the proper upkeep of the
harmony of social existence, it would not suffice to
exhaust the religious concern of the individual. Modern
group psychologies and social Psychologies and
Philosophies, along with political theories, have
stressed the need for the creation of dedicated
uniformities of social organizatin which could stimulate
universal social patterns of organization. Indian thought
on this matter expressed itself very early in the
country’s history. She formulated the four patterns of
social grouping based on functions within society: The
wise man who knows the Ultimate Reality, the
disciplined dedicated person wishing the true welfare
of each individual perse and of all both here and beyond
the mortal existence; the king who has to protect and
preserve functional uniqueness and social purpose of
e a c h a n d e v e r y i n d i v i d u a l c o u r a g e o u s l y,
dispassionately, and detachedly; the citizen who has
to continue to be dutiful to the business of commerce
and production, and who has to give charities and
partake in social improvements and endowments; and
the general servant of all. Thus the brahmana-purohita,
kshatriya-rajayan, vaisya-janah, and sudra-dasabhutas
were shown to be universal patterns of behavioural and
functional groupings everywhere. Plato’s scheme
reflects this, and may be an adoption from India.
All the criticisms of the above system are against
its being rigid and hereditary, and also because of the
alleged previlegedness of vocation. The broad division
of men into contemplatives and workers had somehow
58
helped to produce the conception of previlegedness
and superiority of the former over the latter. This is not
of course intrinsic or inherent to the vocation. But this
is a universal phenomenon and the modern reaction
against it is but a natural dialectic. Similarly the rigid
and hereditary concepts are undergoing scientific
verification in the areas of biology and social dynamics,
together with a study of the necessity for conservatism
in certain areas of human conduct and tradition.
The other concept of Ashrama, or the four stages
of human life, is a unique feature of Hinduism, and is a
realistic appraisal of the stages or ages of man and
their educational and vocational relevance and values.
The Brahmacarya is the stage of studentship, grhastha-
carya is of the householder; Vanaprastha is of the
retired and aged and matured person who lives for
dharma alone and is courageous in his dedication to
spiritual life; and the last is that of the Sannyasi who
has opted out of ordinary duties of the social life and
dedicated himself fully to the attainment of the release
and liberation. Modifications and amplifications of these
functions have taken place through the history of India
and elsewhere, and yet it is in India alone that the
dharma-sastras have codified these duties riidly.
Tradition, thus preserved, has made for a normal life
of continuity and guidance.
Similarly the goals of individuals in society have
been laid down from the psychological angle, such as
search for wealth, for pleasure, for dharma and for
59
liberation. The four goals of man include all man’s goals
and aspirations, and well may one man seek all the four
at once, or simulataneously, or successively, according
to his caste-function or age-function. But as all people
everywhere tend to become rigid owing to habit or
custom, we have quite a dharma-sankara, functional
mixture or inter-crossing that makes decisions on
ethical-cum-social behaviour difficult.
A universal religion based on socio-ethical basis
seems, therefore, both a necessity and yet impossible,
for religion exceeds this social-ethical rationality and/
or sub-rationality of instinctive drives.
However, from a spiritual point of view, even a
socialistic pattern of thics which takes full consideration
of the exigencies and realities of cultural organization
would have to seek goals beyond the human life, for
obviously all things change; “the old order changeth
yielding place to the new lest one good custom should
corrupt the world.” True enough, the patterns of
behaviour that stood the test of centuries of invasion
by all types of races and cultures is being today
declared to be a bar to the future progress of man in a
technological age. It is because the socio-ethical
structure and form of Indian organization was rooted in
the spiritual and the eternal and not on the humanistic
goals of economic welfare.
The four freedoms profoundly declared during the
last years of the Second world war hold out more hope
for man here on this planet, and have made for the
60
global concern that human institutions as universal had
to face. The ethical concern of these United Nations
Organisations is profoundly dynamic. But no one would
say that they could do duty for the religious aspirations
of mankind. For the aspirations of man for pure
spirituality are different in kind from the natural, the
rational, and the ethical.
The attempts to make man endeavour to devote
himself to a total concern with the natural, the rational,
and the ethical are bound to fail. It is usually stated that
politics demands a total dedication of man to it: so have
scientists demanded of their novitiates. Modern politics
whishes to absorb all of man to its pruposes, leaving
hardly and time for any other thing. No other loyalties
are permitted. So too for a very long time have total
dedication and loyalty been demanded of every wife,
and so aspirant to spiritual life. This is the
concentration, the loyalty of a one-pointed mind,
devotion or bhakti, but despite all the admonitions and
persuasiveness of devotees of social life, man has
after a time left these goals to search for the
incomprehensible.
So the Universal Religion based on ethico-social
loyalties and goals does not seem to be truly universal
or religious. These are necessary for the maintenance
of the frame of society, and the place of the individual
in it, but whilst psychologically harmonizing, it does not
exhaust his higher aspirations. Religion seems to be
something to which all things move, as if attracted to it
61
by a power not capable of being generated from
outside it.
Great stress has been laid on the ethical
disciplines of ahimsa, aparigraha, asteya,
brahmacharya and satya for true social living by almost
all thinkers of the world. It is true that these virtues are
both individual, as well as social and national
necessities for a harmonious society of humanity. A
religion of humanity is best realised when these cardinal
virtues are practiced and no exceptions are made.
Undoubtedly the present state of evolution of man does
not permit the practice of these virtues by all groups,
but it seems to be absolutely necessary for all those
who have gone to a stage and age when the yonder
shore is calling. The preparation for a good death
seems to be a great concern for all those who are going
out of the social and natural field. To some the concept
of rebirth or immortality, of a continuous return, is an
exhilarating immortality of hope, but to those whose
experiences of this world have been none too happy a
non-return seems to be favourbale. Immortality is not
clearly visualized as identical with non-return; rather it
seems, as the Buddhists hold an extinguishments of
the ego that yearns for escape and abjures all desire
for return. Therefore the task of life seems to be to do
acts which would extinguish the personal immortality
or the return to earth consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo asserts the existence of two kinds
of immortality, the one of constant return to innumerable
62
bodies and experiences, the immortality of non-death
to the soul that constantly is reborn, and the other the
immortality of non-return and of advance into the
highest experiences of the Ultimate. It means the
assumption of the two realms, the eternal and non-
temporal and the temporal, and in both one experiences
immortality as the necessary datum. But the
renunciation of immortality of the individual soul or ego
is the view of the nihilistic ethics and quasi-religion.
This however is not a universal dogma of all religions,
though there are all the divergences of points of view
as to what happens after one dies, or after one attains
the Ultimate or the Immortal. The seer of the
Kathopanisad has fully illustrated the magnitude of this
difficulty, though clearly the region from which and in
which this question was put (neglected by all scholars)
is the sphere to which the dead go – the region of
Yama. This makes all the difference to the ordinary
explanations about life after death, which is really the
region of religious problems and of religious concern.
However the quest for universal religion cannot be
restricted to the ethical and sociological area of being;
Nor to the political.
Turning to another area wherein religion is said
to prevail, namely mythological, it is found that this has
been the most difficult thing to define. Myths have
governed man’s history even more than his reason has
done. Irrational as they may sound and colouring the
whole of life, they bring into man’s terrestrial life ideas
and images, forces and powers, from a level of mind
63
which is other than that of perception or reasoning, but
not yet of the transcendent as such. It is of the
intermediate region so to speak. The study of
comparitive mythology is most rewarding as well as
revealing in so far as it shows, as Professor Carl G.
Jung has shown, a world Unconscious common to all
humanity which operates in different ways but produces
about the same mythos. Similarly, the researches of
Anand K. Coomaraswamy has elucidated the basic
shape and recurrent occurance of the same and
analogous myths of creation, deluge, spiritual ascent
and descent; the struggles of the forces of light and of
darkness; the exchange of roles of these powers
determined by the ages or time or evolution. Many
others have since done some provocative work. There
have been of course very or over-imaginative works on
comparitive mythology, especially of Sri Narayana
A i y a n g a r, w h i c h a l m o s t k e e p u s d a z e d b y t h e
application of one kind of mythos to interpret all the
myths of the world. Nor could we accept the view that
all mythology is capable of interpreting to our intellect
or imagination the deepest religious forces. As
Bergson pointed out in his work, there is always a fact
to be reckoned with, namely the tendency of every myth
to start with an opening illumination and a closing
tendency to limit the sphere and power of illuminative
evolution.
Religion in India is basically governed by the two
major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
These two are considered to be real historical
64
occurances by Hindus. Some have seen in history the
myth, also the allegory and the intermediating
philosophy, the concrete exemplification of the roles of
ethics, sociology and politics as well as liberation. It
could be said that Hinduism lives in and through these
two epics, and the popular bases of all religious activity
are to be found in them. The Bhagavad Gita, inset in
the Mahabharata, is seen to be a deep mythology of
spiritual activity, of incarnation, of evolution of social
ideals and individual emancipation. The Open Mythos
of Hinduism obviously has relevance to all mankind
more than the myths of Greece and other countries such
as Norse and Yiddish and so on. Biblical myths have
also been greatly influential but it is clear that they
cannot be made universal, or even parts of universal
religion. T.S. Elliot and others had tried to integrate the
myths of the world into one poetic imagery but with very
little success. This does not mean that the study of
comparitive mythology will not be rewarding or mutually
corrective; and it may yet produce a science of
universal mythology.
Poets have always reveled in mythology both of
the closed and the open variety. Some of the dogmas
of religion have been reflected from mythology, and
indeed constitute the core of superstitious beliefs in
most religions. Popular religions draw their sustenance
and security from these myths, and they prevented most
persons from moving towards higher mystical life. We
can discern that the great poets have tried to
emanicipate the spirit from the form-and-story structure
65
of myths everywhere. Milton and Dante have done
profound work for Christianity. The Sufis of Islam have
done much to spiritualise the myths. Similarly the
Puranas have provided abundant opportunity for the
poets of Hinduism to infuse the spirituality of the highest
realization into the consciousness of the people – the
ordinary humanity. Religion of the people or the mass
has been nourished only by the poets of the true myths,
the liberating myths rather than the closed myths which
provide titillating satisfactions of the lower appetites –
such as the Homeric myths, as Plato pointed out in his
“Republic”.
Religion of Mythology cannot be universalised until
the human being has been universalised in his spiritual
consciouness. Until the open mythology’ of the
Ramayana and Mahabharata is fully understood as
representing the liberating nature of the human spirit
from his terrestrial bondage, it would be difficult to have
a religion or universal religion based on mythological
integration. The attempt of Sri Aurobindo to provide a
mythology of liberation and supermentalisation of
humanity in his “Savitri” – which is called a Symbol and
a Legend – is a profound revelation of the great poetry
of the Mahabharata an the Veda and the Ramayana and
all the puranas as contrasted with poems of mere
folklore and fantasy. The real mythology has to proceed
from above rather than strike its roots below. Therefore
religion requires an anchorage at a higher level of
poetry rather than at a lower.
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 Cosmic mythologies have been helpful in postulating
the creator and sustainer and destroyer of the universe.
All races and cultures have these legends. But the other
functions of the Divine are of the nature of personal religion
helping the individual to reach up to that revelation and
vision of the Cosmic Being. These are the myths of advents
or avatars, God-personalities in human or other form, who
lead the souls to the higher vistas and statuses. Hinduism
has a continuous history of these advents again and again
descending to save, to punish and to establish the dharma
or order of the world or its laws suited to the world, and to
its different beings or peoples. To save the good, to punish
the wicked or evil, are primary concerns of individual
relationship of God with his people or the souls. Hinduism
accepts these fully, and other religion either accept only
one such advent or none at all. But the incarnating diety is
of love, personal, yet not exclusively for any one person.
The mythology of Hinduism, unlike those of other religions,
is rich with God-descent and provides a sure ground of
God-fellowship and realization on Earth of the Kingdom
of Heaven, or of God here itself. The whole thing is however
not just a myth – for the descent is historical and
recognized as such when it occurs.
But comparitive mythology is yet in its infancy. Nor
could we build the universal religion on the basis of a
composite mythology.
Therefore universal religion can neither be based
on a common or general natural philosophy, nor on
mythology, nor on psychology and ethics.
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Religion has its real base in spiritual experience
of the Transcendent which has meaning for man beyond
his mere terrestrial life. That it is based on the spiritual
aspirations for freedom is real; but it is also the search
and hankering after the ultimate sense of Reality that
one does not get from the world and its wealth and
pleasures, or even the securities of its laws in science,
in ethics, society and mythology. In a spiritual sense
the human individual seeks sense of existence,
significance and meaning for his own transitory
existence, for his growth or birth in this scheme of
space-time, in and amidst social environment that gives
him a varied fate.
In terms of a higher consciousness, beyond all the
several avenues of knowing, seing, willing and so on,
one perhaps might be able to arrive at one’s own
meaning and existence. Our studies of the religious
attitudes has brought us to that differentiating
experience of religion – namely its mystic experience,
usually had by some seers and communicated by them
in an objective way that has meaning for the inner man.
Comparitive Mysticism is a new field again and
this has been taken up for the study of the universality
of mystic experience all over the world. World’s
religions to have a core of mystic insight, direct
unmediated awareness of the cosmic Oneness or
Spirit. Mysticism is the experience of spirit as the
Ultimate ground of all existence, an experience that is
supra-rational and supra-relational. Such experiences
are rare, but they are nonetheless basic to spiritual life.
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Mystics are spread all over humanity, and are born in
all levels of hierarchy of mankind – such as the varnas,
asramas and religions. Mysticism can be the
experience of the Ultimate Supra-personal, and its
certitude flows into cosmic or universal activity of a
different order than all other types of activity. Mystics
are souls of light, children of freedom, who could
tolerate no bondage nor accept any. They are in a sense
opting themselves out of society in order to give society
a new sense of values. They are the eternal and
continuous witnesses to the need for transvaluation of
all values. Hindu mystics are in fact the great RISHIS
who speak with a direct light and acquaintance of the
Ultimate Reality – the Saccidananda. They have no fear
of the transitory, or of death, for they belong to the
Immortal and the Eternal and the Infinite realms of light.
The Upanisad speak of the regions of light, of the
immortal and the unchanging, open to the seer of the
one in the many, of the many in the One, and the One
who is All. The worlds of the Spirit are beyond the Sun,
the Moon and the Fire, and these latter derive their light
from That. That is the Reality “Om Tat Sat” – the
existence. That is delight, Ananda, beyond all vijnana
and mind and senses. Such Mysticism is surely the goal
of all souls yearning for infinity. It is the creative source
o f a l l i m a g i n a t i o n a n d b e a u t y. T h i s Sp i r i t
interpenetrates all that is.
The Mystic experiences of Jacob Boehme,
Jallaluddin Rumi, Walt Whitman and others like Bruno,
give the higher metaphysical note of the Spirit. Much
lesser mysticism informs the purely Christian and
69
Bhakti experiences of the later medieval mystics. In
every case they are not usually ‘within the fold’ of the
organized society and religions.
Mystics express themselves in poetry, and in
poetry their deepest aspirations and visions are found.
Though we would extract philosophy from it, yet it is
transcendental to human existence and valuations. Yet
they have a greater humanity about them, a deeper note
of love, a finer sense of reality than any. Truly enough
they have a missionary zeal to transform the world
around them; they speak of the coming of the Golden
Age, of the passing away of the present one of
darkness if not of its doom. They are the prophets of
he future. Their social consciousness is trans-human
for it seeks to bring to society he sense of infinite
spirituality and compassion for all life. Perfect
individuals themselves, they lack the essential egoism
that mars the individual and bedevils the socialists.
Paradoxical as they appear, a heavenly light and peace
abounds in everything that they do. In a sense they are
mahatmas, universal souls, of universal consciousness,
unlimited by space and time. However it appears that
mystics are born like poets, not made, though one could
venture to suggest that Hinduism tried again and again
to provide the institute where they could be made and
born. However, natural mysticism has taken roots all
over the world, and it is in a sense from these mystics
that the religions have had to draw their spiritual
sustenance and vitality. Religions without seers but with
books alone for guidance, religions which cannot
70
produce further prophets or mystics but only reciters of
the hymns of the past and of mystic-world, cannot but
find themselves drawn away from spirituality and may
end lastly in becoming secular in unbecoming ways.
The foundation of a universal religion based on
mystic philosophy may at once appear to be the most
legitimate expression of a world-need.
The satisfaction of the individual’s real nature,
svarupa or svabhava, as a spiritual being, lies in his
fullest realization of his divine possibility. Man has to
transcend his rational soul and attain to the divine
selfhood, or in some way become related inseparably
with that divine essence. Mysticism reveals the highest
that man has so far attained on this terrestrial plane.
But it has not become the differentiating attribute. This
would require a further evolution of man himself of which
the fore-runners are the mystics of the world.
A religion which would be acceptable to all
spiritual seekers may be the mystic one, but whether
it could ever be the common religion of all humanity is
a difficult question to answer. The ideal of humanity has
been the realization of harmony of all peoples. This was
envisaged by ancient seers of India, of Hinduism clearly
at the dawn of human evolution; for man had betrayed
the tortuous nature of human co-existence, its inevitable
frictions and fights, and mutual thirst for slaughter and
sinning. A transcendence over the human nature was a
necessity which could be made by the practice of
virtues backed by the yearning for love of all beings.
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Love seem to be the discovery of the human being as
a necessity for living in family, in community, in the world
itself. It was a relation or drive that brought God and
man, man and man, and man and nature, all into one
organic interdependent family.
Universal Religion, even if it is not to be
transcendental and mystical in its scope and function,
would survive if love could be made the means of
association, of function, of structure and mutual
assistance of all, without differentiations of caste, creed,
age and sex. Love was made to be the nature of God
as well as the essence of the soul. Both need each
other because of love. Love as attraction to the other
or another is a basic quality. But within the limits of
humanity, love always has its polar opposite hate, and
all plays of love are interspersed with the hate-motive
also. Though love has been exalted by mystics as
positive, and hate denounced as negative, it has been
held that love is the only Good whereas hate is the evil.
But when one is taught also to love one’s enemies there
is shown to be a transcendence over this duality in a
way, though it is by no means a full transcendence. Even
when such a love of enemies was shown by the Apostle
or Avatar of this creed, it produced a more historic hate
than ever witnessed. History has only made the
Apostles of this enemy-love the breeders of hate of all
those who are not of their dogma. Religions of love, of
prema or priti, of man have been sustained by the spirit
of divine nature of the quality of love itself. Love seems
to have been the one force that links one with another
72
whether temporarily or permanently. But here again we
are confronted with the spiritual problem of universal
love and how it expresses itself.
Love has been acclaimed as the purest form of
religion, but it has been difficult to define or describe
it, what with its variety of relational conditions. Absolute
love without an object of love or non-dual love is very
m u c h o f a n i m p o s s i b i l i t y. H o w e v e r i t c a n b e
monotheistic. If religion belongs to the super-sensuous,
love must also be of the super-sensuous; to reduce it
to the love of man is to seek not God but something
very different.
Love involves duality, but it also involves loving of
others as one loves oneself. Love, Swami Vivekananda
points out, never asks but always gives itself up wholly.
Love knows no fear and conquers it, and love is itself
its own end, and an end in itself. Swami Vivekananda
holds that it can never be a means. (Vol. VI. p.70). One
loves sugar they say, but one does not wish to become
sugar. But this example, utilized to refute non-duality,
does not truly represent the nature of love. Love is not
a taste nor a matter of taste. Love is a seeking for union
– not of course mere copulation or sexual union. It is
not at all the lust or libido or the essence of lila or play. It is
prema or priti with the Ultimate Divine; it is the spiritual
dynamics by which even the most contradictory force is
made to come to terms with it and unite itself with it. It is
not a question of enjoyment but a melting of oneself in the
transcendently perfect object of one’s evolution or life.
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Life is even treated as a kind of means towards the
fulfillment of love.
Could we base a universal religion on this
foundation of love alone? This is a question of great
importance. If religion is the linking up of oneself with
Reality as it is in Itself and for itself, then love, as the
individual’s total consummation of union, is capable of
being the expression of religious attitude. The Divine
Reality then might, conceivably, be the reciprocal
mergence of itself in the individual, and treat the
individual as an end in itself and for itself. This is an
experience of the highest spiritual quality. Love
becomes the unifying principle of union or unity, or even
inter-mergence.
It may be that compassion or sympathy for the
other souls, and a means by which one goes to the
rescue of others and uplifts them is good as a social
religion, but obviously this is not what is meant by love,
unless it is also an urge to lose oneself in the others.
The above will reveal how very difficult it is to arrive
at a comprehensive or differentiating conception of
Universal Religion.
Any universal religion has to satisfy the
philosophical, psychological and spiritual needs of the
individual called upon to undertake that path towards
the highest perfection of his nature. A religion is not
merely a matter of dogma or creed but an experimental
methodology towards achieving one’s perfection or
74
fulfillment or realization of freedom from all bondage; one’s emotions or sentiments to any parent by affecting
such as those of the cycle of births and deaths, love of their children. This might be a kind of vatsalya –
ignorance and delusion, that the impermanent is love shown to the mother by showing it to her child. This
permanent or that one’s physical existence is all. is the movement from below even like an inference from
effect to cause. The Upanisadic mode has been to
But any universal religion based on naturalistic
move from the Creator or cause to the effect, the
conceptions or sociological and mythological
creatures. Which is more natural is a question which
conceptions cannot truly become universal, or religion,
each individual has to decide for himself: success is
for they are but partial fulfillments. Religion does need
the ultimate criterion – that is, by whatever method one
a philosophy of nature, a philosophy of self and a
can attain the Divine Knowledge that is the best, the
philosophy about God, but these do not exhaust it.
universal method.
Though universal harmony between souls is a dominant
goal, and man’s evolution in this world has to be made The difficulty of speaking intelligibly about the
easy, yet religion when it aims at the realization of union possibility of Universal Religion lies precisely in the whole
with the Ultimate reality of oneself and all is of concept of religion as being supra-rational, and all
transcendental importance. attempts to make religious experience intelligible become
attempts at rationalization. The experience of the
A study of the different religions spread over the
transcendent cause cannot be on the plane of ordinary
world grants a picture. As Professor Archie Bahm says,
physical causality. The super-sensuous is super-sensuous,
if Hinduism is spiritualistic, Europeanism is dualistic
and cannot be represented in terms of sense-images or
and pluralistic though God-centered theistic, Chinese
symbols. So also one cannot speak of the Divine attributes
is naturalistic and so on. Humanistic religions make
or think about the object of religious experience in terms
man the goal of one’s works or service, and through
of our sensory experiences. The universal method of
man or the creature, they seek to reach at God in all
describing the transcendent has always been through
creatures. The spiritual religions on the other hand
negatives. As the Upanisads say by a series of negations
seek to reach the creatures through the Creator or God.
– neti neti, not this, not this. The Western Eckhart also
Whilst the Upanisad says that one loves all because of
described God as neither this nor that. This is the wisdom
the love of the Self, the modern version is its inversion,
about the transcendent that man could distil from all
one loves God because he loves all. The Universal
experiences. A universal Religion based on this
Religion of service of all others seeks to move to the
experience of Negation would hardly be satisfactory. As
creator through the creatures even as one displays
for the positive descriptions that have been attempted to
75 76
be given they are all ‘of holiness’ of wonder, of luminous,
not personal and so on. These are not emotive terms but
they do convey what Hinduism had always accepted, that
man is not restricted to the limits of reason but has other
ways of knowing God open to him provided he dedicates
himself to it.
The elements of any universal religion have been
expounded, but they have all been shown to be
individually incapable of being religious in so far as
they do not give the force and power to lead man to the
experience of his creator, or the Ground of being and
immortality of bliss, or harmony with all reality.
The modern world is seeking the establishment
of one World, one Government, and even perhaps the
thoughtful people consider that sooner or later we must
have one religion for all mankind. As swami
Vivekananda pointed out, the ideal of having One
religion and One Church however ecumenical, cannot
be, for the goal seems to be a religion for each
individual, and this constitutes universality. When every
individual discovers for himself a religion, that is the
direct experience of his Ground or Creator or God, then
that religion would be really universal. Though Reality
is One, and is to be experienced as Religion or Spirit,
it is for each individual to be directly experienced within
himself that would constitute its universality.There are
therefore no signs of attaining One Religion for all
humanity. However it seems that rational man
utopianises and strives for it.
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Hinduism appears such a one because of its
spiritual formulations, all-inclusive aspiration for the
transcendental which is the ground of all
manifestations, whether of Itself or of the individuals
who are always in transcendental contact with that
ground. This transcendental contact or oneness is what
all types of Vedanta assert in their religious or spiritual
concern. This transcendental contact is described as
oneness ,advaita or ekibhava; as organic inseparability
– aprathaksiddha ekibhava; as indissoluble
relationship in essence between the Divine
transcendent and the individual souls of dependence
absolute. The souls never utterly lose their essential
nature, and it is this relational absoluteness that is
forgotten in the adventures with independence of the
souls from the One Divine. Regarding the Divine
Transcendent itself which is absolute and ground, all
are utterly of It, in It; but when it does take statuses of
the creator etc, of advent and of being the inner ruler
immortal of all beings, there are the theistic and other
fellowship and selfship formulations which cover the
entire gamut of Divine-Human relationships. In the
supreme comprehensiveness of its theism as well as
its supra-theism, Hinduism reeals its realistic and
empiricistic acceptance of the several ways of Union
with the Divine in manifestation as it is in essence
always.
It is this all-comprehensiveness of its definitions
and their transcendent unity available to the mystic
vision and experience as well as our own ordinary
78
experience that makes Hinduism acceptable to the best
minds all over the world, and encourages the
experience on the part of other religions of the other
statuses of the One Divine Reality offered to them by
Hinduism.
It is in this sense that Hinduism was offered to the
world by Swami Vivekananda, and it is in this spirit that
the Mahatma embraced it as his most satisfactory
dharma. It is this dynamic supremental nature that made
Sri Aurobindo expound it with all his serious yogic
attainment. It is this again that had given satisfaction
to the philosophic mind of Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
79
PATTERNS OF RELIGION
In the last lecture I referred to the quest after a
universal religion. It had taken several forms. The need
for a single religion for fulfilling the aspiration of man to
unite himself with the deity or God or the All has been found
to be apparent, but rather difficult of accomplishment,
because of the many sided nature of man himself. Though
the ideal of one comprehensive Religion is an ever-
beckoning one, yet an integral realisation of it becomes
more and more difficult. Co-existence of several religions
seems to have been arrived at in India on the basis of
mutual respect and intelligent tolerance of the manifold
ways of approach. That tolerance itself should be
considered to be a part of religion, and is a definite
acceptance of the polytheistic point of view, if not of a
pantheistic view, that All is God which includes the view
that all gods are God, though differently spoken of to suit
the special psychological and other needs of the
individuals.
In this lecture the aim is broadly to state the several
patterns of religion that have emerged during man’s growth
into higher and wider levels of consciousness.
Religion may be said to be something that takes its
rise in humanity when it has developed a sense of worship
or need for it. One does not find this greatly developed in
those races, which have not begun to feel the need for
communication with that which is beyond one’s
apprehension. Primitive religions, however, appear to have
grown out of the sense of apprehension of spirits of the
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dead, and of the spirits behind natural forces. This
animistic tendency – that is the tendency to attribute life
to all things whether they are organic or inorganic – reveals
an identification of life with whatever has motion. All
movement is analogically referred to life. This is
understandable, and I believe that some of us even do, at
some moments, tend to attribute life to all movement.
Growth is another sign of life, and this is not so much
emphasised excepts that we have instances of worship
of the life forces for production of food-crops and so on.
This, later, takes one to the worship of Natural forces
behind rain, water, air and so on.
Evil powers also are propitiated because they seem
to be hostile to the interests of man and his life. The theory
of social worship becomes an extension of the worship
by the individual when the results sought for are of
collective good. Group religion is always a growth, or
outcome, of common interests, and men get into
communion with these animistic or spirit forces to get good
for the community. Thus begins group solidarity, custom,
tradition and the birth of cultural patterns. The individual is
religious in the context of the social pattern of worship,
propitiation and so on. Religion is then seen to be that
which holds the group together, with the chief priest or
shaman as the leader in matters sacred. It is possible that
he may also become a leader in matters secular. However,
with people who have been accustomed to look to higher
animistic or spirit powers for almost every need in their
daily lives, religion and its practices begin to occupy the
whole of life, and no wonder the leader of the religious
81
institutions or practices or conductor becomes all
important. Thus too we have briefly the evolution of the
political leader from out of the religious conductor. Social
organisation also follows the same pattern. In this process
of full dedication to the needs of man, religion becomes
more and more a social concern rather than an individual
concern.
Instances, however, are not wanting to show that
individual men had somehow come to be imbued with the
spirit, or had spiritual experiences or revelations of the
higher powers of Nature or behind nature, or had visions
of the Dead. These individuals were found to be more
religious, or personally religious in a different sense, and
they spoke of spiritual needs of the soul rather than the
material survival in nature. This shift from the material
welfare of the social animistic religion to the spiritual
welfare of the individual’s inward spiritual vision is of
greatest importance in the evolution of the psychological
aspect of religion.
Religion became an individual’s concern with the
Spirit that had chosen him for a message (or vision) and
for an extraordinary function or duty. It was to command
him to teach everybody the way of the inward under
standing of God, or the way of establishing personal
relationship with the one cosmic or supra-cosmic power
behind all Nature and all men. Man became, in this
development, the special vehicle of the knowledge of the
supra-natural world that supported and guided the natural
world. The two worlds were under one sovereign, but the
82
way to the higher world was through inner vision and not
through outer perceptions. Religion thus became, very
early, a matter for inner connection with God.
Putting the distinction in terms of Indian thought, the
Natural Religion is the sense of the transcendent power
behind all Nature that produces a sense of life all though
it, and may be accompanied by wonder and awe; but the
Inward is the deeper experience of the Supreme Power
behind all Nature to be one’s Spiritual Self itself. The
former is the adhibhuta concept, the latter is the adhyatma
concept of religion. Higher religions are, therefore,
individual, personal, and spiritual ways of relating oneself
with God or the Ultimate Reality, who can be known and
seen and entered into, but only from within, through one’s
own heart. The kingdom of God in within : God is the Atman
within, the soul, and all nature. This is spiritual knowing. It
is difficult to socialise this.
The Indian concept of God thus took two forms, the
adhibhuta and the adhyatma; the former tended to worship
directly the elements, such as earth, rivers, fire, air and
the akasa, in all their subsidiary forms. Thus developed
also the worship of God in the most beautiful and
spectacular Natural forms. Trees were also worshipped if
they displayed unusual features. Thus a whole host of
natural and animal gods were created to be objects of
worship. Even here the higher type of religions began to
choose objects which were thought of as symbolising the
Transcendent, as symbols or pratika of it. Idolatry, or
worship of idols or icons, came into being as objects
83
suitable for social worship, or collective congregational
worship. Strewn all over the countryside, in each village,
we have these objects of sacred character, which the
people in the village worship or propitiate in a number of
ways. The reverence and honour done to these objects is
very similar to the conventionalised honour that men are
habituated, by custom, to show to their secular leaders.
That these objects of worship were also accorded
the dues that one is obliged to pay to the ruler is also known
by the sacrifices in kind, or offerings in money or foods,
that one had to give to the deity in the form of the idol or
icon. Thus animal sacrifices had played a great part as
feast objects to the visitors to the shrine, or the
participators in the worship. There is a great development
in religion which makes much of the adhi-yajna aspect –
sacrificial aspect of religion. The more primitive people
had an extraordinary display of the sacrificial aspect. The
Vedic-yajna cult was of this social-religious nature, and
almost all the sacrifices were ordained for the welfare of
the community or the clan, of course identifying it with the
welfare of all.
The Vedic adhiyajna religion was mainly intended to
reveal the fact that sacrifice or offering is integral to
religions experience, and is a way of relating oneself to
the spiritual reality. Yaga and yajna are shown to be
invariable, and absolutely necessary for man to get into
touch with the spiritual powers, which are in constant unity
with the world and its processes. Though science teaches
us the laws of nature, yet is the belief of the religion of
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sacrifice that super-natural powers govern and regulate
natural processes also. The appeasement of these higher
spiritual or supernatural processes also. The
appeasement of these higher spiritual or supernatural
powers seems to be called for whenever great distress
prevails on the Earth. Prayers may do; but in earlier times
sacrifice, or giving up one’s best to God, was considered
to be more efficacious. It however led to extra ordinary
extents of substitutional victims or vicarious victims and
other unsocial “Social” activities which made the yajna
itself an affair of loathsome cruelty, so much so Mahavira
and Gautama Buddha unsparingly condemned this. They
therefore counselled the inner sacrifice, sacrifice of wealth,
possession, marriage, society itself. Whilst the Sakta view
maintained the adhibhautika and adhi-yajna views of
sacrifice, the Vaisnava, Jaina, and Buddha views
encouraged the adhyatma sacrifice. The great Smartas,
however, counselled the via media of religion; sacrifice is
necessary but not of the animals or of life, except in secular
life such as in defence of one’s country, protection of
honour etc. But adhyatma sacrifice, or offering of all one’s
desires or objects of desire, possessions and so, is a
necessary part of religion. Karma-Yoga which consists in
sacrifice, inculcates dana, charity and helpfulness to all in
need of succour. Thus the spirit of renunciation or sacrifice
of even fruits of all actions was said to be the basic concept
of spiritual relationship with God’s Universe outside us.
The worship entailed also the utilising of all the
sensory and motor functions for the worship of the icon or
God-delegate. Thus, every sense organ was utilized to see,
85
hear, smell, touch and taste the object. Similarly the legs
and hands and speech were utilised to serve God. Love
for service of God was engendered. In all activities one
had but one object, and that was God. This led to mental
concentration and devotion to the Divine object, chosen
as such. Sophistications not -withstanding, it brought out
an amount of dedication, which was emotionally integrated
the individual with his social religious tradition.
In the adhyatma sense it meant meditation on the
Supreme Being in the heart, from which springs all
emotion, and devotion; in one sense all life. Individual’s
cave of the heart is a concept of personal connection with
the divine in silence and in loneliness. Man discovers that
he is essentially not a member of the family or clan or caste
or community or even religion, but a lonely being whose
problems of death and life are so very personal and un-
connected with others, that no one except himself must
solve them. This loneliness has been the mark of spiritual
emancipation from the group-psychology or the social
dynamics. It has been condemned by some but
nonetheless it persists. Man, though born in a family,
develops, at the time of his adolescence, a sense of
loneliness, a separateness from all his institutions, and
his thought seems to take wings. The crisis of this period
was sought to be solved by developing a new approach
to the problems of social life, by giving opportunities to
experiment with it in his own way. But more than all, religion
as an inward way of thought towards the spiritual harmony
behind all things seems to have a chance at this period in
an individual’s life. Brahmacarya, in India, provided this
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training for the inner way, and at the end of it his
harmonious growth as a citizen of spirit in the context of
society was rendered possible. Of course not always was
this attended with success, except in certain higher levels
of individuals. Modern religious life emphasizes the
sadhyatmica, or personal experience of God, as the chief
concern of man. It is essential because some of the most
important problems arise for an individual when he comes
to grips with what may be known as personal relationships,
complexities, disturbing his equanimity, tormenting his
whole being, torturing his understanding. Men lose their
peace of mind.
Mind becomes man’s chief concern. Our human
society is more a mental one than a physical one, though
some are more mental than others. Complexes of all kinds
about, and there is perhaps not one individual who is not
subject to one or two of these. Egoism and mind bring
about all kinds of situations, and they are disturbing. The
training of the mind to abolish all thinking had been
undertaken by the psychologists, and some yogic schools
consider that that is the business of yoga, deriving it from
yoking – the bull of the mind is yoked to the cart of social
behaviour or integration. This has, unfortunately, only a
restraining influence but not a satisfactory one. Society
itself might help a lot in solving the problems, provided we
have societies, which cultivate the harmonisation of
personality. However, not until one can establish a purely
spiritual and ethical society for the promotion of the full
development of the individuals that joins it, will social
relationship help much. Religions based on mere ethical
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or political ideals do not go far, for these cannot answer
the more peculiar problems of human life, such as the
search for immortality, freedom from fear of death and
emancipation from sinful-feeling or guilt-complex,
perfection and cosmic awareness and so on.
The society by itself may contain all these aspirations,
and form different sects within it, but cannot solve it. Those
religions, which emphasise sociality, or the Samgha-
concept, miss the one fact that counts in spirituality. To be
with those who believe alike might give comfort, but not
necessarily promote growth of the individuals. It would
become an institution, a structure that tends to, lose
flexibility, and becomes unhelpful in the long run. Thus,
when Buddha enunciated the concept of Samgha or
Church as the institution to which loyalty must be given, he
was undoubtedly stating the necessity for a good and
congenial environment for mutual growth and mutual
instruction. He however did not, perhaps, fully foresee that
it might lose this aim and become an institution that binds
rather than liberates man; that hushes the problems than
solves them, and instead of remaining a means become
the end itself.
Adhisamgha religions thus do not help much, but we
have to recognize that they have been preserving, with
whatever success they could, the original ideal of a society
of spiritually emancipated men living for the highest values
realisable by man. The religions of the still higher order
have been devoting themselves to theology – the science
of God, not in relation to the world as such, but of God as
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He is in Himself. These religions are considered to be
remote, for God is not thought of as the creator of Spirit in
Nature, nor as the Self of the individuals. The transcendent
nature of God is thus beyond man’s outer and inner
capacities or powers to know. This is really that beyond
from which our speech returns, and so too our mind or
thought. However our human frame may be limited, man
yearns for this experience, and therefore it is that he seeks
this again and again baffled though he be.
The adhidaiva experience of God is a matter for
Grace from above, rather than cogitation or mentation from
below or from within. The inner, however, is the field for
descent of that God-knowledge through grace. The
intimations of the Adhidaiva are recorded in the high
revelational literature called the Sabda (divinely heard) and
divinely seen literature called the Veda. The hearers and
seers of the Divine, in His transcendental, aspect, are the
Rishis, prophets, the Alvars (divers of the deep) and others
of this rank and status. They are kavis (seers of the
Transcendent and singers of that). Thus the Hymns have
a double role; to reveal the Divine as it is in itself, and
also to reveal all in it. But this revelational level is very
difficult to attain, and to understand this mystic literature
demands a competency which man rarely possesses. To
interpret them is a very difficult undertaking. However, it is
to this transcendent mystic literature that one must turn to
verify one’s own deeper experiences. To interpret our
experiences in the light of that literature may profoundly
alter our ways of looking at Reality itself. The paramarthika
or transcendental way of knowing obviously would differ
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from the humanistic vyavharika way of understanding,
which includes also the physico-biological way of science.
It is this adhi-daiva way of knowing that is to be
cultivated, if we are to develop further towards universal
harmony. A truly universal religion is possible only when
each individual can evolve towards the transcendental way
of known through dedication to it. Every other lower
knowledge has to be at first brought into life with it, if not
rejected till a greater light could bring it into it. Mystical
discipline of the jnana-yoga and dhyana-yoga help the
acceptance of the ‘universal transcendental way’ which
makes man an object of grace of the transcendent. This
is the goal of higher religions.
Any attempt to limit religion to anything other than
the transcendent, however, is spiritually unsatisfying and
unsatisfactory. Therefore for our investigation religion
comprises of several levels of manifestation and
attainment:
The Transcendent or God in Himself or Reality in
itself; in the society; in the individual; in the offering
or sacrifice; and in Nature.
These five or six statuses of the Divine experience have
more or less formed the core of the different religions.
Though some of the religions have emphasised some and
relegated, or neglected to recognise, the others.
In respect of our studies in the fields of Comparitive
Religion we come across these in a variety of ways
distinguished by cultural and environmental differences.
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An integral view, or all comprehensive view, would show
that man needs perhaps all these approaches to the
Divine, so as to experience in each the richness, or
emancipation, or creativity available therein. While it is
true that what is emancipation for one individual way be
bondage to another, it is to be realised that religion is
mainly the means to liberation from all bondages; physical,
vital, mental, egoistic, and Nature itself. The transcendental
aspect of the individual ego also has to be finally overcome
by Realising the Absolute Godhead. Therefore the
Experience of the Para or Absolute, and the Liberation of
the individual, appear to be one and the same. The
pregnant utterances of the Upanisads All is Brahman,
Brahman is All, I am Brahman, Brahman is I, Tat Sat, Sac-
cid-ananda, reveal the different levels of the experience
of Divine in Nature, in Man, and in Himself.
The Highest of spiritual experience goes, according
to some, beyond all religions, which are but means to that
highest experience. Religion is not a goal but a means to
the Goal. Of course it is one of the experiences in religion
that all through the course of religious evolution, the guide
of the Absolute Spirit is necessary.
There are other ways of classification of religions
according to their theism or otherwise. Religions of God,
or of One and only One God, or the Unity of all Gods, or
Just polytheism are important formulations. Discussion of
a profound nature centre round the fact whether there are
many Gods, each one of which is all important in all ways,
or important only in one field and not in others. The
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doctrine of Monotheism denies the other gods, or reduces
them to the status of subordinate Gods, or affirms that the
One God appears and functions at different levels in
different ways. Thus Polytheism is reconciled with
Monotheism. It is only when one endeavours to explain
the world and man that we ask the question whether the
world was created or the souls were created. The fact
that there are processes of birth and death give rise to
the questions of creation, sustainment and destruction.
Religion has to deal with this problem and no wonder the
first definition of the nature of God or Brahman is with
reference to the Being, which causes these things to arise,
to continue to be, and to perish or get withdrawn from
existence. These are the philosophical questions about
“whence” and “why” and “who”) the Upanisads have
unequivocally stated that this is Brahman. All this is by
Brahman. From Him all arise etc. Of course this cannot
be proved by arguments taken from experience, though
analogically it may have some proofs. But it is revelational
knowledge in respect of cosmic facts that must be the
proof. Such would have to be accepted as matters of
belief, faith, or dogma.
But some others thinking not of creation, but of pain
and misery which are referred to the threefold sources of
nature of self and gods, have sought to explain the whole
to arise from desire, whether unconscious, conscious,
supra-conscious or sub-conscious. Such a religion, if it
could be so called, deals with human misery and its
solution, rather than pointing to a Creator of the Universe.
Such is Buddhism, which is humanistic and rather
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unconcerned with, God. It is concerned, if we may say so,
with the evil of suffering which, could only be got rid of by
abolishing the cause of suffering, is the desires that arise
from within for things outside oneself. This is a religion of
a different order. Religion is said to be a curative institution
hospital for the mentally invalid or deranged people. And
mental and other kinds of therapy art suggested in this
kind of religious training. The whole world is thus
considered to be a vale of misery, and spiritual therapy
consists not in supernatural worships and prayers but in
the disciplined abnegation of all kinds of desire, which
produce effects that ultimately spell misery. This discipline
of renunciation of desire seems to be part of all religions,
for one reason or another, for desire is said to be the root
of all suffering.
A basic conception of religion as a way out of
sinfulness of desire seems to have been characteristic of
religions which posit that sin is inherent in every living
being, especially the human being; but this seems to be
only to make man go to a Godhead to redeem or save
himself, the sinner. That is why it is inculcated as a belief.
This is one of the motives advanced in Christianity. But
the cause of suffering or sinfulness is traced to an act of
disobedience, rather than to desire, which led to
disobedience. But we have religions emphasising the
need for God because of an ineradicable sinfulness of
the individual.
Though Buddhism seems to get over suffering by
reasoning out and finding the causes of suffering and
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abolishing it, of course with the guidance of the Buddha
or bodhisattva, Christianity seeks to cross over sin by the
grace of God expressed through Christ, his only begotten
son. In other words, Buddha had faith in man to get over
his suffering; Christ held that for getting over sin, a
transgression of the will of God, God’s own grace is
necessary. We have therefore religious aspirations for
crossing over human sin and suffering, whether it is by
God’s grace or Spiritual Meditation or Dhyana. The
Sovereignty of human reason, or sublimated reason which
has become Vision or divine illumination, has thus been
revealed by the Buddha - a way that the religions of
Revelation had arrived at independently. One thing seems
necessary for any religion, Illumination from Above, from
God, or from within.
There are religions which emphasise the necessity
to believe in God, whilst other religions emphasise the
necessity to believe in righteousness, or the System, or
Law of the world. The motivation behind these seems to
be that obedience to God’s will or laws of nature is enough
to grant us felicity and peace of mind, whereas
disobedience to these leads to punishment and suffering.
There is more awareness of religion as being almost identi-
cal with social welfare, orderliness, or traditional
conformity, rather than as an apprehension of the supra
consciousness. Culture, and the cultivation of traditional
gentility, seem to be enough provided men are enabled
and helped to live together without quarrelling. A peaceful
society of course, is difficult to build, but it seems to have
been possible in the disciplined ordering of society
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according to certain basic principles of social organisa-
tion in which the community centred round a central
institution called the temple or church. Hierarchy develops,
but it is contained also by etiquette of spiritual discipline.
God is identified with law and the lawgiver. The
maintenance of Social dharma becomes the business of
God or His messengers, and the restoration of the order
also becomes, inevitably, the purpose of his advent or the
necessity for His advent. Thus we find the loka-samgraha
or dharma samsthapana becomes God’s business, and
His will though all-embracing, seems to be insufficient for
the purpose of redeeming the souls. However this is said
to be not the reason for the Advent at all.
God descends to manifest His love to his creation,
his concern for the welfare of all his creatures. The
impersonal seeks personal relationship in and through the
Advent. Therefore the Advent - God or the Avatar is an
expression of personal Love, and reveals that the Trans-
cendent is not for itself, but offers Itself to one and all who
are devoted to His laws, and also to those who do not, so
that they may be restored to His Grace.
The repeated historical or trans-historical advent of the
Divine is accepted fully in Hinduism, but accepted as
occurring only once in Christianity, though there is the promise
of the coming of the messiah. Advent or Avatar is also not
accepted by Islam, but the direct play of God and his lila are
accepted in Saivism, the descent as such participating in
the world of humanity. That is to say, a humanised descent
of the Divine is not accepted by that school.
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This brings us to another form of the Godhead, God,
in the religion of Zarathustra, is the God of Righteousness
or Rta or Dharma; and arrayed against Him are the forces
of Darkness. Man is to choose the right, and service to
the right is his religion. To fight against the evil is also his
duty. Ahura Mazda and Ahriman are the two forces. These
are recognized also in Christianity as God and Satan.
Their’s is an eternal fight. This is also reflected in the
devasura yuddha in Hindu mythology. Religion, therefore,
becomes a mythological and allegorical or symbolical
struggle between man’s higher aspiration and lower
cravings. The torture of man’s inner conflicts, the inner
dharma-yuddha, is to be solved by surrendering everything
to God and leaving Him to fight the battle. Religion as the
quest for supreme values reveals the struggle between
higher and lower values, right versus might. One must,
even though alone, fight or resist evil with all one’s powers.
Bloody wars have scarred the pages of history. The
funniest part of this episode in religion is that both sides
claim to be the righteous and godly ones. It is not strange
that in Zarathustrian myth the devas are said to be forces
of unrighteousness whereas the asuras are said to be the
righteous ones. Thus it has been left to man to decide
upon the ethical concepts of what is right and what is wrong.
The Religion of Love fights the religion of hate, not
by creating more hate and fanaticism but by displaying
love for the evil-doer himself. The religion of light can hardly
afford to remove darkness by producing darkness to
remove it. The analogy is exact, for the spiritual man tries
to introduce rationality into the blind emotional believer.
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The religion of struggle also perhaps signifies that God is
appearing to be finite, for he Invites the creatures to
participate in His triumph over evil, and thus reveal the
inwardness of spiritual courage that can withstand the
martyrdom that is the crown of the hero or the vira.
Religion includes this as an essential feature - this struggle
against the lower nature which, even when renounced,
trails the inner life till the ultimate victory, Mara has to be
conquered before the bodhi could happen as the Buddha
had shown.
Thus, avatar of God, or religions of the Avatar, form
a unique type, most near to moral and spiritual struggle,
and to our own present day ethics of religion.
The avatar concept of religion, or avatar-based
religion, has to be carefully studied, for there are many
who make claims to be avatars but do not fulfill the
conditions laid down. Sri Krishna laid down the purpose
of His advent and generally of all avatars, and they are (i)
the protection of the good (saintly sadhu), (ii) the
destruction of the wicked (duskrta) and (iii) the re-
establishment of dharma. There is not just one descent
for all eternity, as a symbol and perennial inspiration, but
a descent again and again whenever dharma declines and
adharma raises its head. In a sense the occasionalism of
certain western theologians where the Deus ex machine
operates would be nearer the intention of the Divine
Descent.
We are ofcourse in a world where changing values
have registered changes in social morality as well as in
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p o l i t i c a l m o r a l i t y. W h e n e v e r s o m e g r e a t m a n
introduces a moral value into our secular or ordinary
world in order to restore the moral tone to it, we
recognize that a divine force is working through him.
A single devotee or votary of truth or ahimsa could do
much, but also provoke such antipathy from all quarters
as to invite martyrdom. Such is our modern
predicament; But as the moral degeneracy, that
produces not even a tinge of conscience for a wrong
or, evil done, or tolerated, sets in, the call of the helpless
sadhu goes upto God.
Our puranas narrate how the Goddess of the Earth
petitions to the Creator, seeking redress from the sins
and wickedness of her own children, and the creator
moves the Transcendent Godhead to save the Earth
from her burden.The call of the sadhus, the good men
who are devoted only to truth, ahimsa, brahmacarya,
aparigraha and asteya, deeming them to be the ultimate
values of human life, reaches the Divine and He
descends to save mankind and all creatures from the
adharma that has reared its head. The question of
questions for religion would be, how does evil arise at
all in a god-created world ? Or if evil infected this
creation from the very beginning so as to be the cause
of all creation itself, how is it proposed to explain it?
There are various reasons, and one of the primary
reasons would be that every evil has a nucleus of good
which is exaggerated or perverted. For example we
know that people play up one set of values against another,
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for instance social justice, against real justice; and what
is demanded is a compromise or mutual adjustment of
these values. However, one is negated by the other and
there results other compromises which defeat the other
conditions of moral life. As it was said of power, that
“power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, we
find certain values have a tendency to try to corrupt truth,
ahimsa, asteya, aparigrha and brahmacarya, which
fortunately cannot be corrupted, Even an abstract devotion
to them is preferable to casuistry regarding them. This is
a truth that the Western ethical and religious thinkers have
to learn even today. Wherever casuistry was practised it
left the moral subject more helpless than ever.
It is perhaps not necessary to enter into the
mythological accounts of the lives of the avatars to explain
the difficult function of establishment of dharma, which in
many cases were forgotten.
The historical avatar has attracted more religions
because of the hope of being saved, or redeemed and
salvaged, and because of the establishment of the
Kingdom of God on Earth - the Ramarajya, as it is in
heaven or Vaikunta. So much so, a great teacher said that
he does not desire to dwell in Vaikunta because he has
all things granted to him by God on this Earth itself - in His
temples. (Vaikuntha-vaso’pi na me ‘bhilasah).
Moat historical religions go by the name of Zoroaster,
Christ and Mohammedanism (though it is also called Islam)
and are centred round the prophet, or Son of God, or Seer
of God. The religions also depend upon the continuity of
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the faithful, the martyrs, and the saints avowing the religion.
The historical religions surviving today have fulfilled this
test, but again and again the flagging faith had to be
renewed by the birth of saints within its fold. Its capacity
to convert men of other faiths to it by persuasion or force
had indifferent results. By and large, the survival of a
religion depends upon its capacity to enlarge the
dimensions of civilized behaviour based on the five
principles of Hindu ethics, yamas or Sila, or vinaya. A
religion that cannot bring about this transformation of
personal conduct and social behaviour cannot survive, for
it undermines dharma which, as the Upanisad states, is
satyayatana.
Mahatma Gandhi stated that once he defined God
as truth, but later he defined Truth as God. This inversion
of the original proposition emphasizes the eternal need.
Similarly we can see that God incarnates not for the sake
of showing his power and omnipotence, but his love for
Truth, sadhu, and dharma; and this love is God. Man
should cultivates these loves primarily, and not identify it
with other things which takes one away from sila vinaya.
However, one basic experience that results from
the practice of prayer or adulation and admiration for
God’s supreme love for the good and the oppressed,
is the experience of the ecstacy of inner meditation or
contemplation. The heart of man gets opened up to
the Divine experience, and God is seen and heard
within, Mahatma Gandhi expressed this by his
experience of the Inner Voice, the hearing that meant
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everything to him. The Yoga of dhyana or meditation,
following on prayer, is to experience the descent or birth
of God within one’s self or heart. This descent of the
Divine into the Heart, otherwise called His avatar within
the yogis’ hearts, is a supreme crown of human
endeavour, and is possible. The Alvars have sung
about this incoming of God into the heart, and sages
of the Veda have experienced this, and their ‘hearing’
was super sensuous, super conscious, in one word
divyajnana. Of such it was spoken as jnani - Jnani
mamatmaiva me matam. The jnani deems God as his
Self, and God in turn deems the janani to be his self.
He Himself becomes jiva-bhuta under such conditions
of supreme devotion, or love of God in all His supreme
light and glory, and as the Ultimate that has descended
into him.
But this experience of the Divine Self in the heart
is available only to the dedicated. The common man
cannot arrive at this experience all by himself. Supreme
devotion, total or integral surrender to the Ultimate
Godhead who is contemplated upon as Self, alone
makes this possible. Lovers of God are indeed knowers
of God, and their love of God, in one sense, excludes
the love of everything else. The supreme
contemplatives have enriched the world by their
realisations much more than all the social work done
in the service of the poor, for they roused the inward
fire within the heart to yearn for the Divine, and not for
the removal of their poverty or their pestilence. But this
supreme ekantibhava was not properly understood, and
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most persons felt that there was an amount of egoism
remnant within, that made these great contemplatives
to seek their own salvation rather than seek to gain
salvation for all. Perhaps wisdom lies in the lone seeker
of the supreme destiny, so that his love could be
emulated and his achievement be repeated. For such
a person discerns all in God and God in all, and loves
truly with a different love than what ignorance
conceives to be love.
The Divine revelation, or birth in the heart of the
Yogi, is the Harda -the heart experience or heart-born,
and is supremely personal, transforming the individual
into a temple or body of God. The immortal is installed
within the mortal, the infinite is born in the finite, and
transforms the latter into its vehicle. This is the concept
of the Bhagavata or the siddha. True realisation in
religion consists in this inward experience of the
Godhead as self. Almost all types of yoga finally enter
into this condition of union. Though central to personal
devotion, it is also the goal of karma and jnana yogas.
However if religion has also to do with the
Transcendent and not merely with the embodied
condition or indwelling condition, the liberation from the
body leads to the ascent into the Transcendent, and
this is easily provided by this realisation. In a significant
sense, the individual is already free when the Divine
incarnates into him, and his bonds fall away from him.
Even Time or kala has no more to do with him, and
God’s infinite universe is open to him.
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 Such is the religious experience glorified by the
mystics of all races and times, and more particularly
illumtnatingly by the Hindu saints and sages in a
continuous line of unbroken succession, in all parts of
the country. Thus we have sketched the four main types
of Religions the religions of the Transcendent, the
Religions of Creation, the Religions of Avatars, the
Religions of the Heart, or immanence. And lastly we
come to the religions of Iconic worship.
Hinduism has been usually equated with the
worship of idols - which seems to be the most primitive
way of objective warship. A poet’s praise of the Dawn,
or the Ganga, or the Ocean, or of the Sky or Sun might
appear to be Just the worship of Nature, The object to
be worshipped may be an object of significance within
which the individual feels the divine has incarnated.
This avatarana, or descent of God into his creation as
its inner self, is not an impossible one. God is in
everything both within and without.
The Church, it is claimed, is the body of God, even
as the individual is the body of God, The community of
saints is also said to be the body of God. These are
symbolic utterances. The symbols are significant links
by which one remembers, or reminds oneself again and
again, about the Divine Nature or attributes, which may
be physical. Thus the Trisula, the Tridanda, the Cross,
the Single digit of the Moon, the Tao, Om, are all
symbols. One begins to worship them directly, or
through suggested traditional meanings. The totem
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and taboo objects performed a purpose in the lives of
the primitive communities. The same was lifted to the
level of spiritual symbolism. Though psychological
analyses had yielded very peculiar results, yet these
have been sublimated or spiritualised by the higher,
consciousness. While people who were not fully
spiritual had treated these symbolic objects (lingas so
to speak) as reprehensible to their inward and elevated
levels of thought, the truly spiritual persons permitted
the common man to imbibe the symbol and their
transforming, force which helps them to inward
realisation. Again and again the critics of the outer
representations do not perceive that they themselves
are only trying to substitute their own idols in the place
of the old ones. They hardly liberate them from all idols,
or help them to reach the inward experience which
relinquishes the outer, because of its inwardness.
Swami Vivekananda therefore pointed out the supreme
necessity for the sage not to disturb the worship of the
idolator before one gives him the taste of the inner, and
also that there is no contradiction or opposition between
both these aspects ultimately. Only idols could be
broken or stolen, but not the divine within, who continues
to dwell within even when the heart is broken.
The objects or idols to be installed are generally
of the Supreme Transcendent, the Avatars or merely
the Linga (Symbol) of the Divine in His supremest state,
so that one is always to contemplate on the Ultimate
through the symbol that adequately represents or
suggests it. Gross symbols lead to results that could
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only produce sorrow. Worship of lesser powers also
produces fear. Fear is the last thing that one should
associate with worship. Just a reference in this
connection to those who hold that religion is born out
of fear. One is admonished that one may give offence
to God if one did not strictly observe the regulations of
ritual or of morals. Surely one has to be afraid of
punishments for dereliction of duties. But religion would
mean that one asks forgiveness of God for such things,
and the approach to God is dictated by dual feelings
of fear and mercy. This intermixture of feelings may
constitute religion for many. But there is another view
which holds that God is one who abolishes fear, and
those in fear of anything could resort to him for help.
Thus religion offers refuge from fear, for God has
undertaken to save all those who seek refuge in Him
alone, and not in another. This is surrender in distress
to God (apat-nyasa),
intensive spiritual advancement of the individual, from
beginning to end of his journey. All the yogas of karma
(works) and service (kainkarya), jnana and bhakti,
including Rajayoga or meditation or dhyana, had a
place in this practical environment for integral growth.
This is the justification for the fivefold nature of
Religion, Hinduism has all the five. Others have two or
three or four, but not all the five, nor are they integrated
spiritually. Therefore Swami Vivekananda seems to
have uttered a profound truth: Hinduism is the Mother
of all religions, all others are her children, conforming
or rebellious.

The temples are places of Divine residence

denoted by the establishment or consecration of signs,
symbols, representations, or figures of the Divine
revealed to man. They are places of physical presence,
even like the Asramas of the Sages who are the living
residences of God. The Construction of the temples
follows the symbology of the universe or the human
body, or the prakaras of the Creation. The worship of
the objects within the temples sometimes produces
inward awakenings or vice versa, and sets up spiritual
ascent. In any case the temples were intended to be
institutions like the Viharas or the Monasteries for the
105 106
 SYNTHESIS OF RELIGIONS
AND SPIRITUALITY
The goal of universal religion or world religion is
entertained by almost all thinkers as eminently desirable.
However it is not easily established. The competitive spirit
between all religions to become the world religion is not likely
to promote this consummation. Christianity, Islam had tried
to spread the doctrines of Christ all over the world and thus
tried to civilize the people of the world. Owing to very many
factors not Christian in themselves it is well-known that
Cristianity has spread to all continents. The spirit of
proselytization has promoted, incidentally, the study of the
various religions for the purpose of comparing and
contrasting the religions of the prospective converts with the
religion of Christ. In all cases it has been in favour of the
latter.
When, however, the vast literature of the Hindus got
interpreted and translated it became clear to most scholars
that it is not so easy to establish the superiority of the Christian
religion over the Hindu. Eminent scholars like the leaders of
India, whom we have expounded during these lectures, had
shown that Hinduism is a serious rival to the Christian; but it
was also shown that Christian Way of Religion is but one of
many ways which Hinduism itself had trodden. It was
asserted by some historians that possibly some latter cults
of Vedanta like the Vaisnava owed much to Christian
influences; But it is well-known that thebasic doctrines of the
vedants were far earlier than theChristian.This has been
shown by Dr. Radhakrishnan in his works.
107
The doctrines of the Trinity of Christinaity have been
anticipated in a different form in Hinduism, and the
transcendence of God, his immanence and mediating
nature have all been anticipated. Shades of difference
would always remain but the identity of conceptions is not
to be dismissed.
The ideas of God in the several religions could be
syncretised or synthesised. So too the ideas regarding
the individual soul could be shown to be capable of being
synthesised. Even the Nature of the world according to
the several religions could be unified. Such unifications
would give philosophical satisfaction. The religions have
major concern with the way of relationship between the
Transcendental Reality of power of God and the human
individual. Though this is simple enough thesis, yet it is
known that a religion as an institution gathers certain other
features, such as Mythology, Ritual or Worship, in addition to
the revelations which had brought the consciousness of God
into the lives of men. The historical evidences in the lives of
a line of men of such incidences of experienceability of God.
Thus almost every religion has built up an institution
for its preservation and continuance, firstly to be of help on
the path of human aspiration to meet God. This yearning for
God is clearly discernible at every level of human existence
and all that every human individual had been doing is to seek
ways and means of fulfilling this aspiration. But not all religions
realized, as Hinduism did, that in whatever way one sought
to meet the maker of God,in that way reaches him or helps
the seeker to realise Him.
108
 In most religions the manner of reaching God is
prescribed to be only in one way, and that way alone could
lead upto God. This idea of an exclusive path, so to speak,
on the one hand denies that there are other paths, and on
the other encourages fanaticism. Whilst it is true that,
broadly speaking, the way to Union or Realisation of God
as the Supreme Creator and Father is most efficacious,
yet it is not to be denied that there are other ways of
reaching upto Him. But it is to be emphasized that there
are good ways of love of God which would promote union
whereas the wrong way of hatred and belief cannot
promote this union. This divergence of paths must be
recognized in religion. But it is true that even a contrary
approach is said ultimately, to help attainment of God. For
example enmity is said to promote constant remembrance
of God; and thus produce concentration of meditation; and
the hate itself would be transformed into love of God.
Though one starts with hatred or unbelief in religion later
on one begins to feel love for god.
This however would not explain the case of the
mythical stories of Hiranayakasipu and Ravana and
Sisupala, who had, till the last, followed the path of virodha
to God.
No world religion, however comprehensive, would
subscribe to this attitude, nor even be prepared to call it
religious, except Hinduism.
Religion cannot be equated with the aesthetic
approaches to reality which subscribe to manifold ways
of devotion of sentiments.
109
The omni-inclusive description of god which
Hinduism hold is capable of being accepted by all
religions; but here again the several forms of names of
God are not equally capable of leading us to liberation or
freedom. In fact the philosophical terminology that names
God as Existence (Sat) is not said to be capable of
appealing to one who would like to call God as Father, or
Creator or Ruler or Inner Conscience of Timeless or
Immortal and so on using a thousand other names.
Individual approaches by different religions have given
satisfaction to devotees who find that connotation helpful.
The lover speaks of God as the Beloved or Love; the
humble servant of God calls Him his Master; he who feels
naturalness as son calls Him Father, and so on.
As Mahatma Gandhi put it, it is difficult to make
every one call God by the same name or grant to Him
the same meaningful relationship as every other. We
must recognize this individual difference and submit to
poly-vocality or multiple-names for the same, or
recognise that God is poly-faceted, though one only.
This is a significant gain in higher religions but it is not
always that every religion recognises this identity of the
Godhead behind the multiplicity of names. On the other
hand we have strenuous quarrels about the names of
God, or the names signify different personalities and
powers which are, in mythology, set up one against the
other. Conflicts among religious people belonging to
different sects have not been rare, and a syncretism
seems to be strictly possible within certain limits. We
may all agree to suspend our devotions or we may agree
110
to suspend opposition and objection to others calling a fact of great concern to people who would like to abolish
their God and our God by the names they like. all symbols and have a religion without any symbols. In
doing so one either substitutes other symbols of greater
Religions also depend on the different myths, and
merit, or as it happens, one removes one of the most
mythologies have grown either as biographical data in the
important props of belief and uproots the religious attitude
case of historical personalities or as symbolic data
itself. This uprooting of religious attitude in modern times
coming through ages. The puranas contain many stories
by decrying tantra or symbols is a phenomenon of universal
which may all be considered to be historical records in
concern today. Since the symbols themselves have begun
spiritual history or real history. The five-fold nature of the
to lose interest for the modern man, a collection of symbols
puranas (purana panca Laksana) giving creation –
or even a fervent resuscitation of the symbol to its originsal
accounts of the universe, the philosophy and dharma, the
meaning cannot rouse men. Just as sacrifices in gorgeous
dysastic histories of historical personalities, the avatar-
scales have ceased to have interest for almost every body,
or incarnational episodes of the Supreme Being have
from the most ordinary man who may be expected to be
guided the general cultural formation of the entire people
struck by gorgeousness to the most intellectual whose
of this vast continent. They, in one sense, have been
imagination may be expected to be fired by them , symbols
philosophically explained by the schools. Every religion
have begun to lose their fascination. Sophistication has
starting with revelational knowledge of one individual and
begun to be applied to things of the earth and industry
his history had produced universal symbol of him, so that
rather than sculpture and dance and sacrifices and Art.
it might be adopted by all individuals and for all time.
The great art of religious symbolism had come to its nadir
However this symbol and constantly to be renewed or
of existence. Religions of the past no longer enthuse any
rejuvenated by the followers of that religion, or by seers
one much. A syncretist attempt to bring them all together
and saints devoted to exploring and experiencing the inner
may be a noveltly, but after a brief spell will lose its
reality veiled or revealed by the symbol. Thus we find that
attractiveness or evocativeness of the spiritual.
every religion in addition to a mantra develops tantra, and
these become ideals at the beginning and idols at the end The rituals of religion comprise prayers and
of an age. worships of the Godhead. These may be in respect of the
idols of symbols of the Unseen Godhead who is pervading
In one sense a religion that has lost its ancient force
everywhere. The rituals in Temples follow the path of
has to renew itself by means of other symbols. Symbols
anthropomorphic service; and it is no less significant of
in one area do not graft themselves on to other symbols,
the rituals of the Churches or of those who reject the
nor wholly replaces them. This persistence of symbols is
worship of any human form of representative of the divine
111 112
in any form. The ritual of prayer or worship is in incantation,
or repetition, or counting the beads, or falling prostrate in
a particular way or performing the prayers at certain
specific hours. There are disciplines or the manner of
doing worship or reciting the prayer which are said to have
magical efficacy in bringing the individual in closest
contact or union with God or His intermediary. No religion
seems to be exempt from the ritual which starts from
supreme simplicity and ends up in inexplicable complexity.
The integration of rituals again poses problems
which are difficult to overcome or solve, and we would only
be again establishing religions which are new and which
have a few adherents. Thus sects have multiplied in all
religions which accept the minimum, or greatest common
measure, of agreement but actually vie sequestered lives
of their own but no one remains thus isolated or insulated
from otherssects of the same religion.
Religions had perpetually identified themselves with
the works of social amelioration and social reorganization,
as extension programmes of spiritual realization. This
service attitude whilst most welcome, also had led to turning
these social institutions into political centers of power, at first
very innocuous and ethical determinants, but later as forces
of either revolution or reactionary conservatism. In most cases
religions tended to become institutions of conservatism of
tradition, ritual or power and so on. This grants stability to
the institutionand to religion itself. In universal religion these
institutions of conservatism become mutually exclusive and
refuse to integrate and thus make religion impossible.
113
Thus it comes to this that neither on the basis of a
single philosophy for all religions, nor symbolism nor ritual
nor tradition could there be a common world religion for
all individuals. Whether the religions are of the East or
the west it appears that we have to be satisfied either with
having each his own religion, the religion into which he is
born, or have no real religion at all. For all that we get
from the study of the history of conversions and
proselytizations is the simple fact that no one altogether
escapes the unconscious and subconscious scaffolding
of the religion of his birth. Even upbringing in an altogether
new surrounding does not remove this religious
unconscious from operating subtly all through one’s life.
This would be an interesting psychological study in itself,
and important for the future of religious unifications, but it
would not even then help the formation of a Universal or
world Religion.
As pointed out, a religion that permits all faiths, all
dogmas, all rituals, symbols and myths has a chance of
helping mutual instruction on these different dimensions
or levels of religion. That is stated to be Hinduism by
swami Vivekananda. Dr Radhakrishnan has stated this
in more intellectual and philosophical terminology.
Mahatma Gandhi has said that since no one likes to think
another’s religion is better than one’s own, no one religion
can become the world religion. But obviously we know
that there is also the other tendency to like other’s wares
over one’s own and hence conversions become possible.
Perhaps the disillusionment that follows after the
conversions should make one pause in this respect.
114
 A free flow of individuals from one religion to
another, and vice versa, could be useful as a training
ground for bringing into being a world religion. This has
been attempted in many ways by inter-fellowship of faiths,
and of course those who have profited by this intercourses
of minds in matters of personal religious experiences have
more and more tended to become world-religion
conscious. But the whole problem of today is that our
concern for world government, world welfare, world peace
and world religion are all operating simultaneously and
forcing us to become world-conscious. Enforced
neighbourliness has, in all levels, produced an explosive
situation, and the urgency for a common understanding
and a working arrangement in all levels seems to be a
world imperative, and immediately to be acted upon.
Therefore every religion has striven to this goal and
has failed to satisfy the religious craving for God-vision of
liberation of all people. Will Hinduism lift itself up to this
stature, or what next, is the question. One’s hope seems
to be to develop the techniques by which religious
experiences have happened in the past, and by which
some of the most leading religious people had shaken off
the restricting myths, rituals, customs, and differences and
arrived at the mystical experiences of divine Union,
transcendent love and perfection.
Therefore today the tendency has been for almost
all religious people to set aside the dogmas of religion
and accept the methods of union. Exercises of religion or
spiritual awakening have become things of deepest
115
concern everywhere. Though each religious institution, or
philosophical system, has provided certain kinds of
exercises suitable for experiencing the divine through form
or symbol, the modern eclecticism or syncretism seeks to
go to the root of the matter in seeking Divine Comunion
within the circle of religion or sect if possible, but without
it if necessary! This shows the urgency of the spiritual
yearning or hunger in almost all the intellectuals of today.
As pointed out, what men yearn for is spirituality
rather than religiosity. Not so much the love of God as the
experience of the Ultimate Reality, or God himself. Not
beliefs in rituals, nor myths, nor even philosophies, but
verifications of whatever is possible in experience.
Experience of the temples, churches and Mosques and
other places of worship had been stimulating to some
individuals at all times, and have also been places that
have been avoided by some of spiritual mystics, who had
arraigned them in their teachings. The revolt against rituals
and the caste system, combined with the revolt against all
types of hierarchical social arrangements and had
produced reactions everywhere. Men have challenged the
beliefs and customs in religion and religious organizations
as not in consonance with the best deliverances of mystic
visions.
Mysticism, rather than religion, has become the
modern approach. The question would be whether
mysticism could be the basis of universal religion; or are
we to seek a universal mysticism to be substituted in the
place of universal religion?
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 The tendency of mysticism to be open to experience
of the higher order of reality is well known. Every religion
has a nucleus of mystical vision, which gives on the sense
of freedom or liberty and love and certitude of reality or
truth. Mysticism is the experience of the transcendent
reality, which is seen to support the entire world of
immanence is religious experience; transcendence is
mystical experience. Religion demands devotion and
service to the Ultimate, whereas mystical experience or
spirituality is the enjoyment of liberty and fulfillment in
oneself and in all. The transfiguration of the seen world
happens in mystical experiences, which are the basis of
mythology. The liberating nature of the experience is such
hat even the ego seems to melt away in the One Divine
Nature. The fading away of the self is an experience of
mystical unity or dissolution of the knower, the known and
the knowing. It is that Tan-maya state which is difficult to
describe, but capable of being experienced at gifted
moments.
Whilst religion calls upon the individual to unite
himself with the Ultimate Godhead or God as a person,
and in all ways in which a person is to be met and
worshipped, mystical experience calls upon the individual
to lose himself in the Divine. The impatience of the mystic
almost makes him deny all regulations of religion or its
institutions, and improvise other alternative rites and
symbols also which in the mystic’s view are elevating and
highly evolutionary. All this is not quite clear. However we
can say that the religious man develops a mystic
awareness or cosmic awareness, whereas such an
117
awareness seems to be absolutely the qualification for
being a mystic.
Therefore the emphasis of mystic experiences is
laid for the sake of the continuous growth of the individual
towards cosmic consciousness or the One-
Consciousness, whereas all emphasis on religious
experience is for experiencing the particular way of union
provided by the Divine whole for the individual. The inter
relation, or mutual support, of these two tendencies is
capable of fulfilling the important role of integration of
religion and mysticism.
If we consider that Spirituality is the nature of the
spirit or self as a self-conscious being hungering after an
all-inclusive experience of reality, including itself, by which
the individual lives and moves and has its being, then the
mystic utterances of the Upanisads asserting the identity
between the World Self or Universal Self and the
individual’s Self are mystical. The experience itself is not
only liberating but also supremely blissful.
When Swami Vivekananda said that Spirituality is
the goal of religion, he was showing that religion, if it has
to serve any purpose, should lead one, or help in the
process of leading one, to the spiritual experiences of
oneself; religion is in one sense just a means to the
Ultimate End. In fact Advaita Vedanta in exalting the
Transcendent Experience of Oneness had relegated the
godhead to the realm of religion, the realm of one’s
personal relationships. It was, in a sense, sacrilegious to
reduce God to the secod place in the existential hierarchy.
118
But it was sought to be rectified by saying that the Mystic
absolute and the religious God are but two faces of the
same Reality. This reconciliation made by Sri Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda has been a
welcome modification of the extreme position taken by
religion and mysticism.
Regarding World Religions Prof Archie Bahm
writes that most religions are world religions, or at least
they regard themselves as succh.
But mankind yet lacks a world religion in the sense
that it is the only one or only true one and in the sense that it
is superior to others because it embodies within itself the
virtues of all other religions. However the latter is the claim
made by Hinduism, for in a sense it embodies all the virtues
of the other religions. The Hindu concept of the Deity as
enunciated by the Bhagavad Gita and the Pancaratra Agama
reveals the Divine as having five statuses, as Para-
Transcedent, as Vyuha, omnipervading cosmic creator,
sustainer and destroyer ,fourfold in nature; Vibhava as Avatar
or historical descent significant for biological evolution and
establishment of the planes of conscious and unconscious
and supraconscious evolution, Hardra (inner ruler Immortal,
or antaryamin), and lastly the Archa the Image or Icon
consecrated and worshipped in the temples and other places
like the home. The trinity is clearly visualized as even the
acceptance of the visible and the transcendental invisible
indescribable. Further, Hinduism has provided modes of
apprehension of these five statuses of the Deity, through
Supreme Grace of the transcendent, through revelation and
119
scripture, through itihasa and purana, through inference and
analogy and through perception. The supreme purpose and
goal of man is stated to be liberation in respect of the Highest
or Para; dharma in respect of the second and third i.e. Vyuha
and kama or supreme divine desire in terms of the fourth is
Hardra; and wealth or artha in terms of the last or Arca. The
all-inclusiveness of the Divine is experienced in mystical and
religious vision which is echoed by the Upanisadic “Sarvam
Khalvidam Brahna” and “Vasudeva sarvam iti”, or “Isavasyam
idam sarvam”, God is everything and All, and He is the
existence, Consciousness – and Delight or bliss.
The all inclusiveness or the comprehensiveness of the
above religio-mystical synthesis should be experienced in
order to be appreciated. The five statuses are the one ultimate
itself, which has descended for its own purposes of self-
expression or lila which is creation.
Man’s supreme religious and mystical experience
would be to behold all the fivefold statuses in one all-
embraching Vision, or at least to experience them in
succession which does not interrupt their oneness. This vision
was vouchsafed to the Alvars, to the Vedic Seers, and in the
Bhagavad Gita. It is not eclectic stringing of these statuses
but an organic inter-relatedness of the statuses from the
highest subtlest to the grossest solid descent that makes for
the supreme integrality of the mystico-religious experience.
A mystical experience alone could give as only the
Transcendent in Vision; a religious would grant only the
creator-immanent in the creation or the avatar. The integration
of both is the achievement of the Vedantas.
120
 This synthetical view of the nature of the Deity or
God is also integral and should prove a basis for a
universal conception or religion. It is also something that
satisfies both religious and the spiritual: it is rationally
satisfying and may form the basis of a system. It provides
for the different levels of aspiration and evolution. Though
there has always happened the phenomenon of being
satisfied with the lowest or visible form of God-presence
or some such symbolic presence of the highest
recognized and worshipped and served as such, yet in
this scheme the individual usually passes from the external
to the inner heart-experience of God. These two may be
sufficient, for all practical purposes, for some of the
religious people. However the inner self eggs the individual
on towards the transcendent mystical experience, or
towards the conception and vision of the creator. The
search for a cosmic creator or an explanation of the
phenomenon of the world process is a rational one, and
philosophical search for cause or ground of the world
process satisfies the reason in man.
The historical is the most human aspect of the Deity,
for it is in this form or descent that the individual begins to
see the manifestation of perfections within the context of
the human mould or type, and within the conditions of space
and time and process. Most religions would very much
strive to call this the truly religious experience – experience
the infinite in terms of, and in relations with, the finite
beings; of perfection in the context of the imperfect; and
the universal in terms of particular. In fact the glory of the
Deity is experienced by these thinkers, humanists only in
121
terms of the human situation, human relationships. The
Deity is the Leader, Saviour, the Guru, statesman, if not
merely a Conqueror and Emperor. He may also be the
father of the Nation, light of the world, Universal Redeemer.
His existence would easily lend itself to a symbol and
legend or a Myth. As some theologians would have it, the
Advent of God would be unique, irrepeatable, and
inimitable. It is said that the Advent of Jesus, marked by
the culmination on the Cross, has a unique quality not
found in other advents; and we have no need to deny this
because the other advents also are unique, and there
cannot be another Krishna or Rama or Bhargava or
Vamana or for the matter another Gandhi or Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. The significance of the
Advent is such that it reveals divine properties or qualities
which the Hindu thinker calls the six perfections, aisvarya,
virya, jnana, bala, sakti and tejas. These are the radiating
perfections, bha-ga-van of the Divine nature which are
pure, (amala), untarnishable (vimala) pellucid (nirmala) and
infinite and un-diminished whatever the kind of body the
Divine takes in the Advent. We could reveal the immense
quality of the Divine Nature which no human association
or birth in any caste or race could reduce (acyuta). Above
all the Advent descends to uplift the world to a greter and
vaster dharma and not merely to re-establish the old order
by restoring the old foundations. The eternal order is that
to which all creation is moving, and it is in terms of the
eternal order (sanatana dharma) that at each age the new
order is being adopted by the omniscient vision of the
Advent, or his associates, the sages, whose vision
undimmed always gazes on the eternal. It is this experience
122
of the divine man in person that makes sense of the
created world.
Historical religions stress this aspect of the
religious and the personalistic. It is the immanence, or
inherence, or possibility of the perfect person in the
Transcendent and the Creator statuses that makes even
mystical thinking personalistic, as in the hymns of the great
devotees – alwars, nayanmars and the Gnostics. It is true
that there are some Hindu sects like the Saiva Siddhantins,
who do not think that God takes a human or mortal birth
(and that he has no need to do so because of his
omnipotence). Such sects think of His intercession on
behalf of the devotees (as for the granting of supreme
vision) as being usually direct. However the humanity of
God is fully brought out in the advents which reveals more
purposes than one.
A synthetic religion, which any universal religion
would have to be, would have to accept this version of the
Divine Advent which enriches the entire earth-processes
or evolution.
The incarnational conception of God bridges the
gulf between the Absolute Transcendence and the total
Immanence in Nature of God. Any attempt to conceive the
former as the only Real makes religion impossible, though
it may be mystical experience. The conception of God as
Love does envisage this advent or avatarana fully. That
does not mean that love is superior to Truth, but only that
Truth and Love are essential features of the Divine
123
Manifestation, However, some religions emphasize the
aspect of Truth whereas others emphasize the aspect of
Love. As it has been said the six perfections of the Divine
nature, Bhagavan, might each be considered to be the
ideal of God or Human personality, and a classification of
the religions could be made accordingly.
The impersonal ethical religion of Taoism is
exalting. The impersonal meditation of the Zen is equally
devoted to the experience of the transcendence over all
process. In fact the “Satori” is said to be suddenly reached.
Satori means enlightment. Originally it is stated to have
been taught in India and carried to China by
Boddhadharma of Kanchipura (South India) about 552
A.D. Known as Dhyan (Chan, Zen) it was one of sudden
englightment.
“A special transmission outside the scripture
No dependence upon words and letters
Direct pointing to the soul of man
Seeing into one’s nature” *
Satori is beyond the intellect; it is seeing one’s own
nature and know that Nature is not one’s own. The vision
may come suddenly or arise slowly. In any case, applied
in the context of Buddhism, it meant the arising of the void,
the sunya, which is all-embracing.
* Quoted from Budhism by Humphreys. p. 182.
124
 One attains the condition
“Imperturbable and serene the ideal man practices
no virtue
self-possessed and dispassionate he commits no sin
Calm and silent he gives up seeing and hearing
Even and upright his mind abides nowhere”.**
The ideal of the impersonal trans-mental state has
been perfected by Buddhism, and in Zen it has found
variations.
A theistic version of this Satori may be ventured.
Satari is the Sanskrt name of a great saint of Sri
Vaisnavism, in fact its founder, who is said to have lived
about the 8th century A.D. by historians of today, but placed
somewhere in 5000 B.C. by traditionalists. It means the
enemy of Sata or the breath that leads to the next birth.
This breath (jiva) movement to next life is cut away once
for all by means of supreme devotion to the Ultimate
Godhead-Narayana Krsna. One does not know when and
how this word came to mean also total surrender to God
alone, and to none other, for the sake of deliverance.
In any case the aim of religion has been to be in
tune with God and through him with the entire world.
Spirituality has meant the complete transformation of one’s
very being and nature into Inifinity, and it has even been
considered to be anti-thetical to religious experience. The
denial of the efficacy of all organization or institutions and
rites, rituals and so on by some of the mystics is evidence
** ibid. p. 186 quoted from Hui Neng's Sutra of Wai Lang.
125
of the mystical anti-religious tendency. It is also affirmed
that mysticism can even deny religion and the authority of
religion. But an integral scheme of life would demand the
recognition that once mysticism establishes the freedom
from religion then prevailing, it in its turn produces its own
pattern of ritualism and cultism. Thus we know that Islam
was a protest against the increasing tendency to worship
Jesus Christ and His Virgin Mother. The recognition that
God is not to be stepped down to the level of his son or
his emanation or descent is very important, as important
as the recognition in India of the difference between Isvara
and Brahman as in the mystical idea of Sankara. The
absoluteness or transcendence over creation of Brahman
has been hailed as the metaphysical mystic status,
whereas the Isvara has been recognized as the creational
power along with the universe or in relation to the universe.
We see then that religion is relational, mysticism is supra-
relational if not transcendental. But every effort to transcend
the level is a mystical effort, whereas every recognition of
the transcendent in relation to oneself or the creation is
religious. In the twofold Vedanta we have the recognition
of the two statuses of Brahman and the Isvara. In the
Pancaratra Agama we have the recognition of the five-
fold Divine nature which integrates organically the mystical
with the religious Godhood.
The mystical aim has one more goal. It aims at
taking the whole life for its province, on the one hand, and
on the other the total denial or renunciation of life and the
world. Though the God of religion is claimed to be the
sovereign creator etc of the universal, and as such satisfies
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the mystic halfway, the dynamic nature of the mystic is such provoking capacity. The Buddhist counsel that all life is
tht he is actively engaged in breaking all bonds of freedom. suffering has not made man turn away from it. The call to
save himself from the hell-fire and doom awaiting man,
The history or religions reveals the tendency of all
the sinner, around the corner, hasnot been taken seriously
of them to become close societies. The loss of effective
by any one. The wrath of God even when experienced
power to make for strenuous ascent to Godhood is
through the constant evidences of earth quakes, fires,
uniformly present. Even as in the case of philosophy, where
typhoons, air-crashes, wars, pestilences and draughts,
old philosophies required reformulations for being living,
have not provoked much response. Men continue to go
so too religios require periodic re-filling in order to be vital
on. Only a few men are prodded to think within themselves
expressions of the consciousness of the individual
and seek a godly guidance. We have become morbid and
embracing it. Modern religious life is described as
melancholy because religious do not seem to solve any
comprising only the regularity of doing certain practices
of the real human problems. Death seems to have lost its
such as temple-going, or Sunday or Friday or Thursday
sting and seems to be vastly more preferable to the life
church or mosque-going, and hearing or seeing the rituals.
that we live. Though man’s triumphs in knowledge of Nature
Even the dutiful incantations and repetitions do not lead
and conquest of it have been sometimes stimulating the
one to the experience of God in any one of the five statuses.
yearning for doing the same, yet it has been clearly
Externality and formalism, however gorgeous and
disheartening to see that no one really thinks that religion
imposing, do not cut much ground or rouse the heart to a
has a future.
great endeavour. The attempts to interest man in social
work or service of God in man have equally begun to prove The materialistic attitude can be described as one
barren of spiritual, mystical, or religious results. This state of either a life hitched to ephemeral values and pleasures
or religion seems to be not exceptional but rather the law evanescent, or of unrelieved gloom. Human welfare has
of all institutions proper to man. been more prominently in the front and humanism seems
to be a living faith for many who feel that man’s primary
All efforts are being made to urge man towards
concern is not with God but with man. Even our prophets
religion. To rouse man from his slumber seems possible
are interpreted to teach us the faith in humanity, human
only when he is given a really worthwhile goal or target.
values and human destiny, and the concern of the
The great disaster ahead of him seems to be the total ruin
incarnations themselves has been shown to be man. Even
of man in the world of shadows, of pleasures that bring
his evolution to a higher level of consciousness, or his
unhappiness, disease and disgrace. The old doctrine of
liberation from the round of deaths and births have been
illusoriness of the world seems to have lost all threat-
given up. Humanism is the religion of worship of human
127 128
values and human welfare. Secularism is the non-religious Modern attempts to synthesise religion and
concern with human activities, and materialism regards spirituality in terms of humanism or secularism are too
all processes even of life and values as flowing from Nature rational and limited in their scope to be of lasting
and motion, without any spirit. Consciousness, too, is importance. Nor can there be any reconciliation between
shown to be material product. Between these secularisms religions which insist on dogmas and myths without
and materialisms all our human activities are centered. opening themselves to spiritual awakening. The old
God is fifth wheel to the coach. spirituality had become religious dogma and formalistic
and materialistic too. A new spirituality needs a re-opening
This situation has been common to most man tired
of the mind to things which are beyond the old mind and
of the eulogies paid to religion and higher mental activities
its rationalities. As it was pointedout, the new dimensions
to solve the problem of human misery. Human misery could
of our present age demand new extensions of our logic
be solved by human reason, however fumbling it might be,
and reason. It is possible only by going beyond our present
however muddled its operation. Man has been learning
humanity and its rationality and by diving below matter on
through trial and error. Religion without reason has been
the one hand, and soaring above reason on the other, so
of no use, and reason without religion has had great
as to have glimpses of the axioms of the Infinite Spirit from
success. Thus all the great truths said to belong to Religion
which alone all the great prophets received their
and Mysticism have been rediscovered in the context of
illuminations. May be in an age of democracy when each
our life by reason. These arguments are once again to the
individual has come to a sense of personal existence and
fore. Except for the traditional respect that men bear to
commitment, each individual has to open up to the flashes
religion and religious experiences, no one really thinks that
of insight from above, and from within, and from below.
religion adds to the weight of our reason in human conduct.
Then alone will a real synthesis of religions and Mysticisms
In such a condition it has become imperative to show that
take place, and men may be aware of the birth of a new
reason itself requires, for its greater acivity, the life of spirit
universality with a different logic and language.
or religion which gives a faith that outlasts life. Strange as
it may seem, there are men who claim that their prophets
are ‘living’ though dead a two thousand years ago, whilst
the ideas of today are stated to be dead and meaningless.
The living Gods of the ancient past yet lay heavy hands on
the present, and religion becomes an enchanting relic of
the past re-enacted today.

129 130
 SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND
UNIVERSAL RELIGION
EQUALITY OF ALL RELIGIONS
Swami Vivekananda quotes Udayana (Vol. VII. P. 454)
“He who is Brahman of the Vedanti, Iswara of the
Naiyayika, Purusha of the Samkhya, Cause of the
Mimamsakas, Law of the Buddhists, Absolute Zero of the
Nihilists and Love infinite of those who love May (He) take
all under His Merciful Protection.”
In the analysis of the nature of the Universal Religion
following Swami Vivekananda, it was stressed that the
Goal of Religion is spirituality and all religions have taken
their rise from the supra-cosmic spirit that is one only. This
spirit has manifested itself in nature and in individuals, and
is therefore being sought by the individuals – this search
constitutes the ascent of the individuals to that primary
source of their being. All religions are therefore derivable
from the one spirituality as partial manifestations of ascent,
and as expression at different levels. The most dominant
note of spirituality is its craving for freedom from all bonds,
and in another sense, mastery of all the ways of Nature
and souls or psychologies so as to be freed from their
binding nature.
The inductive approach emphasized the hierarchical
or evolutionary ascent observed in the worship of stones,
plants, animals, men and heroes, natural powers, and the
dead who are somehow held to survive their death. Nature-
worship and ancestor worship are but ways of adoring the
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supreme which is manifest in Nature and in souls. The
experience of God as creator of the world and souls had
shown the higher nature of religion that had tended towards
rationalistic consideration of the relation between God and
nature, and God and man, and nature and man. The
concepts of God as Father, Mother, and Guru and so on
have their relational apotheosis in respect of one’s own
earthly relationships. The Godhead as Sovereign is also
one such apotheosis of the ruler and law-giver. God as
Law, or Cosmic Law, is also known. The development of
monotheism in the west is for world-theism or cosmo-
theism, parallel to the worldly ambition for domination, to
be chakravartin, or emperor. One spiritual ambition has
been to emphasize the One Sovereign principle as
bringing about world harmony, or one government of God,
who is both the spiritual and temporal soverign. The
Fraternity of the diverse religious aspirations was
emphasized by the Vedic utterance : Ekam Sat Viprah
Bahudavadanti – Agnim Varunam Matarisvan etc.
The concept of the brotherhood of man through the
concept of one God is implicit in the hierarchical
conception which does not exalt any one of the Gods over
the others. All religions thus become, in a sense, helpful
in leading to the One supreme spirit transcendent to the
levels of matter, life, mind, vinjnana and Ananda. The
oneness is the nisus of the diverse and the diverse are
necessarily to lead upto it. Advaita, or the emphasis of
the oneness of the Diversity, is essential for the individual
who is seeking to go beyond his bondage to the lower
forms. This is the conscious or unconscious aspiration.
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 The third spiritual concept is that of Equality between
the several religions as means to the attainment of the
one universal spirit that confers freedom from all bondage
and the cycle of births and deaths entailed by the birth
into lower levels of consciousness and experience.
Harmonising of all is the goal, and it has to be based on
the principle of quality of all.
The three mottos of the French Revolution Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity have had a quite dynamic part to
play during the past two centuries, and even today they
are supreme expressions the spiritual aspirations of man.
“All the social upheavals, at least the leaders of
them, are trying to find that all their communities
or equalising theories must have a spiritual basis,
and that spiritual basis is in the Vedanta only.”
(Vol. V p. 213)
God’s impartiality is the basis of the concept of
justice. The spirit is same to all, and is fully related to
each; each individual has only to liberate this inward
self slowly by realizing its withinness or immanence in
his heart. This raising of the stature of each individual,
in fact even every atom, to the level of universal power,
personality or divine fullness is one of the greatest
aspirations pushing man towards the spiritual or the
ultimate spirit. The triune aspirations in the materialistic
sphere, encouraged or roused to white-heat of
aspiration through revolutions and reformations, have
brought out the existence of universal upsurge.
133
Equality or samatva or justice is a great ethical
concept. Where religions are concerned, the question is
whether all religions can be said to lead to the ultimate
spirituality. We can see that the ultimate spirit accepted
by the Vedanta as the ultimate is not accepted by
everybody as such. These contentions have unfortunately
been subjects of religious controversy and fanaticism. In
most cases it was not clear what these great scholars or
religious teachers were trying to emphasize, for the ultimate
must be the ultimate in the sense that no one could go
beyond that experience. It is clear that only one who had
this ultimate experience, and could definitely say that there
is nothing beyond that, is competent to affirm the ultimate.
Secondly, such a person alone become competent
also to say whether any other way exists or not to that
Ultimate. For we know that the path taken by one is
usually onsidered to be the only, one till others point
out that they came there by different routes. The claim
of some religions to exclusive pathways is rather
unacceptable to the Hindu rational mind. It is said that
all roads lead to Rome, which is built in such a way that
it has many roads leading upto it. Could we say that all
of them are easy roads, equally well-made and
macdamised without pits and so on? These questions
have pestered the seeker everywhere. Only adventurers
and mountain climbers who are anxious to conquer
peaks ask for hard work and challenging routes. Others
are content to go by the well-worn and well-made roads,
easy of access and ensuring smooth travel to the
destination.
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 Hinduism has made many roads to the Ultimate. The
number of sadhanas or means of connecting oneself with
the Divine and realising the Ultimate are many. The way
of Karma-yoga and the path of Jnana yoga as well as
Bhakti yoga are three paths all said to lead to the One
supreme and Ultimate Liberation, and to God-union. They
are considered by some to be independent paths. But it
is also agreed that they may also form a chain of paths all
helping to lead us to the Ultimate. The analogy of paths
leading to the One centre would not work, for here is
integration, mutual development. Thus karma, performed
with detachment and dedication, would give rise to jnana
or knowledge of the essential and permanent, as
contrasted with the impermanent, and make one devote
oneself to the permanent, rejecting or renouncing the
Impermanent. This devotion to the permanent would then
be called bhakti. It is also possible to start with bhakti, or
devotion to the goal, and then that entails jnana and karma
suffused with devotion to the Ultimate; or one may start
with jnana and then pass on to action that is almost
equivalent to non-action, for there is no desire for fruits or
their enjoyment, and devotion is so pure and perfect that
it has sublimated devotion. So we find that the three yogas
interpenetrate each other, so thoroughly as to become
Ultimately one integral path.
But all this discussion of the independent paths to
the One becomes mere analytical discussion. The
practical course seems to be the integrative triunity of the
yogas. So too may many extreme practicants claim each
yoga to be supreme over the others. Bhakti is said to be
135
the most easy, for it means praising the Lord and
worshipping Him only, whereas the performance of works
or yajnas and yagas is said to be arduous; and jnana
demands power of ratiocination which is perhaps not
needed for an emotional, devotional approach. All these
are conditions of fitness (adikara), and progress in each
case is determined by factors of intensity of aspiration,
strength of belief and faith. Lack of these is of course the
only sinfulness, so to speak. We have the possibility of
slowly helping every one to rise up to the highest levels of
jnana and supreme devotion by training oneself to perform
small acts whthin one’s capacity. God, in His infinite love,
has provided means for approaching Him, a method by
which he could be reached through even blind love, a love
based on mere trust in the loving nature of God Himself.
The Akincana – one who has nothing – has got that
particular quality that attracts God to him, and he gets the
Divine Help that makes him fitted for greater work and is
shown the paths of karma, jnana and illumined bhakti. As
is well known, Religions have these steps to reach God.
However it is still an important question whether any one
religion is better than the other for leading one quickly to
the ultimate Godhead.
Approaching the question of equality of all paths in
another form, we have, in the modern world, religions which
proselytize men from the primitive religions, claiming that
they grant freedom from sinfulness, and that they offer
equality of opportunity and social treatment to all those
who have accepted the method of their religion. Thus
Christianity offers the Saviour-Redeemer as the principle
136
or person who is supreme among the saviours of the world,
if not the only saviour of all mankind. His is the only path,
and the way of salvation. Love of God for His creatures
was its sign.
Islam offers the message of the Prophet, who is the
last among the prophets of God, who gave the world the
message through his divine revelational writing – the
Al’koran. The following of the teachings of the book, and
the abiding by the five-times prayer etc would provide a
safe conduct to God and His angels. He is the Best among
the prophets and has to be followed. But as this Religion
of devotion to God developed exclusiveness and
arbitrariness, it also developed fanaticism about its
exclusiveness. It denied all other paths. Idols fell, all other
superstitions were swept away. Yet its devotion to the deity
it had chosen was deeply asustere and sincere.
Zoroastrian thinking had shown that the God Ahura
Mazda was the power ultimate for the Good, always
combating the Ahriman - the power of evil. Man must
choose to worship the Ahura Mazda in order to triumph
over the evil. This is ethically valuable in so far it reveals
that man must choose the good - the godside and fight on
the side of God against the evil forces. The Path is the
path of devotion to the Good, the Ultimate Good, which is
indeed the fire that burns away all the dross; it is the God.
Buddhism follows the path of discrimination or jnana,
finding out the causes of sorrow and exterminating them
by means of dharma (dhamma) - the practice of right
thought, right speech, right work and right meditation, the
137
Buddha who has shown the path of transcendence of
sorrow - the tathagatha - had become the Path he himself
has shown by his supreme example of the renunciation of
the causes of sorrow - trsna - tannha. He, like Jesus and
Mohammed after him, showed the way by his personal
example as to how to attain the state of Nirvana.
Leaving aside the question as to whether all these
religions have the same goal for the present, it is enough
firstly to ask whether each one of them leads to the goal of
others, or whether the goals of each one of these leads up
to the further higher or Ultimate Goal propounded by the
Vedanta - the Brahman.
Sri Rama Krishna Paramahamsa has shown how he
attained the Absolute Godhead through the worship of the
Idol of Kali, the Mother, in such devotion as to have her
pratyaksa darsana. He undertook the spiritual discipline
of dhyana and rose to such an extent as to have attained
the Vision in Samadhi -samprajnanata at the beginning -
but later on, thanks to his getting an illumined logic Teacher
Tota puri, he achieved the asamprajnanata and
nirvikalpaka samadhi. This made him go beyond to the
Nirugana - Transcendent Impersonal Experience of the
Divine. He also knew that these two statuses are of the
Same Ultimate Reality or Brahman. His tantra-sadhana
integrated with the mantra and the archa or iconic worship
did take him to the Ultimate Experience. His yogic trance
also led him to that Experience. He was a bhakta, he was
a karmayogi doing his work in the temple, and serving
God and his devotees, He was a jnani who knew that the
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Ultimate was all and in all, and as being present in all. His
realisations had opened up a great chapter in the history
of Hindu religion. He was above all sectarianisms; the
paths of Siva, of Visnu, of Kali, all led to the transcendent
experience.
Among the Christian the way of devotion or Bhakti
to the Saviour led to his having the vision of Jesus Christ,
and the way of love. Christianity was not contrary to the
spirit of Religion; on the other hand it was one of the
special ways by which the Divine is experienced in the
heart as yogins do, and prayer and surrender to the will of
God in all things showed an extra-ordinary trust in the
Divine Love. Further, the verifiability of the Christ-
experience revealed indubitably that the path of Christ is
right. It is therefore necessary not to seek to convert the
Christian to Hinduism, but to help the Christian to lead a
real Christian life and attain the Vision not only of Christ
but what Christ stood for - the experience of the Divine
Godly trinity, the Father, son, holy Ghost. Sri Ramakrishna
had the vision of Christ and the attainment which He
promised to the seeker by that Way of Christ.
Similarly Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa followed
the path of Islam, and attained that divine state promised
by the Prophet of Allah. The sufis of Islam had reached
the Ultimate Experiences and in consonance with their
experiences, the experiences of the Yoga were verified
by them. Swami Vivekananda, who had trodden the path
of Rajayoga, has illuminated this chapter of inner
illumination and trance wonderfully and at first hand.
139
The Buddhist jnanas, similar indeed to the dhyana
but with the specific purpose of having the bodhisattva
state through the path of Nirvana, led to the Nirvana not
only of the thoughts but also of the ego, and to that Sunya,
which was not nothing but the Absolute as transcendent
to all phenomenal being. So much so all experiences
devoted to the realisation of the highest of each one of
these religions led to something beyond them, culminating
in the Ultimate Advaita experience of that One Spirit.
Regarding the equality of religions Swami
Vivekananda also insists upon the freedom to choose
whatever object of worship an individual admires or likes.
This object of worship may be just a symbol, a salagrama,
or linga, or Cross, or Circle or Tantrika Chakra; anything
which has meaning for him.
Or he may choose to worship his Ideal man - the
Avatars or Prophet or Gurus who appear to him as worthy
of imitation or attainment. Or he may choose to worship
the Pure Sky or the inner light, or a God without form or
quality, or having qualities and forms which are adorable
and auspicious.
This freedom to worship whatever object one adores
or admires also means that whatever one worships, he
becomes like that because one’s thought takes the shape
and dynamism of that object. The lover of Brahman
becomes Brahman.
The Ishta devata is sacred, not a secret God. It is the
choice that one freely makes as to what he would like to
140
become. This shows that whilst in India or Hinduism one
can worship whatever one wants to become or grow into,
this is not permitted in the Other religions. Regimentation
of thought in this direction is a great impediment to spiritual
progress. The choice of the Ishta devata is sought to be
held secret in the West. As Swami Vivekananda said
“Secret societies are western inventions where
there is no freedom to openly worship what one
cherishes to be best.” (Vol.IV.p.57)
It is of course difficult to conceive of God without
name and form. Thought, name and form are one series.
Thought is the subtlest; name is more gross than thought;
whereas form is the grossest. They are three stages of
one development. (Vol. IV.p.5l) The samkhyan view seems
to be accepted in a way as to the manner of the grossening
of the categories. However these form a trinity. In worship
then one can stop with unuttered thought or proceed to
name, and from name to the form.
The identification of a form is by a name, and all
communication from one individual to another is with the
help of sounds which refer to things or objects. Thus name
and form are one aggregate and are inseparable. No
doubt the diversity of languages means different sounds
apply to the same object. But a careful study of the
formation of sounds in relation to objects would reveal the
functional or root forms which the objects mean for an
individual, and it may mean very many different things to
different individuals, and as such the same object gets
141
many names each denoting its different purpose for several
individuals. Therefore the thought or meaning determines
the name of an object for the individual. If the object means
the same function for some individuals all of them apply
the same word or name to that object.
The supreme need to have an object for worship in
religion is well-understood but the names may vary and
so too the forms. What secures mutual understanding is
not only freedom to have one’s own object for worship but
also to understand that others may have different meanings
for that same object which would equally suffice for spiritual
meditation and self-realisation.
So long as religion is held to be
“the realisation in the heart of hearts, it is possible
for all religions to come together in fraternity of
seeking. Religion is the touching of God. It is
feeling, realising that I am a spirit in relation with
the Universal Spirit and all its manifestation.”
(Vol.IV,p.l26)
“Whilst each one of us is a believer in a personal
religion, that is we can grasp an idea only when it
comes to us through a materialised ideal
person,’”’we can understand the precept only
through an example.” (Ibid.p.121)
Yet it is possible to transcend and receive a personal
experience of the Transcendent Reality when we touch it
through the heart, through love, and total self-giving.
142
 Further each religion has to be considered in its
integrality or wholeness. As pointed out, each has a book
of revelations, and rite or ritual or work, and a philosophy,
or myth or both. The institutions for the preservation of
these is undoubtedly different from all the above, for though
it is necessary it is really non-essential, for whenever the
basic experiences are not to be had through these above
paths of revelation, kriya, yoga, and incapable of being
rationally communicated, or where even a transcendental
communication through poetic myth is unavailable, the
institutions tend to wither. Most religions confuse the
institution with its work and try to preserve the former at
the expense of the latter.
But as we are concerned with the spiritual nature of
religions at their highest, each religion aims at the highest
experience that it has laid before itself, and when it
reaches this goal it is satisfied. The one test of each
religion is whether it leads to that which it promises. Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa showed or revealed that they
do. This is their truth. All religions are true - they lead to
the goals they have placed before their followers. And they
are, to that extent, satisfying.
The methods or means also are about the same.
Prayer and meditation, devotional service and
righteousness in conduct are all equally promoted by each
religion. But where they are all rather wrong is that they do
not recognize that each religion is equally capable of
leading to the goal. The synthesis of Goals could be shown
to be necessary, for the goal is the one Reality that
143
liberates and unites all religions, and in granting this
synthesis we provide for an intelligent solution to the
problems of world conflict as well as for the fanatical
espousal of one path for all mankind. This runs counter to
the very nature of man who has a fourfold nature, even as
his society has a fourfold division.
Karma refers to the will, bhakti to the emotional nature
and jnana to his cognitive or thought nature, and they are
inseparable and their unity is perhaps best in Raja yoga. In
fact Jnana of the transcendental order is the culmination -
the turiya is the result. This quarternary nature of the society
of Brahmana, Ksatriya, Vaisya and Sudra; the Brahmacari,
Grhastha, Vanaprastha and Sannyasi, helps us to realise the
intricate Oneness/that is realised through these diverse levels
and diverse methods or means.
Thus equality of all religions is a realisation, not
merely a slogan for the sake of seeking the hectic
evangelical attempts of religions. Persuasiveness even
demands the presentation of the superiority of one’s own
standpoint over the other’s. The need today, as it was at
the time of Swami Vivekananda, is to show that no one
should attempt to persuade without having been convinced
wholly about the Ultimate Truth of one’s own Religion. Most
persuation stops on the surface, and comes out of men
who are not truly persuaded about their Ultimate
Knowledge. Relative Ultimates are unfortunately satisfying
to minds, and those minds have to be by the Grace of God
lifted beyond their relative limits. No one seems fitted to
do this except the men of real spiritual power like
144
Swami Vivekananda and other spiritual souls of his
calibre.
Equality between religions also entails an important
question as to whether all religions, whilst being equally
efficacious in leading to God-Union, are also equally easy
for all to practise or follow. Here comes the most important
factor of differentiation between the several paths. What
is easy for one individual need not be equally easy for
another, that is, what is sauce for the goose need not be
sauce for the gander as they put it. This easiness is a
question of one’s ability and capacity. However, the choice
of the means whether it is through the method of karma,
service to God, bhakti or love of God, Jnana or knowledge
of God, will be decided by the initial ease with which one
is able to follow it. Aptitude and ability determine choices.
We know that young men try to take up fashionable
choices of subjects but are latter found to feel their
deficiences and regret them. This is because their own
fashionable choices, or their parent’s wishes, determine
their choice of vocation and only long afterwards they return
to their real vocation, if at all they could. A life full of regrets
-is otherwise the result.
The Ease of a path is determined by aptitude and
ability, and so long as the several seekers find their paths
easy, they are satisfied with it. Else wrong choices lead to
struggle with one’s own nature. Svadharma and svabhava
are psychological determinants. In so far as each
individual claims his religion to be easy for him, it is best
to follow it, for it too leads him ultimately to the highest
145
provided his own ideal is the Highest and the Ultimate -
the highest which the mystics and saints of personal
realization had discovered whether it be in Christianity or
Islam or Buddhism or Jainism or Taoism etc.
Though the Hindu seers have held that each one of
these paths (religions) have emphasised certain basic
dogmas for acceptance as preliminary to their practices,
and no one would profit by them unless these preliminaries
have been learnt, yet certain cases have been provided
where these preliminaries are also suspended.
Similarly the religions also insist upon certain
realisations or experiences of sinfulness and confession
of them; the helpless state of man before the omnipotent
world-God-power; the existence of misery as the most
crucial factor of the world-existence; the impotence of
man; and the belief in the Saviour, the Buddha, the
Prophet, and so on. This adhikara niyama or rule of fitness
is such that it can be attained, either by carya (conduct),
or heredity, or samgha (environment).
However, the agamas have insisted on other than
heredity and dogmatic acceptances for the path of
salvation or liberation or self-realisation, and that seems
to be the condition of unfittedness either by intellect or
devotion or action to pursue the divine path. This path of
akincanata - being nothing and no-body - has been itself
a profound fact in Hindu Agama which claim to be
supplementing the Vedic revelations, Swami Vivekananda
has vehemently protested about the Tantrika practices of
the Vamacara or hedonistic materialistic path, but has
146
clearly accepted that there are tantras which could be God so as to lose oneself utterly in Him, even losing name
accepted in so far as they lead to the Ultimate Godhead and form. Advaita looks forward to this identity which
experience. exceeds union, whereas others have different distances
(psychical or spiritual) and seek to resist the last step. This
The ‘open-door’ theory of all religions is in respect
struggle for individuality apart from that of God is visible
of permitting any one to enter a path without qualification,
and evident in all pluralistic formulas of uniqueness and
but most such admission had led to the watering down of
individual worth and value and so on. Modern thought, more
the efficacy of the path. The Veda-marga was not closed
and more, is individualistic, and all concessions are made
to any one. In fact on the plane of divine experience even
to this idea of individual liberty and worth. But what is
of the Vedas, the avaidiki or tantrika who had access to
most often lost sight of is that by merging in God one
the Divine Experience also had access to the Vedic
regains the infinite freedom to be individual in a cosmic
tradition and sruti. The writings of the Alvars and the
sense and in cosmic consciousness. All that is said to be
Nayanmars in the South, as well as the rich mystical
lost is one’s materialistic separateness which is pseudo-
experiences of the Northern Saints not of the Vedic fold,
individuality. However this is terrain which is beyond our
bear witness to this phenomenon. It is only private
normal materialistic and secularistic concepts of
dogmatism, or clinging to a set of dogmas whilst refusing
individuality.
to consider others and experimenting upon them, that
leads to intellectucal and emotional isolationisms that In any case even though religions are seeking
breed conflict and misunderstanding of the real purposes individualistic ends even as wen in a democratic pluralistic
and ideal of Religion. set up, the Oneness that they finally arrive at will reveal a-
new dimension to that many ness which is integrated with
There is a factor of great significance when each
oneness, unlike the present manyness disintegrating the
religion, for the sake of keeping up its artificial
Oneness. However, with the fear that is inherent somehow
individuality, develops walls or barriers. The pluralistic
in each individual at his losing himself in something else
tendency has always been to insist upon the ‘uniqueness’
however big or noble, it looks like one’s death. True
of each individual to the Whole, but really it is to prevent it
Spiritual attainment lies in the manifestation of the Infinite
from losing itself. Most individualisms are attempts to keep
(vibhutva) in the finite (anutva), the individual, and this
up one’s privateness. Religion, if it is true to its definition
realisation of the Infinite self in the individual as its very
which is to link up itself with the Ultimate One or God, may
self. True individuality is that personality of the infinite in
entail not merely a samipya (nearness), but also salokya
the finite, and even-in the discrete which has been brought
and sarupya, and finally sayujya when one merges into
into spiritual organic relationship with the rest and all:
147 148
As the Gita (VI.32) puts it Atmaupamyena sarvatra samam
pasyti on the analogy of the self he who perceives me
equally in all everywhere - one realises the unique
manyness of the One in all, Swami Vivekananda is not
tired of emphasizing the Unity of the Diversity and the
diversity in Unity. As he put it he would like a religion for
each individual - that is to say a direct access to that
Ultimate ultimately. (Vol.VI.p.l7 &p.l3)
It is difficult to get direct access to the Ultimate or
God without a long process of ascent through several
individuals or teachers who have known the path and who
are capable of leading one to the same. But all teachers
are mediators with differing capacities — and the teacher
of teachers is God alone - the Absolute who has come
down in the hierarchical ladder so to speak. But no one
can presume to be the Teacher except the Ultimate Spirit.
The position this poses is whether every religion
ultimately.directly links up an individual with the Divine
without any intermediaries? This is a modern Question
as well; though there have been some at all times who
aspired for a direct union.
It appears that in Hinduism, ultimately the guru
withdraws and leaves one in direct relationship or union
with God. But this is not so in some other religions which
insist, on the presence of the mediator or prophet or guru.
In Buddhism the bodhisattva remains, whereas in earlier
Buddhism, which is so much a religion of liberation and
reason and anti-God and anti-self, the intermediary is not
retained. However the Guru occupies a significant and
149
necessary place as the delegate of the Ultimate, and the
getting of a Guru is itself deemed to be the gaining of the
divine path and light and the way.
Simplicity is one of the claims put forward as
characterising the Higher religions. What with the heavy
dogmas, practices, rites, and worships, religions have
become overlaid with formalism. Hinduism recognizes that
there are many ways - the formalised as well as the
simplified process - all depending on the type of Yoga or
union that one utilises. The simplest path is self-surrender
prapatti - prapadana, counselled by the Lord Sri Krsna
which makes one swiftly, or in the shortest possible time,
a dharmatma, a righteous soul which has shed all its
cravings and desires, and one is hawklike or like the Rishi
Suka taken to the Absolute. The other ways are like that
of Vamadeva, the gradual path rich with experiences of
the route of God but steadily leading one to it, each step
lighted by a brilliant vision and wisdom. All religions
therefore are not equally simple except in their highest
levels seeking direct experience of God. There seems to
be in each religion an attempt at direct simple experience
or anubhava which is complete union, that is, granting one
a sense of being, a sense of illumination, and a sense of
bliss (satisfyingness) of fullness (filledness), and above
all of transcendence of the transitory empirical world and
a sense of Immortality and Infinity. This however is at the
highest reaches.
Whilst equality pervades at the highest, hierarchical
relations exist at the lower; and institutions of religion
150
mainly prosper on this differential rather than on the goal disciple Swami Vivekananda. It made for discovery of the
of Union with Infinity and eternity, or immortality (anantatya ultimate goal for religions which got arrested on the way
and amrtatva). to the Ultimate Godhead. Whilst it stimulated their
endeavours it also enabled them to pay heed to those
Thus, what we find is that all religions ultimately cannot
mystics among them who had been sought to be excluded
but aim at God Union, Immortality and Liberation. They
from their orthodoxies of church and system and so on.
cannot but seek fraternity among all beings which gives a
This has been a liberating influence on all the religions
sense of brotherhood and mutuality of love -the true
that had drawn their shutters down.
samgha or church or Alaya or Temple, where each lover
of the Ultimate would instruct spiritually one another - This is the beginning of Open Spirituality as against
bodhayanti parasparam. Lastly, the goal of all religions is closed religiosity.
direct experience that verifies all traditions of scriptures -
or sruti, smrti, itihasas, puranas - revelation, tradition,
history, and myth and rite and philosophy.

There is thus also the equality of all paths in so far

as they have all the opportunities to develop uniquely
towards the ultimate realisation. No path seems to be
better than the other in one sense, but in another sense
since some paths seem to halt at a lower formulation of
the Nature of God, they are sought to be criticised, but if
the seeker on that path urges himself further, seeking God
union directly, then such a one reaches verily the goal which
has been reached by other sincere loftily aspiring seekers.
In one sense the heights of attainment in one path must
urge others to follow their own paths to that Goal or Centre
of all Unity or Oneness. All religions are strung like beads
in the string of God that passes through all of them, even
like the Divine who is the thread passing through all souls
and things. Such is the realisation of Sri Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa - a realisation that he transmitted to his

151 152
 SWAMI VIVEKANANDA &
UNIVERSAL RELIGION
LECTURE - I
Among the profoundest men who adorned the 19th
century, and who had a hand in the shaping of our religious
history, three persons stand foremost as the stalwart
defenders of Hinduism in its purity. The rest were
Reformers. Even among them three, only two stand out as
the preservers and conservers of the ancient Indian
tradition. The Renaissance, according to Professor D.S.
Sarma, began with the call to purify Hinduism of its ills
and maladies, its accretions and distortions and to return
to the theism inherent in the Upanisads. This version of
Hinduism was called Brahmoism to remind all that
Hinduism is the religion of Brahman, and that it is a
casteless community. The sectarian cults usually
developed an anti-Brahman attitude, while the brahmins
were caste-ridden and caste-determined men.
The criticisms levelled against Hinduism was almost
entirely by westerners, and rightly they had pointed out what
according to them were the social ills that blackened it.
Many of these ills were not inherent to religious
experiences and were not sanctioned by original texts at
all, and if the religion of the Upanisads were to survive
and live, drastic reforms had to be carried out. These
great souls, led by Ram Mohan Roy, undertook to bring
into being a samaj known as the Brahmo Samaj. The
purified or reformed Hinduism which it preached attracted
153
intellectuals and led to an earnest study of the indigenous
literature of the Upanisads, and to a newly patterned
worship of God in a simple way of communion in spirit.
But this so much resembled the Christian pattern, as
distinct from the temple rituals, that it did not really satisfy
except such of those who had absorbed the western ways
but were unconsciously clinging or returning to Indian
traditional beliefs. This movement shows how mutual
religious influences could bring forth a Christianised
Hinduism and be the fore-runner of a Hinduised
Christianity; a gain indeed for an integrative fusion in the
years to come.
It is well to remember that this was a kind of repetition
of an earlier century, when Hinduism was Islamised and
Islam was Hinduised in the Sikhism of Nanak and the Din-
i-lahi of Akbar. This is a historical process inevitable when
different peoples are thrown together. Through early
conflict and because of fear creating suspicion, men seem
to stand against each other. Later, when the conquerors
learn to be civil and understanding, they all learn to respect
the deep ideas of the conquered and adopt them to fuse
a unity of the divided. This Integrative process has been
going on. So after preliminary opposition rather defensive
in nature on the one hand and offensive on the other hand,
there takes place a mutual recognition of merits which
leads to fusion through the adoption of the best elements
in both. This is the synthetic nature of all integrative living
religions. Those that do not adopt this process, through
their best spiritual representatives or the common people,
tend to fade into oblivion. There will, at all times, remain
154
remnants of the extremists on both sides whose suspicions
and fears cannot be removed. The psychology of
fanaticism thrives on these, and fanaticism is egoistic in
its expression in faith, and thrives on fear and defensive
offensives. Brahmoism was the first attempt gallantly made
to affirm one’s own religious integrity.
The second renaissance effort was that of Dayanand
Sarasvati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, who tried to instil
new forces through the revival of Vedic studies, which had
suffered much and were suffering from the western
materialistic and naturalistic interpretations of the original
theism of the Vedas. Further, if theism had to survive it
had to pull out the Upanisads from the hands of the
illusionists who claimed their authority from the Upanisads
for the establishment of the Nirguna Brahman as the one
reality, and the world as a phenomenal entity. Despite the
claims of the Brahmos to be theists, in so far as they relied
on the Upanisads alone, it was possible for them to affirm
Brahman who was not an Isvara, the latter being only a
phenomenal appearance of Brahman. This was because
of the prevalence of the theory of Absolute Brahman as
contrasted with Isvara who was the Brahman in relation to
the world, its creator and sustainer and destroyer or
withdrawer. The Veda seems to favour an, Isvara-concept
rather than a monistic concept of a relationless Absolute.
The theistic strain in Dayanand also made him turn towards
proselytization of non-hindus who had gone over to other
religions or were converted to them. The suddhi or
purification meant that all could be made fit to study the
Veda. Veda was now thrown open to all those who believed
155
in Hinduism. Caste barriers were abolished. In fact caste
was no longer to be used to bar anybody from the study of
the Veda. The study of the Vedas was being pursued by
the western scholars and no one could prevent people of
other religions from studying them; but the danger was that
Vedic texts insisted upon disciplinary preliminaries such
as siksa (training or education), kalpa (engineering - doing
building), vyakarana (grammar), nirukta (etymology) and
Jyotisa (astronomy) which alone could help a proper
understanding of the Veda: Lacking these, others could
only distort the Vedic teaching and make it secular and
profane, which in fact occured. Sincere though the scholars
of the West were, the Veda for them was only a great field
for studies in indology, comparitive philology and religion.
Such an extension and re-grouping of social patterns
was necessitated because there was no method by which
a Hindu, converted to other religions, could be enabled to
return to his original religion and participate in the Hindu
community. The flexibility had to be restored to thought
and experience without Impairing the security of the
religious practices. It is well known that sly infiltration of
alien doctrines could destroy the religious fabric; and faith
could be rudely shaken. This was therefore a defensive
reform to enable sincere men to return to the ancient fold.
We know well that even though many have embraced other
religions, they continue to hold on to dogmas which are
not germane to them. However when an attempt was made
to make political device, it was stopped by this Arya
Samajist movement of reconversion. The renaissance
awakened the religious men of Hinduism to a sense of
156
religious and political realities and prepared for a revival
of spiritual interest in the Veda not merely as the oldest
spiritual scripture but also as the living scripture of
mankind, and of Hinduism in particular. It could be the
scripture of the entire humanity. There is no doubt, as Sri
Aurobindo speaking of Dayanand said, that his great work
has cleared the mistakes and corrected most of them which
are the results of western (Christian-slanted and
materialistic) scholarship,
A study of the nature of the spiritual climate of the
Vedic-Upanisadic times emerged and as a result
Hinduism could look forward to becoming a world religion.
We could speak about the great headway being made in
the studies on Buddhism from the point of view of
comparitive religion, and see also how & later busdhism
eclipsed the original teaching of the Buddha, and how
instead of being heretical Hinduism, Buddhism played the
part of refomer and deepener of the mystical experiences
and led men to heights of self-realisation hardly paralleled
later. Buddhism was found to be in the spiritual tradition
of Hinduism, or rather Upanisadic thought and conduct;
and even as Hinduism became a ritualistic religion
catering to the common man, it (Buddhism) also was
stepping down to the level of the lay man; and two types of
conduct in spirituality came into being. However the
theosophical writers following closely on the writings on
Buddhism helped to interest its members in spiritual
illumination based on the study and practice of religions.
The idea of a world religion or a Universal or divine wisdom,
157
“theosophia” was very much in the air. The Iheosophical
Society tried to speak for the evolution of a higher man -
an idea already mooted by some of the advanced seers
in the west in the 19th century like Nietaeche, Goethe and
Fichte. Aurobindo showed that this was in fact the
aspiration of the Vedic Rishi Rbhu, and the Yajna is said
to be a means for the evolution or making of an Immortal
Man, as in the Nachiketa-episode in the Kathopanisad.
A study of comparitive religion could not but reveal
the insight of world-unity at least in the lives and teachings
of the prophets and seers, however divergent their social
and other conditions may have been. It is also evident that
the later history of each one of these religions revealed a
falling off from the standards of realisation, and hence the
failure of vision, growth and transcendence. It is perhaps
true to say that the Iheosophical Society did not have
outstanding scholars in any field as such, but the profound
labour of inter-relating and cross indexing had provided
the stimulus for the creation of an organized body of world
religious texts. Recently books on the several Gospels of
each religion have been brought out which continue the
Theosophic tradition.
1. * It is also perhaps quite true that they hardly helped
Swami Vivekananda in his American tour, or at the
World Congress of Religions at Chicago, as Swami
Vivekananda himself has stated.
* Utopias have invariably been written in a prophetic vein - whether it is
by the Christian or Marxist or Psychologist or economist or idealist.
158
2. It must be remembered that Theosophy does not aim
at presenting Hinduism as a world-religion, or as the
world religion, but only as a constituent of world
religion. The aim is to promote mutual understanding
and experience of the occult and divine truths of
Reality, evolution and the goal of creation. It is, in a
sense, scientific in outlook but then all has turned out
to be outlooks on occult experiences.
The world outlook had come to stay as the goal of
all religions. Parochial religions could hardly keep up
to that purpose and became unsuitable. It is very
necessary to remember that it is through the spiritual
genius ofSri Ram Krishna Paramahamsa that the
Occidental oriented Indians found a return to their
ancient Hindu tradition. If Ram Mohan Roy hearked
back to the Upanisads, Sri Rama Krishna
Paramaharasa hearkened back to the Agama - the
popular religious experience of the mystic order of
tantra. He was neither an educated person like the
brilliant Rammohan Roy, nor a learned Pandit like
Dayanand Sarasvati, but he was a soul drinking from
the fountain of spiritual life awakened to the glorious
presence of the deity in the idol of Kali the World Mother,
and its identity with the One Brahman of the Upanisads
- the “Ekam sat” of the Veda.
If one of the major tenets of Hindu worship is the
worship of God in the iconic form, and if this is the one
tenet that mystics all over the world (except Hindu) have
rejected as materialistic and gross, then this movement
initiated by Sri Rama Krishna is a return to the
Icon - worship - which is basic to the traditional worship of
159
the Agama or tantra. It is of course the most accessible to
man with his sensory perceptions and seeking a sensory
visual representation. It is a call to return to ancient temple
culture from the westernised pulpits. It is also a return to
the icon detested by Islam, which undertook a massive
idol-breaking sacrifice to the Nirguna Invisible Godhead -
Allah. This is truly a return to Hinduism.
The worship of the icon was a legitimate kind of
worship of the Absolute Godhead invoked into the Icon.
The simple priest revealed the Absolute Godhead in the
icon to his disciple Narendra when he asked him to show
him God. His (Narendra’s) eyes were opened to the
presence of the transcendent in the icon, the gross material
pratika or bimba. This is a great enough vision - the actual
confirmation of the belief that the Absolute has both form,
and indeed many forms, whilst being One only as the
transcendent Secondly these icons are not just for the
purohit or priesthood, because there are always genuine
knowers of the Ultimate through realisation of the Ultimate
in the finite and the formed, in and through names. Thus
was the scepticism and logical contradiction removed by
actual vision. Experience, in a sense, makes the
impossible possible. Further, Sri Rama Krishna revealed
that all religions devoted to the Ultimate Divine are equally
valid means to the realisation of the Ultimate. The Divine
has infinite phases, though One. He is a unit as multiplex
or, to use the phrase of Errol E. Harris, the Ultimate is a
polyphasic unity. The Monism is poly-phasic and is not a
barren Oneness negating all inner divisions or differences
or wholes. The manyaided experiences of the One God
give rise to infinite forms of the One Divine all of which
160
are equally true and real, but all of which are those which
point towards the Oneness of all these. This exposition
of the spiritual nature of Reality is the insight and
guiding light of all developments in the 20th century.
This is the strongest emphasis that Swami
Vivekananda made in his great talks and speeches
during the last decade of the 19th century. The
experience of the One in the many and through the many
is verily the basis of the Advaita or Ekatva statement
of the Veda and the Upanisada. The “ekam” refers to
the Ultimate Godhead, the One purusa or One Being
(existent); this becomes all inclusive advaita rather than
an all-negating advaita. The spiritual harmonisation
samanvayata of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is one
of the most significant intuitions that has led to the
unification of all faiths, and one that can reveal the
Universal Religion.
Monotheisms like Islam refuted all gods or reduced
them to subordination. The puranas and also the
interpreters of the Vedas in earlier phases had spoken of
the dethroning of the gods and the exaltations of the other
gods, and this obviously in certain mythologies, had turned
oust to be battles for power and position. All these are
due to the rajasic and tamasic ways of looking at the
concept of the supreme power. Sectarian squabbles or
religious fratricides issue from the non-possession of
knowledge or ignorance of the divine nature. Sri
Ramakrishna showed by his example how all are one being
but the names of the One godhead, or rather all ultimately
refer to the One supreme Godhead whose embodiments
and name they are (nama-rupa distinctions).
161
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Two monumental statues adorn the Madras Beach.
They are near each other. They are of two eminent sons of
India who have changed the direction of Indian history in
respect of its religious freedom and political
emancipation. Both were under fire from forces which had
emasculated India, and yet in a sense both were
necessary to enable us to gain our freedom through a
double or twofold renaissance in religion and politics. They
are Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi. Both made
religion their total concern, but it was a religion that sought
both here and hereafter a freedom from all shackles that
prevented every single human being from recovering that
inherent right to be free, and that meant freedom in an
integral sense through religious dedication. Both these
statues are austere: one is that of a ‘wanderer’ who
walked the length and breadth of India to feel the very mud
and soil of India, sacred to all seers and seekers alike,
and the other who donned the loin cloth - a naked fakir as
one contemptuously called him -who felt his oneness with
all the downtrodden and the dispossessed. Both have their
staff of service, illumination, renunciation and dedication
to the One supreme Divine, the One God of all the peoples
of the world. Both spelled out the goal of Humanity to be
what the Ancient Seers of India had envisioned for eternity
- dedication to truth, and renunciation (anasakti in the
language of Gandhiji). They spoke with the unadulterated
eloquence of the heart. Compassion ruled and guided their
steps. High idealism combined with that occult practicality
which goes with simplicity and spirituality was their inner
light and motivating force.
162
 India had a message to deliver and a work to do, a
contribution to make to the welfare and higher evolution
of the world. It was undoubtedly a great endeavour; no one
uttered this inner message in such clear terms, perhaps
none ever uttered it earlier. The singular call to Hinduism
to become a universal religion had something of
captivating magnetism; it was a call to awake from slumber
- Vivekananda was ever fond of raising this call Uttistata
Jagrata, arise! awake! It was an eye-opener to India
herself that she had use for God in His stupendous
creation, and for the founding of a Universal religion.
Vivekananda, the saintly Monk, was the elder and
he stimulated and fired the imagination of world youth, and
of Indian youth in particular to dedicate themselves as
sannyasins to carry the message to all over the World.
No one escaped his magic and charm; his high
eloquence thrilled and filled the hearts and heads of one
and all. He initiated the whole nation to a new vision; the
whole world to a new aspiration that would build up an
enduring spiritual unity of the West and East.
Swami Vivekananda, in one of his writings, said that
there should be a college at Madras for the study of
comparitive religion in order to foster mutual understanding
that would help the realisation of the ideal of one Universal
religion, rather than have competing religions each trying
by mutual criticism to arrive at universality of helping all
humanity. In so far as that study spelled out the goal and
ideal of universal Religion he had no doubt that Vedanta
would naturally be accepted as the best candidate for that
163
position. Vedanta, for Swami Vivekananda, meant only
Advaita or Non-dualism or Monism, the Unity or
Universality principle which is basic to all processes of
thought itself. Though thought everywhere analyses, it is
yet seeking for that which unites all and integrates all, and
as such a rational religion cannot stay at the stage of
division. It is impelled by the logic of its nature to seek to
become a universal principle as well as a uniting principle.
So when one applies the same unifying principle, or seeks
to discover it as ever present in all systems and
experiences, it is clearly reasonable to expect that such
principles could be discovered.
The field of investigation is not the field of reason,
abstract or practical, or even aesthetic, but the field of
religious experiences themselves. Religious
experiences in the various religions have however
developed certain dogmas or articles of faith not
subject to reason or understanding, and were thus
opaque to intellectual investigation. Therefore one had
to search for the rationale or meaning of these dogmas
- not an easy process as these are said to come
intuitively or through revelation. It is only the Indian
seers who discovered that in the sphere of revelations
the ordinary principles of non-self-contradiction
(badhita) should not be applied but samanvaya or
harmonisation of even the mutually contradictory
revelations or vakyas should be undertaken. This is the
contribution of Mimamsa as distinguished from tarka
or nyaya, in the field of logic of revelation.
164
 This was the reason why linguistic and grammatical
interpretations and analysis of the texts became a serious
field of study requisite for interpreting the vedic texts. But
this by itself takes one nowhere if the experiences or
intuitions are absolutely unverifiable, which indeed they
happen to be to many of the scholars averse to spiritual
awakening, or unfitted for it. The awakening of man to this
intuitive region or area of experience is to awaken him
also to the harmony of the religious doctrines, not only on
the basis of partial truths which they tend to represent, but
also to affirm that they are capable of leading to the
apprehension of the Whole truth. Each religion, in its
dynamic condition as a living religion of some at least of
its members, has its nisus to the One supreme Being or
God, and in this sense wholly becomes sufficient for the
purpose of realisation.
Swami Vivekananda continued the spiritual insight
sanctified by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa by
formulating the main form of the Universal Religion, that
was to be.
His own clear statement is that by the study of
comparitive religion two conclusions, both scientific in
nature, could be drawn.
“I would like to draw your attention to the one that
bears upon the universality of religions, and the
other, on the idea of the oneness of things”.*
He had a definite idea that religion essentially
belongs to the supersenauous.
* Complete works of Swami Vivekanand Vol. III p.185
165
“Religion belongs to the supersensuous and not
to the sense plane . . . It is beyond all reasoning
and is not on the plane of the intellect . . .It is a
vision, an inspiration, a plunge into the unknown
and unknowable, making the unknowable more
than known.” **
He avers also that it is wrong to think that this vision
or inspiration could be called such, for really it is something
that comes out of the individual.
“What is called inspiration by other sects, the
Vedantin begs the liberty to call the expiration
of man (for all energy is really from inside
flowing out)." 1
“Religions do not come from without but from
within.” 2
It is usual to think that so far as knowledge of
external objects is concerned it is acquired through the
mediation of the senses and the mind, which are
extroverted in the sense that their objects are outside
themselves, and which they bring to the soul to
experience. These are questioned by philosophers, for
all knowledge so got is subject to the individual’s sense-
organs and mind, and are distorted and discoloured if
not wholly different from the nature of the objects outside
oneself. They can be false or illusory, or in one word,
** Complete works of Swami Vivekanand “ p.1
1 Complete works of Swami Vivekanand Vol. I p. 388
2 Complete works of Swami Vivekanand III p.2
166
untrustworthy; dubitable. The religious experience,
since it stems from the self or from within, is true.
“Religion brings to man eternal life” †
Man is driven by his external experiences brought to
him by the senses to go beyond or behind them, and is
driven to study that which makes such experiences
possible. This is an inevitable result of the very nature of
man. Since ‘religion permeate a the whole of man’s life’,
one seeks to integrate the two phases of his experience,
the outer and the inner. It is precisely this integration that
has been the problem of man through the ages, and it is a
problem both for science and religion.
Swami Vivekananda says
“Two theories have gained some acceptance amongst
modern scholars. One is the spirit-theory of religion,
the other the evolution or the idea of the Infinite. One
party maintains their ancestor worship is the beginning
of religious ideas the other that religion originates in
the personification of the powers of nature. Man wants
to keep the memory of his dead relatives and thinks
they are living even when the body is dissolved, and he
wants to place food for them and in a certain sense to
worship them. Out of that come the growth we call
religion.” ††
In Egyptian, Babylonian, Ionian, Chinese and many
other religions in America and elsewhere this ancestor
† Complete works of Swami Vivekanand Vol. III, p. 4
†† Complete works of Swami Vivekanand Vol.II, p.57
167
worship prevailed and formed the content of their religions.
Egyptians believed in the soul being a double, and it is
the double that went out of the body and yet lived on when
one died, (ibid) This is of course what survives and yet
many theories have originated as to where it abides or
wanders, and as to how it has to be propitiated. Swami
Vivekananda shows that it was even believed that when
the outer body was hurt the double was also injured. The
concept of ghosts and man’s experiences of the ghosts
form some of the most interesting features of western
legend and history of religion. It is well known that in Ancient
Hindu theory and in popular religions we have the belief in
ancestor worship - pitr-worship -burial customs and so on.
The belief in paisaca persists in all parts of the world and
there are good and bad varieties of these deceased spirits
which are believed to be disembodied spirits influencing
the lives of all. The Chinese are said to have this kind of
ancestor worship as the main content of their religion.
“The only religion that can really be said to flourish in
China is that of ancestor worship”, says Swami
Vivekananda (ibid).
He goes on to say
“On the other hand there are scholars who from the
ancient Aryan literature show that religion originated in
nature worship”, and that “though in India we find proofs of
ancestor worship elsewhere, yet in the oldest records there
is no trace of it whatsoever. In the Rg Veda sahmhita, the
most ancient record of the Aryan race we do not find any
trace of it.” (ibid)
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 Modern studies do clearly show that the religion of
the Vedic aryan had quite a strong element of wonder of
nature that led to the ‘personification of the powers of
nature’ - the unmistakable feeling of the presence of the
divine forces that operate through Nature as their inner,
psychological phase.
The theory of religion as ancestor-worship and as
personification of the powers of nature are apparently
contradictory, but they can be reconciled on a third basis -
a theory of struggle to transcend the limitation of the
senses. This is the view of Swami Vivekananda - his
theory of religion as the struggle to transcend the
limitations of senses, (p.59. Vol.11). Though science may
be objective knowledge or knowledge of outer objects etc,
it has to be known that all such knowledge is for a subject.
Similarly religion tends to grant inner knowledge or
knowledge of the self, and this has to be related to the
outer world. If the inner knowledge is of the eternal, that
which is outer knowledge is of the transitory. And these
have to be fused or integrated. Religion therefore has
also to establish the relation between the eternal soul and
transitory nature. Further it has its primary function of
revealing the ‘eternal relation between the eternal soul and
the eternal God’. (Vol III. p.2)
The important problem therefore is really a triune one,
how is the world related to the man or soul and Cod, and
how is the soul related to the Divine. We cannot, really
speaking, reject any one of these three knowledges, ie.
science, religion or mysticism. It is one of the most
169
characteristic signs of the modern Age that science has
made leaps undreamt of in respect of the knowledge of
matter, motion, energy, life, and mind, and philosophers
of science have been breaking across the frontiers that
had previously separated the several sciences. The
dividing lines between matter energy, life and mind are
getting abolished. Verification of the ancient intuitions of
Samkhya and yoga is to be had in ample measure.
Therefore one of the challenges to dualistic thought is
being posed; unification of knowledge pertaining to the
external world has to be supported by the knowledge of
the inner being that is living and growing in it, and this is a
province of philosophy. Swami Vivekananda visualised
this development and welcomed this influence, for the more
one pursues these studies of science the more clearly it
would be evident that all these are phenomenal,
mere appearance, that is to say, there is only One Being
that appears in manifold ways. (Vol. IV. p. 188).
Man has an idea, says Swami Vivekananda, that
there can be only one religion and there can be only one
prophet and that there can be one incarnation. (Vol.IV. p
120) but this is not true for there are many religions based
on One universal religion.
“It is a most glorious dispensation of the Lord that
there are so many religions in the world; and would to God
that these would increase every day until every man had a
religion to himself” (Vol.VI. p.17)
Therefore it follows that each individual should
become a prophet.
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 “Religion is for the training of the prophets;
schools and colleges should be training grounds
for prophets” (Vol.VI p.10)
And so also each individual should become an
incarnation and temple of God, and thus all could aspire
to become incarnations of the One God. (Vo.I. p.332)
In speaking about the ideal of a universal Religion
Swami Vivekananda emphasized the universal aspects
of every religion available to our study. Every religion has
a book, a sacred literature, which comprises the vision
and intuitions of the founder or founders. This is its
revelation. It is beyond the scope of reasoning, though
every attempt at philosophising or rationalising it for
communication and understanding proceeds within the
limits of these intuitions or body of intuitions. There is a
mythology in every religion; a religion without mythology
is inconceivable, for a myth is the means by which the
supersensuous truths and history of the spirit are
communicated through symbolic representations. It is true
that many of these myths get mixed up with superstition
and other lower-order symbols, or symbols of the vamacara
so to speak, that degrades the myth’s utility for religious
and spiritual illumination! Myths that lead to the intuition
or revelation of highest Oneness are real myths.* Myths
must touch the heart and lead men to the heart of hearts,
The myths of Hinduism have this dynamic quality. Swami
Vivekananda has narrated the stories of Prahlada and
*1.Complete works of Sami Vivekanand Vol. II p. 7 ff
Vol. II. p. 374 ff
Vol. II. p.122-141
171
others found in the Mahabharata, Ramayana, etc., and
about the sages of India, which have a profound
interpenetration of myth and history of spirit. Myths are the
spiritual history of a religious experience and should not
be dealt with in a gross manner. As plato said it is
necessary to review our myths and communicate the
elevating myths whilst throwing out the myths that tend to
degrade the character of the gods and so on. Indian
puranas had suffered from this, and therefore it is usual to
divide them into three kinds, the sattvika, (pure and
elevating, spiritual), the rajasic (confusing and passion-
provoking) and tamasic (demoniac and producing
ignorance). So too the care exercised in the
communication of the truths of the puranas and itihasas
was left to disciplined men or teachers.
‘The teacher of religin must be perfectly pure, and
then alone comes the value of his words, because
he is only then the true ‘transmitter’. What can be
transmit if he has not spiritual power in himself. There
must be the worthy vibration of spirituality in the mind
of the teacher. (Vol. III. P. 51).
All knowledge flowing through such a mind, whether
it is mystical experience, or philosophy, or myth, or ritual,
is to be true and to lead to illumination and destruction of
ignorance and doubt.
“Religious thought should be directed to developing
man’s spiritual side. Science, art, learning and
metaphysical research all have their proper functions
in life, but if you seek to blend them, you destroy their
172
 individual characteristics until, in time, you eliminate
the spiritual for instance, from the religious
altogether”. This should remind us about this danger,
great indeed today.
After mythology, which is symbolic and elevating and
capable of illumining and making concrete the spiritual
experiences, come the rituals. Every ritual is a certain
process of worshipping the Divine, or communicating in
terms of the visible the invisible or connecting them with
each other.
“First man becomes a thinker. When you think upon
a problem there is no sense-enjoyment there but the
exquisite delight of thought... It is that that makes the
man... Concentration comes. You no longer feel your
body. Your senses have stopped. You are above all
physical senses. All that was manifesting itself
through the senses is concentrated upon that one
idea. That moment you are higher than the animal.
You get the revelation none can take from you - a
direct perception of something higher than the body...
Therein lies the goal of man not upon the plane of
the senses”. (Vol. VI. p. 68)
Ritual is the homage that one pays to the
transcendent experience.
Thus revelation or mystical experience of the Divine
Oneness expresses itself for rationality in terms of
philosophy, symbolises itself in terms of myth, and
ritualises itself in terms of visible worship and
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performance. The element of history of the spiritual life,
and its growth and expression, is also necessary to make
religious experiences not merely personal to any one but
ultimately available to everybody. It is one of the great
businesses of religious institutions to preserve all the four.
The form the structure and pattern of all religions. Similarly
it has to be the pattern of the Universal Religion.
It is clear also that a study of the several religions
would reveal certain definite differentiations which might
help us to arrange them as equally beneficial, or otherwise
in relative grades.
“Fortunately for me 1 studied the Christian religion,
the Mohammedan, the Buddhist and others - all of
them have the same foundation”. (Vol.1 p. 300)
Swami Vivekananda however writes elsewhere (Vol.
VIII. p. 122 ff) that where other religions depend on a book
(scriptural writing by some writer or prophet), inculcate
veneration of some person, and also insist that what he
and that book speak are the whole truth and none else
speaks it, Vedanta does not believe in any of the above. It
does not believe in a book. Not only that, it affirms,
following the great literature of revelations the Upanisads,
that “not by reading of books can we realise the self. Nor
does it venerate any person - ‘not one man or woman has
ever become an object of worship among the Vedantins’
since God has entered into and has become every one
and everything’ - atmaiva abhut vijanatah. Whilst the
structure of religions is as above, comprising the
revelations, philosophy (dogma), myth, and ritual, which
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may be suggestive of the uniform nature of all religions
and the Universal Religion should have all these - it is yet
necessary to enquire as to the goals of these religions;
the purpose or governing dynamism of these religions in
order to find out what indeed could be the goal of a
universal religion.
Swami Vivekananda puts it
“Vedanta is concerned only with spirituality” (Vol.VIII
p.126)
“It is concerned only with the impersonal Godhead,
and not any person however eminent.” (Vol.VIII p.127)
“God is the infinite Impersonal Being - the ever
existent”, (ibid.134)
“It is true that he can also be personal but in a different
sense from what person - worshippers make it out.”
The most prominent idea in religion for India is
Mukti - freedom from all bondage to the cycle of births
and deaths.
“This moksa path is only in India and no where else”
(Vol.446)
For the western world it is dharma or justice. It is the
most vital concept in Greek philosophy as well politics,
and so it is perhaps in respect of all worldly life. But religion
is not a handmaid of politics nor is to be useful to it.
In India too the importance of dharma is not minimised.
“Dharma is impelling every one day and night to run
after and work for happiness. Spiritual independence is
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the real aspiration, purusartha of India. This is our national
purpose: whether you take the vaidiki, the jaina or the
bauddha, the Advaita, visistad-vaita or the dvaita - there
they are all of one mind.” (Vol.VII.p.458)
The true quality of moksa is the attainment of
liberation and this is the essence of spirituality. The
history of India reveals that so long as this purusartha, and
so long as every individual is free from interference in his
pursuit of moksa, India keeps silence: “but if you run foul
of him there, beware you court your ruin.” (ibid). The most
sacred and the highest purusartha is that alone for the
spiritual man. It can be easily seen that this purusartha is
not the most important for the other religions, for they seek
dharma or kama or artha in terms of this world and God or
religion is only a means for their realisation. The
materialistic note is very strong in most of them: the
happiness of heaven is but a replica of that courted on
earth through austerity and fasting; the bringing down of
the Kingdom of God on earth is but the search for a happy
kingdom of justice, and the operation of the Tao is but the
harmony of naturalness in this world. Thus the Universal
Religion must have the power to guide man to his finest
goal, of freedom from all bondage, from all ignorance and
one experiences God.
“Unless religion makes you realise God it is useless”.
(p.326)
There are of course many who might accept that
religion must end in the realisation of God within one’s
heart or within oneself. The realisation itself has to be
176
understood as liberation by such people. There are of
course others who consider that even this realisation of
God is not the end, but only that which goes beyond the
bondage of God, that experience which is that of pure
unadulterated freedom - namely Absolute Freedom.
Swami Vivekananda states that his study of religions
has made him realise that there are three different stages
of ideas in religion:
1. There is a certain thing, that does not perish but is
Immutable - this is the soul.
2. Though the soul is perfect it has fallen (into ignorance
or sin) and it has to regain its purity.
3. The eternity of the human soul has to assert itself in
terms of assertion of its freedom.
These three ideas, viz., the doctrine of the soul, the
dogma of its perfection and fall, and the dogma of
immortality and freedom, inform all religious intuitions.
A universal religion would have to accept and explain these
three as integral to one another. These are intuitions of
the seers. No proofs of reasoning based on sensory
experiences could be useful. Further, the second dogma
would insist on explaining the fall and the return. The fall is
into matter or prakrti, a kind of pravrtti according to
Samkhya, a plunge in inconscience or acit, and which is
due to an original karma of transgression or beginingless
attraction or desire to experience or know prakrti, the
external reality, the forbidden fruit, or the fruit that makes
life a misery. It is through a series of lives that one evolves
upward towards release from matter and its products, and
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realises one’s Immortal self-nature. Therefore there is
reincarnation and almost all religions accept it, though the
Christians have denied it owing to mistaking it. There
perhaps would be no rebirth once the Divine has been
sought and one has been accepted through perfect
surrender or conversion. The movement upward is
undoubtedly a struggle and
“the struggle which we observe in the animal kingdom
for the preservation of its gross body obtains in the
human plane of existence for gaining mastery over
the mind or for attaining the state of balance.”
(Vol. VI I. p. 155)
The perfection is something there but is manifested
more and more. The perfection that is potent and eternally
therefore within the soul, gets manifested in evolution
through a series of struggles in the animal level; struggles
for the preservation or rather the perfecting of the body to
be an adequate manifestation of the hidden Divine within
At the level of the human it is not so much the body that
one seeks to protect but the mind and its growth.
“We have become bodies. That we are souls we have
forgotten entirely. When we think of ourselves it is the
body that comes into our Imagination. We behave as
bodies: we talk as bodies. We are all body. From this
body we have to separate the soul. Therefore training
begins with the body itself (until) ultimately the spirit
manifests itself... The Central idea in all this training
(yoga) is to attain to that power of concentration,
the power of meditation.” (Vol. VII .p. 435)
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 The important idea is also the growth of this
consciousness of the soulnsss of ourselves and a
detachment from the body-ness of ourselves. This is the
ascent through matter, by bringing it more and more under
the control of the spirit and to be organised by it.
Swami Vivekananda could visualise the importance
of the diversity for the revelation or manifestation of the
perfection of the Spirit as spirit. In a letter to Miss Noble,
he writes:
“My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and
that is to preach unto mankind their divinity and how
to make it manifest in every movement of life”.
(Vol. VII. p.189)
As it is, the religions ‘have become mockeries’ for
they have not cared for this great nisus in all existence
towards the manifestation of the divinity within; this
perfection that is operating in and through all the descent
and ascent of evolution, in the pravrtti as in the nivrtti. If
the former reveals the divinity secret in Nature, the latter
reveals the divinity in soul. Thus one is enabled to assert
that the One Spirit has always remained the spirit. This is
something that can be realised here and now.
“Vedanta teaches that religion is here and now,
because the question of this life and that life, of life
and death, this world and that world, is merely one of
superstition and prejudice...
Religion is to be realised now. For you to become
religious means that you will start without any religion,
179
work your way up and realise things. See things for
yourself, and then when you have done that then and
then alone you have religion.” (Vol. VI .p. 13)
Affirming that all religion must lead to realisation as
the means to this glorious end, the fact remains that these
institutions of religion, such as the reverence for a book, a
person, or its ingredients such as its ritual or myth or all
these could stifle the growth.
Swami Vivekananda illustrates that worship of these,
or merely holding on to them, is superstition for they are
like the man who wished to produce rain by crushing the
pancanga or the rain predicting almanac. (Vol.1, p/326).
When men take to the sincere spirit of religion, which is
realisation and growth, into widest experience of God
everywhere, everywhen and in all souls, then we have
realised the truths of the dogmas, rituals, personalities and
myths. Without this inward light that is most important these
would continue to remain bondages or superstitions.
Gloriously Swami Vivekananda states
“We want to lead mankind to a place where there is
neither the Vedas nor the Bible nor the Koran: yet
this has to be done by harmonizing the Vedas, the
Bible and the Koran.
Mankind has to be taught that religions are but the
varied expressions of the Religion, which is Oneness,
so that each may choose the path which suits him
best.” (Vol.IV.p.415-l6)
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 Thus the multiplicity of religions is possibly due to
historical contingencies, or due to requirements of
evolutionary stages. The ancient division of men into the
divine and the titan, the up-goers and down-goers, the
spiritually ascending and the materialistic explorers of the
diversity is wellknown. There can be another classification
that relates to those who have the quality of equalleness,
equanimity, harmonisation, and existentiality of the spiritual
nature of sattva in one word; there are those who wish a
passional-emotional approach to all existence which they
seek to secure through force and will and egoism, this is
the rajas, type. A third type is down-going towards
ignorance, sloth and rest and pleasures of this order, but
might also, in conjunction with rajas, lead to wickedness,
violence and other vices which are practised with avidity
and wantonness. A still further classification may help us
to think of four kinds of men as workers; as followers of
the path of karma, the followers of love (bhakti), the
followers of dhyana or meditation (rajayoga), and the
followers of ultimate knowledge (Jnani).
Though in the world we have only mixed types of
these classifications, each individual has to discover for
himself what suite him best. Further, one may pass from
one discipline to another and in his life evolve an inte-
gration of all these for the Ultimate purpose of self-
realisation or liberation.
It is possible perhaps to have other types of
classifications based on epistemology, such as those who
are instinct-dependent, those who are intellect-dependent
181
and those who are inspiration-dependent for their
knowledge of the world, and their action within it. Attempts
have been made to synthesise these types but it is clear
that many factors are involved and the arrangement of
individuals in any scheme becomes extremely difficult, for
cross-classifications are always possible. All this makes
the study of psychological types important, and in addition
there is the socio-functional type based on brahmana
(priest-prophet), ksatriaya (warrior-yogi), vaisya (citizen
merchant) and sudra (the worker). The ancients, in
addition, had both a common usuage and an etymological
usage of the terms they used. All these make religious
classification on the basis of fitness and heredity very
difficult.
Swami Vivekananda has not classified the religions
into any scheme as such, but he made a profound
suggestion that Vedanta has so fixed its ideal as to
embrace all these four types of worker, love, meditator
(dhyani) and the jnani (knower of God or Reality).
“The fourfold man is the ideal of Universal Religion.
Tolerance, compassion, diligence, and skill in work
of each, dedication and love, concentration and union
and knowledge of God as self as one’s self”
These are verily to be possessed by one who has
perfected himself. Such is a perfect man. In him, as the
Samkhya says, there is aisvarya, virya, jnana and sakti
which are perfections of the buddhi or intelligence of the
liberated one. Such a personality is rare indeed, but not
impossible.
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 This classification has made for the discovery of the
essential features of each one of the religions, the
dominant note of each one of them, and the areas of their
flourishing and the decline of each one of them in the lives
of its members, till today most religions are just
denominations or political groupings preventing the ‘open’
religion operating in the lives of each one of its members.
It is not, therefore, an accident that Swami Vivekananda
was teaching the ‘openness’ of Universal Religion that
included the most abstract, that sublated and sublimated
the rest - such as he discerned in the Vedanta. Oneness
includes all, and manifests in all, and realises itself in all
and through all. But in this latter process there is the
invariable fact that certain features, aspirations and phases
get emphasised or exaggerated, and certain others get
thrown into the background and eclipsed.
We have explained how Swami Vivekananda arrived
at the principles of Universal Religion, though it must be clear
that he sketched the broad outlines only. He did not enter
into comparitive mythology and comparitive ritualism, for
these too are constituents. Neither the purely eschatological
conception of the soul and a religion based on ancestor
worship, nor the purely naturalistic concept or rather divination
of the powers of nature attracted the real spirituality of religion.
As we divinise or apotheosise the parent, and incidentally
all those who belong to the line of ancestors -a fact that has
occurred from most ancient times as for example the great
scriptural text that asks us to apotheosise the Father and
Mother and Acarya or Teacher - matr devo bhava pitr-devo
bhava, acarya devo bhava - make thy father, thy mother and
183
thy teacher thy Gods - similarly the powers behind Nature
were apotheosized. Indeed, in regard to the state, the
King has been apotheosised. It would be wrong to regard
these as anthropomorphical -humanizing; they should rather
be regarded as divinising or exalting. Indeed the same
tendency can be seen when great spiritual leaders or those
who have rendered some service to society are raised to
the level of worship. Saint-hood is conferred on many, even
as Godhood is being conferred. There is undoubtedly a great
tendency towards the goal of transcendence. AS Swsmi
Vivekananda has pointed out, the struggle to transcend the
psychological, relational, and natural and thus attain to divinity
seems to include both the theories of apotheosization of the
ancestors and the powers of nature. All beings and things
aspire towards divinisation, and surely it is there because
they are in the germ, or root, or potentiality all that. Universal
religion, then, can be expressed as the Aspiration of all things
conscious, unconscious, or superconscious towards
divinisation which is One only.
This aspect of religion as the nisus to transcendence
of the natural and the human and the psychological is a great
intuition. TO achieve this purpose it becomes inevitable that
one must denaturalise as well as de-anthropomorphize one’s
realities of the mundane world whilst yet divinising or
apotheosising them. Philosophical necessity for this process
is to de-realise the world by the concept of Maya or illusive
power of human imagination, which indeed is what is central
to the problem of correction (siksa). We have to take into
consideration our goal, which is divinisation - becoming
divine in all our parts in essence as in expression - we have
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to consider our means - which is the de-realisation of our
experiences at our level so as to awaken the inner divine
illumination steadily present as the divine within us - and this
means the acceptance of the world as tuccha, as asat, as
unreal, a product of imaginative identity, that which is not the
nisus, the goal, the Divine. This is the central aspect of the
rationale for the theory of Oneness of the Divine, for the
correlative theory of Maya of the visible reality of sense and
desires other than the highest. Once this is grasped, it
becomes possible to see that all religions in some measure
evolve when affirming the reality of the worlds of their
experience knowledge, and affirm their mixedness with
delusion, illusion, passion, puerility, sorrow, pain and
continuing precariousness and bondage.
So clearly is this seen in the lives of the saints.
Yamunacarya the initiator of the Visistadvaita philosophy, and
who inspired Sri Ramanuja, has sung that the real mother,
father, relative and friend is all the One Godhead beyond
compare. This transference of the centre of affection from
the human parent to the divine is itself a significant result of
the experiences of man with his relatives and all. However,
this evolution of the individual towards discovery of that which
is really the source as well as the worthwhile object of one’s
love, service, dedication and freedom, is a fact that occurs
only after a series of lives lived, and by living which it has
been discovered that no individual soul can be that Object
and that God alone is that Object. Mankind has worshipped
parents, friends, kings and teachers too, but all have been
found to fall below the standard. That which is the highest
and the source of all these becomes the One object of
worship and love and all.
185
Similarly, worshipping powers of nature, man has
through a series of lives come to regard the absolute
Transcendent Para as the Object of his service, devotion,
love and union.
The ancient method of elimination of the imperfect as
“not this” or “not that” which is sought after is equally operative
in this field of unconscious, self-conscious, conscious and
super-conscious rejection of the non-ultimate, or renunciation
of the lower. But one seeks to discover in the higher that which
is wanting in the lower, and yet not wanting in that in which
the imperfect abounds.
Thus does Jnana become fuller and fuller, perfect and real.
Thus Swami Vivekananda, in giving the proper place
to maya, reveals its double-edged condition, its presenting
a value that is not ultimate and indeed diverting one from the
Ultimate, and making enjoyment of its technique more
important than its knowledge. The renunciation of enjoyment
of what is seen or experienced is the first significant result of
the concept of unreality that makes for the dawn of the true
nature of what one has necessarily to seek.
As a philosophical or logical proposition maya is difficult
to explain as the principle of man’s fall, and so has it been
shown by the great acaryas opposed to it as a philosophical
doctrine, though in practice these have not valued the world
any the whit better. Swami Vivekananda, holding as he does
both ends of knowledge-renunciation and religious
experience, is able to restore to true proportions the play of
logic, psychology and spiritual goal-nisus.
186
 SWAMI VIVEKANANDA &
UNIVERSAL RELIGION
LECTURE - II
Any inductive approach to the formulation of the
principles of an universal religion would tend more and
more to extreme generality. Considered in this sense
we have, in the Vedanta as presented by Swami
Vivekananda, the dominant characteristics i.e. the
Impersonal which is beyond all personalisms, either of
Gods or men; but this includes all these because this
principle or Absolute is generalised from these several
formulations. Taken as a principle, there is hardly any
doubt that the Absolute must be impersonal. This is the
philosophical truth. But once the same is approached
from the point of religion the Absolute becomes the
Ultimate person; the One Purusa or Puru-sottama. Thus
the Ultimate pramana is not reasoning or the books as
such, but the experience to which all seers and prophets
bear witness as being beyond reasoning, mentation,
sensation, etc. This experience is not capable of being
produced by any individual effort whatsoever, however
eminent one may be; it is something that descends from
the Ultimate and delivers its message and vision and
i tself finally. It is this that makes all inductive
presentations of the Ultimates of Religion only general
but not quite universal; all generalisation being
processes of comparison and selection according to
classification that one arbitrarily chooses.
187
The other process by which one can come to a
formulation of the principles of an Universal Religion can be
the study of the history of evolution of Religions. It must be
remembered that given the same situations, the existing
religions would take the same shape or form in regard to
philosophy, myth and ritual.
The development of the idea of God can proceed from
the primitive to the advanced conceptions through several
stages. Starting with the evolution of the idea in the West,
Swami Vivekananda says
“The Babylonians and the jews were divided into many
tribes, each tribe having a god of its own, and these
little tribal gods had often a generic name. The gods
among the Babylonians were all called Baal, and
among them Baal Marodach was the chief. In course
of time one of these many tribes would conquer and
assimilate the other racially allied tribes and the natural
result would be that the god of the conquering tribe
would be placed at the head of all the gods of the other
tribes. Thus the boasted Monotheism of the Semites
was created. Among the Jews the gods went by the
name of Moloch. Of these there was one Moloch
belonged to the tribe called Isreal, and he was called
the Moloch-Yahve or Moloch-Yava.” (Vol.III.p.l85)
“In time this tribe of Isreal slowly conquered some of
the other tribes of the same race, destroyed their Moloch
and declared its own Moloch to be the supreme Moloch
of all molochs. And I am sure most of you know the
amount of bloodshed, of tyranny, and of brutal
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 savagery that this religion entailed. Later on the Baby-
lonians tried to destroy this supremacy of Moloch
Yahva but could not succeed in doing so.”
(Vol.III.p.186)
Swami Vivekananda thus shows how monotheism
has been established as a handmaid or corollary of
imperialistic political designs and not because of any
essential nisus in the spiritual quest for the one God -
Ekam Sat. This of course has been the traditional mode
for quite a long time in almost all religions tarred by the
Semitic hopes of world dominion. Despite the statement
of the prophet that His Kingdom was not of this world, the
semitics have not been able to sublimate their materialistic
empire of the Kingdom on Earth.
Swami Vivekananda also essays the evolution of the
religions (Vol.1,p.323 & 324) from nature worship, which
has as many gods as the many phenomena of nature. This
is followed by the conception of the necessity for integra-
tion of the several departments of nature, and that made
them divine the existence of the One Overlord God who
was raised to the status of the Sovereign or the greatest
among them. Then it was seen that all other gods were
subordinates, and were subservient to, and became
supported by, the Highest - a concept that led to only one
being called God; the rest were not God but demi-gods or
angels and so on. This led to the application of the names
of all gods to the One God - and all functions being
transferred to Him alone.When one calls God by any name,
even by the names that one applied previously to the
189
nature gods, they were explained as referring directly, if
not indirectly to that One God. For this, of course,
philological and etymological derivations were invented
or devised.
In Monotheism also there have been three
statuses. The One God may be conceived as an Extra-
Cosmic Deity, who created the world and governed it,
staying outside it as the Overlord. Secondly He was
considered as immanent in Mature and supporting its
evolution and history, both on the whole and in each
one of its members. Third, as the Divine in oneself as
one’s self and establishing His Kingdom eminently in
the heart of man, the seeker, the mystic. Perhaps all
these three statusses of God are capable of being
considered as co-existent statusses or, permanent
statusses, though potentially. These three may be
thought of as stages of growth according to the capacity
of the individual seeker, but it is just possible also to
hold them as three eternal statusses of the One
Impersonal but ‘living’ Godhead. Swami Vivekananda
seems to be quite aware of the lurking view that the
impersonal does not include livingness,
and emphasizes that fullest freedom that is spirit is
available to it.
The whole problem of creation is the problem of
how the Impersonal one could bring into being the
personal, and also how the infinite diversity could be
there at all. He says
190
 “I will tell you my discovery. All of religions are
contained in the Vedanta, that is in the three stages
of the Vedanta Philosophy, the dvaita, the
visishtadvaita and advaita, one comes after the other.
These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man,
each one is necessary. This is the essential of
religion.
The Vedanta applied to the various ethnic customs
and creeds of India is Hinduism. The first stage, i.e.
Dvaita-applied to the ethnic groups of Europe is
Christianity; as applied to semitic groups it is
Mohemmedanism.
The Advaita as applied in its yoga perception form
is Buddhism. Now by religion is meant the Vedanta.
The applications must vary according to different
needs, surroundings and other circumstances of
different nations.” (Vol.V. p.82)
On another occasion he has stated, “My religion is
one of which Christianity is an off-shoot and Buddhism a
rebel child,” (Vol.VI.p.105)*
* It can be seen that there is no mention of Visistadvaita, It is
clear that though Vivekananda had devoted his study of visistadvaita
to bhakti and his work on bhakti yoga is a neat presentation yet his
specific omission of Visistadvaita in this context is significant. His
own conception of Advaita that it at once includes diversity and
excludes it also reveals that his major concern was only to make all
accept the view that There is one Religion, the Vedanta, the Universal,
all-inclusive Oneness or One. When asked why he preached Advaita
he said “To rouse up the hearts of men to show them the glory of the
souls. I do so not as a sectarian -but upon universal and widely
acceptable grounds. (Vol. III .p.191)
191
His own philosphical statements reveal his originality
towards synthesis:
“Monism and dualism are essentially the same. The
difference consists in the expression. As the dualists
hold the father and son to be two, monists hold them
to be really one. Dualism is in Nature, in
manifestation; monism is pure spirituality in the
essence. Religion is the realisation of spirit as spirit,
not spirit as matter.” (Vol.VI.p.98)
While it is contended by theologians that
philosophical thinking leads to the Impersonal Universal
principle, religion aims at presenting the Ultimate as
personal universal Deity.
Swami Vivekananda writes
“Man can become Brahman but not God. If anybody
becomes God show me his creation. Visvamitra’s
creation is his own imagination. It should have
obeyed his law.” (Vol.IV.p.112)
This is clearly to reveal that philosophical or even
mystical ontology is not easily capable of religious
ontology. It is difficult to try to prove the mystical ontology
by means of our sensuous experiences, for, as Swami
Vivekananda states, religion belongs to the
supersensuous, and the logic of sense and sense-
dependent rationality or inference cannot lead to it.
Swami Vivekananda considers the constituents of
other religions, especially Christianity.
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 Their problems concern the relationship between the
creator and creature; the existence of Heaven and God in
it; the reality of sin, and the belief in a personal God, who
is omniscient and incarnating once for the redeeming of
the souls.
The Vedanta he wishes to present is one which
negates all these beliefs.
“There is indeed no creation and no creatures.
Existence always has been. The idea of God in
heaven is crass materialism. What is to be believed
is the God in every one. God is in every one, has
become every one and everything.” (Vol.VIII.p.125)
“He also holds that there is only one sin, and that is
to believe that one is a sinner. Certainly the
impersonal God gives infinitely more happiness than
the personal God can.” * (ibid.127) One need not go
out of oneself to know the truth. (ibid. p.128)
If then we see things differently, and as created, and
as matter, it is also to be noted that all this is mere
appearance. Of course all are appearances of divine
presence, not of nothing. All that is a formulation of thought;
‘whatever you dream and think of, you create.’ All these
are creations of dream and of thought.
* Vol.V.p.l46 : “The one great lesson I was taught is that life is misery,
nothing but misery” - echoeing the words of Buddha and
of Samkhya. The great incentive to renunciation of the
world. The world-negating philosophies arise from this.
So too, or consequent on this, the earnestness to remove
the load of human misery - love of hunanity, the feeling of
brotherhood of all men, and the divinity in all perceived
under such conditions.
193
This difference between appearance and reality is
sought to be explained in terms of Maya or illusoriness or
laziness. “Men create personal Gods of whom they are
afraid. They have made themselves helpless and
dependent on others. We are so lazy.” (ibid.131)
“Our consciousness is linked up with or bound to the
body, and has itself become a bondage.”
(Vol.VII.p.58)
To liberate consciousness from its tie-up with the
body is to attain the state of liberation from matter or
materialism.
It is clear that Swami Vivekananda definitely
considers Maya as an instrument of illusion that makes
for diversity, variety, and materialism and so on. He does
not embark on the exposition as to how and why this is
produced from the Impersonal. Some are overwhelmed
by the illusoriness of nature, wherein everything is
changing and everything is misery, and renunciation seems
to be the only right way to attain mukti or even happiness.
The worship, or realisation of the Impersonal, which
obviously is used to refer to the transcendent which is
beyond human categories of thought, and is apprehended
only through direct revelation or illumination, is seen to be
more happiness-producing than the worship of personal
gods and gurus, since they are conditioned, and hence
productive of sorrows of different kinds, Man passes from
one relation to another and exploring all relations with
others of his own sex or otherwise, arrives at the conclusion
194
that one should go beyond all these relations - understood
not in the logical sense but in the human social sense.
Attachment to any one or even to all leads to misery. “Only
the Unconditioned, the Transcendent, seems to secure that
equality, that balance, that equanimity - samatva -. which
makes for profound association. God, then, is the,One with
whom any relationship whatsoever can never produce
misery or the occilation that takes place in the dvandva,,
ie the pairing of opposites whose result is sorrow and joy,
honour and dishonour, heat and cold, victory and defeat,
life and death, etc.
Indeed it is only when one gets the shock in ordinary
relationships that one turns his back on all relations - even
deserting or abandoning all social intercourse, and
becomes an avadhuta. Revulsion from family, from
throne and power and wealth, can happen, and the stories
of saints will reveal this phenomenon of renunciation which
becomes the stepping stone for some to the attachment
to God or the transcendent, whose attractiveness is
enhanced by such renunciation. No wonder all through
history renunciation has been honoured and worshipped -
and not the householder, the renunciation is said to be
equivalent to an illumination or knowledge which
consciously or unconsciously has prompted the
renunciations. Jnana-vairagya leads to a devotion to the
Highest, the para, transcendent, the Brahman, It is also
averred that only those who have risen to this level of
renunciation through discipline and knowledge of the
Ultimate are capable of having the insight into Brahman
as Transcendent to the processes of the world. Such a
195
person alone is qualified to enter into the Divine
Experience. Mercy, Purity, Love, all these begin to flow
out of him, and one recognizes the divine nature as
permeating him. The impersonal divine begins to
materialise itself in the human person; indeed the human
being becomes a person, as it were when the
Transcendent, impersonal, unconditioned Person enters
into him, and is manifested in him.
“We are” says Swami Vivekananda, ”born believers
in a personal religion” (Vol.IV.p.l2l).
It is because the Transcendent is, according to
Swami Vivekananda, what it is, that it is capable of
assuming all personalities or Ishta-devatas-varupas,
The Nature of Religion is essentially based on the
central concept of God. All religions are generally
theistic. Indeed it appears that they cannot do without
a God. No doubt the nature of God would vary with the
aspect that one holds to be the Object of worship -
o m n i p o t e n c e , o i n n i p e r v a s i v e n e s s , o m n i r e a l i t y,
omniscience and so on.
Buddhism, for example, may be said to do without a
God, but we find that Buddha became the God to whom
all buddhists surrender, and either without him or along
with him, Dharma became the Godhead. As it was pointed
out a whole pantheon of gods and bodhi-sattvas entered
into the picture of buddhist religious worship.
Jainism did not accept an Isvara, but its tirthankaras
quietly entered in, and occupied the place of God in jaina
196
worship. The liberated jainas became Isvaras possessed
of all siddhis, and beyond all bondage to karma-matter.
The Tao does duty for the Confucian God.
Religious fervour, which animates all religious
attitudes, will always set up an object of worship according
to its need, whether it is for cosmic order and liberation or
individual liberation, cosmic welfare or individual welfare.
Similarly, the religious ecstacy that one feels when
one contemplates the Omnipervasive or omnipresent
Being, or intuites His presence in each and every individual
and atom, is profoundly religious and mystical. The
Upanisads indeed speak of this super-personal purusa
who is universally present, and as such is every bit of it
wholly present everywhere. Ordinary persons are individual
human beings - their masks so to speak are human,
characterised by finite attributes and are limited. It is
inconceivable that such individuals could be everywhere
and in everything. So much so, persons have been ruled
out as capable of being omnipresent. Even to an
introspective vision, the fora of the Divine is not like any
gross form, or person as such. However the superhuman
Divine is not according to religious seeking just an
impersonal principle relieved of all limitations of persons,
masks of nan or creature. He is not just a law, either.
Philosophical impersonalism is natural to thought or
philosophical knowledge, but religious impersonaliam is
contrary to the genius of religious quest and aspiration.
Rational philosophy always thinks that the impersonal is
higher than the sensory personal, but it is clear that the
197
religious personal is higher, and more truly universal, than
the rational impersonal. Hence it is called super-personal.
It is at once concrete experience for the human individual
aspirant, and enters into intimate unitive relationships with
him, whilst yet maintaining in its universality the same
unitive relationship with all other selves and in fact with
the whole of reality, animate and inanimate.
It is this peculiar genius of religion that places it higher
than mere philosophy of the abstract reason, and
philosophical theology meets with specious difficulties
even when it seeks to reconcile the impersonal universal
with the universal personal.
The term impersonal has another significance. The
notion that whatever is personal (pauruseya) is imperfect
has become almost axiomatic in the consciousness of
philosophers. Therefore any source of knowledge that is
in any sense dependent on any person, however exalted
and that means any god even - is bound to imperfection
or vitiated by imperfections of all sorts. And it seems also
a fairly common opinion that gods also are misleaders,
illusionists and so on, and even prophets are said to be
sent from above to mislead mankind, with the ulterior
motive of weeding out or teaching the mass of mankind
the discrimination between the false and the true. Buddha
is thought to be one such avatar by some orthodox Hindu
thinkers. In any case the prophets of heretical sects are
classified as mis-leaders rather than as leaders. They are,
of course, caruvakas - sweet-tongued men, sophists,
hedonists and so on.
198
 Therefore it was claimed that the Vedas are a-
pauruseya, not owing their teaching to any person, human
or divine. They are eternal truths, and it is God who abides
by them. This impersonality being the characteristic of the
truths of the Veda, it becomes clear that Brahman, the
Ultimate Reality taught by it, must also be Impersonal if it
is to be free from all imperfections in respect of vakta, of
content, and communication.
Thus there is much to be said in favour of
philosophical truth and even reality with which it is identical
in the ultimate sense as impersonal. However it is an
impersonal which permits the personal in a special way
without imperfection and impurity. It may however be
equally argued that Personality may be such that it may
dissolve all impurity and present the Ultimate truth
impersonally, impartially and immutably too. This is the
dilemma of theism - the veracity of God. Is God imperfect
and thus incapable of granting true and ultimate knowledge
of all things and reality, in the philosophical sense as well
as the religious sense? If he is incapable it is dear he
cannot be God. A finite God, which is a hypothesis of some
thinkers who wish to explain the nature of the struggle
between good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust,
on the basis of God’s finite ness - if not in knowledge at
least in power - has provided quite a plausible solution to
the actuality of the ineffectiveness of virtue, against vice,
the impotency of good against the bad. The very concept
of a hero-God is clearly an acceptance of this ‘finiteness’,
though optimistically one could go on saying ‘satyameva
jayate’ - Truth alone triumphs (ultimately). The temporal
199
nature of this hope is such that it becomes almost a
mockery. However we are presented with this ahura mazda
- ahriman conflict the Rama-Ravana yuddha, Krishna-
Narakasura yuddha, and so on, taking us to the Indra-Vrtra
yuddha. Hindu thought has always held that the Vibhava
or Avatar-descent form of God is for the protection of the
good, the destruction of the wicked and the restoration of
the kingdom of righteousness or Justice on earth.
Swami Vivekananda, in his analysis of the
constituents of religion, has pointed out that religion
comprises a philosophy, a myth and a ritual. These three
elements are integral to one another. We may add that
philosophy itself is a rationalising, or rather
communicating verbal aspect, of a revealing experience.
Further, if religion is to be a natural growth in man, or if it
were to be something blossoming out of a revelational
datum, be this of the form of wonder or awe or the intuitive
flash or lightning as the Seer of the Kena Upanisad puts
it, then this philosophic form would not conform to the
patterns of dialectical or non-dialectical logic of the
intellect. This is the most important crux of the problem of
religious philosphy. Mystic intuitions or lightnings tear up
our logical categories, and transform the entire movement
of the ordinary popular mind. Sometimes it happens that
the popular mind preserves this genius of the supralogical
in its usage, whilst the intellect has kneaded the truth of
the supralogical out of shape.
Religious philosophy is not just our ordinary
philosophy which tries to explain scientifically or
200
materialistically, the gamut of human experiences. Its
avenues or paths of knowing are much more vast and more
penetrating than that of sensate philoephers who depend
on one or two like sensations and inference for
understanding. The struggle between philosophers and
mystics is only too well-known. It is a struggle of the
pramanas. Problems of conflict between intellectual
demands or criteria and intuitive demands or criteria have
bogged down much of our philosophical investigation.
Purists have always striven to put up exacting criteria, and
the parting of ways has occured again and again between
philosophy and religion.
The second conflict that has also arrested the march
of religion, or the growth of religious consciousness, has
been between the priest and the philosopher. In a sense it
was profoundly true that priests were claimed to have direct
experience of God or were God-possessed. Their worship
of God was intimate and covered their entire routine of
being. God-inspired, they were better fitted by their
spiritual vocation to guide others to that divine state. The
rite or ritual was originally a technique discovered by the
priest to put a person in rapport with the Divine Godhead,
his creator and saviour. The priest knew the technique
of yoga and was the Guru or Teacher of the path. He was
credited with this mysterious power of linking an individual
with the Infinite. He became a man of mystery. Mystery
cults grew up in order to provide schools of training for
this spiritual task, and these were also called schools of
regeneration. This is a universal phenomenon, and the
more interesting fact is that they became sacred persons
201
also. The aloofness enjoyed by some of these bred many
superstitions which were not always creditable or credible.
The interpretation of the spiritual act of yoga was
rather difficult. Mystic insights in many parts of the world
suffered this eclipse of meaning, and we have a host
of literature that remains undeciphered because of this
incommunicability of meaning about the technique. To
provide a philosophy for these becomes a necessity.
Men, trained in the higher way of intuitive realisation,
could hardly undertake the task of interpreting the same
to the lower mind. Their media of expression or
communication was through symbols, myths, or
gestures, and the use of unusual words which more
easily led to comprehension of meaning though not
amenable to analysis of experience. Primitive religions,
or rather religions which had lost the capacity even to
formulate a philosophical vocabulary of communication
have remained at this level of rite and symbol and
gesture, and have retained those techniques of
establishing communication or link with the supreme
power transcendental to all the powers that man has
known. This lag has in fact provided a second reason
for the split into priests (the custodians of mystical
insights and techniques) and the philosphers, who
curiously and genuinely seek to unravel the mysterious
ways of supralogical communication, Rarely have the
primitive religions provided the combination of priest-
philosopher which in Indian language we could call
divya-jnani and tattva- jnani or Alvar-Acarya.
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 It is a peculiar amalgam, this integration between the
revelational knowledge or experience and philosophical
understanding. It is seen that however primitive the
revelation is to the discerning philosophical mind, it reveals
layers of meaning and levels of insight. It is this peculiar
quality of the intuitive or revelational experience that
makes it different from the abstract unidimenaional nature
of intellectual understanding, even when it is granted a
synthetic-datum. Poetry has been the medium adopted by
some of the revelational seers, and it was recognized that
this poetic or prophetic capacity or ability was quite unlike
any that we know. Plato did not have much regard for the
poets of his day who only wrote about the natural and the
human reflected beauty, and who had hardly any access
to genuine Reality. The Kavi or Alvar is one who has delved
into the abyss of the Infinite, and speaks, or praises, or
adores the Infinite Transcendent, tended to repeat a
technique or rite that failed to bring about the experience.
The Reasons are indeed many. Religion realises that it is
not our technique that brings about the experience but
God’s Grace or gift. Technique of Yoga and God’s Grace
are the most important elements for direct, Revelational,
Kavi-experience. This supramental descent about which
Sri Aurobindo speaks, and which he exemplifies in his
higher poetic works, makes the transition to wisdom and
prophetic power possible. The priest, unfortunately in most
religions, remains ‘chanting his beads’, performing rites
and rituals formally, though with faith in their efficacy, and
remains a good custodian, rather than a living
embodiment. Exceptions like Sri Ramakrishna would
203
always rule out the inefficacy of the ‘priesthood’ of God,
though the word “priest-craft” might suffer obloqy.
Pythagoras, Heraclitus and others were masters of
the mysteries as well as of philosophical knowledge. In
India the rishis were both masters of mysteries and
philosophical knowledge. A divorce between the two spells
the divorce between the transcendental and the world. The
restoration of the unity between the spiritual-mystic-
revelational experiences and the philosophical could be
brought about only when we realise that there is a universal
mystical transition which can be brought about, and
interpreted in a universal manner by the supra-
philosophical understanding. Our understanding may be
unequal to this task.
Indian philosophic schools invariably were said to
have been propounded by seers or rishis (who saw the
mantras directly, non-sensorially and non-mentally) as well.
Undoubtedly there has been criticism between these rishis
among themselves, and such mutual super-sensorial
criticism has been valuable aid to thedevelopment of
Darsana - of which the Vedanta has been acclaimed as
the darsana par-excellence, as being both a philosophy
(tattva-Jnana) and a religion (yoga or union with the
Ultimate, sayujya) that is also release from all ignorance.
Man’s concern in religion is with the Divine, not with
himself or with Nature. The concern with the Divine needs
the rite and the ritual, the sadhana of getting into touch
with the Divine, to melt into it, or as has been clearly
204
enunciated, one must go near it (samipya), take the same experience. The All-inclusiveness of the Advaita,
form as the Guru suitable for entering into communion with according to Swami Vivekananda, is its merit, its claim
that divine nature (sarupya), begin to live and move and for universal tolerance and assimilation of meaning about
have one’s being in the world of the Divine Master, the technique.
(salokya) and finally attain the covetable experience of
NOTE: It can be seen that Swami Vivekananda at one
union itself (sayujya). These four are apparently stages of
stage explains that all religions have the four
the progress towards spiritual, as well as material, expert
ingredients - a scripture or book, a myth or myths,
ness. Yoga is this quarternary process, and this is the
rite or rituals, and a philosophy or intellectual
practical Vedanta or Religion. On this must be erected
presentation. At another place, expounding
man’s understanding of the true, the beautiful and the good
Hinduism or rather Vedanta (Advaita) he contents
- the philosophies, so to speak, of expression and
that Hinduism or Vedanta has none of these. He
existence in the world of transitoriness. Theory should
denies creation and creator. He speaks about the
naturally develop out of experience and disciplined
Absolute which always Is, and never was not.
attainment, though it would be unwise to think that there
There is the Nature always, or It never has been
could be no integrating activity at every stage. We can
for All is Brahman and Brahman only. Nature, the
have theories arising out of samipya, theories arising out
souls, and God are all appearance. This
of sarupya, as well as philosophies of salokya, and of
exposition goes contrary to the first. The first
course there would not be anything but a reflection of the
conception makes Vedanta and its Brahman all-
Sayujya that is beyond commanicability to the lower levels
inclusive. The second conception makes Vedanta
of thought.
exclude all creation and multiplicity or duality and
Perhaps this would explain Swami Vivekananda’s so on. Further, at one point, he criticises all those
enthusiastic statement about his ‘discovery’ - that Dvaita, who hold a twofold conception, a paramarthika and
Visistadvaita and Advaita are but stages on the path to a vyavaharika views of Reality, and holds that there
the Ultimate, each one of them necessary for should be only One view of Reality and not two.
comprehending that which is above or below, to such a
If we accept the discovery of Swami Vivekananda
one, Truth which is One only will comprehend and include
as the latter view, and it would appear that this kind of
all, and have no quarrel with any one view of reality,
bringing the three Vedantas into one of gradual ascent is
dualistically, or attributively or organistically or unitarily or
realisation, there would yet be difficulty in holding all of
for that matter any other point of view of thought or
them to be all-inclusive.

205 206
 We can see that Swami Vivekananda had to
exemplify the spiritual realisation or Experience of his
Master, the Paramahamsa, which was one of all-inclusive
Brahman, and yet he was intellectually aware of the logical
attempt at an all-exclusive Identity or Oneness. We find
that his greatness lay in somehow assuming that the all-
inclusive Reality is also the all-exclusive one and the great
Mahavakya “Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma” is in fact but
another manner of expressing “Ekam eva advitiyam” or
“Ekarm Sat”. This would be correct if it was assumed that
these two are the two statusses of Brahman; Brahman in
His Manifestation and Brahman in His Immanence or Non-
manifestation, or as Sri Ramanuja held that the first is the
Sthula cidacid visista Brahman and the second is the
suksma cidacid visista Brahman, and also that Brahman
and Isvara are one and the same.
The transfomation of Advaita from the Sankara view
of Ekam Sat to the Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma dons by
Vivekananda is a radical transformation which found its
fuller exposition in the Philosophies of Sri Aurobindo and
Dr. Radhakrishnan. The latter two recall strongly Sri
Ramanuja’s mediation efforts to secure the truth of both
the kinds of texts of identity and difference, of non-creation
and creation.
207
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S
RELIGION OF SERVICE
It is of the essence of any religion to inculcate a
method of work which not merely leads to the goal of
liberation but follows from liberation. The karma-yoga or
the discipline of work that leads to liberation (moksa) is
essentially the manner one performs his duties in society
according to his station and place in it. Thus we have
duties prescribed for the four orders of life, such as the
brahmacari (student), grhastha (householder),
vanaprastha (retired individual) and the Sannyasi (one who
has renounced all social ties). Similarly we have duties
prescribed for the four castes or varnas, the Brahmana,
Ksatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra - the modern equivalents
being the spiritual teacher, the warrior - ruler or political
leader, the commercial citizen and the labourer -worker.
Each stage of life has its duties, and each vocation has
similarly its duties. Of course the duties imply the right or
freedom to do them or not to do them. He who does not
do his duty suffers in some way. In ancient society the non-
performance of duty entailed sanctions, reprobation or
punishment and was considered sin. Similarly there are
duties attached to an individual within the family, one’s duty
to one’s mother and father, children and relations and
guests and so on. They may vary from one community to
another but they do exist and are well-known as
etiquette. One who does not treat the poor and the sick
kindly, or wantonly takes delight in inflicting suffering
even on dumb animals is considered to be uncivilized
or uncultured or a brute.
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 Swami Vivekananda brilliantly analyses these duties
in his lectures on Karma Yoga. Man is surrounded by, or
enmeshed in, all sorts of duties which have been laid down
in the scriptures. Actions which are performed according
to dharma or duty are capable of producing good and help
in the promotion of freedom ultimately from all these ties
or bonds. Actions such as these are vihitam karma or
dharma. It is possible to see behind these activities two
important features namely the need to perform them with
detachment, without any selfish motive or securement of
pleasure or as a means to it; It is clear duty is for the sake
of duty in the sense that it is the law of nature that makes
for harmony both in oneself and in others. Secondly it
means that liberation from all bonds only results from the
performance of duties regardless of the moral or spiritual
constraint it imposes on one. We can trace the supreme
enunciation of Buddha who insisted that dharma means the
path of liberation which puts an end to the causes of all
karmas that bind, for all karmas are motivated by trsna or
desire - unconscious, without beginning and difficult to
eradicate. The goal or motive undoubtedly is liberation from
all karma - good or bad which all bind. As the Upanisad says,
a liberated soul shakes off the good and bad even as a horse
shakes off the dust - punya papam vidhuya.
It is true also that Hinduism insists on the cultivation
of attitudes of reverence to devas, gods, fathers, pitrs,
guests (atithis), elements (bhutas) and animals. These
attitudes are sacremental as well as secular. Behind all
these is revealed the cultivation of a world-consciousness
or cosmic consciousness of the value of every level of life
209
from the inorganic through the organic to that which is
beyond the terms of our life. Sacrifices or offerings to this
fivefold world is one of the sacramental duties prescribed
by the sastras. Therefore they are known as
pancamahayajnas which every individual must perform
either daily or as occasion demands (naimittika). One
seeks no fruit from this except that one does not incur sin
by not doing it. Thus there are certain duties which have
to be done (kartavyam karma) and there are certain
regulations which prohibit us from doing certain actions
(akrtyam). In both cases the fruit is non-sinfulness. That by
itself is good. This reveals that every individual cannot but
do something or desist from doing certain things, and
therefore he is always active in a way. To be active and
energetic in doing the duty that is in full accord with one’s
nature is the best way to realise satya, or sense of
existence and awareness and bliss. Svadharma is what
each individual has to discover, though one’s social
position and heredity may help the determination of it,
perhaps not always correctly. However it is necessary for
a rational being to discover one’s svadharma according
to one’s svabhava and all the while seek to attain the goal
of liberation (moksa). It is clear that such a person has
greater chances of not being confused according to one’s
duty, than one who has not sought to determine his own
nature and status. When one follows another’s dharma it
leads to great suffering. In the triple nexus of stage of life,
level of life, and nature of one’s own life, one has to discover
one’s duty and no wonder we have discarded this notion
for the simple one of pleasure and/or expediency.
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 Whilst in a society that is undergoing collosal
changes thanks to industrialisation, urbanisation, etc, one
does not know what aptitudes one has and how they would
be useful, the achievement of skill in any profession is
difficult. Karma aims at efficiency in the discharge of any
work, much more in the case of duty. A duty well-
discharged is a matter for satisfaction of the soul. Thus
usually the great and oft-quoted maxim - yogah karmasu
kausalam. It not only means yoga is skill in actions, but
also that it is welfare-producing in all actions - and this
welfare is liberation or attainment of svarga.
Therefore it is that the main direction of action (duty)
should be welfare-producing (kausalata) rather than mere
skillfulness or efficiency. Once this word was
misinterpreted it followed that yoga meant Just skill rather
than well-being.
There is great truth in holding that in doing one’s duty
as such there can hardly be any comparison between one
who has done his duty and another who has also done his
own duty. One is not superior to another. Swami
Vivekananda illustrates this by showing that a householder
who does his duty by sacrificing or offering food to the
destitute and the needy (athithi-yajna) guest is equal to
the sannyasin who renounces the pleasures of marriage
with a princess. (Vol., I.p.49-51) Both attain svarga or
heaven or liberation. However, we know that changing ages
and stages and also vocations impose different skills and
sacrifices (yajnas), and the performance of these duties
becomes imperative in this contexts of changing society.
211
Certain well-known writers on ethics in the West have
subscribed to the doctrine of doing duty for duty’s sake -
that is to say one’s highest pleasure or joy consists in
having done one’s duty and not for any other recognition
or reward. Further they have recognized the need to define
the content of duty according to one’s station in society.
This latter is a very variable one and requires the definition
of duties which may be capable of producing well-fare or
ill-fare. We know how, in the modern context,
disappearance of duties is the rule rather than the
exception. Hindu ethical writers did, in a sense, define
certain unalterable duties linked up with the stable enough
nature of the growth of individuals from childhood to old
age, and the general type distribution of vocations to which
each individual is called. Men are born in society and into
one or other of vocations which condition them from their
childhood; whether they turn out to be skilled or unskilled
in them is a matter that remains an individual problem.
Similarly the individuals may revolt against their traditional
vocation and take up other vocations suited to their
svabhava (nature). Providing for full flexibility, there runs
all through the wisdom of defining certain duties which are
not conditioned by these.
They are the ingredients that mould character. They
are in fact absolutely necessary for the growth of universal
benevolence and purification of the social fabric. If it is
claimed that the aim of karma yoga is cleansing of the
individual of his karma so that real knowledge may arise
in him, then the absolute cultivation of the duties of truth-
speaking, truth-willing, truth-desiring, (satya-kamata) the
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duties of charity in mind, and in gifts, kindliness and non-
violence, non-stealth and non-robbing, become absolutely
significant karmas. We may call them specifically
necessary for rajayoga in the form of Yamas (self-
restraints). But Svami Vivekananda insists that self-
restraint in doing duty is of utmost power, and that
selflessness and self-restraint lead to sovereign power
and fearlessness.
It is of course impossible to expect pleasurable
feelings of love for others as such in doing duty. Duty
demands dispassionateness. Not emotion, but stern
responsibility is its characteristic poise. “Do thy duty
without expectation of reward, without fear or favour.” It is
clear then that though dharma sastras and the Upanisads
insist on the moral preparations for one and all, and man’s
duties are identified with these moral virtues, there are
certain basic works which are not merely moral but are
also works of divine service.
Service differs from duty in that it proceeds on a
different metaphysical foundation. Service normally means
work done for wages or return. Services done without
expecting a reward or wages are essentially acts of love
or affection, reverence and regard. Services that one does
for one’s father may be both duty as well as loving service.
Similarly service need not be a duty at all, yet one may
freely do such work. It may not be demanded even by the
dharmasastras, for acts of kindness are essentially free
of all constraint or compulsion; the compulsion even of
etiquettte is absent. However it is waiting on God or on
God’s creation that goes by the name of kainkarya.
213
Svami Vivekananda’s Advaita enunciates that all is
Brahman, and service of the all (manyness) is the service
of the One. Just as we love the One we should love the
many. Whatever by the metaphysical view, advaita or
dvaita, monism or dualism, all belong to the One, or all
are the One. Service or love of the One means that one is
obliged to love all that belong to Him or depend on Him.
Therefore service becomes the expression of real religion.
By relating oneself through deeds of love with each and
every individual, the many of the One, one relates oneself
with the One.
Duty, at the level of moral life, is an obligation rather
than love. At the level of metaphysical oneness it is but
natural for every individual to love every other because of
that innate linkage of the one in all. As psychological and
social it is dependent on instincts and drives which are
the motive forces that connect the parent with the children
and vice versa. But at the level of conscious love it is none
of these but really spiritual love which gives of itself to the
Object of its adoration without any reservation. It is an
offering of oneself in all one’s parts. Karma-yoga could
be extended to include all kinds of help that one renders
or ought to render others. However much one may deem
this spontaneous sympathy to be natural, the background
of the motive or roots, so, to speak, of such sympathy are
down below in the original bosom of unity, or the Oneness
that manifests itself in manyness.
When a deeply spiritual attitude is taken up, then
every action will be consciously chosen for adoring the
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principle of Oneness, and thus action becomes worship.
In this sense work can become worship. Love converts
duty into worship, adoration of the Divine whether it is in
the form of father, mother, guest or any other stranger. It
embraces all creation in its sweep and there will hardly
be any exception to its operation.
Svami Vivekananda points out emphatically that
devotion to duty helps us on the path of spiritual progress,
and that is because in doing one’s duty lovingly one
realises the oneness of the whole, and this realisation itself
is a gain. The question of duality - I and thou or I and the
Other - so much canvassed by certain modern religious
thinkers as if it is a novelty for the age, is a question not of
divisive ness but of integration. Yoga unites but cannot
divide. Actions, like duties, unite but cannot, like non-
duties or centra-duties or disobedience, divide. The Yoga
of duty is a healing process. Therefore the individual more
and more becomes united in a cosmic way and in cosmic
consciousness with the whole universe.
Worship is usually connected with ritual. Most critics
of religion nowadays want us to abolish all rituals and deem
them to be not only meaningless but harmful superstition,
an imposition on what is simple at bottom - this being the
meaning of the word superstition. It may be that worship
as ritual has developed on different lines all over the world.
The intermediary of mythology usually creates certain
forms and patterns of worship and ways of approaching
the divine object. The divine object may itself be
symbolised in some visual form. Thus, once this
215
formalisation takes the anthropological form, the rituals
or acts of worship follow the pattern of adoration of our
parents or elders - offering of water, of cloth, of flowers
and fruits and other edibles, incense and light and so on.
The order of the worship becomes spontaneous
manifestation of service to our elder, creator, or progenitor.
God, considered in this manner and shaped in this form,
is served devotedly. The ritual of devotion is also divya-
karma, even as the ritual of sacrifice is a variation of the
same. What is necessary for this kind of karma is sraddha
or faith in the object chosen for worship or service.
Some religions nave adopted just symbols as they
did not consider the anthropomorphic representation
correct. The adoption of symbols is determined by the
meaning attributed to them and constant remembrance of
these symbolic meaning. Once this meaning gets distorted
then we have worse consequences than that the worship
of anthropomorphic representations yield. Grossness is
one result; loss of meaning or ignorance of it is the second
serious result. Distortion and disbelief follow as the third
result. Even religions which had tried to live up to the
connotation or meaning of the symbols and rituals began
gradually losing it and also have failed to grow. Growth is
the very condition of life and spiritual growth is all important
in yoga.
Worship as work is therefore the bhakti -equivalent
of karma. However it is limited to the object of devotion
alone and tends to be linked up with it alone. On the other
hand work as worship is more extensive in its operation
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and the omnipervasiveness of the Divine is more easily
realised than in the former which limits it to a symbol or
objective visible form - anthro-pomorphic or quasi-
anthropomorphic, where the symbol and form coalesce.
In a wider context service reveals the triunity of yogas
where bhakti and jnana fuse into an activity dedicated to
pleasing the Divine One. Work as worship reveals love of
God in all things and persons: work as skill and efficiency
is possible only through knowledge flowing into action; and
work as well-being is good in itself. Therefore the ancient
thinkers spoke of all the three yogas as ultimately forming
one integral Yoga, and also that each yoga by itself would
lead to the Ultimate Liberation. For emphasis’ sake they
held that each by itself is sufficient to lead one to Moksa.
As the Gita has stated, both samkhya and yoga lead to
the same result; it is only the unwise who deem them to
yield different results. The Isavasyopanisad however puts
it clearly : those who follow works (karma or avidya) enter
into blind darkness, and those who follow knowledge
(vidya) enter, as it were, into a greater darkness: the results
of following karma are one and the results of following
vidya are another : but when both of them are followed
together, karma will lead to conquest over death, whilst
jnana or vidya will lead to the immortal.
The three yogas for the three aspects or modes of
man’s nature are one only, though appearing to be different.
No one can ever give up working, whether he be
liberated or un-liberated, Even God does not give up doing
works even though he has nothing to gain by it for he is
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ever-fulfilled. Therefore it is man’s nature to work and to
be working incessantly. Even those who appear to be non-
working are working. Cessation of work does not happen
just because there is cessation of desire even, though
there would be another kind of life and work. The ideal of
mere meditation (dhyana) as comprising only
contemplation without working is unrealisable, for dhyana
itself is a kind of work (kriya). The Patanjala Yoga speaks
of its dhyana yoga as kriya yoga, which is not limited to
performance of asanas or poses of the body or the
pranayama (breath-control exercises). Therefore karma
or activity is the very nature of all embodied beings. It may
well be the nature of prakrti. All that one can choose is the
kind of activity.
Just as there are three kinds of qualities, like sattva
rajas and tamas, actions also can be of the sattvika,
rajasika or tamasika quality. Sattvika qualities produced
by sattyika, activities render one happy, intelligent and
good, whereas rajasika qualities are produced by rajasa
actions, and tamasika qualities are produced by tamasa
activities. Character is shaped by the dominance of these
qualities, and therefore man is a bundle of these
samskaras or impressions made on one’s mind and body
by the karmas. Karma, as spiritual activity, however
liberates and therefore the cultivation of spiritual activity,
is all important. Consistent doing of good deeds promotes
the spiritual vibrations in man and helps liberation.
Svami Vivekananda affirmed, in this context, the
necessity for getting rid of tamas or inertia. India has
218
become inert owing to its devotion to dhyana yoga, or Gita-rahasya has stated that the Gita is a Gospel of Karma
rather its perversion of the gospel of non-work. Yoga. In a sense it is for actions done in devotion to God,
and with knowledge of God who is in all things as Self and
Sloth or inertia looks so much like peace that people
Lord, and leads to liberation from all other kinds of conduct.
practise laziness or non-doing of any work. Sloth
Though the goal is jnana or divya-jnana and it is jnana that
unfortunately like peace has made for the utter degradation
liberates one from the cycle of samsara or the round of
of man, has impoverished his capacities, dulled his wit
births and deaths, it is a jnana that achieves or does the
and in every way reduced him to a condition of
naughting (nullifying) of the binding karma. As the
unconsciousness or indifference. Spirituality may move
Isavasyopanisad states - one must go on doing works for
towards peace but it is not the peace of the inert and the
a whole life span of hundred years. If these works are done
unconscious. The ordinary man’s sleep is supti; the
in the spirit of knowledge that all the moving and the
spiritual man’s peace is perhaps su-supti which is prajna of
unmoving are enveloped by the Divine or indwelt by Him,
the Mandukyopanisad. It is better to be doing something even
there is no possibility of ordained works sticking to man
motivated by desire than not to be doing any thing at all.
or binding him. There is no other way for man except doing
There have been many who feared the creation or works. (Isa.U.p. 1 & 2)
production of effects of actions which have the power to
As already pointed out Svami Vivekananda had
bind man. Since man seeks freedom from bondage, he
insisted on the performance of works even if the same is
has to desist from all work or karma. The performance of
rajasic motivated by desire. But this activity -passionate
action was considered to be bad. The renunciation of all
activity in the service of God in the world of His creation is
action was asked to be cultivated, since both evil and good
necessary for higher knowledge. It is practical wisdom.
actions do produce evil or good samskaras which bind.
However much a man endeavours to give up karma he Svami Vivekananda laid the greatest stress on the
cannot help performing actions, so it appears that no man service of man (nara). Man has to be educated so as to
can ever escape from karma. Thus too the idea of the know his destiny or goal, and for this he ought to know
karma cycle has taken root in the minds of all men. himself. Men are poor in every way; in India and the East
it is a fact that education, property and health are very
Sri Krsna once for all rejected the idea of karma-
poor. Illiterate and weak, they have hardly the will to do
sannyasa. If one does his duty it is not capable of binding
anything - even to clothe themselves or produce any food
him for all duty has an inevitable universal character : it is
for themselves. How can one have any faith in God under
not for himself alone it produces the good, it produces it
such circumstances? Though the poor man is such, yet a
for all others also. The great Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his
219 220
rough faith is there which has been sustaining him, just
because (sic) there have been paragons of wisdom like
the great Sannyasins Buddha, Mahavira, the Rishis who
had renounced wealth and all for the life of poverty. I hey
had made life in non-possession noble and admirable. But
it is a life of the severest training, self-restraint and
independence over the body that is perishable and the
seat of all desires. Svami Vivekananda himself advocated
this type of life (monkhood) for bands of young men who
are dedicated to the service of man, or rather God in men
- the poor, the needy, the sick and the homeless the
orphans of society. It is the work and duty of a state to see
that not one individual is ill, naked, starved, or dies of
starvation. But under the domination of the foreigners the
conquered are hardly ever attended to at all. The
community must undertake this work of rehabilitation of
the dispossessed. This too had come into bad times.
There is need for the more able-bodied and idealistic to
undertake this work. The spiritual man who aspires for his
liberation must work for the liberation of these people.Else
he is not truly liberated.
The service of the daridra-Narayana - the Godhead
who is resident in the poor (daridra), becomes more
significant to a spiritual vision. He says
“The only God to worship is the human soul in the
human body, of course all animals are temples too,
but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If
cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any
advantage.The moment I have realised God sitting
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in the temple of every human being, the moment I
stand in reverence before every human being and
see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage,
everything that binds vanishes and I am free.”
(Vol.II.p.32l)
This vision of God in all creatures, and most eminently
in the human being, is a liberating vision. It is precisely
the seeing of all as the body of God, individually and
collectively. Each soul becomes invaluable in itself and
must be worshipped and served. Whilst it is true that this
Vision would do it, the vision has to be cultivated.
“Our prophet-soul is the proof of their prophet-soul.
Your godhead is the proof of God himself. If you are
not God there never was any God.” (ibid, p,308).
Since God is oneself as Self, it is possible to realise
the selfhood of God in everything that is most estimably in
the human being. One must seek and find : without seeking
for God in all, one hardly can see Him or find Him. This is
a great truth of inestimable value which Svami
Vivekananda presented, though it is the revival of the
wisdom of the Upanisad which stated that one must seek
to see the One Divine in all things and all in the Divine,
and also that it is that One Divine that has become all. By
this triple vision (anudrsti) one goes beyond all sorrow.
yastu sarvani bhutanyamanjeva pasyati
sarvabhutesu atmanam tato na vijupupsate
yasmin sarvani bhutani atmaivabhut vijanatah
tatra kah sokah kah mohah ekatvam anupasyatah.
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The worship of man by serving him as the embodiment of
God who is one only, and the same as that within oneself,
supplies a positive activity which could best be expressed
by the term friendship or brotherhood. It is possible that
those who believe in a mere causal relationship of activity
and fruits may not accept the One Divine in all beings as
their Self, or atman or living soul, that is waiting to be
recognised and loved. However, even they cannot forbear
from loving their alike through a natural sympathy or pity
arising from mere likeness. They may not ask as to
whence this sympathy arises, so strong and so very
universal, which makes brothers of men different in race,
caste, religion, status, wealth or possession. There is a
divine force within each which calls out the divine in others.
Most persons are attracted by beauty which is divine:
some by goodness: but all by love that is not related to
beauty or goodness but to the divine in man. It cuts across
even the most difficult divisive forces of wickedness,
criminality and sensuality against which the ordinary man
revolts. But one who has been awakened to this inward
vision of seeing supremely the One divine in all and all in
the Divine, he does not recoil from the good or the bad,
the sick or the healthy, the beautiful or the ugly, the sinner
or the saint, the eater of the dog-flesh or the jnani. Such is
the realisation of the Oneness through love, whose one
driving force is to meet the eternal and the immortal in the
mortal and the perishable.
There are seers who have taught the revulsion to the
things of the flesh so that man may give up pleasure and
pursue the bliss that is not of the flesh but of the soul. But
223
that had also led to the extreme of hating the sores of the
flesh and leaving those who suffer from sores to their fate
without care. What is a discipline for the saint is a cursed
lot to the sinner groaning in pain. It is the realisation of the
sarira-sariri-bhava - between the souls and God and/or
between Nature and the Divine that leads to the passing
off of the fear, the delusion and the disgust or recoil. It is
crucial for the service of others to realise the same divine
Self as calling to the others.
Some philosophers have been at pains to explain
how we know other selves or other minds. If each individual
was separate and distinct, a regular monad without
windows to speak the language of Leibniz, or as the Dvaita
Vedanta assumes, then the knowledge that others have
selves or minds is difficult to arrive at, except through
analogical inference that can give only probability, even
when the other gives us a physical verification about his
existence. Nor could linguistic communication or gestural
language help in proving that the other self, as self or mind,
exists. It is a direct kind of knowing - a kind of saksatkara
not necessarily perceptual or inferential or analogical but
intuitive. It is clear that all intuition is unmediated by
perception, inference or analogy as it arises, but is
mediated in a sense by the Divine or God consciousness.
This may not be quite clear at the beginning, but as
sadhana progresses intuition is that trans-subjective
knowledge which goes to the heart of the certainty about
the existence of the Divine Other, and also the equal
certainty about the existence of other selves within the
Divine, or embraced by the Divine. The inter-subjective
224
nature of relationship between kindred souls, known as
love at first sigit, is simultaneously operating with the trans-
subjective revelation of the Divine in all (sarvam samapnosi
tatosi sarvah - of the Gita). Our knowledge of God is to be
had only through devotion as the Gita again affirms:
“Not by any other than Bhakti is the Divine to be
known in this wish and seen and entered into”
(Bhaktyaaranyaya sakyam evam vidho’ arjuna jnatum
drastum ca ptatvena pravestumca Parantapa).
Love of God is the only means of knowing God and
similarly it is love alone that can bring about union between
minds. But then it is unselfish love that can do it, or love of
God alone that can do this breaking of the barriers between
mind and mind, soul and soul. As the sage Yajnavalkya
said :
“not for the sake of the wife is the wife dear but for
the sake of the Self (atman) is the wife dear.” (*)
Whilst some writers explain that one loves one’ s
husband or wife for the sake of oneself, others see in this
not the individual’s self but the Divine One in all, who is
the Self of all as the mediating principle of love of all things
in this Universe of God. The strongest and ultimate link
between man and man is through God-love: that is the
means by which one could become inseparably related
with one another. The true association that is unbreakable
*Brhadaranka (U.p. IV : 5:5)
(nava are patyuh kamaya patih priyo bhavati, atmanastu kamaya
patih priyo bhavati : nava are jayajari kamaya jay a priyo bhavati,
atmanastu kamaya jay a priya bhavati ...)
225
is through God-love, for that has a permanence and
sanction which no earthly law could either forge or break.
Actions which issue out of God-love for all human
beings are truly emancipatory and detached, and even
impersonal. This impersonality is not to be mistakenly
identified with the indifferentism of the lower order where
love has yet to flower in the soul of the individual. Much of
the love that is cultivated is so very artificial and dramatised
that it leaves one with a sense of disappointment and
dissatisfaction.
The vivification of this ideal of service of man,
especially the poor man and the sick and the destitute, is
to realise the divine in all and as such is of the greatest
help to one’s own liberation. I believe the service of the
downtrodden, the untouchable, the unapproachable, the
unseeable, the man suffering from contagious diseases
and the sinner removes one of those barriers to love which
is one’s egoistic self-superiority neurosis. But it should
not end up in the contrary neurosis of eternal inferiority.
An impersonal sense of the One Divine, and love of Him,
would remove this egoistic turn in service. As pointed out
luminously by Swami Vivekananda, service should abjure
condescension but embrace affection for the individual
soul aspiring to move up to Godliness. One should become
an embodiment of god to be an exemplar of god-affection
which would make the helped person turn towards God.
The lover of God should inspire, by his conduct, the love
of God in all, mostly those who despise God or have belief
in Him. The most important reason for turning away from
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God seems to be the prevalence of injustice, misery,
unmerited poverty and failure, all of which cannot be if there
be a just God who is the creator of the universe. This
experience of sorrow and suffering is so very factual that
the only solutions are rationalisations of the same. These
sinful effects, miseries are said to be purgative of faults,
as well as occasions for the manifestation of virtues or
rather testing of their strength, and as such god-given gifts.
Instead of being deprivations they are the precise
conditions for the manifestation of God’s grace. All these
arguments are dismissed as casuistical, or as special
pleadings for the existence of the Divine. An irrational
universe, governed by chance, blind and meaningless -
such is the veritable conclusion which the despair of man
drives him to. Karma becomes a nightmarish blind
necessity, and by no means becomes a rational satisfying
explanation.
Therefore Karma explains nothing really. A divine
way of knowing is necessary to go beyond these
explanations; a way which would provide a real satisfying
conclusion, and a meaning to our lives. It is in the deeds
of love that one performs that one discovers the inner
meaning of the omnipresence of God. Man’s love for his
brother-man or sister-woman alone throws a glow of
warmth in an otherwise dark world. Service with love
done to the soul in need is verily an eye-opener to the
presence of God in simple things. That is the reason why
service becomes the practice of the presence of God,
which like mercy blesses him that receives and him that
gives. Here is a new kind of knowledge given to the man
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in sorrow, a light that reveals a kind and godly world, a
love that makes the drab divine. This is a service which
no words of education can translate adequately. This is
itself an educative work. The undivine becomes, by an act
of kindness, a divine place. Though it may not transfigure
the world at once by a miracle, yet it provides the torch
with which man may become aware of the future miracle
that might well make this earth a kingdom of God - a world
resplendent with love’s beauty, goodness, intelligence and
bliss. Happiness is fully realised not in pleasure but in the
experience of divine love received and given. In fact in the
expression of divine love there is no question of asking
for even a reciprocation of it by gratitude or satisfaction.
Perhaps it is an extreme demand to make to ask for
unrequited love as pure love - obviously no man postulates
that one should not reveal gratitude or show it to one who
does an act of love or service. In spontaneity there is grace
and bliss, not in the compulsion of thanks-giving. It would
be seen that a new kind of knowledge comes out of love
and services done in the love of God, which reveals God
in His omnipresence as well as in His omnipotence in
dissolving the barriers, that divide man from man.
I am not sure this kind of knowledge through love is
intuitive in any epistemological sense. It seems to be
mystical, sacramental and divine. It is too sacred to be
described in the language of communication useful for
practical and non-loving activities of commerciality. Nor
should it be claimed to be ‘socialised’ knowledge, a new
pattern of knowledge discovered by certain group of
psychologists as socialized knowledge for it is not mainly
228
devoted to sociality or issuing from it. It can be said to be
over-mental or even supramental, but then it does not come
about as a vision or an inspired recognition but as an
unveiling of the veils, the disappearance of separating
walls or rings.
Service of the Divine in men thus opens up new
frontiers of union and recognition of that secret unity and
identity of the inmost Divine in all things and beings.
Therefore the practical method of reaching beyond the
fruits of karma, and gaining the fruits of jnana and the fruits
of devotional love is possible in the supreme development
of this ideal of divine service to Narayana - the goal, and
the support of all beings.
Svami Vivekananda has, in his lectures on Practical
Vedanta and Karma Yoga, fully illustrated the ideal of
service as the modus operandi of divine living both as a
means to liberation and realisation of the One Identity
present in all beings and supporting them all impartially or
impartibly.
Petrim Sorokin develops the concept of creative
altruism as a variant of the spirit of service of man, or rather
God in men. The socialist conception does not need a
theism to buttress the service of another, or service of
oneself through the service of other, or as in co-operation
the service of oneself and others for mutual welfare.
Creative altruism would mean that merely serving other’s
for other’s sake is not truly creative, for nothing leads to
the growth of the other or of oneself or of both. Sociology
has yet to demonstrate that such a creativity - in the sense
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of higher evolution and growth of cosmic consciousness
or even the formation of a socialised consciousness as
the Collectivist state would project-arise, This being so,
the real ideal of spiritual service should truly create an ideal
society of godly souls whose realisation is of a truly spiritual
cosmic or even trans-cosmic consciousness which we
refer to the Divine whose transcendence, as such, is
precisely the condition of its superconscious immanence.
for other entities and consciousness immanence means
the abolition of consciousness itself, or its abridgment or
veiling as/a trance of unconsciousness. But real creativity
is available only through the service of the Divine in purest
love, in simplest acts of helpfulness and sympathy.
Vivekananda’s Religion of Service emphasises the
genuine ideals of Hinduism in relation to society and the
individual. It really shows how he tries to integrate the triple
levels of Vedanta, the Oneness of the Absolute Divine
Brahman and the inmanence of that One in all the
embodied creatures, or rather the souls which are in the
relation of bodies to that One Divine Being, and the
mutuality between these many bodies of the Divine in
society, drawing out that latent oneness into expression.
This gives the picture of the ascent of the souls to their
recognition of oneness in and through service of other
souls equally placed in relation to that One or God. It also
reveals the descent of the Divine embodying Himself in
the many which reveals His supreme lila or play of the
Oneness in and through the many. It finally reveals how
the Oneness, which is transcendent to all the many and
their support, is to be experienced beyond the terms of
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duality and embodiedness or organic being in that Union spiritual concept of Sankara is based on the notion not
or Yoga of mystical oneness or identity, which no mental only of the Advaita but also of the illusory nature of the
or sensorial experience can translate into normal world or the appearance. The concept of social or spiritual
communicable language. service is held by these scholars to be contradictory to
the spiritual attainment of liberation from the world. But it
Ancient thinkers have, in different ways, stressed the
does not seem to be that alone, but the attachment to the
organic oneness of the world with the Divine, through whom
dogma of maya that seems to be given the go-bye by this
all attain spiritual emancipation. The world is the occasion
doctrine of service. Surely if, there is only one God or
for the fullest experience of that which is apparently contra-
Being then there can hardly be any one to serve or be
divine but which glows, as one draws one’s inspiration
served by. Service and love seem to demand duality which
from the Divine who is One in all, with a transcendent
seeks to be overcome by identity. This is the nemisis of
splendour and renders even this transient existence a thing
illusionism. Svami Vivekananda essentially was, they
of beauty and wonder. Therefore is it said by the Sage
claim, a secularist and a patriot rather than a spiritual being
Kapila : Prakrti or Nature binds as well as releases the
like his Master Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Prof Tiwari
purusa. Or as the other saying goes - the mind alone is
claims ‘Secularism is indeed one of the driving forces
the cause of both man’s bondage and emancipation:
behind Vivekananda’s activities” and by secularism he
manaeva manuyanam karanam bandhamoksayoh - Maya
means ‘tolerance’ it means ‘a direct negation of everything
too ensnares the indivudual and liberates him, or rather
that Vaidiki Ethics stands for; and he dubs Rabindranath
one is under the sovereign rule of Maya when deluded or
Tagore’s ethics as aesthetic secularism, Gandhi’s as
ignorant about it, but one becomes a master of Maya when
ethical secularism, Aurobindo’s as mystical secularism.
knowledge dawns in Him, and that knowledge is a gift of
“Similarly an analytical study of the systems of Ramanuja,
the Divine.
Vallabha, Madhva, Caitanya and other exponents of the
In any case the call to service of man in all ways, Bhakti school - not to speak of aberrations like these of
spiritual, mental, vital and physical is necessary for true the Tantrikas -reveals a trend in the direction of
liberation, not only of the person served but also of one secularism.” (p.27 Secularism and Materialism in Modern
who serves. India. B.G. Tiwari.)He holds that “Sankara’s ethics is
simply Vaidika ethos in its most consistent form”
Some attempts are of late being made by certain
(ibid.p.17) Secularisms is any attempt to cater to the
scholars to say that Svami Vivekananda’s religion of
impulses of the ‘natural man’ while Vaidiki culture exists
service is a kind of secularism rather than something
for the ‘ethical man’ (p.28)
following from spiritual conceptions of Sankara. The
231 232
 Some of the statements made by Dr Tiwari betray
an utter disregard of all that the Vaidiki thinkers stood and
lived for. It is sheer absurdity to say that Sankara stood
more loyally by the Vaidiki spirit of that quarter-nary of
castes, ends and ashramas, which all the while speaking
for their very illusoriness, and claiming that it is their
illusoriness that has to be discovered in the ethical
practices or duties they enjoin. In fact it is the basic concept
of ethics or dharma that it is decidedly a ‘devotion to duty’,
a duty that has become almost an act of love (bhakti)
because of the metaphysics of organic union or spiritual
unseparateness. Not having understood the metaphysics
of this relationship nor made any effort to understand it,
Dr Tiwari pompously claims that all activity is secularism.
No one asserts that bhakti replaces karma, but bhakti is
the culmination of duty - except in the bargaining
mimamsaka. Bhakti is a means to moksa, not enjoyment.
Further Sri Ramanuja clearly enunciated that it is
knowledge that grows into Bhakti, or becomes devotion
to the Ultimate, so that one realises one’s union with the
Ultimate which is the Self. Self realisation is the realisation
of the Self of the Universe or Reality as such, not merely
the ego which ordinary ethics seeks to manifest in and
through ethical activities.
Svami Vivekananda really propounds that real bhakti
or parabhakti is a sequence or consequence or product
of Chit-Absolute,
“Absolute knowledge is manifesting itself in its highest
and infinite love in the supreme Lord.” (Vol.V .p.433)
233
This is identical with a statement of Ramanuja -
Semusi Bhaktirupa: knowledge of the form of devotion to
the highest Being. Thus activity becomes also worship of
the highest Being - an Art of beauty. It is delight in creativity
and creation in Delight. True Art has this nature.
Activity of the ignorance is governed by the
disciplines of dharma -caturasrama, caturvarna,
caturvidha purusartha, and perhaps even the fourfold
states of consciousness or awareness and so on. But
Activity which flows from divine realisation of the Oneness
of the Self in all, and as a creative expression of that
realisation, is also a Yoga. Sankara knows nothing of this,
for all activity has been equated with Avidya - Ignorance.
A man of vidya is said to give up or renounce all work and
be a contemplative alone.
Sannyasins are those who have to renounce all
activity - nitya, naimittika and kamya according to some -
some hold that they should renounce all Vaidiki karma -
yaga, yajna and others prescribed by the sastras whilst
performing the nitya vidhis. But in any case they are without
work, except meditation (yoga), or mentations
Renunciation of all activities or duties is sannyasa: but they
have also certain duties prescribed for their asrama. So
they cannot and should not give them up. But there is no
doubt that all duties are moksa-directed and motivated.
And this is the reason why Svami Vivekananda insists on
the universe-service of all men - manavaseva - as verily
the service of God in each one of them. Service thus takes
on not the form of a duty but an act of awareness, a
234
practice so to speak of the presence of God in each and
every human being high or low, healthy or otherwise, to
each individual one should attend according to his need,
physical, vital, mental and/or spiritual, without seeking to
receive any word of thanks.
If secularism means an opposition to the doctrine of
quietism, and this was surely what all the followers of Svami
Vivekananda and also his successors have practised and
taught, it is amazing that one who has read his upanisads
should turn a blind eye to the self-same upanisads which
teach the three Da-s - Dana, Daya, Dama, and also that
one must go on doing works for a hundred years and no
other way is there for man. Works done in knowledge
and for knowledge of the One in all do not bind man. Indeed
it is the misfortune of ill-equipped knowledge to run hastily
to pervert the original teaching of the Upanisads. Svsmi
Vivekananda shows that karma-yoga ethics is for the
householder, whereas the yoga of service of God in each
individual through love is for the sannyasin primarily, but
generally for all. Karma grows into love, even as knowledge
grows into love which is mystical and divine. It is not a
catering to the natural man but to the divine man, and
though our western scholars may not appreciate it there
is no reason to hold that divine activity includes the ethical
and in no sense denies it.
It may be that certain serious criticisms such as
the direction to his sannyasis to give up seeking
individual salvation (mukti) is contrary to the rules of
Sannyasa of the Sankara order (Tiwari : p.47). Svami
235
Vivekananda is said to have convinced his fellow
monks to accept
“the collective concept of spiritual realisation through
public-spirited service as higher than the idea of
individual liberation and realisation of the Atman
through severe penance and meditation in a life
which was indifferent to the sorrows and sufferings
of one’s fellow men.” (ibid, p.47)
Dr. Tiwari holds that Svami Vivekananda’s religion
was a ‘secular religion of social consciousness.’ But it must
be said that an integral Study of his entire writings does
not leave this impression at all. On the other hand it is
clearly seen that whether it is collectivist salvation or mukti
that he has as an ideal, or ceollectivist socialistic service
ameliorating the lower two purusarthas of artha and kama
and kaya, the major note is the supreme necessity to infuse
spiritual vibrations into whatever service one does in the
consciousness of the One Ultimate Spirit or Brahman.
A fashionable modern lobby among scholars is to
discern differences between a Master and his disciple,
and to try to find out where the latter has made deviations.
Deviationism is also a witch-hunting process. Dr Tiwari
indulges in this. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was
purely a yoga Guru of New India (p. 130). His realisation
of the Ultimate Absolute Experience revealed that each
individual must realise his own self or liberation and this
cannot be done in a collectivist way. However whilst the
emphasis on the Sannyasins monks was to realise the
Divine in all and all in the Divine, and this could be best
236
achieved in the context of the social or spiritual service of
Society, it was not precluded at all that each individual
must hold the lamp unto himself.
If the Buddha long before the Christian missionaries
inculcated the doctrine of loving service of all life as one
expressing the manner by which right feelings could be
cultivated, Svami Vivekananda also saw in this the way of
Yoga of Divine Recognition of the divinity in all aspiring
towards divinity. It is true that God is not in need of any
service but His call from each is a call from the infinite
which has to be responded. Vaidiki ethics aims at this
end also. To divide dialectically Vaidiki and the Divine is
unfortunate for ethics as such.
237
COMPARITIVE RELIGION
It is more than two centuries since the West took
interest in Eastern religions and philosophies that have
grown out of the sum of beliefs and experiences. The
interest in these had led to understanding the scriptures
of the different peoples and developed the vast amount of
linguistic studies and translations into European
languages. In fact the missionary efforts to carry the Gospel
to the heathen had led to a profound after-effect namely
an inner understanding of the souls of the peoples who
also in diverse ways formulated according to the limits of
their rationality the conceptions which have begun to be
known as specially religious, the idea of God, the idea of
the soul, the problem of death and existence after death,
and the conception of fate and faith, and the idea of the
goal of life and man. These conceptions have been found
in the apparently primitive peoples even, and if we could
understand the methods by which they had begun to
relatethemselves with the Godhead or the several godly
powers (beneficent as well as maleficent) then we have a
very illuminating record of the evolution of religion itself.
We may then be able to discern the patterns of religious
behaviour available in humanity. Studies apparently called
anthropological had yielded results of a gratifying nature.
It has led to the study of evolution of religion almost on the
lines of biological evolutionary theories, which tries to
understand the present in terms of the past, on the belief
that there is a process of evolution of reason from the
instinctive beginnings The broad distinction between the
higher religions and the primitive religions seems to be
238
today the distinction between instinctive mythological and
the rational intellectual (abstract). Though this is a broad
enough distinction yet the fact remains that there is much
in rational and supra-rational religions that is mythologically
slanted.
The fact that the most primitive religious dogma
contains in germ the most mystical truths of spiritual being
reveals the truth which comparitive religious studies will
have to accept that in reality the microcosm contains the
macrocosm, that the last degradation of matter contains
the structure of spiritual being itself in one word everything
is contained in everything only in different degrees of
obversion, conversion, inversion and perversion. The
paradoxes of religion just as the antinomies of philosophy
arise out this realisation.
The intrinsic truths of religion owe their origin to a
state or consciousness of awareness which is
supralogical, firstly because they are so very self-evident
to our consciousness and explain the principles of life and
conduct and secondly because they are implied as axioms
of reason or logic itself. This supra logical knowledge is
not got through reasoning from facts of our sense or idea
but almost inmediatedly in a state of trance or intoxication
or dhyana or meditation. The first two are usually induced
by practice, the last is something that is attained in
absorption with what is known as the Ultimate Reality or
God. The extraordinary thing about these revelations is
that they are protected by the followers of such cults with a
fanatic sincerity that borders on intolerance of all criticism
239
or even testing or verification. But the attitude of the fanatic
is born out of fear of failure of verification and us such
many have attempted to stifle the individuals by denying
any possibility of verification or anubhava of the
transcendent truths. To some it amounts to heterodoxy to
seek verification or experience or revelation. However
persons who have sought to go to the Ultimate Reality had
to hazard this exposure to criticism and punishment. Thus
opened a route to the Spiritual or Mystic being out side
the pale of religions and its methods. They had to discover
methods and ways of the higher spiritual or occult and
mystical on their own initiative, for in a way the religions
have either obliterated the routes or forgotten them.
Therefore for a proper understanding of the foundations
of religion and its institutions or dogmas, one has to go
backwards to the sources of spiritual experience not
merely contained in the scriptures of the religions but in
the heart of man. Higher Religions have indeed been able
to lift the lid or open the route ever by slight suggestions
when in one voice they assert that the Divine is to be found
in the heart, through meditation and surrender. Not outside
oneself but within oneself is to be found the secret of our
unity with the Reality, the secret of immortality and bliss,
and the vision that liberates man from fear of the world
and its paradoxes, impermanences, and sorrows. This is
the meaning of the famous utterance or command (vidhi):
Know Thyself or know thy Self.
This mystic imperience is crucial to the inner
evolution of man. There fore is it called adhyatma sastra -
the science or yoga of inner being or living, living not only
240
in one’s impermanent body subject to the ravages of age experience. In fact as Sri Ramchandraji used to put it
and death, but also of that which is usually called the where the religion ends there spirituality begins. It is
‘I’ - the subject of the experiences of the body physical, however from this central spiritaality which has been
vital and mental. designated as the Zero - later expressed at lesser levels
as Sunya, as a concept of abhava or negation, that all reli-
The second major axiom of the mystic experience is
gion draws its sustenance and quasi-reality. But we have
the vision of all things both living and non-living as being
been more concerned with the experiences of God in his
suffused by the Spirit or what has been felt as the self of
oneness and many-ness or rather we have been
oneself. All this is the body of God, is God, and they live
concerned with the God in his meaningfulness to man. God
and move and have their being in Him. This is in respect
a proved, approved , and worshipped in terms of certain
of the so-called objective universe. One also experiences
attributes which have needed the existence of God as
mystically that there is only one God and that is God. Ekam
such. A god who is unconnected with the world even in
sat. Sarvam khalvidam Brahma. One leaves behind the
respect of its creation or sustention or destruction and
concept of Atma and enters into the awareness of the
redemption is held to be an impersonal - a nonbeing as it
Brahman and discovers that indeed they are one and the
were. It is not necessary to hold that God is such except in
same - the avama and the parama so to speak. This is
respect of certain aspects of Nature and man and his
also the basic mystic formula of the Tattvam asi. All these
freedom - a mere spectator - impassive observer. Such
seem to be so self-evident to that mystic awareness known
an experience of God may well be useless even as
anandaas (bliss) awareness that goes beyond the
Scientists have held-for an incessant interference with the
cognitivity of the jnana or vijnana. In fact one is urged
laws of Nature would make the discoveries of science
forwards to the apprehension of that which is the ground
Impossible - uniformity would not be available prediction
of all these experience-imperience complex into what
would be impossible and chance would reign. As against
Boehme calls the Urground - the Ultimate, the Para the
the Fate (determinism) of science, the world of chance
transcendent, the indescribable infinity (anantyam ).
has no hope of being acceptable to man Han wants a world
Mystical imperience-experience embraces both the of order, determinism and his God must be one who
poles of Being and transcendence, the subject and object upholds order and not introduce chaos chance. Though
and explores the Infinity that is a continuous yet permanent inwardly scientists would much wish for miracles to be
Reality. performed for their own personal affairs, yet for the outward
semblance of work for others they would insist upon the
This is the region of spirituality, pure and
miracles being as natural as any other natural event though
unadulterated which is beyond the realms of religious
241 242
the law under which they happen may be undiscovered. In experience ends mystical or spiritual imperience-
any case we have been shown that God is precisely experience begins.
described in terms of man’s needs for Order, moral and
A true study of comparitive religion then should firstly
temporal in every sphere of man’s personal, and social
be grounded in the spiritual experience-imperience of all
behaviour. The mystical view of reality is explained clearly
religious knowledge.
when it is held to be the standpoint of the absolute, whereas
the religious is the stand point of the relational. The Many years ago when the movement for the
relational may be also relativistic, but need not be so when discarding of religious experience and God gained
the mystical informs the relational and corrects it by means strength thanks to the dialectical materialism having won
of a equation that might be called ‘conversion’ - a logical its first victories in the area of politics, there was a counter-
tern so to speak. movement which tried to show that there are many levels
of religion, and therefore many types of Gods, who are
Comparitive mysticism has in recent times been a
either equal or arranged hierarchically, according to the
profitable enquiry in so far as it has clearly demonstrated
fields of operation and function in the world over which
that there can be ‘imperience’ - experience of Reality in
they apparently presided. Thus naturalistic religion revelled
its absolute and transcendent status, miss called
in having all Gods preside over the several kinds of
impersonal, though it is beyond the impersonal of the
phenomena of nature. The inner life of man revealed
universals of logic and the personal of the sociologist and
problems of conscience, society, moral law and duty, over
the individualists. There can always be a personal
which certain other Gods used to preside and direct, still
knowledge of the impersonal nature, and similarly there
higher were the gods that presided over the life beyond
can be a personal knowledge of the Transcendent.
and the worlds beyond Broadly speaking these levels
Perhaps if religious experience can be called the personal
imposed a system of divine, human and terrestrial natural
knowledge of the Godhead, philosophy can be called the
order, which operated almost like the laws of Nature.
impersonal knowledge of the same reality known as God.
However it was clear that a unity of all these was
But we may hazard the guess that philosophy may also
demanded and the acceptance of the Ultimate Godhead
attempt the impersonal knowledge of the transcendent.
was forced on the people, at least thinking minds. Thus
This latter seems to be the only reason for some
arose a theology . We may call it the natural theology, a
considering that philosophy is superior to religious
common sense construction or speculation of the way of
knowledge even as Hegel does. However it is the
Nature . It was found that one had to have a philosophy of
experience of Sri Ramchandraji that where philosophy
the world, physical, psychological and divine, a mythology
ends religious experience begins and where religious
243 244
that created a hierarchy of the many gods, belonging to
the physical, psychological, and divine levels or orders.
The mythology necessitated concepts of precedence on
account of the powers and also gave rise to the varied
myths and mythologies and legends. In fact it became
clear that not only these powers were made rival to each
other, they confronted another phenomena arising from the
bosom of the Absolute -the Spiritual, the contra-gods, or
God-opposites , even like Non-being . If gods were of the
day these contra-gods were sovereigns of the night, and
thus two sets of Gods arose. A new mythology was also
formulated . But then the crisis arose between these two
sets - and were have witnessed the famous opposition
between the forces of light (daytime) and the forces of the
night ( ratri), the former were known as devas the latter
were known as asuras. By a strange inversion of
conversion, the names asura and deva were interchanged
in the religion of Zoroaster. Asuras were said to be divine
whereas the devas were shown to be deluders:almost
recalling Blanco White’s sonnet : if light can thus hide why
not life?
The strange spectacles which are being presented
to us today is that conflict between the forces of darkness
and of light, of what has become in the sphere of dharma
or morals of justice and good and injustice and evil.
Religious ethics is the relativistic ethics essaying to define
the areas of dharma and adharma that have resulted in
making religion a solution to our problems of dharma
(good ) and adharma(evil). Contrary conventions have
been promulgted and it is one of the greatest feats of
245
modern conventionalism to have evolved common law
which really reveals the universal consensus about what
are the basic or cardinal virtues which religion should
promote Undoubtedly this has entailed the whole
traditions, conventions, customs, and usuages and we
have discovered that any true religious man cannot but be
loyal to the principlex of truth, tolerance and chastity or
loyalty to the highest ideal towards which religion is a
means. However we know that it has taken quite a lot of
self-criticism that had led religions to realise this absolute
of virtue which alone can be the means to spirituality or
liberation. These virtues are accepted as necessary and
desirable at least as between the followers of certain
religions but not in respect of others or other religions,
which has by that token led to watering dowm of these
values or virtues even in respect of the members of that
religion itself. Sectarianisms have made loyalty to the
Ultimate impossible for men have been counselled to be
loyalty to the institution/and sects than to truth or the
Godhead. Once an institution or person is identified with
the Ultimate then it follows that virtue is sacrificed. As it
was said the first casualty in War is truth so too the first
casualty in institutional religion is truth. Since truth is a
difficult thing to practice and much more to define
Philosophy has become a hand maid of casuistry rather
than an instrument of reality.
It has been made clear that we are revealed the
Nature of God in the several religions. There are atleast
five levels of the presentation of the God-Idea: the
transcendent absolute , the creator-complex of the Deity,
246
which may be functionally divided into three or four or any
number called graphically as Visve devas. The third is
important realisation of the Avatar or descent into the
evolutionary or historical scheme of humanity for the
purposes of teaching the knowledge in all its manyness
(kalas), fostering the virtuous and annihilating the non-
virtuous (not to be identified with the powers of light and
night), and the realisation of the descent and entry of God
into the heart or every seeker after the Ultimate thus
becoming his very life and being and reality, and lastly as
present in Nature in all its manyness of phenomena and
also in icons or symbolic objects in gross nature. These
five forms of God have been variously worshipped -
sometimes one at a time, sometimes simultaneously; the
higher type of religions emphasise the super humanity of
God and adore the Ultimate Transcendent of whom the
others are but inversions or reflections or illusions. Some
others adore only the inner ruler aspect of God, as the self
of oneself. Some are lost in the admiration and greatness
of the historical descent, and hold on to His worship.
Unfortunately there are many such descents in history and
prehistory and there are claims to such a status even today,
that it has bred more conflicts than understanding.
Comparitive studies in religion have somewhat
smoothened or rubbed off the angularities of opinions
about hero worships and we are hoping for a better mutual
understanding of the greatness of avatars, eastern and
western. Sometimes the avatars pass of as prophets and
thus has posed problems of conflict between sectarians
within each religion. Obviously static dogmas cannot fit
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into the evolutionary scheme of spiritual development and
attainment. Religions as dogmatic set of beliefs and
institutions which have ceased to function dynamically
create more problems than solve them, and instead of
liberation into the higher levels of spirituality, such as the
experience-imperience of the Transcendent which is the
root of all reality, they have forged bondages however
silken sometimes. The beauty of the rituals, the dextrous
quality of the methods of worship, the cultivated air of
serenity and sombreness, and the rich and lavish
expenditure made for the promotion of art and architecture,
have been so many hindrances to the real imperience of
the profound love at the heart of spirituality. Beauty and
art have their roots in the need for recreation and
expression and obviously are based on experience but
they hardly reveal the inner poise and basis of reality as
such. We may agree with Rabindranath that the world of
the absolute has hardly the charm of the expression and
nature itself may be said to exhibit this outer beauty of the
form and colour that senses react to and motor organs
recreate and amuse the ego of man. Lila of creation may
be, the play of externality and manyness, and may be the
divine evolutionism of Sri Aurobindo also looks upon this
expression of the potentialities of the Absolute as the goal
and perfection of expression in terms of the divine man in
the making. However beauty is but a word for expressional
satisfaction, recreative apprehension and formal
dedication . However it is also that impoverishes the
intelligence from its dynamic infinity. If by some spiritual
alchemy the experience-imperience of Reality could be
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made flow into bath the expression of beauty and the
intensity of internal potentiality that is infinite, and if indeed
the infinite is not finitised in the process then it may be
possible to apprehend a religious architecture and art that
reveals rather than veils the Spiritual. This is yet a far cry.
All our beauty or its creation dependon the lines or
boundaries that we draw from imagination even as Blake
has said.
It may appear that this analysis of beauty entails its
being devalued and also that it is not an absolute value at
all. Religion in a sense entails a relativistic conception and
beauty involved in religion is equally a relativistic concept
of value.
There is a way by which religion could be made
to function as a way towards the spiritual, instead of
what it has been made into as a means to convert the
spiritual into the worship of mere expression or art.
Religions have attempted to play a dual role and thus
has led to the confusion that prevails about the goals
of religions. If religion means literally the re-connecting
of the individual with the Divine Reality or God, then its
means should be more and more psychological and
inner act of connecting with the same . The other
process by which one seeks to connect oneself with
God through outward Nature is plausible but essentially
philosophical or scientific. The outer Nature is claimed
to be the body of God in externality and objectivity,
whereas the realisation of oneself as the body of God
is the realisation in subjectivity and interiority. When
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the glory of Nature is contemplated and the existence
of God is intuited we have the birth of Naturalistic
pantheism or the creationism of God, or the vastness
of divine omnipotence . God is not only a great Artist,
but also the great geometrician and scientist. But when
the same God is intuited as one’s own inner self, as
one who makes one live and move and act from within
and also reveals the supreme glory within out of the
reach of Nature itself , which Nature would like to parti-
cipate in by becoming one’s own body as it were, the
transcendence of God is imperienced. Religion would
faign keep both the poises of God as the Brahman -
the creator etc and as self (atman) (antaryaamin) - the
spiritual life and self. But this is precisely a most difficult
thing.
The idea of God as omnipotent power is so universal
an idea that it may well be said that it has led to the
sequential idea of fear of disobedience . So many religions
finally fall back on the idea of fear of disobedience, that it
is well-known that fear is central to the experience of God
rather than beauty. Beauty itself has become a symbol of
fear - for we are all afraid of being tempted by beauty which
might land us in disobedience. However if God is love,
then fear could be overcome but then fear and love or love
and disobedience seem to be polar unities, the excuse or
pardon of disobedience is defined as love and fear is cast
aside because one is sure that one’s disobedience will
be unnecessary as God is love. The idea of God as love
is a man’s complex belief that there is always ready the
pardon from God- though the provison is that one must
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seek God or surrender to Him or in some way pitiate Him.
All these are available in the several religions in some
manner or other.
The omnipresence of God is an experience which is
cultivted by means of fear itself as even in the ordinary
political state the omnipresence of the police is a deterrent
to crime. However much it is clear to us that such an
experience of omnipresent fear is not very much capable
of giving us that peace which comes from the mystic
experience of liberation from fear through the omnipresene
of the Divine Reality, when the mind is transcended and
one is at home with one’s deepest self .
Religions of love tend to emphasize the relational
nature of God, as father or as mother and develop the idea
of fraternity of all creatures or created things and beings.
Love seems to be diversified into any number relational
phases, including those of the lover and the beloved -
which despite the introversion are really manifestations
of the extravertedness. These anthropological attitudes
have limited relevance for social unity but not for liberty
and equality seems to be precarious. Modern religious
thought has began to emphasize the role of equality and
liberty in social and religious existence - but it appears
that religious belief has hardly that force or logic to
promote this realisation.
If then we consider that religion is a means to the
realisation of the truth about ourselves and our
relationship to the Transcendent Primal cause of a11
creation and ourselves, then it appears that it has
251
ceased to be the real driving force towards enabling
man towards liberation.
Nor would the idea of God as the just help to make
God an instrument or means of liberation. In other words
religion and God of religion hardly help man to attain the
liberation from the basic ignorance of the Ultimate Reality
nor do they help to connect man with it.
The truth seems to be that religions are at best social
instituitions, of a special kind or unique kind, that help to
maintain the principles of social control, by emphasizing
the principles of fraternity, equality and liberty from
oppressive forces that tend to disrupt the unity and
harmony of the society. Thus the concept of religion as
Mata is a set of beliefs which render the social life pos-
sible is Buddism which seeks to get beyond the social
ties towards liberation beyond the social, is mystical in
movement, though the social motivation began to
dominate the lower levels of aspiration. In other words
Buddhism has two phases - the spiritual and the religious-
the former emphasized moksa or nirvana, the latter
emphasized social humanitarianism or dhamma. Similarly
Jainism reveals two phases - the spiritual that makes for
jinas or liberated and liberators, and the other for laymen
emphasizing the virtues or silas of anuvata, the
little-dharmas necessary for providing the preparatory ground
for the mahavrata or fitness for arhathood or jinahood.
Dharma became a more dominant religious trend
than moksa, all the while reiterating that Darma is the
means to moksa, even when the downward trend away
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from moksa is discernable. In fact the tendency to make
religion suitable to the fulfilment of aspirations of man in
respect of physical, biological and mental wants as well
as social solidarity has been the dominant trend in all
religions after the first few centuries of liberation-
consciousness. So consistent and uniform has been this
tendency more to bring down the kingdom of happiness
or God on this earth than to make man rise towards the
higher regions of the cosmic or supra-cosmic or
transcendent.
The works today speak about the social value of
religion rather than the spiritual valued of religion. Religion
has become a byeword for stagmation and apathy towards
transcenendental realities. It has ceased to be means and
has become a knot of ignorance. Revolt against religion
has set from the inner sources and origins of religious
instinct or motive, and has shown that there are higher and
more simple and subtler means to Realisation of oneself
than the institutions and concepts of religion. Religious
history has lost its meaning, the symbols have become
dumb and unlinking with reality, and the rites and rituals habits
of performance. As Francis Bacon has said we have
developed a series of fourfold idols, the idols of the tribe, the
idols of the market-place, the idols of the Cave and above all
the idols of the theatre. Other idols or icons may have only
lesser danger as against these fourfold opaque statues which
as F. Nietzsche warned might well crush us to death.
Gloomy and pessimistic though this downward
movement of religious life has been, let us ask ourselves
253
whether the recipe precribed by Thomas Paine in his Age
of Reason would help. Would philosophy as Scientific
endeavour help us to rediscover the fonts of spirituality if
it could?
If philosophy is assumed to be an intellectual attempt
to explain the assumptions of religion, that endevour known
as apologetics has been the main function of all theological
philosophies. It was precisely this that characterised
medieval theology and philosophy. Many intellectual
systems have been developed only on this apologetical
manner , known to India as Mimamsa. Medieval theological
philophies have revealed that philosophies at that time
dared not to question the dogmas of religion, nor could
they dare to verify them. In fact spiritual experiences had
to bow down before the dogma and were sqeezed into
the pattens of religion. This situation was in-tolerable and
we have one reason why so many religions started to for-
mulate differentiating dogmas on the basis of spiritual
insights that could ill fit into the earlier parent religion.
Sectarian movements within a religion tended to
breakaway and form independent religions The diversity
of religions is not to be referred to diverse ways of
approach to the same reality, known as One, but also due
to the unique unfolding of the quality of divinity that opens
up a new approach. Such a quality could obviously be open
to the individual prophet or seer a new dimension of the
divinity known or unknown to the religions of that day.
Philosophical theology could hardly go beyond and had
to accept that there are more ways of knowing reality than
through the methods of religion or the methods of reason.
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In modern times, and perhaps at all times for a minority of
intellectuals, philosophy meant an intellectual or rational
attempt to explain and interpret our experiences . It is said
to be even an obstinate attempt to arrive at the nature of
Reality not in terms of God or theology but in terms of the
highest concepts available to human reason. The
development of intellectual logic, both deductive and
inductive, was rendered possible by this eschewing of God
as theological Ultimate and making the Ultimate the
Absolute Ground of Reason or the Absolute Idea.
Philosophy liberated human reason from its shackles to
religious dogmas, and instead of being its handmaid
became its critic. Though philosophy as such can be said
to be atheistical in so far as it does not accept revelational
‘truths’, and it had never ceased to consider them as
irrational, yet it had striven to see the iota of rationality
that might be present in it. Therefore a study of
philosophical grounds of religious beliefs, not to speak of
spiritual awareness, had been an unconvincing one,
though the subject has been handled by scores of first rate
intellectual minds. However the way of philosophy should
become more liberal and not remain strictly confined to
the dialectical kind of reason if it has to play a real role in
unfolding the hidden potentialities of a way of knowing that
is trans-rational or dialectical. By dialectical I mean the
rationality based on the principle of non-self-contradiction
and law of contradiction or negation based on the
alternatives. (tarka). Though philosophy has been
understood to mean love of Ultimate Reality ( sophia) ,
yet it has in methodology meant the love of intellectual
255
dialectic and currently it means love of words (logos) as
species of philology (linguistics). Language of philosophy
is to be distinguished from the language of the commonfolk
(loka) and the language of religion is obviously different
so much so it has been held that the mystical imperiences
are inexpressible or incommunicable through languages
of the other orders of experience. Philosophy thus broke
away from the mystical at the first phase. Despite the
universality of reason, that truth is the same for all under
the same conditions, it has been shown that religions have
particularised truths limited them in many ways.
Modern philosophy reveals the break way nature of
all thinking from its roots. The problems could have been
faced differently. Can the mystical imperiences of the
transcendent Reality be interpreted by evolving a logic
suitable to communication in terms of philosophy, thus bye-
passing religious dogmas ? This indeed has been
attempted.Mystical philosophy attempts to eschew
mythology and imagination on the one hand and also the
rigid patterns of the logic of contradiction known to
rationalism. It begins to realise that psychological logic
could bridge the rigid lines that have fettered the
discernment of a twofold truth. Truth being the aim of
philosophy, its criteria of truth are such as try to define
falsehood in logical terms, which includes error. Theories
of error and falsehood have abounded in logic of this kind.
The mystical logic, being of the infinite consciousness
transcending so to speak the distinctions of truth and
falsehood of the rationalistic mind, discovers that in reality
the opposites co-exist and are not as Hegel shrewedly
256
observed ,linked up inextricably with each in order to
explain the process of change and evolution by realising
a synthesis of opposites, In fact the equal reality of the
opposites showed on the one hand that all experience is
of the order of finiteness or logical particularness, and on
the other that it is because of this equality of the propositions
of finite nature, one finds it difficult to evolve a logic of the
Transcendent in terms of the finite. Despite the assertions of
the logicians that there are universal propositions, all that
experience reveals is that all propositions are particular, so
that one may be able to assert the equal reality of all particular
contradictory propositions.
This realisation in Jaina logic has revealed the basic
need to cultivate not only tolerances in religious diversity
but also philosophic diversity. At any rate it has become
increasing clear that truth is not the ultimate of Reality, and
that all truth is what belongs to the realms of appearance
and relatively true . This should of course be distinguished
from the degress of reality of Absolutism which really tries
to condemn one set of truths to appearance or falsity whilst
exalting any other set to the status of reality. We have seen
that since reason cannot comprehend the Universal
transcendent, its being an ultimate value also is
questionable. Studies in comparitive philosophies could
hardly render greater service than arriving at this
unsatisfactory conclusion.
Empiricistic explanations do not go far even to prove
the validity of religious beliefs. God and soul and even
morality or order cannot be proved by means of
257
experiences, whether of the order of sense or inference
or analogy . They happen to be presuppositions for the
explanations of human behaviour and conduct. May be
there is another means by which they could be grasped,
known, seen and entered into as a great seer stated,. This
may be the way of revelation , an unfolding of divine truths
or realities by the Divine Himself . May be there is a way
or means or method by which this supreme revelational
possibility could be secured. But so many of the
theologians have denied this second possibility and have
asserted that the traditional scriptures have been given
by God and no one should either seek to verify it or deny
it, or even try to attain to the status, of the Rishi or Seer or
prophet . Comparitive studies in religion have revealed
that this prohibition or this inhibition is unwarranted
interference with the innermost divine instinct in man. Man
has again and again revolted against this interdiction with
the dogma of unique revelational possibility. It is this that
had kept on the religious and mystical forces at war with
one another in most religions which reveal internal fiss-
ions and instability. It is only when the mystical hope for
direct experience or imperience, and revelational vision
and veriflability is burning in the human heart and religions
permit themselves to be constantly leavened with it that
there can be any real universal Religion, which seems to
be the hope of many scholars devoted to the study of
comparitive religion. Freedom and authority should mingle
sufficiently to produce a healthy upward movement in
man’s divine evolution.
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 COMPARITIVE RELIGION - II
In the first lecture it has been shown that the studies
of comparitive religion have showed that all religious
movements have their source or ground in mystical
experience of the Ultimate Reality which beckons the
mystic visionary to seek it by direct aspiration .Truly such
a person feels the revelation to be an act of Grace on the
part of the Divine Ultimate or Urground. Religions have
come into being to give the idea of means by which this
Grace could be secured, though it is equally true that it
does not depend upon the human effort or means.
Obviously the Ultimate Cause does not need any other
cause to make it grant the vision and imperience of Reality.
Religions have tended to become the means through outer
expression- by rites (karmas, involving karmendriyas or
motor organs) and repetitions, (japa or rosary countings),
and service (waiting on the institutions founded or erected
for these purposes of worship of God) Idols of all kinds
have been erected, whether they are symbolic or gross
representations depending on the imaginations of the
persons -again used as means to the Ultimate. The idolatry
has many degrees of grossness, ranging from the iconic
representation, symbolic representations, ritual
representations, dramatic iconographical representations,
known as mantras, tantras, and yantras in Indian ritualism.
They are intended to develop the triple unity of mind,
speech and act (manasika, vacika, and kayika). However
all the three have tended to be gross idols of the mind,
speech and form. They have become more and more
important in themselves and not just signs or connectors
259
(lingas) with the Ultimate which they presumable are said
to refer to or stand for.
Therefore religions have failed to link up man with
God or the Absolute Reality. Though simple at the
beginning they have become complex and complicated,
having introduced artifices and techniques which satified
perhaps the tastes of the worshipper than be instruments
of spirituality. Aesthetic enjoyment or rasa tended to build
up around the central core of spritual goal or deal, and in
the process the ideal not only became blurred or dimmed
but also lost all appearance in the ornated substitutes made
for its installation. So much so we live in the world of signs
and symbols, and interested in the inter-dependence of
symbol on other symbols and signs have imaginatively
created poetic mythologies, which are said to be of things
long ago (purana). It is true that no human being can live
without ideals. It appears to be equally true to say that no
one can live without idols as well, which cloth the ideal
with a permanent form or sign. The living faith or ideal
becomes a frozen sign or symbol. This has occurred in
the sphere of language itself. Words have become
conventional signs for things and actions, and of
connections. The original language - and thereafter every
other has been built up by this process of verbalisation.
Men became more interested in the use of language and
its extraordinary beauties than with the actions and things
themselves. In mantra shastra as a matter of fact, the
mantra is said to be more powerful than the actual things.
This mantra is verbalisation rather than the original thought.
Thought-word became a complex unity: however this got
260
a rudest shock when it was discovered that words in the
different languages were not identical denotators of
objects or actions, both in the acradotal or mystic level
and in the secular and ordinary commercial language. If
one could see what this denotes in the sphere of religion,
we can discern the impossibility of making linguistic idols
our guide to reality. To seek the ultimate for itself seems
to the only way to making even language meaningful to
express the higher spiritual truths.
The fear complex that has been assiduously
cultivated through the institutions of power, such as the
State or Leader, was equally powerful in the institutions of
religion. The concept of sinfulness is on a par with the
criminal acts against the person, as well as the civil acts
against property. Since everything belongs to God any
attempt to usurp that which belongs to Him is sinfulness,
and would be punished - in terms of laws of God. So very
comparable are the punishments of sin in religion to those
of political that one wonders whether the religious are not
just transferred from the political society. Fear became a
very cultivated emotional response to acts of trespass of
moral law, and much more religious laws that insist upon
the proper performance of rites, rituals, repetitions, and
so on. Whilst then religions have as their basic emotional
quality of fear, there is also every attempt to make out that
God is love - especially in some religions, he forgives, he
pardons, and he himself would pay the penalty also. These
complexes however are just trappings effective indeed that
cover the innermost fear of having to pay the penalties of
disobedience. All these forms of religion are however
261
definitely social adaptations or rather adaptations from
social order. The hierarchy of priestly orders, kingly orders
and citizens and others again is based upon the social
responses made towards satisfying the fourfold nature of
man himself, as one who seeks transcendent contact, or
cosmic contact, as one who seeks to be master and ruler,
as one seeks to be materially prosperous and efficient
and as labourer with work as not merely a means to good
life but also as an end. Such conceptions had plenty of
speculative formulations both in Plato’s Greece and
India’s Manu and China’s Confucianism. Islamic
democratic theism and Christian egalitarianism have not
been able to abolish the existence of the fourfold man,
and therefore have not even mitigated the abuses of the
hierarchical society even today. Nor has the religion of
dialectical materialism been able to do it. For it needs the
making of new men who are integral or unified in
conscience.
It is true that higher religions have striven to precisely
this and the mystical aim has always been to have the ideal
of the egalite. For any society coming into being from the
conception of egalitarian religion also. But whilst these
religions have succeeded in breaking or smashing the
ideals of multi-caste society or multi-class society they
have not been able to transform man himself into a unified
integral person. The disturbing phenomena of mystical
prophet-ships has been such that it tended always in
some measure iconoclastic it has heralded the twilight of
the idols. A new religion is what produces this process.
But its vitality and strength it gets from the mystic. However
262
after a brief spell of some five centuries mankind has
settled down to living not in the company of new idols but
also with assimilated, in different degrees, old idols.
The phenomena of these conversions of ideas into
ideals and they in their turn into idols in almost every sphere
of being has its parallel in the formation of habits and
instincts, of habits that proved useful at one stage
becoming bondages and liabilities at another, of instincts-
protective mechanisms of the animal have tended to
become racial and biological bondages to man.
intelligence had to struggle against these fixed
automatisms in order to meet the challenges of vaster
areas of functioning at the early period of man’s struggle
against all natural forces in the field of spiritual life. The
mystical insights have provided the instruments for
breaking the idols of the past, and cutting the ropes of
bondage that have prevented man from going to his fullest
stature. Indeed if we take Mystic vision as the vision of
liberation from our past and from the gloomy future that
the past has been sedulously building up, then it may
appear that we have to rethink our religious future as
something that needs reformulation. Religion has failed
to preserve the link with God: it had only succeeded in
preserving and stabilizing the traditions of the past in the
present - it had preserved continuity and not growth.
Today when we are working for a real universal life,
we find that religious institutions have developed
proprietary rights over the souls of men and have been
trying to use all sorts of means to keep men with their rigid
263
or closed frontiers. The threat to any universal religion
that is capable of liberating all individuals from their
regional ,geographical, racial, and mythological shackles
is posed not from the side of agnosticism or atheism but
from the orgnised religions alone. The failure of mystics
to bring into being universal religion, not merely
confraternity of the existing religions but a religion that has
promoted the awareness of Cosmic consciousness and
universal vision, not only in respect of outer and horizontal
extensions but also in depth are all referable to the failure
of religions to serve the spiritual purpose of liberation of
man and promotion of cosmic value inherent in him. In
other words the ideal of Human unity has been given up
for the idols of the theatre - to use Bacon’s phrase.
In other words universal religion, which was mooted
as a feasible ideal by many advanced religious seers, has
become apparently impossible if we think in terms of
having one set of insights or revelations or a conglomerate
of them, one set of rites ora conglomerate of them, one
set of myths or a conglomerate of them, and a unified
philosophy to justify or rationalise these processes. One
set of moral codes more probably could have more
possibility of being universalised as Immanuel Kant stated
in his Critique of Practical Reasons, than the aforesaid
unifications. Actually such unifications have been attemp-
ted during the past century and half and we could only
produce what we may call eclecticisms that teach
tolerance rather than liberate vision and, spiritual unity or
uniqueness of each individual. In fact compromises have
been more to the fore rather than the ability of the
264
compromises to be working hypotheses for spiritual union
with the Ultimate Reality or God.
The way out of this impasse can be found only when
one really understands the definite vitality that has been
keeping up the religious aspiration alive in the hearts of
men everywhere. These men do realise that religious
aspiration or goals are necessary, God is in fact very
necessary for human existence. They equally well realise
that religious institutions or religions of dogma and faith
have not been perfect: indeed more of ten they have been
afflictions to the aspiring mind. The psychology of atheism
does not stem from the lack of spiritual aspiration but due
to the lack of quality in religious practical life. If as it is
sometimes stated, religion is the practical aspect of
philosophy, then it appears that practice always falls
behind theory. To cover up this gap one is expected to
have faith - which more often means blindness to real
quality of moral and religious living or failure. Faith is the
counsel of patience of tolerance and a will to hope for the
best in the long run. But this kind of faith is quite a self-
deceptive one and religion may well be called today as
the great self-deception - a kind of Maya of the religious
level. If faith is something that cannot and should not be
verified knowledge, then it is almost a kind of agnosticism
- a reverse kind of ignorance interminable. Belief is a hope
based on experience already undergone, making one
hope that what has been true would continue to be true
even in the present and in the hereafter. Religions may be
justified on the basis of belief but cannot be based on faith
as such. In any fundamentalist religions are encountering
265
firm rejection, because they erect their entire structure on
faith, unverifiable, but which conventionally seems
sufficient to assuage the anguish of the heart and the mind
in the presence of personal misery and riddle. Agnosticism
seems one way but it is a half-way house. It impels some
to move towards the overcoming of it. Atheism rejects
completely a presence of a supreme cosmic principle or
Ruler -creator, other than Nature, or as later it has emerged
other than man.
Universal religion of today as explained by humanists
is the religion of humanity, a process strictly to be
understood as the way one gets unified in ideas, ideals
and life with all human beings. Of course this involves the
conception, that God is found nearest in one’s neighbour
- not oneself even, and collectively in all men. The collective
tends to usurp the functions of the individual and becomes
the idol that today we know as the picture of the ideal man.
The religion of realisation became the religion of service
of humanity. Though more well-meaning expositors of
humanistic religion have said that the only way to meet
God in Himself is to meet him in the physical and vital and
mental beings , it is clear that this attempt to sublimate
one’s religion of God through the religion of humanity has
already been known as a deviation. The experience of
Buddhist sanghas, the Christian Monk-orders including
those of the Society of Jesus, the Islamic traditions of
brotherhood etc. have demonstrated that though one may
convert others to a faith, one hardly tends remain in it
himself by the time he has succeeded in gathering his folk
or flock. It might obviously be quite a realisation of the ideal
266
that God does become s man, but it is not quite so obvious
that men do indeed become Gods or God by this process
of conversions of all kinds. One may wear the signs of
God or godliness but one hardly become what one
worships - except perhaps by an irony of dramatic self-
deception. In one’s own heart lur the doubt whether it is
ever possible to become truly spiritual by external
worships.
Today we have other types of religion, the religion of
Science or the Religion of an Artist, the worshippers of
scientific truth in Chemistry, Physics, and biological
science which has drawn the unqualified loyalty and
devotion to those ideals. So too the Artist seeks the
Ultimate beauty and lives for it with devotion, undiverted
to any other. But devotion is not religion, especially when
it is of ideals that are external or other than the Ultimate.
Truth scientific, beauty , and goodness are undoubtedly
great ideals but they are not of the Divine as such when
they refer to lesser planes of experience, such as Nature,
creativity or imagination, and human service and sympathy.
The exteriorisation of the goals or ideals is perhaps the
single drawback in these humanistic enterprise of modern
religions as it was in the ancient.
The worship of man as deity either in the single
person as Teacher or Prophet or avatar has not been totally
supplanted by the worship of man in the collective. Anyway
there has been a great deal of human worship going about
in all religions and this has only led to deepening shadows
of anthropomorphism, either single or polytheistic or
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poly-humanistic. This latter has become a quite common
phenomenon at the present day. In fact each religion is
trying to produce more such worshippable personalities
or saints - backed by authentic miracles either current or
posthumously. Miracle performance has become the sign
of deity whether they are of the lowest order of the highest
order of revival from death. In any case it is yet a serious
question whether miracle performances are enough to
justify the acceptance of these personalities as delegates
or incarnations of God. Anyhow the terrestrial perishing
bodies of these personalities reveals only if at all a
temporary influx of the Divine not a spiritual divinisation
or realisation. There are innumerable legends and stories
about these miracles and miracle births which are
invariably recited to bring about wonder and awe to the
minds of the listners and that is about the best that we can
say about religious competence of the human
personalities. The claim that that they are the Ultimate will
not be accepted at all except by men of faith.
It has been of course a fact that man has striven to
make religion a matter of his object of devotion and service
- the idol of the icon, or the sign (linga) - more as a pratika
or object of concentration. This is what is known as idol
worship.
Though the majority of persons who counsel this sort
of worship or object of concentration or meditation, there
are undoubtedly some who literally believe that the idol is
the actual presence of God within that, or resident in that
icon. Philosophically if we accept that God is either
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omnipresent or can be, then it is possible to affirm that
under special circumstances such a presence cannot only
be felt but also experienced. It is this that has stood the
test of time and has granted belief in these presences in
icons or presences. They should not be treated as idols in
the same way as we have mentioned about the Baconian
‘Idols’ that hinder free thinking and reflection, and whatever
their merits, they have not promoted the enlargement of
consciousness. They have most often, if not invariably
produced men who are well described as frogs in the well-
men (kupastha-mandukah).
Therefore it is seen that philosophical justifications
are given to pratikas on different grounds than what are
given to explain the special presence or descent of the
Divine presence at some places and icons. However this
might be, it is not proper either to accept wholesale all
iconic representations as presences - even as all heroes
are not gods - nor are gurus for that matter. Mystic
experiences are the only tests in such cases. Such must
be indeed rare, unless we are able to train persons to
mystical imperience of Nature and its objects even as it is
really requisite in the cases of gurus or personalities who
appear above the ordinary run of things. As we have said
it is one of the profound truths of Yoga, that it has functioned
both as a truly connecting method with the Ultimate Reality
and as a training for mystical imperience of Reality - in
both and in all its phases.
Yoga as the method of linking up or relating the
human soul with God is like religion in its subjective phase,
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and as the method of awakening the mystical
consciousness, transcendent to the lower gross and
externalised and externalising consciousness that is but
an inverse inversion of the transcendent wombal
consciousness, it is mystical liberating.
It is perhaps a truth in our human consciousness to
crave for the double benefits of heaven and earth, of
liberation and enjoyment here. Such fervent hopes have
always been entertained through religious history the world
over. ‘Happiness here as well as there’ has also been
voiced by the Vedic seers. God and His world are not
opposites, and man’s choice is not between them. But how
indeed one could have the cake and eat it too!
Renunciation of the world is said to be a temporary phase
in Yoga, for the world can be really enjoyed without misery
only when one has secured union with the Godhead or God.
Once that is secured through Yoga, then it is claimed that
one acts by the Law of God who rules the worlds, and is
no longer bound by its pleasures or miseries. Perhaps as
some suggest the very sufferings become enjoyments,
sorrows become joys, failures turn into successes and
so on. Be that as it may, the change in the very nature of
experience of the world would make all the difference
between the pre-godly state and the post-Godly state or
more exactly the Godly state that has no end. Perhaps
this sought to be described as the Kingdom of Heaven
within oneself, for the self has become divine or one with
the Divine. Such has been the hope and the aspiration of
advanced thinkers about the condition of a liberated man,
if he returns to the Earth after plumbing the depths or
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ascending the heights - whichever imagery seems adapted
to the individual seeking knowledge and a nature of the
world in terms of God-consciousness. Scriptures aver that
no one who has reached God returns back to the earth
consciousness-na punaravrittih . It is a place of no return.
Obviously some do not endeavour to go to that place of
no return, and halt at lower levels of glory and beauty -
with lingering looks at the world of colour and sound,
softness and luxury, beauty sensate and satisfying.
Religious idealism has this ambivalence and it must be
presumed that these two sides are organic to each other
- though they are practically opposed to each other. The
attempts to make the earth-phase of reality equally as
liberating as the other phase of it has appealed to
somethinkers especially Rabindranath, Radha krishnan,
and sri Aurobindo. Their religious concepts have tried to
give meaning to human life and expression and world of
Beauty as revealing God in extension as in intension.
However the real failure of these attempts to make
externality as liberating as internal transcendence has
proved materialistic than spiritual growth.
Can we ever make the external the means to the
transcendent and the internal? Through out the mystics
have rejected this and affirmed that possibly the external
can be made meaningful and the vehicle of the spiritual
when the spiritual is discovered and affirms itself in the
external evolution or expression.
Thus it can be seen that religion cannot be by itself a
means to spiritual imperience or liberation. No religion
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has been able to grant us the link with the supreme Reality
- it has not been able to perform the one function it was
designed to achieve - the yoga or connection with the
central Reality that is transcendent to both the internal and
the external, but nevertheless sustains both of them - and
could be made to it once the connection or yoga has been
achieved.
No religion again has provided the apparatus . For
it is a basic fact that not by oneself or by any means is the
Divine Union got except through the descent or grace of
God into oneself. Not study, not charity, not sacrifices but
by His grace is one taken up and led to liberation by a
path that is not known to these institutions . It has been
called the path of Light (Arcis) guided by the Transcendent
amanava (angelic) Spirit or God Himself.
In other words, religions need the mystical vision,
audition, the transcendent experience of the Reality as it
leans towards man. But it is something more also. It is
only when one really yearns to know God, as he is in
himself, in all his infinity, that one really gets this mystical
experience at all. As the Isa upanisad puts it-the seer, the
poet, the seer beyond and self-illumined perceives the
nature of things in their eternal nature-which is their reality
so to speak – yatha thathyato arthan vyada dhat sastibyah
samabhah – it is precisely reality when it is apprehended
through god-vision. It is then that one knows and lives in
God as he is for Himself and not for us merely.
Men usually deem that they are their bodies – a soul
different from their bodies is hardly realised. Intellectual
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abstractions may still the clamour of the body’s claim to
selfhood, but the ordinary man succumbs to the idea of
the body, being the soul that matters. We protect the body
in order to protect the soul. The same phenomenon can
be observed when man worships God as his Self, but
always seeks to emphasize the importance of God for the
preservation of his soul. If it is a mistake to identify the
soul with the body, it is equally true that the identification
of God with theh soul is a mistake. It is the transference of
the epithet Religion tends to commit this mistake and it is
mystical self-imperience of God as He is in Himself that
corrects this anthropomorphic bias. The soul of man is
the body of God, and it has to live by and for and in God
as He is in Himself, which the Upanisad affirms is the ‘Tat’
or ‘Tam’ – the THAT.
This experience of God as the self and the That is
essentially a mystical disclosure of God to Man and Nature.
Perhaps we might have go beyond even the mystical
or religion and reach a level of consciousness or being
transcendent to it. Sometimes the mystical experience is
almost equated with the pantheistic experience of a
Spinoza, or the Poets of metaphysical order. However the
really transcendent Godhead or the Absolute goes beyond
both Consciousness and Being itself – not by negations
but by a supreme jump or leap into the Unknown –
Urground. It is even then true to hope that all this which we
know being and consciousness, even of the cosmic order,
do derive from That. It is so because all this being and
consciousness even where cosmic is fragmentary or
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fragmented though linked with each other in an external
way which dominates more than the internal inherence they
possess with each other. It is this experience that enforces
the experience of the Ultimate Reality as going beyond
consciousness and being as such. It is sometimes called
the Great Negation, which can be reached only by a
spiritual leap, and from which anything emerges only by a
reverse leap, and that may entail an inversion in the
process. This phenoemenon of leap and inversions occurs
at almost every stage, even as the dialectical oppositional
moments occur both in the ascent as well as the descent
of evolution and involution. These leaps are significant at
the final stages of imperience (living in or birth in) the higher
planes and levels. The Transcendental mystical is an
unknown terrain – and perhaps unknowable terrain –
because it is beyond the logic of our human intellect and
action. This is verily the summit of mystical imperience. It
is to use our language symbols a qualitatively distinct
Infinity – which is unending bliss. I would not like to use the
word ecstacy for the simple reason that it smacks of
externality. It is rather a supreme state in-statis-and
capable of being considered as a transcendent form of
Homeostatis.
The human problem is religion lies precisely in its
promise to grant man an adjustment to this environment
taken in its widest sense. Indeed this adjustment has been
continuously achieved from the lowest level of life to its
most magnificent manhood, or humanity, notwithstanding
the great struggles and failures on the way. Religion as
the conscious linking of oneself with the cosmic and trans-
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cosmic Power or Powers marks out man from the animals.
Though man has indeed utilized the animals as the
symbols of power and wisdom beyond man-as may be
witnessed in the past in Egypt, and other counties, and
even in the present in India and else where. It may be that
it is a re-enactment of Plato’s dream or vision of the
Transcendental world or Realm of Essences to use
Professor George Santayana phrase which contains all
the Perfect immutable Ideas of everything that is produced
or invented in this world of images or shadows within the
Cave. In any case it is clear that we might have for a while
to abandon this realization – viz., to aim at seeing all the
Ideas of the shadow objects in the Transcendental world
or Realm of Essences, unless we wish to be artists and
sculptures or iconographers, to copy the original idea
rather than copy the copies of those Ideas – as Plato
speaks of the poets of his day. (Why not even now). One
has to go beyond the Realm of Essences or Ideas and
this religion can do only when it becomes endowed with
the aspiration to link up itself with that Beyond, In other
words, it has to liberate itself at the peril of losing contact
with the earthy world of shadows or our social world by a
loftier aim. It has to soar higher.
Indian spirituality had dared to do so when it went
beyond our ordinary being to that One without a second,
that One which has become all this, that One which is
spoken of in manifold ways as the various Gods or the
Cosmic world (created world).The mystical Realm of
Being is indeed very much different from the religious
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realm of Essences or Ideas, though it is easy to mistake
them as one for the other. The Spiritual is the Great
Negation according to some who had glimpse of that, but
other have spoken of the religious world as the great
negation of the transcendental. Negation itself is the term
of logical import, and there for this mental or intellectual
term hardly brings out the basic reality of both, for the
spiritual is the potential Absolute of which the
manifestational Absolute is the Religious. If realization
consists in the freedom that comes about from the Potential
or transcendental Being, then the manifested or created
realm is at once the creature and the power of that.
If liberation consists in arriving at the Rest (santi) that
nothing can disturb, and which once arrived at or attained
reveals itself as the inner base of foundation of all
movements and manifestations without being made to
participate in these, then the goal of religion as well as
mysticism is the Santi, the peace that pass the
understanding and even the union with the Ideas or gods.
When religion fails to help this upward mystical or
transcendental movement or leap it naturally falls back for
its support on the below or the lower cosmic, the transient
earthy and finally the shadowy world – Well may then we
exclaim with Edmund Burke in his last days : What
shadows we are and what shadows we pursue”. This is
the anti-thesis not the climax of wisdom – an anti-thesis,
that has flowed out from the profound realization that the
pursuit of Ideas however glorious ends up in divine despair.
We may be satisfied with the theory of world illusion or
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cosmic delirium of divine forces that produce a dance
exhilarating like the Dance of Siva, but nonetheless the
dance of despair or death. "Lives of great men may well
remaind us that we can make our lives sublime and leave
foot-prints on the stands of time" which may well be blown
away by winds of time. This with due apologies to the poet
Longfellow.
As even a study of history produces in us the
impression if not a deep feeling of disappointment and
makes even the most optimistic of men pessimistic, so
also a study of the history of religions gives us about the
same feeling. The same rise and fall, and the leavings of
these past great and glorious days as the debris of cultures
littered about in the minds and hearts of men may well
turn even the most stout-hearted of humanists sad and
forlorn. A great historian like Professor Toynbee may well
point out that a cosmic plan is present in all these rise and
fall of religions and cultures, that at every stage, a great
spurt or intervention of a higher and transcendental quality
has not only illumined the darkness, though not at the same
place but at other places, West or East, and created a
new life or renewal of spirit. In almost all cases it may be
seen that it has not drawn upon the past but from above, a
mystical downpour opening out a new frontier to man. It
may well be suggested with Bergson that possibly the
mystical is of the open society, and it is new liberation
that has led men to shape a new society with new axioms
of society. The reactions of the past societies to the new
influx are obviously not favourable, they are resistant and
inhibitive and become more closed than ever. Religion thus
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becomes a hindrance to progress. But if an enlightened
people or persons begin to see that this new Vision,
revelation, new techinique of opening out to the
Transcendent that is leaning towards the world and in fact
denting holes in its homogeneous structure is indeed the
goal of religious aspiration,then the day will not be far off
when religion would be released from its own boundaries
that it had erected at the beginning to guard its frontiers
when it was at first born. As Sri Aurobindo stated about
the ego: What was a help at one stage has become a
bar.”
It was said of a great saint-scholar that he firmly and
for all time put the fences and defences of the system of
philosophy and religion, which could neither be assailed
from without or from within. This has been the aim of almost
every conservative thinker during history not only of religion
but of empires or properties. However, there are more
forces that threaten from above - a continuous downpour
of divine grace making men strive for higher and higher
perfections and direct attainment of divine Union with the
Transcendent. Or it may be due to the inevitable
deterioration in meaning and practice that rob the system
of any relevance or utility to the changing patterns of the
earthly consciousness. Everything becomes out of date.
The most eternal verities seem to lose their relevance.
Other eternities, or to use Leibniz’s phrase, other
compossibilities equally eternal seem to be urging
themselves towards existence or manifestation. In any case
the fact remains - that every glorious past is a past - an
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abstraction however, not all the museums can ever evoke
a practical relevance to the future.
This grim conclusion should not disappoint us. On
the contrary thanks to the Mystics who are always with us
as witnesses to an ever- present omnipresent Reality and
bringers of good tidings the Supreme Transcendent which
is truly infinity has a future along with a past and a present.
It is with this that one must connect oneself wholly, totally
or integrally in all one’s parts. One who could help us in
this direction is verily a real guide or God. And as even
Plato is said to have stated “Show me a man who will lead
me to God and I shall follow him to the end of the earth.”
279
MAHATMA GANDHI AND
UNIVERSAL RELIGION
Swami Vivekananda was a Monk dedicated to
religious and spiritual life. His love for spiritual experience
made him search for a guru, and he got an exceptional
one in the person of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Not
only did he gain the vision and the power of spirituality in
the fullest measure, but he arrived at a new method of
understanding the very constitution of the religions of the
world in their essentials, and found that all their truths were
present in a living manner in the age-old religion of India,
the Vedantic Hinduism. Universal Religion, as the religion
of every one on the Earth, was found to be realisable in
and by means of Hinduism. Hinduism, for Swami
Vivekananda, was universal religion, and it is the religion
of Advaita (all-inclusiveness).
Mahatma Gandhi, though supremely religiously
inspired, had plunged into serious ethical problems vis-a-
vis political and social doctrines and situations. The
Mahatma’s religion has been characterised by a political
purpose, even as we find expressed in some of the
speeches of Swami Vivekananda, so much so, many
critics had thought that Mahatma Gandhi used his religion
as a means to the political emancipation of his country,
deeming that the one thing that India understands is
Religion and nothing else. This may be partially true, but it
is perhaps the religious realisation, within, that also made
him use politics as a means to his religious fulfilment.
This is very likely because the basic concern for the
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Mahatma was religion, and the practice of it in and for the
realisation of himself; and for him the basic virtues were
truth and ahimsa and brahmacarya, and the injunction of
the Upanisad, not to covet other’s possessions. In a sense,
for him the exercise of religion was surely realisation of
self and God, but it was something that had to have
concrete activity or ethical content, and this the political
condition of India and the world provided.
One should remember that Mahatma Gandhi was
influenced by his earliest home environment of Vaisnavism
and Jainism. His residence in England had put him into
touch with Christian mystical thinking; especially was he
influenced by Cardinal Newman’s writings, by those of Leo
Tolstoy and John Ruskin. He was determined to practise
the path of non-violence, ahimsa, and non-resistance or
passive-resistance, in the small things of the day to day
life. That events put him in social situations to try out his
dharma in larger and larger contexts is a fact of great
consequence. In South Africa he tried out his method of
passive resistance, which was modified in later years into
Non-violent non-cooperation. Here, as we know, was a
reformulation of a Christian principle of “Resist not Evil”.
His deep religious feelings became more and more
prominant, and prayer for inner light and guidance was
found to be his daily need. His belief in the teachings of
the Bhagavad Gita, which became his Mother, is
well-known. His acquaintance with the Upanisads became
more and more illuminating to his realisation. His own self-
discipline helped him to understand, with increasing
insight, the inward meaning of these texts. The
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Isavasyopanisad, especially the first two mantras, became
for him a guide. As he put it, if all the literature in the world
was to be taken away or lost and these two mantras alone
remained, they would be enough to guide man to his self
realisation. He practised nama-bhajan, prayer in silence,
and felt that each man must be usefully employed in helping
others and in earning one’s bread. His daily practices of
karma, jnana, and bhakti yogas together also made so
many see how all these could be done even during a
strenuous period of service to the country. Struggle with
an alien power, Satanic in operation and ruthless in its
execution, was his daily bread. His profound faith in
spiritual power and God made him fearless. His life was
religious to the core.
As Dr. Radhakrishnan writes, his was a life in God
which is the test of a religious life. In Gandhi’s own words
“There is an indefinable mysterious power that
pervades everything. I feel it though I do not see it. It
is this unseen power which makes itself felt, and yet
defies all proof because it is so unlike all that I
perceive through my transformed conduct and
character of an unbroken line of prophets and sages
in all countries and climes. to reject this evidence is
to deny oneself."
This realisation of the In-dwelling power is the beginning
of the great work in the world. Not to have this faith or
belief in God for him meant death itself. “Blast my beliefs
in God and I am dead”,he writes.
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 Gandhi recognized early that there were prophets
of God who had borne witness to this inward experience
of God which had transformed their conduct and character
everywhere. This God is identically the same everywhere.
The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of the Christians
and the Isvara of the Hindus. Even as there are numerous
names of God in Hinduism, there are many names of God
in Islam. The names do not indicate individuality but
attributes, and the Divine is beyond all attributes,
indescribable, immeasurable. All this clearly shows the
realisation of the Oneness of God in all religions; but in
respect of one’s attitude to other religions one has to grant
equal respect to the prophets. Whilst it is true that Hinduism
alone realised that violence is wrong and that equal
respect should be shown to all other persuasions, other
religions became intolerant and violent, deeming that their
religions are superior, and also because they tried to save
others without trying to save themselves.
A practising religionist everywhere would realise that the
godhead is not the possession of any one religion, for He
is the object of spiritual realisation in all religions. What is
observed is that whilst other religious thinkers, as a rule,
did not realise this, Hindu seers and in our modern times
Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and
Mahatma Gandhi realised this and affirmed this. In fact it
is a very serious historical point even in India that sectarian
rivalry prevailed, even to the extent of mutual persecution.
But it is well-known that real religion had hardly anything
to do with this, the real reason being only political goals
based on power and so on.
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It is also affirmed that Truth is God, and the only
means to attain to God is by the practice of truth and
ahimsa. Knowledge of truth and the practice of truth and
love are inseparable parts of the same process known as
religion. To separate them is basically wrong, for it also
leads to the divorce between ends and means. Here was
a re-discovery and emphasis laid on the identity necessary
between ends and means. Purity is necessary and
purification is rendered possible by the life of the ascetic,
who practises the five yamas including fasting, so that one
is freed from all passion in thought, word and deed. His
personal purity was something exceptional for one who
lived the life of a grhastha or householder, but it was not
an uncommon one in ancient times. He recovered for his
countrymen the ideals of the ancient householder who lived
the ascetic life. He existed in the true ancient tradition which
he recapitulated for his countrymen who had been carried
away by the glamour of alien cultures.
He practised complete equality in all his
associations. “He had known no distinction between
relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white
and coloured Hindus and Indians of other faiths, whether
Muslims, Parsees, Christians or Jews.” His discipline was
however a matter of ‘continuous striving for the cultivation
of non-violence, celibacy and other cardinal virtues.”
His living in God had given him also the other
experience - the spirit of humanity as Radhakrishnan calls
it. He did not exile himself from the world for the natural
work was to work within society or the world. The Isa seer
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had spoken of the continuous necessity to be doing work and the great sages of other religions have stated it, is
for humanity for realising the Divine. It leads to the natural to man, it is indulgence that is unnatural.
experience of God in all creatures of the universe, and all
Humanity has to be trained to leave the path of
creatures in God. Mahatma Gandhi, by working through
indulgence that had brought it down. The great work of
society, attained this experience. His own intimate
Gandhiji was to establish ashrams wherein he inculcated
association with Ruskin’s work “Unto this Last” had led
these disciplines in the most natural way, so that all could
him to see that work done is capable of being spiritual
realise that they were codes of behaviour for all men.
when done for the Divine. Hindu thought had also insisted
Ethical discipline is not asceticism. As Plato long ago
on this performance of work, productive and helpful to
wrote, the problem of man is to make him feel that the
society, and to maintain one’s self respect and
good is the pleasant, and not that the pleasant is the good.
dependence. Whilst other religions did not emphasize the
The brahmacarya education, the educational
goal of man to be liberation but only social welfare and at
modifications that he tried to introduce had one aim, to
best political liberty, Gandhi knew that moksa is God-
make the ascetic life pleasant; for it is disciplined by
realisation, and Self-realisation immeasurably greater than
cardinal virtues and turn man away from the attitude that
political freedom. For he says that to him Ahimsa and Truth
makes him think that the pleasant is the good.
are much more important than liberty won by means other
than they. Indeed he asserted that he would retire to the Though modern ethical thinkers have been at pains
Himalayas if India chose the path of violence. to criticise this kind of morality, yet it would be seen that
events during the past one century were following the other
One almost feels that he felt that ethical discipline
route that the pleasant is good, the pleasant being also
was absolutely the condition of any spiritual growth, as
an education in accustoming oneself to indulgence in
well as of political emancipation. A freedom that is not
contrary habits. Industrialisation and urbanisation had
based on self-discipline and moral values seems to be a
made life harder and artificial, and man has been
false and precarious freedom. Individuals and nations have
separated from his normal life. Gandhiji opposed this trend
fallen because of the lack of character and good conduct.
and sought to re-form society on the ancient pattern of
Ascetism seemed to him the essence of self-discipline,
simple living and independent earning. His khadi and
but it is an asceticism that did not go to extremes of
village programmes were integral to his concern for the
unnaturalness. Natural asceticism is the life of yama, self-
education of the young men of India in the ways of a simple
control or self-restraint. Looked at from the point of view
religion of good conduct and good habit. In a sense he
of the indulgent men, control appears to border on
valued his Socrates, and possibly discovered that the voice
asceticism, but asceticism as the ancient Hindu thinkers
285 286
of Socrates was an echo from the Indian Rishis. He seems
to have patterned his own life on that of Socrates, but one
can see that he had thoroughly indianised or hinduised it.
Mahatma Gandhi described his own religion as
Ethical Religion. In his view, ethics is the practice of the
cardinal virtues of Truth, Ahimsa, Brahmacarya,
Aparigraha. Purity in personal life is the sine-qua-non of
spiritual capacity to hear the ‘Indwelling’ Godhead’s Voice.
Without this preliminary training for all, and this is
something that must be universally inculcated, no one can
be on the path of Spirituality, Whilst aware that mere ethics
would not be enough, yet he was confident that the inner
voice spontaneously arises in man when moral expertness
develops, and the discernment arises as a flame of truth,
and in due course it would be recognised as the voice of
God within.
More than anything else, ethical life also promotes
the courage to see that righteousness is upheld and wrong
redressed. A moral conscience that lies supine and idle
before evil is not moral at all. Every man is charged with
the duty of resisting evil, wherever it occurs and by
whomsoever perpetrated. The failure of moral indignation
or wrath may be due to helplessness or fear of hurting
others, or bringing down the wrath on oneself. We have
come to a stage, and it was so under all dictators or
powers, foreign or indigeneous, where we are caught up
in fear for our own safety and of our family whenever we
are aroused to indignation. No one had developed courage
to lose one’s all in the cause of resistance to evil
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perpetrated against oneself or against some one else.
Altruism and egoism had both been victims of fear, and led
to security-consciousness and indifference. The hushing of
the conscience is about the most dangeous modern symptom
of an ethical disease, which politics has bred.
Religion cannot be considered to be merely the
business of seeking freedom elsewhere, or out of this body,
or moksa, but it must also conserve the values of ethics
for society. It is in this sense that Mahatma Gandhi felt
that ethics or virtue is indivisible or One, and it is the
business of every human being to seek to preserve it. The
preservation of dharma is one, and dharma is indivisible
or One; but it is also necessary to see that every
individual is a moral agent who rises up to defend it
whenever it is sought to be defeated or violated. The
Bhagavad Gita had firmly inculcated the necessity to carry
out the duties of protection of dharma relentlessly without
fear, and Mahatma Gandhi had discovered that a moral
situation demands a moral battle - a satyagraha intended
to restore faith in the moral system of the universe - a
dharma ksetra and a karma-ksetra,
“The World rests on the bed-rock of satya or truth.
Asatya which means untruth, also means
non-existent, and satya or truth means ‘that which is’.
If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out
of the question. And truth being that which is, can
never be destroyed” writes Gandhi.
Therefore untruth is something already destroyed and
man has to be but a nimitta, an instrument. Man has, as
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any moral agent has, to be an instrument of Truth or God,
and it is his duty to be that. This it is that grants the moral
agent the capacity to be fearless about results. The moral
agent realising himself to be a nimitta of God in fact
becomes a religious aspirant seeking liberating service
which is not only useful to him but also to the whole of God’s
creation.
It is the Satyagraha concept that is the discovery
of the Mahatma. It is the dynamics of service to
humanity that the Mahatma was giving. It shows that
the ethical has its roots in the Spirit or truly religious
life, the life of realisation that God is in everything, and
calls out to moral action. In a sense Mahatma Gandhi’s
satyagraha also solves the problem of egoistic and
altruistic ethics by making all activity the service of
Truth that is one and indivisible. The heart of a moral
agent, inspired by the recognition that Truth is God, is
universalised both in conduct and character. The
Mahatma says
“I recognize no God except the God that is to be
found in the hearts of the dumb millions. They do not
recognize His presence : I do. And I worship the God
that is Truth or Truth which is God, through the service
of these millions.”
To put them on their feet so that they too could worship
truth and serve it is a goal worthy of the highest sage. This
miracleof putting men on their feet with the help of truth is
a Gandhian Miracle in Indian Politics.
289
But the strength of truth is not in arms, but in the
conscious, dedicated self-suffering undertaken to convert
the evildoer from his evil. It is not the evildoer who is fought,
but the evil that nestles in him, and involves the business
of undertaking suffering on oneself rather than inflicting it
on him; and this is a novel enough way to rouse the
conscience of the evil doer and help him to discard his
evil, or rather the evil that had been using him. In a subtle
way this reveals that an evil doer is not a foe to be
butchered, but a sick man who had got possessed by evil.
The only way is to bring him round by means of love and
rationality. The awakening of the conscience of a man, and
no man is so dead that his conscience cannot be aroused
to think, is almost like a process of conversion, or
initiation, opening up a New life for the evil-doer. This
discovery of how to awaken or initiate is a unique one,
and Mahatma Gandhi considers that it is a unique Hindu
discovery implicit even in the Gita.
The Mahatma says
“The hardest metal yields to sufficient heat: even so
must the hardest heart melt before the sufficiency of
the heat of nonviolence. And there is no limit to the
capacity of non-violence to generate heat.... During
my half century of experience, I have not come across
a situation when I had to say that I was helpless, that
I had no remedy in terms of non-violence”.
This faith in Truth and Non-violence which typified for him
God is the supreme example of a new Ethics that has
transcended the ethics of the utilitarian or the stoic, or even
the best of idealism.
290
 So it is dear that Mahatma Gandhi brought to
Hinduism its basic strength, namely its ethical concern
with virtues. What the Western thinkers held lacking in
Hinduism was ethics, but this was shown to be not only
very much present, but dynamically capable of being
revived. It was not an innovation, a borrowing from the west,
but quite native to the Indian or Hindu soul. And just as
philosophy fades into religion, ethics realises its fullest
strength in religious experience, especially of the Harda
or Antaryami or the Inner Voice.
Mahatma Gandhi saw in all religions the same Cod
being worshipped, of course according to their own ways.
They all lead to the life of purity. Therefore it was easy to
live together with the moral and religious people of all
religions. However he was closely affiliated to Hinduism,
in which he believed in all its several aspects and dogmas.
He held that the sincere pursuit of one’s own religion is
helpful to the realisation of one’s own goal of Moksa.
Though he loved to serve humanity in the spiritual - ethical
way he had planned so that each individual must be helped
to his ethical statute of an independent moral agent, yet
he was clear in his mind that one should not try to convert
one to another religion. He belived in the sufficiency of
each religion to the needs of the person born into it. Nor
could any one convert another, unless he himself has
realised fully the life of religion. Though Mahatma Gandhi
had very close associates belonging to other religions,
like C.F. Andrews, Maulana Azad and others, yet he never
even tried to show them that Hinduism was superior to the
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others, or even that it was all comprehensive and the
mother of all religions, all of which had been affirmed by
Swami Vivekananda. As he put it:
“Belief in one God is the corner-stone of all religions.
I do not foresee a time when there would be only one
religion on earth in practice. For as my wife to me is
the most beautiful woman in the world, so also others
may feel the same about their own religion.”
Universal Religion is not a possibility. One Religion
for all mankind, such as a Religion for Humanity or anything
like that is an Utopian wish or ideal. It would be good if it
could be had, but even this question is in doubt under the
present conditions.
Mahatma Gandhi saw clearly that whilst all people of
all religions must and can practise the ethical or cardinal
virtues of Truth and Non-violence, it would be difficult to
make all accept any one set of dogmas or Teachers or
Prophets or Books of Revelation or Inspiration. The Old
Testament will not be given up by the Hebrew, the New
Testament by the Christian, nor the Al-Koran by Islam, nor
the Zend Avesta by the Zoroastrian; nor any of the other
sects give up their dogmatic loyalty to these - As Mahatma
Gandhi said it is like the love of one’s wife. Looking at the
way Mahatma Gandhi interpreted the functions of other
religions, he discerned that all of them had worshipped
One God, but not with one name only but with a thousand,
each one of which expressed an attribute or a story or a
myth. Though one name may be preeminently suitable for
meditation, or as a unique discovery of the prophet or seer,
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the others were not neglected. A study of these names
would reveal the same tendency of all religious people to
call the Divine by many names -a tendency that we have
recognized in the Veda which the Vedic seer himself
pointed out as referring to the One Experience. His
open understanding was to live in communion with all
masses as one of themselves, so as to get en-rapport with
the meanest and the lowest members of humanity.
More than any one he showed that the religious life
is the life of one who loves God in all the levels of
experience. It is a personal relationship of love with every
one.
We have shown that in his opinion so long as men
do, perhaps rightly, remain loyal to their own religion in
practising it, there occurs the growth of reverence to the
founders of these religions, and this personal feeling itself
would make it difficult to outgrow it. Even a mergence of
all religions into one religion as a World Religion would
be difficult to arrive at.
We have seen how our affection for our mother
tongues had tended towards the formation of linguistic
patriotisms which somehow are expected to pull together.
The demand of independence and autonomy or parity or
equality on racial and religious grounds is not yet given
up, even when there remains the constant threat of serfdom
to any new conqueror. We believe in separatism and
individualism as gospel truths, and as the inviolable rights
of man. These make even an integration of all religions
impossible.
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All that seems to be possible is that we can draw up
a blue-print for a Universal Faith or Religion into which all
‘open-minded’ persons can enlist. We have this possibility
in many World fellowships, the Theosophical Society and
so on. But even the most liberal formulation of the dogma
of any Universal Religion would only set up another sect
and begin circumscribing itself. Gandhiji seems to have
been quite aware of this, and therefore he does not make
any attempt to formulate a universal Religion, nor hold a
briel for Hinduism or any other religion.
Every religion in a sense contains the essentials of
all patterns of religion, all aspirations. Each religion
sets up a stimulated activity within itself for realising the
other ideals of other religions, which it begins to develop
within its own context. This kind of activity would, in due
course of time, beget the sense of self-growth. Ultimately
every religion may become non-different from another. But
this, as Mahatma Gandhi saw, is a dream of the future.
Dr Radhakrishnan has brilliantly spoken of Mahatma
Gandhi, for he seems to have seen in him the spiritual
vision that makes for supreme liberty and the making of a
Prophet.
“Gandhi is the prophet of a liberated life wielding
power over millions of human beings by virtue of his
exceptional holiness and heroism. There will always
be some who will find in such rat examples of sanctity
the note of strength and stark reality which is missing
in a life of general good will, conventional morality or
vague aesthetic affectation which is all that many
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 modern teachers have to offer. To be true, to be
simple, to be pure, and gentle of heart, to remain
cheerful and contented in sorrow and danger, to love
life and not to fear death, to serve the Spirit and hot
to be daunted by the spirits of the dead, nothing better
has been taught or lived since the world first began.”
(Mahatma Gandhi ed. S.R. Jaico ed. p.37)
Yet Mahatma Gandhi knew that he should not found a
religion, for he was but a deep and sincere follower of
Hinduism, supremely in both spirit and in action.
Many wonderful estimates have been made of his
work both when he was alive and working and after his
martyrdom. His own words are written down every where
without any reserve. The life of Mahatma Gandhi provides
all the characteristics of a truly religious man. As his closest
associate C.F. Andrews wrote
“Mahatma Gandhi is essentially a man of religion.
He can never think of any complete release from evil
apart from God’s grace. Prayer therefore is the
essence of all work”;
but as Gandhiji stated his prayer was not of the Christian
pattern.
“ I do not pray as Christians do, not because I think
there is nothing wrong in it, but because words wont
come to me. I suppose it is a matter of habit.... God
knows and anticipates our wants. The deity does not
need any supplication.. I cannot recall a moment in
my life when I had a sense of desertion by God “.
295
At the moment of death he was repeating the names of
his beloved Ram. It is said that it is the moment of death
that reveals one’s religion or godliness. Truly he died with
God’s name on his lips at the moment of being shot.
When the ancient seers sometime claimed that Satya
alone is enough to make one attain the Immortal, or that
any one wirtue was enough, they were just expressing the
fact that ethical values coupled with religious faith leads
to the highest spiritual planes. Mahatma Gandhi revealed
that Truth and Non-violence alone can lead to the status of
prophet-hood when one is supremely dedicated to them.
In an appreciation of an ethical religion which could be
universalised, as revealed by Mahatma Gandhi’s sayings
as well as his inimitable life, we can see the real
beginnings of a world conscience that might be aroused
by the dedicated ethical elevation of one single person.
It was said of a great reformer of the past, whose
love was universal and who also underwent lot of
martyrdom, that as his eyes were fixed on the feet of Cod
alone for the sake of love of mankind, all mankind got
absorbed in him. So too the Mahatma’s God-love was
as deep as his love of God in all Humanity, and yet it was
a love that was a kind of divine love; which had as Thomas
A Kempis wrote
“a love that feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength, pleads no
excuses of impossibility : for it thinks all things lawful
for itself and all things possible”.
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But with the supreme difference that it did not permit love
to be ‘amoral’.
To those who think that religious love should be beyond
good and evil, or that it means a ‘transvaluation of all values’
or which dismisses ethics as limiting the freedom of the higher
kind of life, Mahatma Gandhi’s answer would be that it must
be considered to be non-religious. Under no condition could
Truth and Non-violence be sacrificed, nor barhmacarya.
Expediential morality is no morality.
Gandhiji does not agree that morality could be
abrogated under any circumstances. Thus the
development of political conscience, or industrial or
technological science, cannot lead to abandonment of truth
and non-violence. It is perhaps with this spiritual vision that
he tried to apply moral principles to the political field. That
it brought to politics, both national and international, sense
of moral purpose and the recognition of the absolute worth
and value of every member of humanity is a tribute to the
attainment of a universal ethical society in the context of
political conditions. This would elevate mankind to a higher
level of ethical life, and therefore religious life. In a
sense it appears that the Mahatma even used the religious
to inculcate the ethical values, for in Hinduism the religious
values have a greater hold on the mind, whereas, thanks
to the confusion about moral values engendered in her
itihasas, the ethical had not the same hold.
For example, we all admire Bhishma for his
brahmacarya, Karna for his dana, and these great
heroes have been praised and even over praised,
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despite the fact that both of them were not votaries of
truth as such. Similarly strange religious sects had tried
to plead casuistically in support of immoral and amoral
society. But it was to break this spell that Mahatma
Gandhi practised the ethical in the context of the
religious, and thus pointed out that an Ethical Universal
Religion has much better chance of being realised than
a dogmatic or other religion. There is a great deal of
literature on Mahatma Gandhi, and his own writings are
voluminous. It is an inspiration to read them, and no
one who had heard the Mahatma Gandhi could feel
anything but the deepest feelings that he was verily an
avatar - comparable to the Buddha - but much more
dynamic, comparable to Christ but much more universal,
who did not write a gospel but taught the way of living.
He is rightly called the father of our Nation. His ethical
religion is a profound movement in the history of the
world which every man can understand, where ever the
terms truth, non-violence, non-grasping or exploitation,
continence could be understood. Deeper and
profounder meanings for these terms would be found
when they are considered in the context of bodily,
mental and mano-vak-kaya practice.
Therefore in a sense though Hinduism has been
stated to be not yet something that others would accept,
and Hinduism has no right to say that it is the universal
religion or that it can be one, yet the ethical basis of
Hinduism and its Vedanta, can be the ethical basis of a
universal Religion as well.
298
 However the one thing that the Mahatma has pointed
out is that Religion and ethics are matters of vigilant
concern for the preservation of the divine attitude towards
all humanity.
Summing up :
Mahatma Gandhi has held that all religions are equal.
The possibility of establishing one religion for all mankind
is remote. Each religion has produced the ideal of good
life along with the acceptance that there is only One God
for all, and not that there are many Gods, like perhaps
many kings who need to be brought under one great king.
This is impossible. Democracy is the recognition of the
divine in each individual. Morality is the recognition that
each individual must practise Truth and Non-violence and
be able to stand up and resist untruth and violence, relying
on God who is Truth and Non-violence. Mahatma Gandhi
had awakened Mankind and the religions to the sense of
Moral Excellence which alone makes for the full experience
of God, or attainment of liberation here and elsewhere.
Morality should be practised in the context of our political
society as well as in the context of religious institutions,
so that purity is established.
In a sense the Mahatma showed that it is possible
for every individual, who is supremely dedicated, to
become an avatar of God or His associate in the business
of establishment of Ramarajya.
The tribute that one great man has paid to another
great man in his own lifetime merits consideration. The
one was a great patriot imbued with spiritual light and
299
fervour, the other a great educationist - philosopher, whose
sense of reality was matched by an equal sense and
senstivity to discern greatness wherever it existed.
“Gandhi is the prophet of a liberated life wielding
power over millions of human beings by virtue of his
exceptional holiness and heroism. There will always
be some who will find in such rare examples of
sanctity the note of strength and stark reality which
is missing in a life of general good will, conventional
morality or vague aesthetic affectation which is all
that many modern teachers have to offer. To be true,
to be simple, to be pure and gentle of heart, to remain
cheerful and contented in sorrow and danger, to love
life and not to fear death, to serve the Spirit and not
to be daunted by the spirits of the dead, nothing better
has been taught or lived since the world first began.”
(Mahatma Gandhi: Ed S. Radhakrishnan Jaico ed.
p.37)
“Mahatma Gandhi is essentially a man of religion.
He can never think of any complete release from evil
apart from God’s grace. Prayer therefore is of the
essence of all his work” wrote his closest Christian
friend C.F. Andrews.
As Romain Rolland wrote he was the “St. Paul of our
own days : he was the St. Francis of Assisi too. But he put
his ahimsa and his programme of Khadder and Satyagraha
to the ‘corporate life of mankind’ on a scale never known
before in human history. In this way he has been more than
any other personality now living a herald of peace and
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good will to mankind.” (ibid. p.48-9). Ernest Barkar learnt
from him the lesson of love and of service in love, and the
lesson of non-violence.
Prof. William Ernest Hocking writes that
“Gandhi teaches us that there is no greatness except
greatness within one’s own kind, no universality except
the universality within one’s own province, no freedom
except the freedom within one’s own belonging.” (p.102)
If Buddha taught “If hatred responds to hatred when
and where will hatred end” Mahatma Gandhi taught “If love
responds to hatred here and everywhere will hatred end.”
“I do not pray as Christians do, not because I think
there is anything wrong in it, but because words wont
come to me. I suppose it is a matter of habit... God
knows and anticipates our wants. The Deity does not
need any supplication.... I cannot recall a moment in
my life when I had a sense of desertion by God. “
(cf. p. 134)
Gandhi compared to William Law (ed Stephen
hobhouse.)
“Stafford Cripps quotes Thomas A kempis” Love
feels no burdens ,thinks nothing of trouble, attempts
what is above its strength,s pleads no excuses of
impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself and
all things possible.” (p. 347)
301
SRI AUROBINDO AND
UNIVERSAL RELIGION
The problem of universal religion has been not only
urgent but inevitable, especially with the development of
science. Spiritualism or spiritual life that previously
delighted in rejecting the material world, and renouncing
all that savoured of the materialistic and sensate, had to
come to terms with matter. This is the modern
phenomenon. It is likely that in some form it had occurred
in the past. The achievement of a balance between the
spiritual extreme and the materialistic extreme is the goal
of all religious process, and that it is struck by their
oppositional integration is a fact of evolution. This is the
logic of the conflict or adjustment of environment with
heredity in the field of psychology.
Comparitive studies in Indian culture by Westerners
in the early decades of this century have high-lighted the
differences between the Indian (Eastern) and the western
(European) approaches to reality and life. Swami
Vivekananda undoubtedly realised the basic stress in the
two hemispheres. He states the basic stress in France as
the “political independence of that country.” Britain has
always’ a give and take policy’, whereas the Hindu has
always the goal of spiritual independence in the forefront
of his aims.
“This is the national purpose : whether you take the
Vaidika, the Jaina or the Bauddha, the advaita,
visistadvaita, or the dvaita - they are all of one mind.
Leave that point untouched and do whatever you like,
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 the Hindu is unconcerned and keeps silence: but if
you run foul of him there, beware you court your ruin.”
(Vol. V. p.45B)
Further, Svami Vivekananda refers to the kind of
advice given to the West, and compares it with that given
to the East :
“Jesus Christ, the God of the Europeans has taught
‘Have no enemy, bless them that curse you.
Whosoever shall smite Thee on thy right cheek turn
to him the other also. Stop all your work and be ready
for the next world; the end of the world is near at hand.”
Our Lord in the Gita says :
“Always work with great enthusiasm. Destroy your
enemies and enjoy the world”. (Vol. V. p.453 ff)
This appears to be ironical but it reveals that what
the West needs is the renunciation of action and realisation
of the Next or Higher world, whereas India requires the
dedication to this world. Hence the advices are different.
This recalls the Upanisadic seer who told the devas, the
asuras and the manavas to practise dama, dana and daya
by uttering the multi-meaninged imperative ‘Da’. To each
according to his need - this is the advice of the knowing
teacher.
Buddha, said Svami Vivekananda, ruined us by
teaching the renunciation whereas Christ ruined Greece
and Rome by teaching them the same way. (Vol. V. p.454).
However both these doctrines are controverted by the
303
modern spirit of utilitarian materialism that is pervading
the entire globe.
It is necessary to recognize that good qualities are
not the privileged monopoly of any one race or nation or
religion. Both the East and the West have their own goals.
With India the prominent idea is mukti or liberation from
all bonds : with the Westerners it is dharma - that which
makes for happiness in this world and in the next
according to rules established. “This moksa path is only
in India and nowhere else.” (Vol.V.p.446)
The broad distinctions between the eastern, or Hindu,
ideal and the western ideal are given by Svami
Vivekananda.
Sri Aurobindo is more explicit and full in his appraisal
of the distinctions between the Eastern and Western Spirit.
In the remarkable essays in reply to Mr.W. Archer who
asked the question whether India was civilized, Sri
Aurobindo in a most trenchent form lists why India is
civilized and why the West cannot be civilized at all.
Continuing the same topic in his essays on the Defence
of Indian Culture he eloquently and fully explains the
spiritual value of Indian Culture.
Perhaps the super-journalist is right in exclaiming
that
“East is East, West is West And never the twain
shall meet” (Rudyard Kipling)
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Sri Aurobindo clearly contrasts the spirit of the East with
the West.
The Graeco-Roman culture is predominantly
mental and intellectual, and the modern European
culture is predominantly materialistic, whereas India
continues to manifest her spiritual tendency. And India
in essence or quint-essence expresses the Asiatic way
of life. Perhaps we have yet to be able to explain
how China today is seeking to express the spiritual,
for in fact she is now out-Russianising the Russian way
of revolution, a dialectical materialism, with its militant
crudeness. Whilst the West tries always to impose her
pattern of life by force of arms and by other ways less
honourable even in her conversion through religion,
India’s method has always been an infiltration of the
world with her ideas. This was a fact even during the
period of her being conquered by the West. There is
an increasing infiltration of India’s spiritual thought into
Europe and America. The testimony of three entirely
different minds of the greatest power in this field,
Emerson, Schopenheur and Nietzsche, shows how
deeply they have been influenced by Indian thought.
Critics of Indian religion and philosophy from the
West have not been able to judge except from their own
standards, or rather from their levels. Indian thought had
symbolically and significantly explored the possibilities
of these levels, and the standards for each level have
been established clearly. Thus, religion too falls into
groups or levels: there is a natural religion suitable to
305
men or cultures which is based on the appreciation of
the transcendent in Nature - for such, annam or rayi is
the Brahman. For those to whom the life-principle or
breathing principle is important the highest religious
or spiritual principle is prana - prana is Brahman. For
the mentalistic groups, mind is brahman, and for the
intuitive minds or groups, vijnana is Brahman. But
for the highest group Ananda is Brahman. Religion of
the last group goes beyond all the earlier ones, and it
is for this that all the other religions make one yearn.
The Upanisad has clearly shown how these levels of
contact with reality happen, and how men have different
levels. As are men so are their religions or their
apprehension of God.
“The tendency of the normal western mind is to live
from below upward and from out inward” says Sri
Aurobindo. (p. 23 F.I.C.)
From annam or matter it proceeds slowly and
gradually towards the spirit, if necessary, by a series
of negations, as to the nature of the Ultimate Reality. It
arrives in the spiritual in the lives of some of its most
profound thinkers. But in most, it stands at different
levels. We can discover by a study of the Western
mystics and philosophers how the different schools
represent different conceptions of the Ultimate.
Materialism, Vitalism, mental ism, transcendentalism
(super-mentalism), are but many ways or levels of
defining the Ultimate; which however is all these and
something ‘more’ and beyond. This India discovered
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in the very dawn of her history. Her aim has been to
find a basis of living in the higher spiritual truth, and
live from the inner spirit outwards; to exceed the present
way of mind, life and body; to command and dictate to
external nature. As the old Vedic seers put it “their divine
foundation was above even while they stood below, let
its rays be settled deep within us. nicinah sthur upari
budhna esam asme antar nihitah ketavah syuh. (p. 2k
F.I.C.)
The Indian concept of civilization and attainment are
broadly
“More high- reaching, subtle, many sided, curious
and profound than the Greek,
More noble and humane than the Roman,
More large and spiritual than the old egyptian,
More vast and original than any other Asiatic
civilization
More intellectual than the European prior to the 18th
century possessing all these and more it was
the most powerful, self-possessed stimulating
and wide in influence of all past human
cultures.” (p. 50 F.I.C.)
Sri Aurobindo does not think that with such a radically
different type of being and development of culture-attitude,
East and West could meet from two opposite sides and
merge in each other and found, in the life of a unified
humanity, a common world culture! Though this has been
307
fondly hoped for by the early workers in the field of
comparitive religion, philosophy and culture such as for
instance the theosophists.* But the problem is not so easy
and not so harmoniously simple. Further the cult of
secularism has begun to take shape as a solution to the
problems of justice in the context of conflicts and
differences of religion, caste, class, race and so on.
Compare this with what was the attitude of
theosophists towards Svami Vivekananda. cf. Collected
works Vol. 111. p. 208 ff .
And “the tendency to secularism is a necessary
consequence of the cult of life and reason divorced from
their inherent inlook” (p. 95 FIC). ‘Western civilization is
proud of its successful modernism’ and “it labours to
establish unity by accommodation of conflicting interests
and the force of mechanical institutions, but so attempted
it will either not be founded at all or will be founded on
sand.” (p. 46 FIC). It is being currently realised that, as Sri
Aurobindo put it, the purely intellectual or heavily material
culture of the kind Europe now favours bears in its heart
the seed of death, (p. 8). And today, the life of the West is
still chiefly governed by the rationalistic ideas and a
materialistic preoccupation, (p. 19 FIC).
* Sri Aurobindo p. 19
“Theosophy with its comprehensive combination of old and new
beliefs, and its appeal to ancient spiritual and psychic systems,
has everywhere exercised its influence far beyond the circle of its
professed adherents. Opposed for a long time with obloquy and
ridicule, it has done much to spread the belief in karma,
reincarnation, other planes of existence, evolution of the embodied
soul through intellect and psyche to spirit; ideas which once
accepted must change the whole attitude towards life.”
308
 It is one of the claims of modern writers that we should
make spiritual truths intelligible, that is to say, put them in
the language of the common man or address them to the
common intellect. And old criticism of any writer was that
he did not put everything in the logical form of alternatives
where one of them was right the other was wrong. This of
course is most fruitful for debate and helpful also in fixing
meanings for and against. However, our spiritual life does
not seem to accept this logic of debate or dichotomy or
dillemma, except in the field of rational dialectic. There
have been many who have approved the systems of
thought on the basis of their conforming to their logical
demands of self-consistency and non-contradiction.
One of the contentions of western writers on religion
was that India has no religion in the sense in which the
west has; secondly, since God has only a second place
in Vedanta (Advaita), God is not really God. What perhaps
may be conceded is that India has spirituality, not religion.
No one aspires for realization of God except as a means
to liberation. God is not the goal but only a means to the
ultimate and which is liberation from all samsara, the cycle
of rebirths, from all karma. The attainment of God is of
course equated by some vedantas with the attainment of
liberation also. Though one might attain the luminosity and
other resplendent attributes, and one possesses all godly
attributes with the exception of the creation-sustention-
destruction of the world (jagad-vyapara-varjam), one is
promised that once one attains that condition there is no
return to the condition of bondage - no return, no return
says the Veda (anavrttisabdat). This is to emphasize that
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once one realises the ultimate condition or divine status,
one does not fall into the lower, nor is there any possibility
of such a fall.
Religion as the union with god attained through
worship, prayer, surrender, dedication and discrimination,
service and self-offering in all one’s parts, is personalistic.
God is conceived as a supreme Personality, the Uttama
Purusa who is different from the individual and from Nature;
who is beyond the lower personal and the higher
impersonal. The western concept of God could hardly
conceive of the Divine as Impersonal, and it is not strange.
The attempt of Islam to conceive of God as an impersonal
being, or one who cannot be contained in any form
whatsoever, could hardly lead one to the devotion that is
characterised by personal service to the Divine. A religion
without worship but only with mere surrender or prayer
involves quite a strain on the human imagination and vision.
It may be true that for the really enlightened and advanced
types, the Impersonal as a freedom from all personal and
individual or private relations spells a great experience of
limitless bliss. However, for the individual who experiences
this Impersonal it may reveal a cosmic greatness and
largeness, or brihatva, that is exciting consciousness
relieved from all sensate and mental limitations. The
experience of the Void, sunya, and Vast is Impersonal. It
is not an abstraction but something which our mind and
sense cannot grasp. The Divine has been again and again
declared to be beyond the reach of the senses and the
mind and breath, though it is by its power that one senses,
mentates and breaths. Beyond both, there is the
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experience of the Uttama Purusa, which is the experience
of God as He is in Himself, and not for us.
The experience of the Gita is undoubtedly very
important, and its unequivocal utterance about the divine
personality or God-head which includes all the perfect
qualities (vibhavas or Divya gunas), and excludes all that
savours of imperfection, and which is truly universal and
omnipervasive and omniscient, grants the spiritual
aspirant’s religious experience a richness that is
unmatched. It is because the impersonal of the rationalist
excludes those imperfections that ensue out of a sense of
partiality and discrimination even in the interests of truth,
goodness, and purity in the affairs of men that one delights
in the impersonal. But it is not either religious or spirituality,
being but an abstract quality worship at best. In this it is
clear also that the individual soul does not really seek the
impersonal status, albeit without any name and form in
the sense we give to the things of our experience, though
this has been proposed by distinguished scholars and
mystics too. The Nirvana of Buddhism is different
indeed from the brahma-nirvana, for it is the richness of
the Brahman that one gains, and one’s individual private
nature is transfigured into that of the Brahman’s
supracosmic nature.
The Absolute is Godhead, and none other. This
Absolute has several statusses. His supreme triplicity of
Sat, Cit and Ananda are available in all manifestations or
projections of the One Divine. There is therefore the
possible experience of Brahman in all, and as All. The
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manyness is present all through, and its play with the
oneness is the eternal emergence and immergenee in
time and in space. All these many are in the one as even
the one is in all the many. The discovery of the One in
the many is as important a part of philosophy as the
discovery of the many in the One. Religion and spirituality
are definitely engaged in this process of discovery even
as in a lesser way science and philosophy are doing in
the fields of Nature and Psychology.
Sri Aurobindo reveals that the general attitude of
rationalism or intellectualism will not help solve the
problems of religion or spirituality. It cannot help even the
understanding of cultures based on the intuitional
approaches of religion and spirituality, “The whole root of
difference between Indian and European culture springs
from the spiritual aim of Indian civilization.” It has, as
compared and contrasted with other cultures, ‘a striking
originality and solitary greatness! ... “Not only did it make
spirituality its highest aim of life, but it even tried, as far as
that could be done in the past conditions of the human race,
to turn the whole of life towards spirituality.” (p. 139 FIC).
Distinguishing between religion and spirituality, Sri
Aurobindo points out that “religion is in the human mind
the first native, if imperfect, form of the spiritual impulse..,
Spirituality indeed moves in a free and wide air far above
the lower stage of seeking which is governed by religious
form and dogma ... it lives in an experience which, to the
formal religious mind, is unintelligible.” (p.140 FIC).
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 The western mind deems a fixed intellectual belief
to be all important part of a cult. It considers falsely that an
intellectual truth is the highest verity and even that there is
no other. However, the highest verities for Indian thought
are truths of the spirit. Intellectual truth is only one of the
many doors to the Infinite. It is many-sided and not narrow
one. Most varying intellectual beliefs can be equally true
because they mirror different facets of the Infinite - they
form many side-entrances which admit the mind to some
faint ray of the supreme Light ! “There are no true or
false religions, but rather all religions are true in their own
way and degree. Each is one of the thousand paths to
the One Eternal.” (p.142 F1C) In this conception Sri
Aurobindo echoes the discovery of Sri Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa and that of Svami Vivekananda.
Sri Aurobindo analyses that Indian religion affirmed
four necessities for a full religious life; firstly a belief in a
highest consciousness or state of existence, universal and
transcendent of the universe, from which all comes, in
which all lives and moves without knowing it, and of which
all must one day grow aware, returning towards which is
perfect, eternal and infinite.
Secondly, every individual must prepare himself to
become or grow conscious of this; thirdly, it provided a
course of many-branching discipline, and lastly, for those
not yet ready for these higher steps it provided an
organization of the individual and collective life, a
framework of personal and social discipline and conduct.
“The first three of these elements are the most essential
313
to any religion, but Hinduism has always attached to the
last also a great importance; it has left out no part of life
as a thing secular and foreign to the religious and spiritual
life.” Further the core of Hinduism is a spiritual, not a
social discipline.
Again he emphasizes that the funadamental idea of
all Indian religion is one common to the highest human
thinking anywhere. ‘This Truth of being was not seized by
the Indian mind only as a philosophical speculation, a
theological dogma, an abstraction contemplated by the
intelligence. It was not an idea to be indulged by the thinker
in his study, but otherwise void of practical bearing on life.
It was not a mystic sublimation which could be ignored in
the dealings of man with the world and Nature. It was a
living spiritual Truth, an Entity, a Power, a Presence that
could be sought by all according to their degree of capacity,
and seized in a thousand ways through life and beyond
life.’ (FIC p.144) Again he is emphatic that “the Infinite
alone justifies the existence of the finite, and the finite by
itself has no entirely separate value or independent
existence. Life, if it not an illusion, is a divine play, a
manifestation of the glory of the Infinite.”
Sri Aurobindo, writing on the life-breath of Hindu
Ethics, says:
“The universal embracing dharma in the Indian idea
is a law of ideal perfection for the developing mind and
soul of man; it compels him to grow in the power and force
of certain high and large universal qualities which in their
harmony build a high type of manhood. In Indian thought
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and life this was the ideal of the best, the law of the good spirit-wise and wordly-wise, deeply religious, nobly ethical,
or noble man, the discipline laid down for the self- firmly yet flexibly intellectual, scientific and aesthetic,
perfecting individual - arya, srestha, sajjana, sadhu. This patient and tolerant of life’s difficulties and human
ideal was not a purely moral or ethical conception, although weaknesses, but arduous in self-discipline.”
that element might predominate: it was also intellectual,
“But even this was only a foundation and preparations
religious, social, aesthetic, the flowering of the whole ideal
for another bigger thing which by its presence exalts human
man, the perfection of the total human nature. The most
life beyond itself into something spiritual and divine. ... Law
varied qualities meet in the Indian conception of the best,
and its observance are neither the beginning nor the end
srestha, the good and noble man, arya. In the heart,
of man .... immortality, freedom and divinity are within his
benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion, altruism,
reach.”
long-suffering, liberality, kindliness, patience; In the
character, courage, heroism, energy, loyalty, continence, (Foundations of Indian culture: a rationalistic critic
truth, honour, Justice, faith, obedience, and reverence of Indian Culture: pp.120-1)
where these were due, but power too to govern and direct;
The basic tradition of Indian religious epistomology
a fine modesty and yet a strong independence and noble
was that it never considered intellectual or theological
pride; in the mind, wisdom and intelligence and love of
conceptions about the supreme Truth to be the thing of
learning, knowledge of all the best thought, and openness
central importance. “To pursue that Truth under whatever
to poetry, art and beauty, an educated capacity and skill
conception or whatever form, to attain to it by inner
in works; in the inner being a strong religious sense, piety,
experience, to live in that consciousness, this was held to
love of God, seeking after the Highest, the spiritual turn;
be the sole thing needful.” (p.145). Thus among the basic
in the social relations and conduct a strict observance of
approaches it is necessary to develop adhyatma-yoga,
all the social dharmas, as father, son, husband, brother,
inner experience, which alone can give knowledge of
kinsman, friend ruler or subject, master or servant, priest,
anything, terrestrial, celestial, psychological or
or warrior or worker, king or sage, member of clan or
transcendental, as they are in Truth in their Reality, what
caste:”
they are in themselves - tathatathya, yathartha.
“This was total ideal of the Arya, the man of high
Referring to Advaita, Visistadvaita and Dvaita as
upbringing and noble nature. The ideal is clearly portrayed
three modes of religion rather than of philosophy,
in the written records of ancient India during two
Sri Aurobindo points out that “The Spirit, Universal Nature,
millenniums and it is the very life-breath of Hindu Ethics. It
(whether called Maya, Prakrti, or Shakti) and the soul in
was the creation of an at once ideal and rational mind,
315 316
living beings, Jiva, are the three truths which are universally
admitted by all the many sects and conflicting religious
philosophies of India. Universal also is the admission that
the discovery of the inner spiritual self in man, the divine
soul in him, and some kind of living and uniting contact or
absolute unity of the soul in man with God or supreme Self
or eternal Brahman, is the condition of spiritual
perfection,.... and the one important truth of spiritual
experience is that He is in the heart and centre of all
existence...” (ibid).
As he remarks “the truth announced is not peculiar
to Indian thinking; it has been seen and followed by the
highest minds and souls everywhere". The one basic
achievement of India has been this; where other religions
had failed to stamp their culture and existence with this
spiritual quality and foundation, India has succeeded in
stamping religion with the essential ideal of a real
spirituality. It brought some living reflection of the very
highest spiritual truth, and some breath of its influence,
into every part of the religious field. “The ideas of Maya,
Lila, divine Immanence are as familiar to the man in the
street and the worshipper in the temple as to the
philosopher in his seclusion, the monk in his monastery,
and the saint in his hermitage.” (p.147)
The West has cherished the aggressive, and quite
illogical, idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion
universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of
dogma, one cult, one system of ecclesiastical ordinances.
Sri Aurobindo calls this a narrow absurdity, this grotesque
317
creation of human unreason; this vast attainment of the
spiritual consciousness, the consciousness of the real
nature of spiritual experience to be of the Infinite which
embraces all variety of spiritual experiences and
knowledge, even as Svami Vivekananda held. (p.148)
Man lives at different levels, conscious of some of
them but unconscious of some others. The majority of
mankind lives on the surface. “Even the choice spirits
raised from the grossness of the common vital and physical
mould by the stress of thought and culture do not usually
get farther than a strong dwelling on the things of the mind.
The highest flight they reach - and it is this that the West
persistently mistakes for spirituality - is a preference for
living in the mind and emotions more than in the gross
outward life, or else an attempt to subject this rebellious
life-stuff to the law of intellectual truth or ethical reason and
will, or aesthetic beauty, or to all three together.”
Further “ a mere intellectual, ethical and aesthetic
culture does not go back to the inmost truth of the spirit: it
is still an Ignorance, an incomplete, outward and
superficial knowledge”. It lacks clearly the power to
transform the outer in the light of the inner of which it is
ignorant. However, the several religions reveal their
inability to arrive at the transformation of their outer by the
light and power of the spiritual. “The Christian discipline
was not only to despise the physical and vital way of living,
but to disparage and imprison the intellectual, and distrust
and discourage the aesthetic thirsts of our nature. It
emphasized against them a limited spiritual emotionalism.”
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 The development of the spiritual, or its evolution so
to speak in humanity, moves in different channels. Whilst
the Indian dynamism registered the spiritual attainment and
its application to the varied levels of human behaviour, the
other movements had proceeded on the lines of the
intellect, and the vital and physical. But as man is not merely
spiritual but also intellectual, vital and physical, there
intervene periods of obscuration or decay of each one of
these, in order to make up for the final integration. This
danger is, if it is a danger, something that has occurred
everywhere. Spiritual illuminations gathered from the past
tend to be obscured and stifled by the lower levels of the
intellect which claim to be self-sufficient of course for its
limited work. This has happened even in Greece and the
other western countries.
“The old knowledge was prolonged in a less inspired,
less dynamic and more intellectual form by the
Pythogoreans, by the Stoics, by Plato and the Neo-
Platonists; but still in spite of them and in spite of the
only half-illumined spiritual wave which swept over
Europe from Asia in an ill-understood Christianity, the
whole real trend of Western Civilization has been
intellectual, rational, secular, and even materialistic, and
it keeps this character to the present day.” ( p. 169 )
Sri Aurobindo points out that what hurt Buddhism and
determined its rejection in the end was not its denial of a
Vedic origin or authority, but the exclusive trenchency of
its intellectual, ethical and spiritual positions.” (p. 172)
319
The aim of religion is the most important single factor
in the evaluation of its workings. The one question is
whether it is consistently developing the spiritual, in the
context of man’s life on earth. In so far as this
spiritualising of life on earth and the liberation of man are
available in any religion, to that extent that religion may
be said to have met the needs of man.
Sri Aurobindo considers that religion is not open for
all kinds of men. In this there is the recognition of the
differences between stage and stage. In India, according
to him, two complete external stages have taken place.
“The early Vedic was the first stage: religion then took its
outward formal stand on the natural approach of the
physical mind of man to the Godhead in the universe, but
the initiates guarded the sacrificial fire of a greater spiritual
truth behind the form. The Puranic-Tantric was the
second stage: then religion took its outward formal stand
on the first deeper approaches of man’s inner mind and
life to the Divine in the Universe, but a greater initiation
opened the way to a far more intimate truth and pushed
towards an inner living of the spiritual life in all its profundity,
and in all the infinite possibilities of an uttermost sublime
experience.” There has been a preparation for the third
stage which belongs to the future. (p.180)
The grand scheme of Indian spirituality is presented
by Sri Aurobindo with imaginative insight and with
authentic understanding. “No Indian religion is complete
without its outward form of preparatory practice, its
supporting philosophy and its Yoga or system of inward
320
action, or the art of spiritual living.” (p. 191) And “the
business of the ancient Rishi was not only to know God,
but to know the world and life, and to reduce it by knowledge
to a thing well understood and mastered with which the
reason and will of man could deal on assured lines, and
on a safe basis of wise method and order.” (p. 190) The
ripe result of this effort was the shastra.
Sri Aurobindo is convinced that mankind is still no
more than semi-civilised, and that it was never anything
else in the recorded history of the present cycle. He recalls
that each civilization has contributed to the development
of man: “Greece developed to a high degree the
intellectual reason and the sense of form and harmonious
beauty; Rome founded firmly strength and power and
patriotism and law and order; modern Europe has raised
to enormous proportions practical reason, science and
efficiency and economic capacity; India developed the
spiritual mind working on the other powers of man and
exceeding them, the intuitive reason, the philosophical
harmony of the Dharma informed by the religious spirit,
the sense of the eternal and the infinite.” (p.202)
The spiritual force always tried to go beyond religion,
and religion constantly tries to effectuate the spiritual
aspiration.
Man has to pass beyond religion itself, which is at
present just what his own intellectual reason is able to
deem as the spiritual and Ultimate. There is a truth which
goes beyond all reason and its constructions, and it is to
this eternal that the inward spirituality awakens and moves.
Indian religion is spiritual religion.
321
It can be seen that Sri Aurobindo, in his exposition
of the nature of religion vis a vis spirituality, clearly
propounds that religions are of an imperfect order trying
to mediate between the highest spiritual condition and the
intellect, reason, instinct and physical ways of human
understanding. Man’s emotion creates certain needs, even
as his will and intellect have their own thirsts to quench.
Religions, like so many others, demand not merely the
satisfaction of one part of man but the whole man. It is one
of the greatest drawbacks of certain thinkers and
psychologists to omit or play down the importance of
certain facets of man’s unified or unifying nature. Indeed
in a dynamic conception of man there is a constant
interplay of the triple modes of man’s nature, his emotion,
will and thought, which in terms of Samkhyan guna
psychology could be equated with the tamas, rajas and
sattva. Their interplay and integration or to adopt the
modern term “homeostasis”, is one of profound
significance in all the areas of human conduct. Religion
is no exception to this. Sri Aurobindo, following the ancient
clues, has most luminously expounded the ideal and
purpose of the quartets - caturvarga, caturvarna,
caturadhikara of Indian religious and spiritual formulations.
He has shown how they answer to the fourfold nature of
man as a physical, vital, mental and supramental being,
leading up to the spiritual existence that is the
transcendent goal. Considered in the light of the
exposition, almost all the problems of religions seem to
fall into their respective places. In a way the archetypal
forms or patterns of religious behaviour have been
322
exhibited in the light of revelational vision, and human
intellects all over the world have drawn their light and
reflections in themselves according to their need and
circumstances.
Sri Aurobindo does not enter into the field of
comparitive religion in the sense that he does not expound
the doctrines of each religion and appraise the principles
of absolute Religion, if there is to be one, or of a universal
religion as such. He undoubtedly speaks about the
necessity for humanity to attain significant unity, and
propounds the Ideal of Human Unity. There are two major
goals in religion, firstly it is the individual’s realisation of
his own spiritual nature, and consequently his freedom,
from whatever limits or circumscribes that nature; secondly,
his association which that realisation brings about with
God, the Universal Absolute Reality and with His creation
or creatures in terms of spirituality. And nothing that in any
sense abridges this sense of communion in the truly
spiritual and universal sense would be worthwhile.
Recent studies on comparitive philosophy between
Sri Aurobindo and western Philosophers* have revealed
how, through independent spiritual intuitions directly sought
and gained, Sri Aurobindo has reformulated with great
advantage some of the major discoveries in philosophical
and spiritual or mystical fields. His synoptic concern for a
world philosophy or spirituality has made him present a
universal philosophy of the Spirit in the true sense of that
* S.K. Maitra : Meeting of the East and West in Sri Aurobindo’s
philosophy. Ed. Haridas Chaudhuri & Frederic
Spielberg: Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. 1960.
323
term, which embraces organismically the several levels,
undoubtedly hierarchical and real, and dynamically
supported by the highest super-cosmic consciousness
itself. While clearly realising that philosophy must concern
itself, and could concern itself, with that which falls within
the ambit of Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo pointed out
that the consciousness that man already has and
possesses is much less than what he, in fact, can attain
to. The super consciousness is something that is available
to man, provided he would open out to it, and this
superconsciousness is the only integral consciousness that
can truly grasp reality in its fullest and real sense.
Piecemeal intellectuality, depending on piecemeal
systematisations, distort our consciousness and make for
illusions of system. Fragmentation of reality is as much
as distortion when one seeks to act in terms of partial
knowledges or non-universal uniformities or laws.
In one sense intellectual or empirical philosophies
suffer from this radical defect - they leave out other states
of consciousness except the waking or sensorial. Religion
seeks to make up for this defect by opening up fields or
levels of consciousness which philosophy has shut out. It
becomes more comprehensive and satisfying. But even
religions do not lead up to the highest limits of divine
gnosis. Therefore we move from one religion and from one
sect to another, in order to discover higher openings of
consciousness not merely intellectually satisfying or
emotionally soothening, but truly universal and liberating
man from his thraldom to the limitations of sense,
imagination and sleep or absorption. Spirituality
324
transcends these, and makes one enter into a true infinity
and eternity. Religions, in varying degrees, are pointers
to transcendence but the price paid for that is dedication
to the Ultimate Reality or Spirit in love and total self-offering
for the sake of that Experience of God alone.
Sri Aurobindo is convinced that a rationalistic religion
can never lead to that summit of spirituality which every
individual can attain. If such a rationalistic religion is
framed, as indeed it has been done, though it really does
some good in so far as it infuses faith in reason, it
otherwise leaves out much that is invaluable. Reason can
help to get rid of religionism with all its spurious qualities
of creed and cult, ceremony and symbol, its churchianity
or ‘false theocracy’ depending on the ‘Kingdom of the
Pope’, rather than on the Kingdom of God in the heart.
For it is the ‘deepest heart, the inmost essence of
religion’.... is the essence, is ‘the search for God and the
finding of God’ (Human Cycle p.173 Pondicherry ed.) But
reason is valuable in so far as it mediates between the
supra-rational intuitions and the human mind, and makes
intelligible to man his own higher capacities of
generalisation and inference. However “the limitations of
reason become very strikingly, very characteristically, very
nakedly apparent when it is confronted with the great order
of psychological truths and experiences which we have
kept in the background - the religious being of man and
religious life.” (ibid p.170)
An attempt was made to expound a Religion of
Humanity in the West.
325
“Religion of Humanity was mind-born in the 18th
century - the manasa putra of the rationalist thinkers
who brought it forward as a substitute for the formal
spiritualism of ecclesiastical Christianity.” (Ideal of
Humanity ch. 34)
“ It tried to give itself a body in Positivism which was
an attempt to formulate the dogmas of this religion,
but on too heavily and severely rationalistic a basis
for acceptance even by an Age of Reason.
Humanitarianism has been its most prominent
emotional result. Philanthropy, social service and
other kindred activities have been its outward
expression of good works... Democracy, socialism
pacifism are to a great extent its by-products or at
least owe much of their vigour to its presence..” (ibid)
According to Sri Aurobindo its basic principles are
I. Mankind is the godhead to be worshipped and
served by man.
II. Respect, service, progress of the human being
and human life are the chief duty and chief aim
of its human spirit.
III. No injunctions of old creeds, religious, political,
social, cultural are valid when they go against
the claims of Humanity.
This religion of humanity is today holding the field, though
higher light is breaking in. It was a corrective, even as
Science has been a corrective, to the aberrations of
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religious beliefs. It is a basic question however “whether
a purely intellectual and sentimental religion of humanity
will be sufficient to bring about so great a change in our
psychology” (ibid. p.) However, it is to be noted that we
are even today under the impact of the religion of humanity,
now known as humanism. It is also a religious attitude that
seems to have had a great fascination for Swami
Vivekananda and his followers. Undoubtedly based on” a
sort of primal intuition” as Sri Aurobindo puts it, its aim
was, and still is, to recreate human society in the image of
three kindred ideas, liberty, equality and fraternity, (ibid) *
However, a religion of humanity having these triple
ideals which are indeed mystic in origin cannot really be
successful unless fraternity becomes the unifying principle.
“It is the real key to the triple gospel of the idea of humanity.
Fraternity cannot merely rest on belief or analogy, but on
something more abiding and more thoroughly rooted in a
spiritual experience of the ‘fatherhood or motherhood of
God’”. Though freedom, equality and unity, according to
Sri Aurobindo, are the very nature of the soul, unity cannot
be equated with fraternity except by the intuition of the
‘fatherhood’ of God. Thus the concept of a religion of
humanity demands the acceptance of the ‘fatherhood of
God’ for its very success. Svami Vivekananda’s and
Mahatma Gandhi’s clearest bases for service of the
Daridra Narayana or humanism requires a spiritual basis
which rationalism has been unable to grant. **
* Dr K.C. Varadachari’s Radio Talk on Sri Aurobindo Paper on Talk on
Svami Vivekananda.
** Age of Reason : Thomas Paine
Rights of Kan : -do-
327
Therefore “Reason is an insufficient, often an
inefficient, even a stumbling and at its best a very partially
enlightened, guide for humanity in that great endeavour
which is the real heart of human progress and the inner
justification of our existence as souls, minds, and bodies
upon the earth.“ ( p.163 Collected works. Human
Cycle Ch. xiii ).
One of the moat distressing phenomenon of the
present day is the misunderstanding of the very nature of
Spirituality. Dr B.G. Tiwari, in his book on Secularism &
Materialism in Modern India, complains that almost all the
thinkers of the Renaissance are secularising because of
their love for activity, and that true spirituality lies in inactivity
or passivity. It is a complete misstaternent of the spiritual
position. One has to distinguish between spiritual and
secular activities, the one leading to the inner and central
reality of one’s being and the other leading outward to
surface reality. The former leads to the permanent whereas
the latter leads to the impermanent. The achievement of
the sthita-prajna state or aksara condition is midway
towards the Ultimate. There is a state of Brahman which
is that of the Supreme Purusa or Person, as stated by Sri
Krsna, whose activities are of divine nature. The
Samkhyan purusa is of the nature of aksara, but not of the
status of the Supreme Person. Therefore, to say that all
activity is secular is a misnomer. Secondly, the vyavaharic
activities of dharma are not also secular when they are
done as kartavyam karma acts which ought to be done.
Ethical activities which are determined by one’s
svadharma and svabhava can either lead one towards
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spiritual or secular life. By no kind of argument can it be
claimed that one can pursue both at the same time - live
and act secularly as also live spiritually and remain a
passive (saksi) witness. However, for one who pleads that
the whole universe is illusion and that all activity is
mithyacara, there is obviously no relevance for dharma-
performance, even as a purificatory measure for removing
the illusion.
What the renaissance thinkers had attempted was
to deepen the spiritual activity to embrace the secular
activities as well. It is to reveal that all is Spirit, and activity
also is spiritual. Such spiritual activity differs undoubtedly
from the activities governed by, or motivated by, the desires
and attachments (artha-kama) and. by egoism
(ahamkara). But when spirit begins to descend into one’s
being, all activities are taken over by the Spirit and there
takes place a gradual sublimation of the quality of action,
and man realises freedom of his nature or rather resumes
his role as a spiritual being in a material world plastic to
the stress of the divine nature and action. The secular
begins to be absorbed in the spiritual. Therefore the
activity of matter and egoism which advaita chastises as
absolutely contradictory to the spiritual is mistaken for the
divine activity that the Gita pleads for. It is clear that
Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak
had taken their lead from the Gita in pleading for divine
action rather than accept the self-stultifying inactivity suffers
from its gunas, the God’s activity is absolutely free from
guna-activities.
329
While it is to be conceded that in a natural world, a
world which has not a ray of divine presence, the rule of
the three gunas would be absolute, and all activity would
be deemed to be of the nature of rajas, yet when the divine
activity or presence is assumed or brought down or
descends, all activities including those of rajas would get
transformed, or annulled, or sublimated. It is therefore not
possible to accept the view that all activity is secular and
taboo. As it was pointed out by Sri Krsna, no one can
cease to do or act, for that is not merely the nature of Nature
but of the Spiritual itself. Sri Aurobindo points out that the
Spirit has two poises, the poise of Non-activity which
supports the Activity, as well as the poise of Activity which
cannot be totally severed. Spiritual activity embraces the
secular, whereas secular activity inhibits the spiritual,
because of its seeking to be particularised.
The divine life is therefore a spiritual inactivity, but is
spiritual activity based on supreme peace. It is then that
all activity exudes the peace that pervades all existence.
In any case, if a divine humanity should be the goal of
existence, then it becomes clear that we should divinise
all activities or at least aim at it. If we concede that all is
Spirit, that all is divine, even then it behoves us to remove
all that obstructs that divine. If it is something that cannot
be dissipated by mere textual knowledge, then it follows
that this reverse activity or removal-activity should be
cultivated. Sadhana becomes absolute condition, and
sadhana is activity that uplifts.
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 It is of greatest interest to find that Sri Aurobindo was
deeply concerned with the problem of Indian Vedic Religion
as the most universal religion from which all religions, by
a process of diversification and particularisation or
localisation, had come into being. Each one of them
has emphasized one aspect, and by that fact had ceased
to be capable of remaining universal, though the emphasis
was for some time at any rate put forward as a universal
truth. They can be universal truths without being at the same
time comprehensive Truth. It is the ambiguity in the word
universal that has lead to the deep misunderstanding.
Universal means that which is for every one; universal also
means that which comprehends all or includes all. This is
what Svami Vivekananda also emphasized in respect of
all religions other than the Vedanta which is parent of all;
But no one has really presented fully this aspect.*
Sri Aurobindo has further expounded the nature of
evolution of the Spiritual Man in his Life Divine. Man
evolves from the lowest to the highest via religion. The
studies in comparitive religion work out themselves on the
lines of social organisation from the tribal, communal, clan,
national and then individual. Organized religions have this
unit-character of sectarianisms. Tribal gods vie with each
other to become national gods. But the truly intuitive and
mystical experiences of the individuals constantly tend to
liberate man from his boundaries. The religions remained
private possessions, permitting no entry of new or alien
members. However, the proselytizing religions had tended
to embrace all mankind. This undoubtedly helped the
concept of One God and one Humanity. Each human being
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therefore was given the chance to lose his private nature
or merge himself in humanity. This was undoubtedly a great
advance. But its basic defect was its emotional appeal
rather than a rational appeal.
The age of reason induced this attempt at a
universaling of religion by denuding it of its emotionalism.
However the tendency has been to take an oblique turn
towards approaching the heart of man through service of
man, rather than liberating the understanding which has
not become even to a little extent rational, appealing to
the head or logic. Rationalistic religions which had
intervened have provided certain basic lines of universal
understanding of the problems of religion. But these have
not succeeded beyond a certain limit. Man has begun to
be alienated from both his heart and head. The ascent to
a higher form of universalism than reason had become
necessary. Neither emotionalism nor humanitarianism,
neither reasoning logistically nor scientifically, could satisfy
the soul of man. A deeper level, or a higher truth, had to
be found. This is the Spiritual level or the life of Spirit which
transcends the levels of religion that we have known so
far. This was what was mooted by the Upanisadic seers
as the Brahman or Absolute Spirit from whom alone
mankind can receive its highest benediction. This is the
Universal Godhead who is the meaning of all existence,
intelligence - consciousness, and all delight.
* Idea of God : K.C. Varadachari.
Visistadvaita : (Travancore University lectures II).
332
 This is the spiritual principle which every individual
must arrive at in his spiritual progress or evolution for such
a person perceives all as One Spirit. As Sri Aurobindo
puts it “ A diversity in oneness is the law of the
manifestation, the supramental unification and integration
must harmonize the diversities, but to abolish them is not
the intention of the Spirit in Nature. (Life Divine p. 790
Am. ed.)
The study of the Aurobindonian approach to religion
and spirituality reveals how the evolution of spirituality
proceeds through several stages, and as it ascends, more
and more of the truly spiritual gets manifested. Religions
are institutions founded by great seers for the promotion
of the orderly and harmonious development of man
towards his highest destiny. It is of course a fact of great
importance to realise that in a world of multiplicity, variety
develops, and this itself imposes inequalities that tend to
develop barriers or walls of separation which lead to
conflicts of all sorts. The only solution to this problem, the
only way to make these separative walls less opaque and
movable or removable, is to develop the inward life, not of
religion but of spirituality. Hinduism claims this universal
quality that belongs to the spirit. It makes meaningful the
social organisation and the hierarchy of values for the
gradual evolution of the divine type of man. The higher we
go, the clearer becomes the vision that reveals the
meaningful ness of progress, and the unity of the Spirit
through all the diversity. Sri Aurobindo sees in all religions
the impulse to move higher; but untouched by the ever
descending spirit into lower formations, these religions
333
tend to either break up or deteriorate into fanatical creeds
to be sustained and supported by lower nature or emotion.
That mystical religion is about the best which leads to an
openness to the higher descent*.
In the main lines of his thought Sri Aurobindo agrees
with Svami Vivekananda. He agrees that at the present
moment in the world’s history not only India needs the
verification of its spiritual activity, which unfortunately was
neglected by denial of all activity as inconducive to spiritual
realisation, but demands the descent of the spiritual
transcendent force. It would be wrong to introduce rajas,
the material element into the body spiritual of India, but it
is necessary to bring down the truly spiritual force - the
supermind - or vijnana - which in one sense is the spiritual
aspect of the original of the prakrtic rajas. It is the only
force that can tame the rajas of the West and the tamas of
the East, and uplift both to the transcendent state beyond
even the sattva of prakrti.
* Sri Aurobindo has made references to Christianity, Buddhism,
Zoroaster, Chinese books in the life Divine and to Islam in the
Ideal of Human Unity. But there is no attempt to present their
systems as a whole, as modern writers or theosophists have
tended to do.
Practical guide to Integral Yoga - 2nd ed, 1965.
p. 384 - “The Indian systems did not distinguish between two
quite different powers and levels of Consciousness,
one which • we call the Overmind and the other the true
Supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why
they got confused about Maya and took it for the Supreme
Creative power.”
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 SRI RADHAKRISHNAN AND
COMPARITIVE RELIGION
If Svami Vivekananda wished to develop a college
for the study of comparitive religion, it was left to
Dr Radhakrishnan of Madras to fulfil that wish by devoting
himself to realise it. His own valuable writings on the reign
of religion in contemporary philosophy, written very early
in his professorial career, as well as his stimulating studies
on Eastern religions and Western thought, have shown
how continuously he has been at work to make clear the
basic nature of religion, and its realisation in the different
cultures of the world. The studies reveal how greatly he
had been influenced by the deepest spiritual movements
in India and elsewhere through the centuries. This had
led to a dispassionate appraisal of all of them, both in
what they had contributed to the stream of human evolution
as well as in the directions in which each one of them
lagged behind in achieving the spiritual goal.
The spiritual goal is infinite and infinity itself. No
terrestrial limit could be applied to it, nor does it depend
on it as such. Individual saints have stepped out of this
terrestrial limitation and presented the eternal. The
comparitive study of the lives of these saints would yield
very important and striking material for defining the spiritual
levels of each culture and religious pattern. It is true that
all religions, when sincerely pursued as ways of spiritual
attainment, would lead to the goal, would reach God; some
however are long and strenuous and devious. Indeed it is
likely, as Hindu sages knew, that one reaches the goal
335
contrary to the manner by which it has to be reached,
avidhipurvakam. The old story in which God offered
alternatives to reach him either through friendliness (maitri)
or through enmity (dvesa) to his most excellent servants
Jaya and Yijaya who had been cursed by some sages to
take birth, shows that one could attain God through either
path. Though the former is prescribed in yoga, the latter
is contrary to it. This is of course catholicity and tolerance,
or could lead to it. No doubt the several religions aspire to
reach God, and tolerance of the paths chalked out is
helpful and experimental, and above all supremely
democratic and individual.
The world is in need of a new approach. Hindu
thinkers or sages had seen that is almost a continuous
demand for new events; and an awareness of the new
dimensions of the human problems provoke constant
search for harmonious solutions in each age. We find that
men cry out to God to take birth, or to send his prophets
and messengers to establish righteousness, to punish the
wicked and to save the faithful. In certain literatures we
find that extreme urgency expressed with all anguish and
pain of the soul, as if the world is engulfed and awaiting
destruction. However each age is answered and each
nation is assured by the birth of a saint; but it is a
phenomenon that leads to the study of the many ways in
which man prays for a new world and a new life.
The problems of religion remain, despite all attempts
to establish a new relationship with God or the Absolute
things which are understood in a terrestrial sense, or rather
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‘a human’ sense. There is of course all the certainty that
there are super-human or super-manic senses, but they
belong to an select sect and man is unfortunately not
included in it. In what manner those persons know and
see, touch, taste and hear, one hardly can know, though
descriptions are not wanting in all mystical and religious
literature. In fact Sri Aurobindo devotes quite a few
chapters to delineate the ‘gnostic man’ or superman. To
the man for whom religion exists or is established as a
path to liberation, as a means to his emancipation from
all binding and limiting bonds and misery and death, there
is necessary a pragmatic or human understanding of his
place in the universe, a place to which he might legitimately
aspire and attain. Peace in the soul, prosperity in all things,
and harmony with all mankind is an undoubted trinity of
interests that every man, whatever his station in life is,
seeks.
Man seeks fullness. He is always sure that though
what he seeks is not always attainable he should still strive
after it; and ethical life for him is a means towards this
realisation of the good.
In his brilliant series of lectures on Eastern Religions
and Western Thought, Dr Radhakrishnan throws out
pregnant criticisms not only of the ways of thought to which
the rationalists have accustomed the present age, but also
the ways of religion which promises to succeed it. But
after the rational treatment which in a sense happened
again and again in the history of mankind, religion is not
likely to be the same again. However there are certain
337
broad axioms of his thought on religion which could be
shown to follow naturally from the beginnings made by
Svami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,
his great master.
1. The Reality is spiritual. Reality of the Unseen.
2. Man is moving upward towards this realisation.
3. Humanity is striving after Unity - this is the direction
of its aspiration, the light and the law that moulds its
direction or the direction of its life-force.
4. Intellectual thought is insufficient, but historical or
human history is important : (European thought’s
contribution). The Kingdom of God is not of this
world.
5. Religion and humanism are not opposites : The
divine and the human are ever interrelated.
‘Humanism is the religion of the majority of the
intellectuals today’.
6. ‘Hinduism adopts a rationalist attitude in the matters
of religion’. (p.20. ER & WT).
7. Religions are religions of object and religions of
Experience. The former depend on faith and conduct
directed to a power without; the latter attaches
importance to the experience of God. Hinduism and
Buddhism belong to the second category.
8. A rationalist attitude means a study in a scientific
spirit, and religion is also studied in this spirit of
inquiry, not by faith but by experimenting, observing,
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 and discovering laws of inner life through experience
in the deepest levels. God exists means God is
experienceable or attainable, (p. 22)
9. Knowledge is awareness. This is different from
logical knowledge which is comparable to a finger
which points to an object and disappears when the
object is seen. (p. 24)
10. ‘Philosophy and religion are two aspects of a single
movement.’
11. Religion is a natural development of a really human
life, (p, 25) . In this sense it is humanism, ‘in a deeper
sense.’True humanism tells us that there is something
more in man than is apparent in his ordinary
consciousness, something which frames ideals and
thoughts, a fine spiritual presence which makes him
dissatisfied with mere earthly pursuits, (p. 25)
12. Maya does not mean that the empirical world is
illusion. It is only ‘fragile’.
‘Reality and existence are not to be set against each
other as metaphysical contraries.’
13. “The fundamental truth of a spiritual religion is that
our real self is the supreme being which it is our
business to discover and consciously become, and
this being is one in all.” (p. 32)
14. Mankind is still in the making. Human life as we have
it is only the raw material for human life as it might
be. (p. 34)
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The above axioms of his thought reveal his wide
perspective, distinct indeed from those of the preceding
thinkers. There is absolute agreement on the nature of
reality as spiritual. It is also agreed that man must become
aware of this spiritual nature, and more and more realise
it in his person, so to speak. His whole nature must
become spiritual. Spirituality means liberation or freedom,
and this spirituality is at the heart of every thing in the
universe to which he aspires. Religion means this
attainment through spiritual experience.
But there are some who consider that man is always
perfect, being spiritual, and his ignorance and imperfection
are not real. They hold that there is no evolution of man
into a spiritual being. There is no birth and no realisation.
The whole is unborn, cannot be born. Dr Radhakrishnan’s
view is that the world’s soul, as yet unborn, will be born
even as man is in the making. So he does not accept the
ajata vada and the illusion-theory of becoming, or of
creation etc., Nor does he accept the theory that maya is
the power of creativity in matters material. Maya represents
or explains the fragile nature of the manifest world which
is constantly changing, or rather coming into being and
passing out of being. The fact of transitoriness of material
things and bodies is incontestable. The bodies change
but the spiritual nature goes on interminably. Bodies age
but the spiritual nature experiences and goes on from one
body to another after fulfilling its desires in each one of
them, and therefore there is a continuity of births and
deaths. However we are not concerned so much with the
nature of the body in its perishability but in its being the
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vehicle of experience (anubhava). Religion has concern
for the soul of man, his immortal spirit playing in and
through the mortal and the changing nature.
Dr Radhakrishnan’s great contribution to comparitive
Religion is contained in his Oxford lectures on Eastern
Religions and Western Thought. it is about the only book
today which presents succinctly and lucidly the Eastern or
Indian approach to Comparitive Religious study. If Svami
Vivekananda tried to show how Hinduism is the Mother of
all Religions - all religions are eastern not european - and
how by shedding certain aspects each religion had
developed its own emphasis, and thus separated itself
from the parent; if Mahatma Gandhi, following Sri
Ramakrishna as it were, tried to establish a catholic
egalitarianism between the religions which could be
permitted to claim similar developments independently of
the alleged source in Hinduism or Vedism; Dr
Radhakrishnan’s approach may be said to lead to a
hierarchy of religion based on the levels of intuition and
levels of intellect. The Eastern religions are all intuitive,
inspired, and spiritually allied to the Ultimate purpose,
whereas the Hellenic religions are over-intellectualised
rationalisations of the intuitive. However it is clear that Dr
Radhakrishnan himself seems to feel that spiritual religion,
which is Hinduism, had very early in World History inspired
and guided the lines of development of Christianity and
Islam in their spiritual theories and practices.
A consideration of not only the philosophical bases
of these religions but also of the self-limitations which they
341
had imposed on themselves for the making of a better life
here on earth clearly indicates the causes of the diver-
gences in goals, A yearning for the Divine in Himself or
Itself does promote a vision that transcends the earth and
its perfection. Perfection itself has to be considered in
the light of purification of the spirit through experience, till
it reaches its perfection beyond the transient bodies or
matter. This is true of the spiritual religions whose look is
turned to the beyond. But it is not so but turned around
one’s surroundings when adaptation to it and survival in it
is the goal. This is the goal of religions which seek for
perfection of adaptation and harmony with it alone. In
either case it is the necessity of man to discover the power
or illumination which transcends his present powers, but
which he somehow feels is immanent in him.
Early enough in the millenium before Christ, Greece
underwent change in its beliefs, thanks to the influx of
ancient Hindu thought through the Mysteries of Orpheus
and the philosophies of Pythogoras. Clearly, Eleatics were
influenced by the ‘abstract’ speculations of the Hindus. (p.
134). It has been an unbroken influx before and after the
invasions of Alexander, perhaps more before than after.
Though Dr Radhakrishnan insists that his endeavour is
limited to showing or indicating their affinity of type rather
than their identity of origin, it is nonetheless a pointer to
the mutual influence of a higher religious stream on the
lower Homeric religions. Remarkable indeed are the
affinities. The Aryan names adorn almost all the pages of
their history of ancient religions, and perhaps it is clear
that it is in the Indian formulation that these Aryan gods
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and goddesses attain a purity and perfection in their
qualitative holiness or numinous nature. “The mystic
tradition in Greece is definitely un-Greek in its character.”
(p.135) As quoted by Dr Radhakrishnan
“Prophetic austerity and mystic indifference are alike
foreign to it (Greece). « (p. 136 note 3.)
The nearness or identity of practices and beliefs about
the soul and its immortality reveal more than mere natural
coincidence.
“The beliefs held in common are those of rebirth, the
immortality and godlike character of the soul, the
bondage of the soul in the body, and the possibility
of release by purification. If we add to them the
metaphors like the wheel of birth and the world egg,
the suggestion of natural coincidence is somewhat
unconvincing.” (p. 138)
Initiation was also considered to be of great importance.
To have initiation is to be twice born. The first birth is the
physical one, the second is unto what is real in us, to be
changed in nature. The yearning of religion is the desire
for union with our true self. ...
The ideal of Dhyana or theoria was inculcated, and
that meant contemplation of the divine reality. “For
Pythogoras, pure contemplation is the end of man, the
completion of human nature.” (p.141). There are so many
things in common between the Upanisadic teachings and
the Greek Platonics that we could assert their
interconnection. But whether or not we accept the
343
hypothesis of direct influence from India through Persia
on the Greeks, a student or Orphic and Pythogorean
thought cannot fail to see that the similarities between it
and Indian religion are so close as to warrant our regarding
them as expressions of the same view of life. We can use
the one system, to interpret the other. “ (p. 143)
Professor Radhakrishnan’s exposition of the
characteristics of a universal religion have the supreme
merit of clarity and charity which are brilliantly combined.
His wide acquaintance with the several features of world
mysticism and ethics and philosophy has made him a
unique personality. Idealism and practical wisdom coupled
with a deep piety for the ultimate values have made for
his knowledge of man and his destiny, in and through the
several avenues of knowing and tradition. This has
produced a humanism that made it a laughing stock in
ancient philosophy.
Philosophy and religion are for man, and man is not
to be conditioned and regimented into the schemes of
philosophy and religion. This is not subjectivism on the
contrary it emphasizes that our knowledge is essentially
governed by our mind, which is human at the level of our
education and It is very difficult to ask for a divine way
when all that we have is only a human vehicle and
instrumentation. The most flattered human is not divine but
human. The concept of man has been of course beautifully
explained even in India as in the Bhagavad Gita which,
called the Divine only the Highest or the Best Hunan
(Purusottama). No doubt that all religion is human, and
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for the human, and it may lead to the best that could evolve
out of the human - his highest possibility or potentiality.
The basic Upanisadic statement could be made to show
that the Brahman is what the atman could attain to - and
the potential and the manifest expression of it are an
organic unity — a process of growth or evolution or
unfoldment or even the breaking of the obstacles to the
self-revealaent of the self. All these terms of human
understanding of the gap or the gulf between the Ideal and
the Actual is bridged firstly by the recognition of the Reality
of the equation between these two terms. Their separation
by whatever reason brought about, illusory self-limitation
or creative dialectic, is the fact to be recognised and
overcome. Religion tries to do this through the several
religions, each of which is suited to the fact or feature or
mode of separation, that exists between the Atman and
the Brahman, - the individual and the Divine All. It is
certainly possible even to hold that the several expanding
individuals may grow to such vast dimensions that one
begins to include the rest, but then these inter-pervasive
universes, or individuals, or mahatmas, do need a
common universe of discourse and being which may
produce or creatively recognise the One that is indeed
the all. Man has infinite potentiality, and it may be that the
divine nature is also his possibility, even as the human
itself has been the possibility of the animal before him, so
far as he is concerned. Hindu thought therefore is a
problem or adventure of infinite manifestation of the infinite
potentiality of the microcosm - the atman or anvatma or
life - to become Brahman or universal life - visvatma or
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purusottama. Professor Radhakrisnan’s most rewarding
chapter in his work Eastern Religions and Western
Thought, from the point of view of comparitive religion
forging ahead to a universal religion, is entitled “Meeting
of Religions” (pp. 306-343).
India has been historically known to have been the
meeting place of almost all religions: perhaps it has also
sent out from ancient times its own religion to other parts
of the world. Whilst other religions, especially those
developed in Europe as well as the Arabic sematic,
developed a zealous attitude to convert others to their way
of thinking, which they were convinced was the best for all
the rest of the world, whether they were advanced or fitted
or otherwise or whether all things are the same for all men
differently constituted, India tried its level best most of the
time to foster inward understanding of the goals of not only
oneself but also of others as well, and knew the wisdom
that to each is best that makes for his realisation.
Today we have the well-devised slogan : to each
according to his need, from each according to his ability :
an axiom of economic socialism, put forward by one who
seems to have known the mystic truth that multiplicity, in
order to be, must remain multiplicity. Democracy would
wither if individuals coalesce or get absorbed in others.
Indian thinking, so beautifully expressed by the Bhagavad
Gita, has stated that each individual has his own
svadharma which he should develop according to his
svabhava - his own line of growth, and to attempt at
exchanging it with others is fraught with great misery to all
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concerned. The maxim of svadharma and svabhava of
Hindu Gita thinking is almost identical in import with the
slogan or axiom of ‘to each according to his need and
from each according to his ability.’
But this perception is not possible unless one gets
out of his net-mesh of doctrinairism and dogmatism.
Traditional development has helped individual growth and
evolution by and large, and Utopian population shifting has
uprooted people and has provided for their extermination
through atavism, and decay.
Professor Radhakrishnan says “The different
religions have now come together, and if they are not to
continue in a state of conflict or competition, they must
develop a spirit of comprehension which will break down
prejudice and misunderstanding and bind them together
as varied expressions of a single truth.” (p. 306)
All religions have come together in the world, but long ago
they did come together in India, and India then decided that this
comprehensive spirit is good for man despite all provocations
made, and insults heaped and brutalities commited against its
religion of One Reality, One God that merely permits the many
but helps them and sustains their growth and evolution as
exemplars of the One Supreme Brahman.
What was achieved in those early times of Asoka *
could well bear implementation in the vaster arena
* Asoka’s dictum : “ He who does reverence to his own sect while
disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own, with
intent to enhance the splendour of his own sect, in reality, by such conduct
inflicts the severest injury on his own sect.” (quoted on page 309)
347
of a world meeting of religions, the globe itself that
has, whether we like it or not, shrunk in terms of time
and space because of the modern discoveries of
science. “Obviously, says Professor Radhakrishnan
‘the different races and religious cults lived in harmony
and adopted an attitude of live and let live” (p. 307),
Despite conflicts which did take place, it became clear
that the Vedas realised that “ever since the dawn of
reflection the dream of unity has hovered over the scene
and haunted the imagination of the leaders “ of that
age. The theoretical explanation was put forward in
the Rig Veda for this attitude of acceptance of other
cults. “The real is one, the learned call it by various
names Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” (I. 164.46) And again
“priests and poets with words make into many the
hidden reality which is but one” (X.114). “The oneness
of the Supreme is insisted on, but variety of description
is permitted.” Dr Radhakrishnan holds that “In the
boundless being of Brahman are all the living powers
that men have worshipped as gods, not as if they were
standing side by side in space, but each a facet
mirroring the whole”; though he seems to concede that
these may be considered to be ‘refracted’ formations
or just ‘symbols of the fathomless’. In ancient times
this attitude of comprehensive tolerance was adopted
by the Chinese where the three religions of Taoism,
Confucianism and Buddhism have so far “melted into
one another that we cannot separate them easily.”
(p.309). It is but fair to say that this attitude was not
gained in a day. Conflicts had taken place till men have
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begun to see reason - human reason. Even today the
atmosphere for comprehensive spiritual understanding
of awareness has been brought about only through
revolutions and two World Wars, and under the current
threat of a Third one. The sanity of man gets a chance
when it is suicidal and homicidal to indulge in insanity.
Reason, human reason, might not grant stable
insights, revelations from above to all, but it does grant
a sense of expedient good behaviour. We know how
the social contract theory was an invention of the human
rationality to save man from fratricidal war which was
but another name for collective suicide of humanity. It
may not be a sovereign force but potent enough.
Sectarian squabbles there always have been, in
India as elsewhere, but whilst in India there have been
attempts at a positive integration of divine ideas and
concepts, in other parts of the globe there has not
happened anything more than an armistice, a
recognition of difference, an agreement to differ, and
that too when men seemed to lose their attachment to
spiritual truths or God. The industrial age and economic
determinism have more and more begun to dictate a
socialistic pattern of society based on cooperation and
corporation. This is a basic differential between the
Indian or Hindu mind and the Western Mind, Dr
Radhakrishnan points out how Brahma, Siva and Visnu
were integrated as the three poises of the One Divine.
Srsti sthityantakaranam brahmavisnuaivsbhidham /
sa samjnam yati bhagavan eka eva Janardanah //
349
Or the other famous verses
Yah puman Samkhyadrstinam
Brahma vedantavadinam
vijnana matram vijnanavadinam ekantanirmalam
yah sunyavadinam sunyo bhasako yo’rkatejasam
vaktamantartam bhokta drasta karta sadaiva sah
purusah samkhyadrstinam Isvaro yogavadinam
sivah sasikalankanam kalah kalaikavadinam
(Yoga Vasisista Quoted by Dr Radhakrishnan. p. 319)
All names may be given or invented to refer to the
Sane Being in the different darsanas or philosophies or
religions, and it is good to recognize this significants fact.
It is also known how Udayana in his Kusumanjali, written
to prove the existence of God, had discerned this truth.
Determined by the approach to the Divine, One receives
his vision from that point of approach. Even the atheist
and materialist is received in the Hindu fold as they also
reach the Divine in that way.
It is a truth that is being slowly recognized by the
mystics of other religions whether Christian or Islamic, but
more by the former, for their windows of knowledge are
much more open to the breezes from eternity.
Dr Radhakrishnan vigorously points out that it is
necessary for religious experience to be experienced and
recognized through the test of evolution of the human spirit.
“Let us frankly recognize that the efficiency of a religion is
to be judged by the development of religious qualities such
as quiet confidence, inner calm, gentleness of the spirit,
350
love of neighbour, mercy to all creation, destruction of
tyrannous desires, and the aspiration for spiritual
freedom.” (p. 323) This is a serious practical test which
every one should apply, and then perhaps we will all know
that religion is yet a far off ideal. Some may even draw
the pessimistic conclusion that it is an Utopian dream to
be truly spiritual or religious.
And spiritual goods are not to be confused with the
world’s currency, as Dr Radhakrishnan says. The Christian
missionary had been much more obsessed by his
excellences which were in fact, undermining his own
nature. The brilliant replies Dr Radhakrishnan has given,
will reveal an underlying lack of humility on the part of the
missionary writers, suffering under the burden of their
evangelical mission to save their own souls rather than
that of the other people who are less well placed in the
material plane of life. It is true that some of the reformers
in India were equally obsessed by wordly values and sought
to remedy the situation of the people of India, especially
the downtrodden and the dispossessed, and spoke a
language of depreciation of tne spiritual values. This is
also the modern obsession among the educated people
as also the pandits seeking equality with the materialistic
comrades. Perhaps it has invaded even the spheres the
monks and sanyasin and brought cynical sneers from all
those who see them as the exemplars of the spirit of jnana
vairagya.
This inversion of valuations of the age of mystic
renunciation and service and Oneness of all Being has
led to the depreciation of the present age and loss of faith
in every one. The intolerant voice of the missionary zealot
351
is matched by an equivalent fanaticism of the
proselytizer with the superiority complex making him
say things which are barren of all meaning and reality.
At any rate the Christian religion has no universal
possibility for humanity, unless it begins to shed its
institutionalised behaviour patterns, whetherProtestant
or catholic. One must realise ‘that different creeds are
the historical formulations of the formless truth’, and
a l s o t h a t r e l i g i o u s m y s t i c s o r r a t h e r. S v a m i
Vivekananda spoke bitterly against the fanatical ideas
of a One God and of One Creation also.
Dr Radhakrishnan pertinently says “Unfortunately
even as faith in one’s nation kills faith in mankind, faith
in one religion seems to kill faith in others.” (p.329).
One’s faith must give faith to others in their own faiths.
Just as one’s manifestation of love and sympathy to
others seems to make others feel the necessity to love
in return and adore the Supreme who has made this
possible. Further Dr Radhakrishnan says “Those who
believe in an immanent Logos are obliged to admit the
value of other faiths.” (p. 331)
The secret of tolerance and love stems out of this
recognition of the immanent Logos, the Antaryamin in
each and every human being, whether of one’s own
race, sect caste or otherwise. The immanent Reason
in all is Universal Reason itself, *
* It is usual to criticise Hegel for having asserted that what is, is
right, because it meant also that he was justifying the Prussian
Military State. The deeper meaning could be elucidated that it has to
be understood along with the other dictum that the real is the rational.
352
 It is on the plane of human rationality that we discover
that reason itself is universally present in all humans, and
works on an identical set of laws of thought. A science of
religion would discover the uniformities of spiritual
experience and the Uniformities of thinking processes, as
well as the mythical and emotional psychologies. Thus it
is by showing the different ‘distortions’ ‘refractions’ and
‘inversions’ and evolutions of the several truths of religion
in the different climates and traditions of humanity
sprawling on the face of the globe, that we seize upon the
essential elements of universal religion, and also develop
a charity and positive tolerance to all religious
manifestations. It is then that, as Dr Radhakrishnan says
“a religion embraces all mankind; For in a religion like
Hinduism, which emphasizes Divine Immanence, the
chosen people embraces all mankind; not merely those
of the semetic or aryan or any tribal and national type of
men alone.”
Professor Radhakrishnan emphasises that religion
at least must remain the home of liberty, in this , following
Rousseau whoa he quotes; but he also perceives the
wisdom of Plato who insists that liberty has only one law
to obey, that is the law of beneficence to society, or rather
should we say the beneficence to one’s own evolution to
higher and wider liberties open to him. The Hindu has
always recognised the need for the formation of
fellowships or Samgha or sat-sangha which promotes the
evolution of man towards his liberty (moksa) as well as
his harmony with humanity. Men live from one community
to another entailing change of attitudes - “sat-sanghatve
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nissanghatvam, nissanghatve nirmohatvam” a true
objectivity develops along with a dispassionate attitude.
Hinduism recognizes that each religion is inextricably
bound up with its culture. This poses the problem of
association and fellowship between individuals belonging
to apparently different religions, but seeking the same goal
of liberty in God, or dharma.
Dr Radhakrishnan’s great work has been to answer
the critics of Hinduism, as also to direct criticisms against
them from a real and dispassionate standpoint. Tall claims
made by Christianity by followers of modern Christianity
are shown to be hollow and pretentious. Whilst “we cannot
dismiss as negligible the sense of majesty of God and
consequent reverence in worship which are conspicuous
in Islam, the deep sympathy for the world’s sorrow and
unselfish search for a way of escape in Buddhism; the
desire for contact with ultimate reality in Hinduism; the
belief in moral order in the universe and consequent
insistence on moral conduct in Confucius, it is unfortunate
that claims are made for the exclusive salvation device of
Christianity by its leading expounders.” (p. 342) However,
wise men abound every where and the light of God is
pouring on them from above.
There is always a necessity for instructing each other
among good men as counselled by the Bhagavad Gita
Acharya (bodhayanti parasparam) even as Jesus seems
to have instructed, “But go then and publish abroad the
Kingdom of God,” even as Asoka sent to all directions
messengers of freedom (moksa) from misery; but this task
354
could well be done with imperialistic designs. As it was
earlier remarked, conquerors of nations were
accompanied, by missionaries to convert the conquered
by force. fraternity; those deeply universal mystic truths
absorbed by the Hinduism from remote ages. And this
recognition of equal rights for all has compelled the ethical
conscience - but not of all missionaries - to dedicate
themselves to these triple goals of human existence. More
disastrous has been the attempt to undermine, subvert
other peoples faiths, and this too is being exposed by
modern thinkers.
Dr Radhakrishnan’s services to the emancipation of
Hinduism, both from its critics and its friends and followers,
have been singularly successful. His massive knowledge
of, and minute acquaintance with the practices of religions
has helped him to help them to purify themselves before
they attempt exporting their religions.
Splendidly has he presented the picture of the future
of religion -the religion in the making -
“Each religion has sat at the feet of teachers that
never bowed to its authority, and this process is taking
place to-day on a scale unprecedented in the history of
humanity, and will have profound effects upon religion. In
their wide environment religions are assisting each other
to find their own souls and to grow to their full stature.
Owing to cross-fertilization of ideas and insights, behind
which lie centuries of racial and cultural tradition and
earnest endeavour, a great unification is taking place in
355
the deeper fabric of men’s thoughts. Unconsciously
perhaps, respect for other points of view, appreciation of
the treasures of other cultures, confidence in one another’s
unselfish motives are growing. We are slowly realizing
that believers with different opinions and convictions are
necessary to each other to work out the larger synthesis
which alone can give the spiritual basis to a world brought
together into intimate oneness by man’s mechanical
ingenuity. “ (p. 348)
The realisation of the Universal Religion cannot but
be on the lines of a wider awakening of the consciousness
to its cosmic and global tasks. The Eastern Religions
and Western Thought was the work of Professor
Radhakrishnan,Professor Spalding at Oxford. They bear
the scholarly impress on every line, that detachment that
is appropriate to the task of exposition. His only concern
was to present Hinduism as the best synthesis of the basic
aims of humanity as a whole, and it has stood that test
through long centuries.
Since then Professor Radhakrishnan has moved
towards the active life of a Statesman, ambassador, Vice
President and President of Indian Republic. The
philosopher professor has become the philosopher Ruler
or President. Does this mark any change? Yet it does.
The same catholicity and tolerance persists in all that he
has been doing. His has been a healing but firm touch.
The ideals have given him the challenge to execute them.
The ways of liberty, equality and fraternity have broadened
to permit a freer movement of the mass of mankind.
356
The Constitution of India embraces these ideals as
instruments of execution. Socialism, not of the dialectical
materialism but of the liberalistic kind, has been found to
be capable of promoting the fundamental freedoms of
man. Though these freedoms have been stated in the
language of materialism yet at bottom the spirit of
spirituality and mystic unity of mankind has dictated their
declarations again and again. The march of dictators of
the Left and the Right on the world stage only high-lighted
the magnificent dream to be a thing to be realised. The
magnificent obsession of spirit to clothe itself in the
mantles of materialism or matter has begun to be realised.
Dr Radhakriahnan has been able to affirm that though
God is the concern of the religions, it is now Man who is
the concern of God, and spirit must explain itself in terms
of materialism. The paradox seems to be the vengeance
that spirit takes against the logics of contradiction. Or
is it its disquieting laughter after all ?
Can secularism in politics be the expression of
spirituality? This question has been answered by
Dr Radhakrishnan in the positive affirmation he makes,
in his latest speeches. Is this a dichotomy, a hypocrisy or
is it a legitimate spiritual mode of apprehension of the
opposition between materialistic secularism and spiritual
aspiration ? Or is it a kind of choice we have to make
between materialistic and spiritual secularisms ?
Some modern research professors have raised a
furore over this secularisation of spirituality, by equating
357
with non-action, non-political life, whilst dubbing all activity
to be secular.
Dr.B.G. Tiwari considers secularism as the
“deification of activity, self-fulfilment, success, fame,
accomplishment, possessions, excitement, risk and the
relentless striving to push ahead, and the ethical theory
which professes to regard search for worldly goods as
the true or the highest goal of man’s efforts” (p.i. Secularism
& Materialism in Modern India). And under this omnibus
definition he brings all the reformers including Svami
Vivekananda- the patriot Monk, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri
Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jawaharlal Nehru and
so on. He however includes under the spiritual, as
contradicting the secular, exponents like Dr. S.
Radhakrishnan who he considers expounds Indian Ethics
from the Sankara point of view. (p. 17 ibid).
The axiological point of view of ethics is one thing,
and to mix it up with a metaphysical and epistemological
point of view is another. Axiologically the world is valueless
and phantasmic from the point of the ordinary man, who
seeks the Ultimate meaning of his own existence or of his
dear ones who have been snatched away. The
renunciational opportunities are precisely enumerated by
the Indian seers as the point of death, of birth-pangs or
moment of child-delivery, which psycho-analysts call the
trauma; after the cessation of hunger and sex-hunger after
satisfaction. But the metaphysical reality of the world, once
denied, cannot be practised consistently except by
denying all karma whether vaidika or tantrika. If there are
358
two orders of being, one an illusion and the other the
Reality, the renunciation of the former is the logical step
to be taken and Sankara did take it. The practice of
illusion of the world - the sadhana of considering all to be
illusory, like the counterpart all is duhkha or misery, only
inculcates the liberation of the individual from his world. It
may enjoin him to join others equally convinced about the
unreality or illusory nature of the world. Such an ethics
would certainly not seek to maintain this world illusion but
to destroy it or negate it this would be nisprapanchikarana
- naughting the world. One may proceed to naught the
world of vyavahara. Even the practice of the four ends in
order would not achieve this: in any case the criticism of
the Western Critics against Advaita or Sankara Mayavada
ethics cannot be answered.
It is neither consistent with the metaphysical
assumptions nor is it necessary to hold on to this with a
zeal meant for a better purpose. What Svami Vivekananda
saw clearly was that Advaita is much more important as a
concept that can relate the two axiologically different
realms - the realms of transience and the realms of
permanence, ie of change and stability. Maya then need
not be emphasized, nor is it necessary to say that the world
is real in itself, and has to be sought for its own sake. The
sole aim is whether one could confer on the changing world
a semblance of order and cosmos, a unity that would give
meaning to this whole process. Despite the extraordinary
ingenuity of the mayavadic philosophers to prove the self-
contradictoriness and so on of the world of change and
appearance, and despite the impossibility of knowing
359
anything as it is in itself through the means of knowledge
available to man, yet the necessity to act as if there is
order and design or meaning makes ethics possible.
Deny this and then one denies all activity. There is nothing
at all preventing one’s giving up one’s entire work, effort
and goals and all, and enter into that condition beyond all
change and cosmos or anything of the limiting concepts
of the ordinary man.
Advaita, as the search for Oneness or unity, is a
highly spiritual and ethical endeavour, and it is an
instrument of liberation of man from his terrific insecurity
in a world of change and chance. Science does attempt
this systematisation or unification of all objective
knowledge. It is not doing it under the impulse or
motivation of escape from maya or illusion or deeming all
these as just illusion. The experience of Selfness or
Sarvatmabhava or Bhuma or omnipervasive Reality would
entail the abandonment of the maya-concept, whether of
the Yoga Vasista or the pure metaphysical Sankara type.
The attempt to make Maya a pivotal concept in the
sense of cosmic or metaphysical illusion is on the whole
basically irremediable if one wishes to substantiate the
existence of the human world, or the values that one really
seeks here. That is why it is quite likely that though the
intellect of Svami Vivekananda was tuned to the
metaphysical Maya of Sankara, his own spiritual bias was
for the heart of Ramanuja which embraced both the world
here and the world beyond, the transcendent. The bhakti
of Ramanuja was not for this world and its enjoyment,
360
though some eminent followers of Sri Ramanuja almost
gave expression to the view that the Divine experience in
this world is equal to that of liberation, moksa, from which
there is no return to this world at all. Dr Tiwari’s definition
of secularism is too extensive in one sense and too
restrictive in another sense, and suffers from definitional
failure to make sense of his secularism.*
Radhakrishnan himself steers clear of the dilemma
of Maya and Sankara’s brand of it. It is spirituality that
furnishes the light in regard to what it is by which men get
deluded, and what it is by which one does not. His
treatment of the doctrinaire principles of Caturvarga,
caturvarna, and ashrama is according to the principles
underlying the Vaidiki dharma. But he, no less
emphatically than Svami Vivekananda, affirms the need
to instil the spirituality that pure advaita or oneness can
provide. Multiplicity has its own basic values even as
Oneness has, but it is the measure of the spirituality of our
ordinary life as to whether multiplicity has tendency to move
towards oneness or oneness has the tendency to preserve
and maintain the many.
* B.G. Tiwari : Secularism and Materialism in Modern India.
(Jabalpur Cooperative Printing and
Publishing Society Ltd. Jabalpur. 1964)
361
POST VIVEKANANDA RELIGION
In a profound sense we can say that Religion has not
remained the same after the advent of Sri Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda. The turns and
twists that it had before and during their lives had been
varied; and many ways were found to give it some kind of
firm form and shape after they had channelised the spiritual
energies of the Hindu people. The earlier currents
persisted and have been running their course, but even
they had to follow certain definite lines of spiritual and
religious practices.
The reformist cults had agreed to rethink their
fundamentals on religion. The most important attack
against Hinduism has been its idol-worship. It was
definitely established as part and parcel of rational
Hinduism, and indeed as rational as any symbol could be
expected to be. No religion had escaped the process of
symbolisation - the only question would be whether the
symbols are adequate to the metaphysical truths they
represent, or contrary to them, or indifferent to them. Every
symbol tends to lose its power to symbolize and becomes
indifferent to it, and therefore new symbols seem to be
called for. India had a multitude of symbols to suit its variety
of individuals and groups, and people had passed on from
one to another group without losing sight of the goal of
liberation which each one of these was and is being held
to lead to. This is a very great discovery. Idolatory has
ceased to be a religious superstition or a spiritual
aberration.
362
 The shift of emphasis in the approach to spirituality
through religion is another important factor. Religions,
with their parochialism and sectarianism, have ceased
to be indicators of a growing sense of God. On the
other hand the real indication for spiritual sense of God
seems to be today the earnestness to seek a living
union with God. Thus the claim made by certain
thinkers like Prof. Bouquet that Christ is a living God is
no longer seriously accepted, for almost every religious
man or spiritual aspirant has moments of perception
or awareness of ‘livingness’ of God which makes all
the difference in his relationship with God and the
World. In fact, whilst previously one’s living sense of
God had provoked him to commit heinous crimes
against humanity in the name of God, today not until he
is a gentle and peaceradiating personality, without
distinctions of caste, creed, race or colour, etc., would
he be considered to be a person who has beheld the
Living God.Personal experiences of God are not the
unique property of any one religion or of any particular
spiritual exercises. In fact when religious people had
tried seriously to verify their religious claims it became
possible to realise that there is a universality and
truthfulness in all religions, and no religion whatsoever
seems to enfold all religions, their dogma or their rites;
though it has been the claim of Hinduism which has a
polyphasic nature to include all. The dogmas of all
religions could indeed be found within this polyphasic
Oneness of Hinduism, as of its Godhead.
363
Undoubtedly there has occurred the phenomenon of
loss of uniqueness, about which any one religion could
formerly boast. As a matter of fact the growth of patriotism
or nationalism all over the world had led to research
projects of discovering within one’s own culture and religion
all that the more advanced cultures or alien cultures have
revealed as their own unique developments. This led to
loss of advantage which enterprising proselytising
religious missions had enjoyed. Religion has begun to
lose its exportable quality. One’s religion has been shown
to be sufficiently advanced for one’s own purposes. This
is not a little due to the emphasis laid by Svami
Vivekananda on the equal ability of each religion to lead
up to salvation or liberation or realisation of God or Union
with the Spirit.
The rivalry between religions has lessened
considerably. The distinctions between the several
religions however remain. Reason has entered into the
whole business and the philosophies of religion have un-
doubtedly broken the barriers to understanding of one’s
own religion, as well as a comparitive estimate of what
each man ought to embrace in order to be a rational being
or a sane citizen.
The self-introspection that has developed in the
higher intellectuals, and to a large extent in the educated
all over the world, has led to a practical application of the
beliefs and tenets mouthed but not practised; as for
instance the ideas of liberty or freedom for all, equality of
all beings, and fraternity among all men. The sincerity that
364
has been called out has shown the enormous gap between
precept and practice, and social justice has become the
clamour of the modern age of universalism.
The modern keen interest in Hinduism has been
aroused because what was just a habit of behaviour in
matters religious has become a matter for living concern,
a matter of national self-respect; as a self-discovery of
the national soul which has been through ages, essentially
spiritual. The long course of events in history had made
for several modifications of religious attitudes and
aspirations. A vast laboratory of spiritual experiments had
been at work. Thus the rise of Hinduism after the fall or
fading away of Buddhism and Jainism had led to
Sankara’s formulation of Advaita. This was
contemporaneous with the Hymnists of Sri Vaisnavism and
Saivism as it were, and this tradition had been continuously
operating, in South India at least. The Schools of Vedanta
alongside the dharma-sastras have produced a vast
volume of rationalistic and religious literature coupled with
the spiritual work of self-experience.
The Schools of Visistadvaita and Dvaita, engaged
on the spiritual experience of God in all his polyphasic
being, had provided the spiritual-religious background
during the period of Islamic invasions. Though some
thinkers consider that the influence of Islam and
Christianity is traceable in these two Vedantas, yet it must
be pointed out that they developed from traditional
movements which commenced centuries before the
advent of Christ. The statement of Svami Vivekananda
and the later information fully documented by Dr
365
Radhakrishnan, both reveal the entirely native character
of these Vedantas; and if at anything, modern research
shows that they (the Muslims and Christians) have profitted
by intercourse with India. The studies on the
developments of Zoroastrianism by Alkondavalli
Govindacarya have high-lighted this position of
‘motherhood’ of Religions of Hinduism or VedantaAgama.
Theosophical work has not reduced the quality or quantity
of the indebtedness of other religions to Hinduism.
This has brought to the fore the most important
problem of Religion - the supreme quality that a religion
must have to be a living force among humanity (and not
so much the origins of each religion from a parent religion,
which is liable to be historically contested and disputed,
and accepted or not). Is it a dead force or a living force,
and if so could old religions ever resuscitate themselves
to play this role ? However satisfying they might be for an
emotional self-satisfaction of one’s self-respect or national
respect? This is very important in view of the earnest and
strenuous efforts and advertisements being made on
behalf of religious revival through lectures, studies and
researches. Under Mahatma Gandhi grew Ashrams which
functioned as political-religious centres for training men
in the art of non-violent non-cooperation. Thus, all over
the country, asramas once again sprang up, not purely for
spiritual and religious training and education, but for a
moral and spiritual preparation for the ordeal of achieving
political liberty. Such was the climate of socio-political life.
The work of the Ramakrishna Math as well as that of the
Arya Samaj and theosophists began to take
366
shape.Religion was stirred to its foundations. Indian
Philosophical studies were undertaken, and the necessity
to look into our own philosophical literature became urgent
in view of the remarks made about India not having any
philosophy but only a religion
As every one can remember today, the complaint of
the Westerner is that India has no religion at all but just a
mysticism of a kind. Thus India did not have a philosophy
but only a religion, then it had no religion but only a
mysticism. All these views have been ably challenged by
Svami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and
Dr.Radhakrishnan. It was asserted also that Indian
Philosophy and Religion hardly knew anything about a
science of ethics; but both the philosophers and mystics,
and above all, Mahatma Gandhi, showed that India
practices a nobler ethics than what passes for ethics in
the now defunct ethical concerns in England. The founding
of the Asramas for spiritual and ethical practices is a return
to the age-old tradition of soul-preparation for all kinds of
work. The study of Indian philosophy in Colleges and
Universities has helped to reveal that there is enough solid
thinking outside religious and spiritual speculation which
could become the basis for a world philosophy. The
process, of course, has not come to any thing more than
an elementary or preparatory stage, b u t i t h a s
commenced ! The future of Indian Philosophical studies
is assured, especially when we are moving forward
towards using the intuitive and supramental possibilities
of thought to explore the infinities of Reality, not only in its
spatial and temporal dimensions, but also in organic and
367
supra-mortal terms. The world itself has begun to see that
the nineteenth century fictions have at last begun to
evaporate.
No longer is there entertained the illusion of
sovereignty of reason, even in the fields of science.
Hedonism, as an ethical goal is being given up, but the
concept of welfare has also greatly enlarged itself. It is
true that extra-terrestrial religion has not much chance of
success unless the transition to the other world already
involves some stable realisations of the values of religion
even on this earth. Spiritual values destined for the
enjoyment of the soul are found to be increasingly
necessary for living here and for realising them in terms
of our material life if it is not to remain sordid and mean.
Thus, freedom is not to be sought outside life and after
death in another world, but here itself and in every sector
of human activity, and for every one. Similarly, equality
has been slowly growing into the patterns of society, both
social and political, and has not been permitted to be
enjoyed only by members of any sacred brotherhood or
church. It has become a universal right even as freedom
has become. But it is when all men are found to be
governed not so much by equal rights and equal freedoms
but by something that brings warmth and cheer into human
relationships that life becomes valuable in itself. Till now
life had to be given up for gaining the values of freedom
and equality. It had to be the price that man pays for gaining
his humanity. But deeper than these two, and perhaps
even in spite of them, one has to love and be loved as
children of one supreme Being. Religion that has grown
368
naturally had to be given up in order to realise the supreme
rationality of human comradeship or fraternal unity. And
nothing expresses this love except acts of love, sympathy
and sharing. Not by sentiment, nor emotions of blood and
race affinities, but by a superior rationality that recognizes
that all are indeed One. Fatherhood and Motherhood of
God are very effective, and the analogies are nearer to
one’s visualisation. But to feel the same self in all, and all
as being in that One Universal Self, and to feel also that
all are the becomings of that One self demands a mystic
vision of supreme penetrative power which ordinary
religions could hardly offer. But it is precisely this Vision
and insight that the Hindu Upanisadic seer has promised
as the spiritual basis of Human unity and Oneness.
All over the world the concepts of mystical equality
and freedom, and even the idea of a kingdom of justice
and love, have been common heritage. This would lead to
the one insight that there is the tendency to realise identity
of ideals, in respect of material (artha), emotional (kama),
and duty (dharma) goals. The idea of moksa, or liberation
from the earth-life or eternal return to it out of fervant desire
to be here alone, has receded. If the last is the meaning of
religious or mystical yearning for the eternal and the
permanent, that seems to have receded into the
background. Nobody takes the moksa-purusarthe
seriously as a goal worth while pursuing. Any attempts to
discuss the problems of karma and rebirth are met with a
smile; a smile that almost means that such problems are
speculative ones; not germane to the issues of the present
day. However, they were the deep problems that frightened
369
the past age. If materialism means the total disregardof
problems of the future of life, then the present age is
materialistic. And the problems of economics, science,
law are all sought to be explained or governed not with a
drive to the final purusartha or goal of the future life of man
and society, but in terms of present enjoyment and peace.
Thus spirituality is yoked to the chariot of the social and
secular. This has developed as a necessity because of
the impossibility of getting spirituality, or rather religiosity,
to promote inter-religions and inter-spiritual equality,
justice, peace and prosperity.
Yasnin sarvani bhutany atmanyevabhut vijanatah/
Tatra kah mohah kah sokah ekatvam anupasyatah//
The world as a whole, and in its parts, is riddled with
problems of inter-existence and co-existence, as well as of
inter-mixture and inter-action. No individual, social, racial, or
religious group is able to develop its own way of being
because of this phenomenon of inter-alliance and inter-action.
A New world consciousness is emerging, and the old
consciousness seems to be passing out. There have been
several societies and organisations which have been coming
into being in order to solve the problem of unity and amity :
Life Divine Societies, as well as Divine Life Societies,
Sanmarga Sanghas, as well as Samarasa Sanghas,
Sarvodaya and Divyajnana sabhas and Santa sadanas and
Asramas, World Fellowships and World Unions. Several
thinkers and sages like Ramana, Sivananda, Sri Sitaram
Omkarnath, Sai Baba, Meher Baba and so on have urged
the birth of a new Consciousness of World Unity in Spirituality
as well as in Materiality.
370
 A sceptical opposition to spirituality has yielded
place to a sense of, and need to, experiment with
spirituality in terms of secular affairs. The scientific mind
has begun to reject more and more the view that the
ordinary dualism of mind and matter is eternal, though
within limits and functions this dualism cannot be avoided.
An ultimate monism does not deny the dualism between
these which are two states of the same thing and which
remain parallel except at critical points in human
transcendental experience. But this would yet lead to a
still further dualism between matter-mind and Self or ego,
which seems to be still more different from the Universal.
At the present stage of humanity the formation of a
conscious self seems to be more urgent. An ethical ego
with a spiritual destiny seems to be the minimum need of
a spiritual religion. It is in, and for, bringing this about that
the concept of universal spirituality with the triple or triunity
of spiritual values like liberty, equality and fraternity has
been made a paramount force in secular affairs. They do
enfold, and will more and more manifest, the triunity of
Truth-Existence, Consciousness-Force, and Bliss-Peace
in the higher realms of spirituality when it has begun to
operate in and through every individual who has become
a moral agent and a spiritual centre for the One Reality
that is Saccidananda.
The study of the trends that have been under way
during the past hundred years have shown that we have
been appraised of the basic elements of all religions in
respect of the Metaphysical truth of God; the One knowing
Whom we know all, and the goal of life as liberation from
371
ignorance, delusion, division and misery and mutual
conflicts, and lastly the awareness of the eternal life of the
spirit even when it works in terms of space, time and
causality. The means to the Universal Realisation have
to be as spiritual as the goal itself. And this demands a
supreme dedication that would turn the material and
secular into embodiments of the spiritual reality, very much
as an alchemist would attempt the transmutation of iron,
or brass, or copper into Gold. There is no alternative today
to universal religion. One must move towards its
realisation, for cosmic events and discoveries and
inventions by man make this inevitable. He becomes a
world citizen wedded to its fortunes or misfortunes and
fears.
Religion or mysticism can no longer be the refuge of
the scared and tormented soul but is required to do the
task of ameliorating suffering through love, which is
expressed through sympathy for suffering. May be this is
a poor substitute for the promises of an eternal life. The
attempts to make this kind of self-sacrifice, or the myth of
it the eternal meaning of spirituality or emancipation, are
perhaps to step down the old ideals. There seems to be
no alternative to this stepping down of religion into mere
expressions of mundane love and social meliorism, and
similar other things which make our present life a little more
harmonious and humane. Creative rationality might well
suffice for this purpose. So much so, religion has tended
to mean this creative rationality as applied to social
situations. May be this is the triumph of secularism over
spirituality, which has made the latter the means to its ends,
372
whilst all the historical processes in society might produce
varying degrees of operation of these two forces,
producing a synthesis of varying spirituality.
Our survey of the studies made by the different
thinkers, starting from Svami Vivekananda, who has
been most influential and seminal, has high lighted the
fact that this Neo-Vedentic Movement as Religion and
as Universal religion embraces all the other religions,
and goes forward to firmly draw the future of religion
within the regions of possibility. Hinduism has the
native spiritual power, which it draws from the ancient
and eternal foundations of reality as Experience, to
explain and make rational the deepest aspirations of
man, from his lowest and grossest levels to the
supremest heights of spirituality and transcendence.
Man may be said to possess the key to the ascent.
Within him is the possibility of perfection, of
divinisation, and such a man must be clearly
apprehended not as the physical man, nor as the vital
man, nor even as the sub-mental man, but as the rational
man who has begun to see the distinction between the
transient and the permanent; between truth and
falsehood; between intelligence and non-intelligence or
consciousness and unconsciousness. Unless this point
is reached one cannot qualify himself to be a Man. Man
must be endowed with the quality to think, to imagine,
to doubt, and to aspire for truth, goodness, beauty and
duty. He must be capable of loving and sacrificing for
these goals. To develop men to this level itself is the
educational goal of the spiritual man. Beyond that is
373
the education for the Ultimate Realisation — the
Universal Man.
Secondly, the philosophical, religious and mystical
factors of Hinduism make it possible for it to be scientific
and spiritual; scientific in the sense that the spiritual is
shown to follow the natural evolution of man. The
evolutionary process has shown that the organic is a
natural development of the inorganic, that the mental is a
natural development of the organic, and so too the
supramental process is a natural development of the
mental. It is further possible that the spiritual Ananda is a
natural development of the supramental .There is no need
for break between the natural and the supranatural; and
the gulf between life and after-life is only at the beginning
unbridgeable. Matter and Spirit are to each other not
opposites but as immanence is to expression. Similarly,
the spirit’s ‘involution’ into the supramental, of supramental
into mental, of mental into vital or organic, of organic into
the inorganic are nothing but natural processes. The only
point to note is that the involution on the one hand veils
the spiritual qualities whilst exhibiting the grosser and
heterogeneous qualities, while the evolution remanifests
them. Oneness or the unity, is veiled in the involution,
multiplicity is either veiled or integrated or unified in the
One. Or putting it in other words, Oneness becomes unity
in evolution, even as menyness becomes organic
differentiation in involution. The concepts of homogeneity
and heterogeneity are of course not to be equated with
Oneness and Manyness. The basic assumption is that
these concepts refer to the primeval substance or Cit-sakti
374
or Prakrti, which in turn is an efflorescence of a deeper
Spirit. Spirituality constantly operates in and through its
own prakrti and vikrtis which tend to create the several
forms and institutions, and even revelations, so that they
may be restored to flexibility and existential being.
In previous times the formal and the spiritual
operated as a corrective to each other at each level, and
the giving up of form for the spirit meant, at any rate, the
uselessness of form for getting spiritual meaning, or
activity, or evolution, or survival, or realisation. Religions
have passed, for some races at least, several phases of
this progress of forms, and higher choices of forms had
given us meaningful religions. But this is a whole gamut
of being; the solids exist along with liquids and gases and
so. Similarly the inorganic exists, forming the bodies of
the organic. Lower forms of life continue to survive and
proliferate along with the more advanced forms of life. So
too, geniuses have been born amidst the squalor of
mediocrity, and the regressive, and the moron!
The attainment of one single humanity, established
on uniformity of spirituality-formalist patterns, is a great
dream. If universal religion means the achievement of the
highest spirituality in terms of the forms of religion that we
have, then it must be pointed out that, that dream cannot
be realised. It is perhaps necessary to recognize
hierarchy, but it is equally necessary to emphasize the
necessity to provide for evolutionary progress into other
forms and patterns of spirituality which would involve the
dynamic continuity of evolution of lower forms into higher
375
forms, providing more and more awareness of cosmic
harmony. Perhaps, also, we have to assume involution to
be the unseen process supporting the evolutionary
process. The descent or involution would be the divine
activity, whereas the evolutionary movement would be the
human. That is why the human seems to manifest the
divine nature, even as the divine reveals or exhibits the
human and even sub-human nature.
A universal Religion would have to take cognizance
of the basic spiritual nature of man and his world, in which
the ascent to cosmic awareness or consciousness, and
to Reality-consciousness, are provided for automatically
without the twists and turns and the distortions and
inversions which mar the process of evolution between
the animal and man, and between man and cosmic nature.
Human individuals should cease to be particularised and
insulated by barriers of all kinds, though they may have
the limitations which the sense-organs and motor organs
impose. That is why the Hindu Religion embraces all other
disciplines while providing its own method of spiritual
illumination. That these methods had found their way into
all other countries at a very early period is now being
accepted as a fact of history, despite some scholars whose
blind-spot is evident in all that they write. They are blinded
by their own prejudices and wish-fulfilment complexes.
That Hinduism itself needs purification, no one would
question. But what exactly should be the kind of purification
that has to be carried out ? The polyphasic method of
worship of icons, idols, trees, animals, and wen and so on
376
have to be reconciled with a clearer understanding of the
nature of worship and the purpose of worship. Not all
worship, even the Christian and the Islamic, is for the
attainment of the highest beatitude or liberation, Han has
been worshipping, for much less, these icons or symbols
of givers of the results or fruits sought. For bread, for
power, for riches, for child or son, for freedom from fear
and death and misery and so on, all these have been the
aim of worship. Thus they all refer to extraneous factors,
like artha, kama and dharma, and not to the self or soul.
The soul is identified with these goals and thus all these
suffer from the delusion arising from attachment or
identification of the soul with the body, and deeming
sufferings of the body and social relationships as
pertaining to the soul, that is truly spiritual.
Thus, prayer in Christian, Islamic, and other religions
and even in certain levels of Hinduistic religion, is not truly
spiritual. It is the purification of prayer that is our first
requisite in universal Religion. The purer and more
spiritual the prayer, the more efficacious and universal and
divinising it would be. . There are undoubtedly such prayers
in the Upanisads -the Gayatri for example, or the Final
verses of the Isavasyopanisad. The value of prayer should
not be underestimated.
The rituals have also to be purified. The finest rite of
man is his surrender (saranagati - mudra), his self-offering
(bhara-nyasa), and total dependence on the Ultimate
Godhead - the Godhead who can grant him his soul-nature.
The prostration to God and elders, or showing of reverence
377
to them, is a ritual. So too the offering of fruits, flowers
and pure drinks like water, milk etc. are rituals of a pure
kind of service. The offering of incense and other fragrant
things is also a similar honour. The Divine has to be
honoured by praise, not by flattery. Such are the simple
rituals, and these have been magnified and sophisticated
by different races and religions, so much so the symbolic
and the sophistications have merged and sometimes
obliterated the original intention of service to the Divine.
Thus we may have to reorientate the rituals and
prayers in order to emphasize the cosmic consciousness,
or the omnipervading nature of the Deity or Spiritual
Nature. Perhaps all that men mean by service of man as
an element of religion and spirituality is to reveal the fact
of facilitating and helping the growth of man to his fullest
stature as a spiritual being, by helping his physical, vital
and mental growth in an integrated manner. Therefore to
feed man; to give him emotional opportunities; to educate
his emotions in a different way than hitherto; to correct
and to channelise the mental foods; to prepare man for a
real rationality that is universal; and to help him to search
for universal ways of living and acting; and finally to help
man with his religious and spiritual food that makes for
his free individuality in the universe as a whole without
surrendering the ultimate values for which he had stood at
each and at every level of existence - all this constitutes
the service of Man.
Such a universal spirituality was, and is, the goal of
all universal selves - mahatmas, maharsis, siddhas, and
378
so on. Whether mankind likes it or not, whether it is much
more divine to make this world a heaven in the pattern of
man’s hopes or otherwise, the realisation of a condition
or State of being that is permanent and blissful and
harmonious (if not One) is the goal, and if this is said to
be after one leaves this body, it is all the more to be
welcomed. This life would be a sojourn and a preparation
for the yonder. If this world also can give us the glimpse
and experience of that transcendent state, even if it be in
flashes like lightning (vidyutiva), that too is an intimation
of the ultimate - a jivan-mukta or siddha or bhagavata
condition, preparing for the same after the death of this
body which has been stated to be karma-ridden. The
Aurobindonian hope of the transformation of matter into a
divine vehicle capable of realisation seems to be logically
sound as the next step in the evolution of the human nature.
But whether that is the precise condition for ushering the
Divine Dawn is another matter. But it does grant us a hope
of a greater glory than just individual freedom from the
particular karma-encasing body. Religion emphasizes the
mystery of death; spirituality points out the possibility of a
life after death! Sri Aurobindo thinks that our mortal life
itself can be transformed into immortal life, not symbolically,
nor by apotheosis, but actually. Svami Vivekananda and
other mystics also believe that the earth is not just a
purgatory but a laboratory for the making of Gods.
Evan Bergson holds this view.
An attempt is now underway to create a dialogue
between the religions. Divisions, inter-religious and inter-
sectarian, are now sought to be bridged. Thus it is a portent
379
of the times that the two wings of Christianity - the Protestant
Anglican and the Roman Catholic, are meeting together. An
ecumenical Christian religion must first precede the universal
religion. Similarly the sectarians of Islam and other religions
must seek to unite, not to confront, as unfortunately the
religious—state concept has done e.g. in Pakistan.
The important question that arises is, can there be a
universal religion alongside a secular state, or is a
theocratic state necessary ? Without entering into the
necessity of politics for religion or vice versa, it is
necessary to remark that neither politics nor religion can
produce true spiritual understanding or even provoke it,
except when ethical values are universally accepted and
followed, and sanctions are imposed for every violation.
The age of law, ethical law, must come into its own. This
is necessary for religious, national, and international
levels. It is a sign of the times that we have set up United
Nations Organisations to tame men’s passions and
ambitions to conform to international ethics and human
spiritual dignity or freedom.
These are the basic values which have to be
cherished with vigilance, and prosecuted without rest and
with diligence in all the levels of human activity. The
indivisibility of these rights and freedoms, both ethical and
spiritual, has more and more to be recognized for a proper
spiritual growth towards higher evolution.
The ideal of a universal religion need not be a mere
dream just because each individual thinks his religion is
the best, even as perhaps as the Mahatma said each
380
thinks his wife to be the most beautiful or affectionate. This
subjectivity need not be overemphasized, though it has a
merit of its own. Universal Humanity demands a universal
growth impulse through spirituality for higher evolutions
already heralded or envisioned by the world’s seers. That
all men should live the life in God, for God, and by God, is
an aim or goal worthy of man. But it demands much more
dedication than mere cultural enlightenment. If universal
Yoga is the desirable goal, as it is, then it is necessary
that it should be essentially spiritual and simple. It
depends upon the serious recognition of a way of life
different from what mankind knows upto now. It is
transcendental living and a life without tensions and tears;
a life in Cosmic Nature, and an awareness of the
insignificance of life itself unless it be for the manifestation
of the Infinite and Oneness-producing Being.
Such is the meaning of the Divinisation of man which
does not abolish man but enriches him with cosmic
meaning and purpose. It is true that it would not be
possible to restore to religion or spirituality old forms and
myths. Nor is our age sufficiently profound to be able to
forge a new mythology either of creation or evolution which
will carry conviction. Technology and science have
produced more miracles, surely, but they have not been
able to produce the sense of reverence for life and a sense
of ‘holiness’. A new spirituality must be capable of certain
basic virtues or qualities : an incredible capacity for
bringing about inner calm and peace; a sense of spiritual
harmony that weaves a subtle halo of unity between the
diverse; a wide awareness of truth, goodness, and
381
beauty in big things as in small; and more than all, an
irresistable impulse to root out all kinds of force that
tend to break up, at the level of the spiritual, the
harmony that is oneness. While it is realised that it is
perhaps the law of nature that disruption and decay
exist, the spiritual society eternally tends to grow to
vaster and wider realisations of cosmic and
transcosmic consciousness. This is the meaning of
mysticism for the modern man, A mystical religion has
more capacity to become universal than a mythical one,
but even here there are down-going mysticisms as well
as upward going mysticisms.
A rigidly personalistic or humanistic religion would
tend to worship the status quo of human being, which
humanity itself has already begun to get tired of. Nor
could an impersonalistic nihilism produce any thing
more. The growth is in terms of a truer mysticism which
is one of growth into the deepest as well as the highest
levels of Reality - an Existence awareness, that is
Infinite.
The Age of spiritual Crises such as ours demands
a larger consciousness than what personalistic
religions have been able to provide. No wonder that
the leaders of sreligion and mystical experiences are
deeply concerned with the prospects of future
civilization. Sometimes old remedies would appear to
be quite sufficient, but we know that we demand a new
dimension to our ancient Vedanta. A scholastic
renaissance can hardly reveal to us all to the
382
perspectives of eternity that have grown beyond our
little frontiers. Catholicity, seriousness in respect of
spiritual experience, a charity of mind and heart, these
are endowments which we cannot sufficiently emphasize
as necessary for the next step of spiritual realisation,
not only elsewhere but even in our own land.

CRITIQUE OF RELIGION

DR. K.C. VARADACHRI

383 384
 CONTENTS Chapter - 1.
Page. Nos.
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Critique of Religion
The study of religion has always been one of the most
1. Philosophy of Religion 386 - 401
important and interesting things for a mind alive to the
2. Psychology of Religion 402 - 410 existence of facts beyond the sensory order. That the
3. Religion as Value 411 - 415 religious experiences present a world-view of a different
kind from that of the world-views or the ordinary man of
4. Religion as a philosophicial problem 416 - 420 the world is well known. But this world-view has something
5. Theories about God 421 - 425 in it, which claims to be true and real in a sense that is
more urgent than that of the scientist is also to be noted.
6. Ways of knowing God 426 - 429
Thus a philosophy of religion attempts to present the
7. The problem of belief in God 430 - 432 weltenschaung or world-view and is not to be considered
8. Is God a Person ? 433 - 435 to be merely an account of the experiences accounted to
be religious.

There are many who think that a science or religion

is more important than a philosophy or religion. It is all the
competition of science against philosophy. In one sense
sciences seek an empirical method or careful observation
of data pertaining to a field of enquiry, in this case of
religious experiences, and in another sense they seek to
avoid a total explanation or Reality.

Religion might be claimed by some to be beyond

the realm of experience. We might perhaps grant that
religious experiences fall outside the sensory field, which
alone is open to observation in the manner of physics,
chemistry, and biology too. But this does not mean that
religion like mathematics seeks to arrive at deductions
from apriori assumptions given in reason or to reason.
385 386
Nor are they capable of being subjected to verification in
the same sense as the assumptions or hypothesis are in
sense. The assumption cannot be made that religion is
purely of the revelations already given : for it is one of the
most important concepts or assumptions of religion that
the revelations have not come to a stop but could be
renewed again and again in the lives of the Prophet or
Seer. Thus religious science is different in its methodology.
As philosophy it is an attempt to present a religious world
view or reality.
Its method whilst being empirical is to deal with all
facts of experience which belong to levels of experiences,
sensory, vital, mental and supramental (revelational).
Religion as Experience falls with the scope of the empirical
method.
The empirical method demands in the spirit of
science and philosophy that all facts should be surveyed,
certainly all the facts that are relevant and have a bearing
on the subject of religion. It should however take into
consideration all the principles assumed as self-evident
and critically check them up and thus examine their validity.
Each science has certain assumptions, which are deemed
necessary for systematic knowledge of that science. The
scientist not only deduces the consequences of the a priori
principles or assumptions, and applies them to the facts
gathered but he also tries to verify them by methods
devised for the purposes.
As already pointed out the field of religious
experience includes revelatory and immediate
387
apprehensions of the areas of reality not open to the
perceptive and inferential and apriori principles. Indeed it
has been quite a common phenomenon to find that the a
priori principles, which are also assumed by the principles
of experience of self-certainty undergo changes and
modifications on account of the revelationary experiences
open to one.
It must also be emphasized that the empirical
method in its widest sense is absolutely necessary for
religious science or philosophy, for a theoretical
unverifiable phenomenon cannot be truly religious. Religion
is more practical in its approach to the Highest and
Ultimate Reality rather than theoretical : it involves a
dedication and union with that Highest Value : It is much
larger than the physical and physiological sciences and
concerns itself with values such as we know from the
questions that we usually ask : as to what is better to do ?
What is Right thing to do? What is sinful or ugly or unholy?
A constant awareness of the value-world is one
of the biggest differences between the physical
scientist and his tribe who are only attempting to know
the how and not the why, who are egged on in the pursuit
o what is rather than what it is for?
Thus we find that whilst the method is empirical
and the approach is empirical, it does not rule out the
theoretical basis of science as an attempt to
understand the world and area or religious experience
as a universal phenomenon. It includes the experiences
of the trans-sensory and trans-rational or inferential
388
order. It includes the experiences of value and their
hierarchy.
Religion has been defined as entailing a concern with
experiences regarded as of supreme value, as expressed
by devotion to that Ultimate which is assumed or believed
to be originating such values or conserving them, and as
manifested by rites and rituals or symolisations of those
values. He almost exclusively drops the most important
factor of uniting or attaining that Supreme Value. The
definition falls into three parts, the theoretical, the affective
and active : in a deeper consideration it should be clear
that the concept of religion has a triple reference : the
natural-physical, the psychological and the divine or
Ultimate. These three are known as the adhi-bhautika,
adhi-atmika, and the adhi-daivika aspects of Ultimate
value-approach, which reveals also that the Ultimate Value
is being represented darkly in Nature, consciously in
oneself and divinely and purely in God.
Religion differs from magic in being devotion to the
highest Ultimate Value and not to the lower natural forces.
It differs from science which is the concern with is and not
with values. Religion resembles ethical and moral values
and art too in being concerned with the Ultimate Value
rather than with the values of good and beauty. It indeed
goes beyond the value known as truth, which is the concern
of philosophy, for it seeks not merely a knowing and
creating, and living but a Being one with the Ultimate.
1. Philosophy aims at understanding experience as a
389
whole and to correlate all problems. It is not
exclusively concerned with value – value is also one
of the problems it seeks to explain and solve. It aims
at discovering the unity of all experience, and of
forging a coherent and unified definition of the Real.
Religion as being more practical search for Value
and uniting itself with It is different from Philosophy.
Philosophy may lead to Religion. Religion however
being the union with the Ultimate can help the fuller
exposition of the nature of the Unity and Whole than
the reason on which philosophy largely depends.
It is not merely its practical and emotional attitude
towards Reality that makes religion valuable : this is
the western conception : it is on the other hand that
which makes for a higher cognivity and value of the Total
Reality which integrates the whole personality of the
individual and makes for integral knowing which is the
ideal of Philosophy, but which philosophy at present
day does not realise.
The philosophy of Religion attempts to give a rational
interpretation of religion and its relations to other types of
experience, even as philosophy itself is a reational attempts
to explain the nature or Reality. Truth has itself been defined
by some as an intellectual attempt to define realty or it is the
interpretation by intellect of reality. I is contended by some,
that it is not necessary that those who write on philosophy of
Religion should be religious or have religious experiences:
it is sufficient if the philosopher or religion considers the
several interpretation of religion and systematically unifies
390
them. Thus the whole method followed in his work is a
systematic study of the philosophies of religion by other
thinkers, and not a direct approach to the problems of
religion as such. The subject matter or a science of religion
might be the experiences of religious people but a
philosophy of religion thus according some thinkers is a
consideration or the theories of religion not the
experiences of religion. This of course is restricted to the
western philosophers who have written on religion, which
view is unduly restricted and narrow.
The restriction of religious theories to religious
experiences provides the science of religion: but the
philosophies of religion have to take into consideration
the science of religion. Surely Religion is a fact. Treated
as a fact it falls into three divisions: as History, as
Psychology and as Sociology. Thus a history of religion
will narrate the manner of Religious growth and evolution
and how people had actually practiced it and are practicing
it. The genetic approach towards religion will take into
consideration the primitive religious tenets and practices.
The danger arising from this kind of study lies in the fact
that one seeks to explain higher religion by means of these
beliefs or in terms of these primitive beliefs. Anthropology
following the Morgan’s principal has sought to explain the
higher as growths or mere extensions of the primitive.
Primitives of the present day are degenerates of the
original common ancestors of the present day primitives
and ourselves. Thus the research in modern beliefs of the
primitives misses the truth rather badly.
391
The primitive religion cannot give a direct cue to the
higher evolved religious life or experience. This is the
‘fallacy of primitivism’ which is also called the fallacy of
modern speculative evolutionism. The law of Parsimony
(Lloyd Morgon) is utterly unhelpful in this field where
creative evolution is more suited than the ‘emergent’ or
any other type of evolution, for here there is the constant
operative the value principle which is implicit in the
principle of creative survival.
Thus animism, spiritism and other genetic theories
reveal how different kinds of men at different stages have
worshipped and yet continue to worship. Animism is the
theory which holds that man treats everything as animated
because he finds movement etc and by analogy endows
all with the same powers as himself, whether they are
organic or inorganic. ‘Man claims kinship with the world
and attributes to it life and movement’. It treats all that have
movement will.
Spiritism believes that the spirit survives bodily death,
and distinguishes between the body and the soul or breath
that survives. The worship of the dead and the practices
concerning the Dead reveal the basic belief that the soul
survives the body but hovers on the earth level itself. The
burial customs, the building of Graves and Cemeteries
reveal this aspect. For many the death rituals are religion.
Totemism is another aspect of religion : totem is
connected with the well-being of the tribe and life of the
tribe in some mysterious way. Thus each clan and tribe
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has its own totem symbol which it will not forswear.
Undoubtedly this has much to do with the inter-tribal
relationships also such as marriage etc., Though totemic
beliefs and customs are not as universal beliefs and
closely knit yet it is a very important aspect of religious
unity and unification of the tribe.
The explanation of all phenomena in terms MANA
(Orenda etc) is based on the belief that there is one power
or force which is the cause of the religious experiences. It
is characterized by a magical property inherent in the
objects of worship. The theories of magic and animism
resemble this mana-theory.
But these theories do not explain the higher
developments of religion, though it must be confessed that
all these theories do operate in some way in all peoples
however glossed over or rationalised.
The second stage is the National or Priestly stage.
Religion as national, develops the broad division of men
into those who follow and preserve the religious
observances or a tribe or community and those who obey
these men who are in charge of the observances: thus
priestly rule in matters pertaining to religion obtains, and
the non-priests called lay men become and ruled. Later
on the temporal power may also be assumed by the priestly
class. Social organization reveals two stages: the priestly
and the non-priestly, and the priest and ruler. The shrines
and temples begin to be built for the residence and worship
by the priestly class. This is followed by rites to suit the
occasions and size of the people, and sacrifices too are
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made and these may vary from corn and plant to animals
and men too. All these develop ideas of magical efficiency
in addition to being offerings to the Powers of the higher
order. Thus we find elaborate and esoteric developments
and symbolic and suggestive methods adopted by priests
and the rulers to keep the institutions going. Incantations
and mantras are discovered or invented and sacred
writings come into being. Lives of the saints and priests
get written. Discussions on the nature of soul and
immortality feature in the life of the priest and moral codes
get written and applied to the society on a national scale.
Religion thus gets full blown as objective and the gods or
Nature and Death are also included among the
worshippable.
National religions are thus unifying the tribe and
geographical or racial groups. However the process of
this consolidation never gets completed. Indeed it can be
seen that the primitive (so called) is revealed in the
formations of the National religious attitudes. The
consolidation of the religious community however does
not stop at this point. For there have always been prophets
who bring to man the message of the universal values and
known as God to the national and even tribal
consciousness. Indeed the prophet is the first person who
has brought these higher values into the life of men from
the very beginning. Shamanism had its own prophets and
so have Casteists and priests and rulers too.
Prophetic Religion however mixed up with the others
has certain broad features. Prophetic religion depends
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on the revelation of a prophet who is recognized as one Religion of course awakens to its own stature when
who speaks an authentic voice of God. it is counseled to be an invidiual’s realization of the truth
and fact of the prophetic voice or the Rishis counsel. It is
Prophetic Religion:
not a scripture to be accepted: a voiced merely to be
All prophets are convinced that they are speaking listened to : for it is inherent in religious counsel to advice
the authentic voice of God, by whatever name He is inward realization of the God within. In this sense the
denoted. They consider also that they are the verification of religion is within oneself and individual.
spokesmen of God; indeed they even consider that they
Religion does not counsel the going beyond ethics
are the sole spokesmen of God. They are convinced
or bye-pass ethics. Ethical preparation is the necessity,
that the truths they utter from their vision or hearing (for
for it requires that the lower nature (passions and
some prophets claim to have heard God and some to
prejudices, greeds and wants) have all to be submitted to
have seen God or felt Him and so on) are universally
the control of the goal of life, the inward realisation of the
applicable and they even emphasized that there was
Ultimate value. Though the religious experience is what
no other way. Thus the prophet Amos, the Hebrews and
one does with one’s solitariness to use the phrease of
others have thought that religion as the prophetic truth
Whitehead (A.N.) yet the governing passion of the religious
is universally legislative and to be accepted. Buddha
realisation is the eschew all that leads one away from this
and Mahavira are said to have counseled this method.
realisation. Man’s lower nature or emotion, passion,
The question about Buddha and Mahavira is some what
instinct and want and ambition, all take one outwards. Thus
different: they did claim revelation but realization.
the ethical life is one of inward dedication to this inner
Prophets seem to have claimed a uniquely different
realization, which is the ultimate Good. God is the ultimate
status for themselves contrasted with the priests (who
Good for the eastern religious consciousness: in the west
were waiting on rituals and rites for illumination). The Vedic
ethics is a different kind of value and is tied up with social
Rishis were also not of this order or prophets, as they
welfare and so on, and is uncertain of its content yet. Purity,
prophesied nothing but spoke about their relationship with
of mind and body and vital being covers indeed the whole
God and its possibility. The contention that prophetic
hose of virtues of ethical life. The cardinal virtues of
religion includes these cases of the Vedic rishis (who do
wisdom, courage and temperance and justice are all
not belong to tribal religion of national religion) and the
derived from the nature of the Deity or God though it is
great founders of the Religion of Buddha and Mahavira,is
thought that these are means towards it or to attain it.
not coreect. Ethical religions and social religions do have
Ethics as respect for others, as meaning social
prophesies about the futue of mankind.
cooperation rather than competition, and economic and
395 396
political justice are in a sense enhanced with this
realization of God rather than abrogated. Indeed it has
been of course a scandal in religious life that fanaticism
and extreme asceticism had led to as much of anti-religion
as anti-ethics even as the other extreme of thinking that
religion means the 'enjoyment of bliss of God' and all
that is His has led to liberatarian license in familial and
individual relationships. Thus true religious life had insisted
on the virtues of chastity, non-violence and non-killing of
all creatues or life, truthfulness and trustworthiness,
absence of greed and self-control in talk and silence.
Ethics without God had led to what we may call the
acceptance of a second-line God (the prophet himself
becoming a godhead).
Religion also has entailed the intellectual
development of man. It demands that no one will accept
the words of the prophet also without considering its
rationality: one ought to think for oneself before accepting
even the words of a prophet: even more so when the
prophet is a revolutionary who has risen against traditional
customary modes of worship and values. This is of course
closely linked up with the individualism of religious
realization: traditions have to be again and again tested
and verified and accepted and not blindly followed.
Tradition as well as the prophetic voice or truth (for
prophets do become and found traditions too which lead
to blind acceptances by society and forms its norms and
so on) demand verification through application. They
cannot remain just dogmas or beliefs. It is also true that
whilst most religious truths are trans-intellectual and may
397
not be capable of being explained as coherent with the
world knowledge at any time, yet they demand application
for the very change of the assumptions of the world-
knowledge at any moment. They share the stature of
institutions of science, which have revolutionised our world
knowledge.
Religion also is mystical. It is stated by some that
mysticism means that which concerns inward life and
experience. It is said to reveal, the inward yearning for
Vision, and prayer and self-surrender and silence and fast
and so on are included in the mystical practices. The
distinction between mystical and religious experiences is
almost blurred in the Western philosophies of religion.
Religion yearns for union with God accepted and chosen
as such: it is a yearning for ultimate dependence on the
Ultimate being who is known as the self of all. Mystic
experiences on the other hand have the yearning for
freedom and liberation from samsara or this world
attachment and return to this world consciousness. Earth
is not their concern but yonder beyond the worlds of rebirth
and suffering. Moksa is the goal of the Mystic: service
(kainkarya) is the goal of the religious, for love is the
essence of the religious soul in his surrender and
yearning. For the mystic God is a helper to the Yonder
shore and he would have it with the help of God if possible
without Him if necessary. *Prayer has no meaning for him
except as a means; for the religious it is verily the only
means and necessity for ever. It is true that in a sense it
was said that the West knows religion but East does not:
this is too sweeping a generalization, for there are several
398
religious souls like the Vaisnavas who seek the service of
God anywhere (on the earth or heaven or even Hell) if it
could only please God and one is always related to Him
without any separation or injury to their relationship or love.
The alvars yearned for this kind of service which formed
their goal of life (purusartha).
Lastly it is claimed that prophetic religion is
monotheistic. It speaks about One God. It does not
perhaps annual the other gods but subsumes them
under the One God. Some dismiss them all as gods
but accept them in th form of angels, hosts of the One
God, delegates and so on. The process of subsumption
of the several gods is initiated by the discovery that
there must or one Ultimate Reality One Power and One
Ground of all that exists and competitive powers do not
rule the world or the universe. It is a transcendence that
ultimately reconciles all nations and tribes by
subsuming all their gods and deities and powders, male
and female under one Reality, God. The doctrines of
polytheism and henotheism or opportunistic
monotheism are superseded in the prophetic vision of
God. The hierarchy of Gods however is a continuing
feature of several religious communities in popular
religion. The monotheistic religious prophet
undoubtedly develops a zealous God in his own image
of zealousness and has produced more difficulties for
the popular men than anybody. Again the zealous God
theory of montheism seeks universalisation by
compulsive conversion of all peoples and breaks the
idols of other religious peoples deeming them to be of
399
the lower order. Ekanta-bhakti, sole devotion to one and
only God (call him by some name or other) has been
not quite at transmitive influence on the zealousness
of the devotee or the prophet. Whilst rejecting
polytheism and it seems to be a rational procedure in
the interests of the ideal of One Universe, it has one
the other hand developed ideological and emotional
fanaticism of sole worship. Anyhow it is that which led
to what we may call the reconciliation of all the gods
under the Meaningful and Significantly envisioned One
God.
Thus the above sevenfold features of prophetic
religion will reveal how the religions as they are now
thriving have come into being. Hinduism claims its
religious revelations from the Vedas, Upanisads, and
the continuous experiences of the Rsis uptodate.
Judasim is the religion of the Hebrews represented by
prophets who have ceased to illuminate their Mosaic
religion. However great scholars are there. Shintoism
is of Japan, the real basic worship is of the Shinto
power. Buddhism is that which has been founded by
Gotama the Buddha, and people are following it in vast
areas but Buddhas are not being born there Taoism is
an impersonal religion of China; Christianity is of
course being practiced continuously and the Catholic
Church claims the appearances of Saints who have
been verifying the experiences of Christ and prophets
of Isreal. The religion founded by Mohamed is the
religion of Islam and it has been producing saints also
who bear witness to that doctrine. Jainism of Mahavira
400
is practiced in a small sect of devotees in India. Other
sects are there with their prophets. Our problem in
philosophy of religion is sometimes to enquire whether
their truths are universal and therefore unifiable or
complementary. Comparitive religious studies do throw
some light on this identity of all prophetic and
revelational religious truths.
401
Chapter - 2
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
The psychological problems of religion are worthy of
serious consideration. There is such a thing as religious
experience distinguishable from the other kinds of
experience listed in general psychology. It reveals a new
attitude to reality and this has been described as
‘conversion’. Conversion technically would mean reversed
and the attitude that man has to the world around him
undergoes a change or reversal. Things which appeared
valuable and worth-seeking seem suddenly to have
become valueless and unworthy of pursuit. This is the
characteristic feature of religious conversion – the world
may become an illusory thing, shadows and the
relationship with men and women becomes almost cut off.
One enters into a silence of solituide becomes a monk
and homeless one : to him the welfare of his own being or
self means to renounce the world and all attachments
(vairagya): A new vision (viveka) or discrimination arises
and that only leads him in search of ultimate values
everywhere, wandering from shrine to shrine, sect to sect
and belief to belief and practice to practice. This is not
mere curiosity but an earnestness to find a new way of life
or finding it to pursue it till the end or goal is reached. A
study of conversion among the saints and prophets will
reveal this dynamic change in attitude towards the world
and towards the other world.
This conversion may come about through a mystic
awakening – a struggle against bondage and slavery and
402
defeat. It may come about as a vision or intuition of
something that has called one to that stage. Mystic
experiences are the most individual occasions of
conversion. The conversion has been technically
stereotyped in the religious institutions and one gets
converted without inward change and this of course does
not lead anywhere. As in every thing the method of
educating one into religion through habits of training etc.
rites and so on, is almost a case of putting the cart before
the horse. Natural conversion is a matter of a different
order from the conversion technique of religious
institutions.
Prayerfulness of the seeker after religious experience
or one who has been touched by the religious attitude
interiorly is a factor of great importance. One naturally turns
to the Ultimate God in all matters and depends on God for
everything. Prayer is the acceptance of guidance from the
Ultimate with which one feels a personal relationship of
dependence. Worship is the act of expression of this
adoration of the Divine or illuminating principle in one’s
life and activity. One turns to God when one has found
oneself in all things utterly helpless and unequal to the
Universal situation. Indeed every small thing becomes a
matter for God-help and God-guidance. One already feels
oneself in a new Universe, all the old constructions of oneself
having fallen to pieces. The Divine is thus the illuminating
principle and power (div; to shine, to illuminate).
It is true that psychologists have listed that men fall
into types. Some psychologists have stated that there are
403
healthy minded souls and unhealthy or sick minded souls.
The religion of the healthy minded is objective and is
manifestative of social commitments whereas the sick
minded is one who is subjective. This division is or course
very unsatisfactory and yokes religion to societal demands
as such. The second kind or devision of man would be
into the tough-minded and soft minded. This division like
all other divisions of this kind is not aware of the tough-
mindedness of the introspective monk in respect of
ultimate values and the soft-minded or weak-mindedness
of the extravert social man.Many do not recognize any but
the psychological views of some of the psychologists.
Indian typology is clearly not canvassed by him. The divine
and the titan division of the men as pointed out by the Gita
or his own division of men as satva (equable) rajas
(activities) and tamas (ineatia) also helps the appreciation
of the religious types: The satva type is seeking only the
Divine, the rajas seeks the divine but does not known who
the divine is and thus pursues even the titan, because the
later reveals more activity than the former who revels in
silence and calm and balance. Whereas the tamasic
person either is objectively worshipping and praying in the
usual tribal or traditional way without seeking that inward
experience that is the sine qua non of religious experience.
Some writers have suggested the typology of mystic and
monk, the mystic being held to the prophetic in his impulse
towards the transformation of the society, whereas the
monk is a recluse and solitary and individualistic and even
pessimistic about the society, and its redemption.
404
 The study of the sub-conscious levels of the human
consciousness or life is seen to throw considerable light
on the psychology of religious beliefs. This has been
shown to be so by writers like Freud, Jung and others.
However we have also to take into consideration the
vast amount of mistakes that such a study of the sub-
conscious origins of religion can give. They may throw
some light on the symbolic erruptions in terms of vision
and dream of the religious man and even the practicant
of the religious life. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out
dream consciousnessor the sub-conscious is a vast
area wherein the super-conscious and sub-conscious
meet. Religious experiences unless disciplined by
earlier training can give rise to dreams and visions
which are incapable of being universalised in their
meaning or suggestion. The psycho-analytic method has
undoubtedly proved this point also. Religious life and
experienced have been considered to be regressive and
pathological however universal may be this pathology.
Prayer and worship are indeed conditioned by society to
those experiences by tradition and custom and this had
led to the speculative inclusion of religious experiences
under sub-conscious and unconscious headings of
psychology. Religious consciousness aims at integration
with a higher consciousness whereas the integration that
is sought for by the unconscious is with the conscious life
and this leads to disintegration rather than integration, for
whilst it achieves perhaps an integration with life it brings
about disintegration in the physiology of man, his brain
and so on. Thus Brightman’s inclusion of subconscious
as the source of our religious yearnings is confused.
405
Religious life reveals a double valuation of society:
it discovers that the society as it exists is valueless and
turns its back on it: but in a different sense after it attains
its own ultimate realisation it seeks to change the society
from within and without. This unfortunately is not the whole
of religion according to some extraverted thinkers on
Religion. They consider that societal transformation is
rendered possible at the very beginning itself by the social
work or service or humanitarianism practiced by the
aspiring religious novice. Social transformation is offered as
the means to individual religious attainment: this surely is a
fine example of putting the card before the horse; the means
becomes the end and the end is utilised as a means.
Thus the humanistic psychologies and sociologies of
Religion have been unable to clearly perceive the goal and
value or religion as an ultimate value. It is true that society is
impatient of results from its religious individuals who have
almost forsaken it for the attainment of the unattainable. It
offers the work of changing it to the religious seekers and
demands that the goal is identical if not superior to that got
by the monk - the sannyasin: Modern sannyasa has itself
undertaken this change: to live in the world and for the world
with the spirit of Godliness and detachment. This humanism
is undoubtedly as social philosophy of religion today. But the
sannyasin has become a peculiar kind of samsarin or worldly
man, and his yearning for God has been replaced by his
yearning for man, and man becomes Saint by such means
today. The psychology of man in society is called sociology
and the attitude of humanism has facilitated this aspect of
religion.
406
 Religion has its dealings with man and his
institutions. It is an important question how far religion has
dictated the shape and form of social institutions like
marriage, family life and children and education in society,
and caste system and so on. Religious life in so far as it is
a dedication to God and His service subordinates all
institutions to this ideal, and renounces all that is contrary
to it. Thus the lay society is influenced by the religious
attitude and institutions of the society are sometimes half-
way house (sarai) towards fuller religious expression and
institutions.
The prophetic religious constantly has to come to
terms with the common people who hardly hearken to the
universal voice in clear and distinct measures. They always
seek a compromise with the inflexible ideal of the
prophetic messiah. Thus compromise is the essential fact
in the sociological expression of the prophetic ideal.
Economic forces also determine the nature of the
religious life. The conflict between the classes described
as haves and have not has been one of those which
fissured the religious. Religion transcends the economic
world and values: in fact later people tried to make religion
take part in economic equilibrium and egalitarianism. But
the eceonomic values are subordinate to inward value of
ultimate experience. However modern religious
movements have more and more turned towards the
problem of economic life. Bread is important as the
element of religious peace, prayer and contemplation.
Equality in the social life such as abolition of caste-
407
divisions, and class-divisions is considered to be one of
the ideals of religion: To this fact almost all religious
prophets have appealed on account of the acceptance of
God as the Creator of all, and as the Father of all. Thus
social reform in terms of abolition of the barriers and
obstacles for the experience of God and His worship as
between, man and man, man and women led later to the
extension of the scope of religious equality to areas of
social institutions also.
Indeed the great slogans of the French Revolution
equality, liberty and fraternity are definitely referable to the
religious mystic awareness of the spiritual world whose
extension to social life was deemed utopian or only
limitedly applicable. The socialistic pattern of society
though now sought to be explained in a materialistic
economic language owes its basic drive to the application
of idealism to the context of society. The great dictum of
Hegal that the real is the rational was made to apply to the
realistic efforts to make the rational the real. This may well
be called idealistic also, for the attempt is also incapable
of being perfected with men who have not awakened to
the inward realization of God as the Ultimate value.
Socialism is a godly effort but without the subjective inward
emphasis on realization or Vision of the ultimate value of
man in God and God in man, it is likely to wither away.
Thus the sociology of Religion is undoubtedly
important but only its importance will be studied in the
context of the impact of religious consciousness of attitude
on society and its economic institutions and class-
408
formations and this is of course in the context of the past.
Today few religions live by the Vision and indeed they live by
the rationalized corollaries from such premises as they have
concretely formulated for the sake of institutional religion. The
study of instituionalised religion of course is different from a
study of true inward religious attitudes, which have the direct
force of Vision.
An inspection of several religions has shown that there
are eight chief beliefs :
i) There are great and permanent value experiences
ii) There is belief in One God or many gods (Higher
Powers)
iii) There is eveil in this world also along with value.
iv) Man is a soul, or spiritual being and not merely a
physical being of organism.
v) There is in creation purpose and in our existence there
is purpose.
vi) Soul is immortal, though its body is mortal
vii) There are valid religious experiences
viii) There is belief in religious action.
between the good and the bad or evil (the sadhu and
asadhu, sukrta and duskrta, saint and sinner, and
accordingly Gods like Ahura-maza and Ahirman, Rama
and Ravana, Narayana and Naraka, and so on.). The
immortality of the soul is believed in two ways: as a
continuous rebirth by a soul, that is a soul takes new bodies
after the earlier ones have perished owing to sacrifice or
old-age or death in battle, and ii) as a soul even when
going beyond the body with a spiritual nature or god-body.
The belief in the eternal preservation of values in one’s
life of struggle, or even to preserve it grants immortality.
Lastly all religions do pay heed to work for God, as service
of God in man, of Values in the world, or rites and rituals
etc.,.
Karma in Indian religion is the constant performance
of prescribed duties or dharma for the welfare of oneself
in respect of ultimate values of moksa and nisreyas.

The Religious Experience is something that one cannot

but seek in himself and of which he has again and again
evidence. That the realisation of these religious experiences
involves struggle in alas too true. What opposes this ascent
is an evil. Relativity of evil is of course to be accepted and
the existence of absolute evil is of course a different matter.

For this purpose religion accepts the thesis of a finite

God for his evidence reveals the undissolved conflict

409 410
 RELIGION AS VALUE
The modern conception of religion has veered
towards considering all from the value-conception. Value
is an economic concept in the main and it is something
that is considered to be valuable firstly because it satisfies
a basic or non-basic need. Therefore in the modern
language religion also is considered from the standpoint
of its value.
A thing is valuable is so far as it satisfies or fulfils a
basic need. It is defined as something 'actually liked,
prized, esteemed, desired, approved and enjoyed by any
one at any time'. It is an object of any interest according to
some.Value also is linked up to its use or utility.
Usually values are considered to fall into two groups:
the intrinsic or that which is valuable in and for itself, and
that is valuable in so far as it helps that realization of that
which is valuable in itself. The former is called intrinsic
value and the latter instrumental. The intrinsic value is found
to be always so. Another distinction is made between
potential (future utility), and immediate or actual value.
The value of a thing thus has to be determined from
its immediate and instrumental use and for its potential
and ultimate or intrinsic nature.
There is always a tendency to make instrumental
values ultimate by emphasizing their necessity for attaining
ultimate value. Thus arise confusions between ultimate and
instrumental values.
411
There are certain writers who have made value tables
too. They think of purely instrumental values, which include
the natural the economic, and the lower intrinsic and high
intrinsic values which include the bodily needs and social
and other needs. But this is an unfortunate division or
classification for it is clear that the body itself is treated to
be an intrinsic value albeit lower than the higher which
includes again social values which do not surely lead to
any intrinsical realisation.
The classification is pragmatic in approach, rather
than from the real value approach wherein a value is
intrinsic in so far as every other value is surrendered or
subordinate to it.
This will create a pyramid of values rather than a table
of values.
Purely instrumental Lower intrinsic Higher intrinsic
i) Natural : Life, i. Bodily health a) Social life,
Light ii. Recreation b) Character
etc. iii. Property c) Aesthetic
iv. Work d) Intellectual
e) Religious
ii) Economic: Money Exchange
(barter)
The above table is adapted from Brightman. It is as
he would say, taken from our actual valuations. But it is
certainly clear that a different view of reality will produce
quite a different type of table.
412
 Indian Ethics has produced a different table: It
recognizes the two sets of values, instrumental and
intrinsic. The intrinsic value is that which is what all other
values gain by being instrumental to it. Thus it recognizes
that artha (or wealth, power) are purely instrumental. They
are instrumental to kama (or desire) objects of material
desire or need. Thus bodily ends are lower intrinsic so to
speak. But kama is itself shown to be instrumental to what
we may call the feeling of liberation or self-realisation.
What fulfillment of a need produces is the fitness to
proceed forward to the real end. The body itself is held to
be an instrument for realizing dharma or the Good.
(Sariram adyam khalu dharma sadhanam). Thus the lower
intrinsic values are lower because they are in turn
instrumental to the final or ultimate end or value – liberation
which is attained through dharma. The misuse of bodily
values or attainments come in when the dharma is not
adhered to and liberation is barred. The end towards which
money is to further to be instrumental is development of
social and individual dharma or duties that one has to
perform towards the five large areas of human existence
– gods, fathers, (manes), guests or other fellow human
beings, to creatures domestic and dependent on man and
serving him, and elements of nature itself which have to
be kept pure, like water, air and earth, fire and sound
(akasa) or space. We are in a world where in the interests
of society all sources of power from nature like our atomic
power and nuclear power have to be used for the welfare
of all – gods, fathers, men and creatures of the earth.
413
Dharma or duty becomes instrumental in turn to
freedom or liberation (moksa). The discover of duty itself
is due to the awkening intelligence when misuse of
instrumental values takes place. There is aright way and
a wrong way of use of economic and other power, of desire
and even conflicting duties provoke the search for a still
more ultimate value. The seers of India discovered that
karma (or even duty performed) produces results which
tend to bind man. Character of a man once formed
becomes so difficult to develop higher lines of realization.
Thus morality itself becomes religion the ultimate. Thus
we also find that knowledge for its own sake becomes the
goal, just as art for its own sake becomes pursued.
Liberation is the liberation from all bondage, all that
tend to bind. The main secret of liberation lay in its
emphasizing a free life that does not produce a bond-life.
A return to bondage has been stated to be the destiny of
most men who have not found a way out of it except by
cutting at the root of birth or rebirth.
The conception of rebirth is not held by some
theologians and therefore liberation does not features at
all in such religions and philosophies. . But Indian
Philosophy and Religion empahasize this goal as the
parama-purusartha. It is however true that some have held
that beyond liberation there is the goal of God-service
irrespective of its being for man or not.
Moksa as the parama-purusartha has been the
intrinsic goal. Religion as the expression of this
parama-purusartha thus becomes the regulative principle
of all other values.
414
 Religious value reveals the following unique
featues: (1) It reveals the unique sense of dependence
on the ground of the universe. (2) mystical experience
of that ground and the spontaneous outburst of prayer,
(3) awareness of illumination, (4) consciousness or
awareness of the Divine mind back of all things,
(5) acknowledgement that God does for man what man
cannot do for himself or rather the experience of Grace,
and (6) Consciousness or imperative of submission to
the Cosmic Being or will of God which directs the
Cosmic purpose. All these recognizions could be
together or coalesce but religion is interested in finding
that all these values impinge on each individual and
thus possesses uniqueness of impact, a friendliness
in God, the Ground of all Reality.
415
RELIGION AS A
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM:
Philosophy believes in rigorous investigation into the
nature of reality just because it loves knowledge to be
certain and indubitable. There can be no area of
knowledge which can be excluded from such an enquiry.
Religion as an area of experience thus comes under the
scrutiny of philosophy.
Philosophy at present considers that the enquiry is
to be carried on so as to make clear to our reason the
nature of the processes of religious experience, its content,
its effect, its cause and so on. The apparatus of inquiry or
rather the means has been defined by some as an
‘intellectual enquiry’ for that is all that so far as man knows,
helps him to make clear to him the nature of reality. That
this limitation of the enquiry to intellectual enquiry is a
serious limitation, has been affirmed by thinkers who have
come to the conclusion that our intellect cannot probe into
reality for it is an instrument of practical and limited action,
secondly it misunderstands the very scope of reality by
limiting it to human status and action, thirdly that it is limited
by its own assumptions and categories of experience
which exceed it, fourthly that it is sense-dependent and
has the ideal of sense-certainty or finite-logic certainty.
Notwithstanding these limitations some thinkers
proceed to utilize philosophical intellectual method as a
justification of transcendent experience on grounds of need
for belief. Probability is certainly a better thing than nihilism
or scepticism.
416
 The claim that religion should be independent of
philosophical investigation is of course unfounded. Though
religious experiences are immediate (even like
sensations), though they are as subjective as sensations
themselves, and even the ultimate object of religious
experience is beyond our knowledge even like the matter
and self of ordinary consciousness (cognitivity), yet they
are facts which cannot be dismissed. However to utilize
intellectual to measures and determine the nature of the
religious experience and value-experiences may not
satisfactory, even when the intellect is trained to the new
area of ‘facts’.
Brightman and other philosophers of Religion in
America hold that since we have not accustomed to use a
philosophical method in a certain manner in certain areas
and got skill in it could be used here too. This naturalistic
method is vastly used in recent times and has had many
votaries who would make religion intelligible to all men.
The religious values pose a philosophical problem
in the sense whether they are part of and constitute
reality. A belief in a hierarchy of values would make one
determine the hierarchy. We have already been shown
that there are instrumental as well as intrinsic values
and ultimately the reverse process as to how the
intrinsic sustains and operates through the several
instrumental values in many ways. Indeed one of the
most important problems would be to determine in the
light of the intrinsic, the utility and function of the
instrumental and to determine their instrumentality
417
itself. Secondly no philosopher of religion at present is
prepared to consider the instruments of knowledge
themselves as to how far any of them is the means to
determine value. We have yet to discover the value-
pramana, or that means of knowledge which will grant
us the value-cognition so to speak. To say that this is a
problem of philosophy is correct, and this cognitivity-
instrument has to be detrmined by one’s consciousness
as knowledge-securing is also true. But is the human
intellect with its adaptation to human values and
practical interests capable of deciding or discovering
it is a philosophical question.
That religion, science and philosophy refer to the
same world it is true and one believes that they refer to
the same set of facts, which is not so true, they do
demand different areas for their operation in so far as
sciences seek the material sensate knowledge, which
is limited obviously, religion seeks the spiritual non-
sensate value knowledge and philosophy seeks an
omniscience about all facts of science and values of
religion and any other too.
The real question for philosophical investigation in
religion seems to be based on the extraordinary presence
of contradictory views about values and claims allegedly
religious. It is the attempts to solve these value-claims that
requires the philosophical approach: this is its reason for
entering into the field of religion.
A candid analyses the scope of this enquiry from the
empirical standpoint of inductionor collection of data,
418
analysis and synthesis, hypothesis, verification of how far
these are coherent. Finally reinterpretation is necessary.
The philosophical criterion to be used is coherence.
Coherence is explained as (i) consistency with the whole
of reality or body of facts. (ii) consistency with all the known
facts of experience, (iii) consistency with all the
propositions known as true, (iv) explaining all facts and
interpreting them as related to one whole or Reality which
is assumed to be a Coherent Whole and One. This
coherence is stated to be something that is not a static
one, as new facts and value-experiences about the Whole
are coming in all the time, and perhaps the Whole itself is
no block universe so that there is constant need for
reinterpretation of the Nature of the Whole or Reality. Thus
a static concept of coherence becomes nugatory in a wolr
or Reality that is apprehended as always growing or
expanding.
ways of subjective conviction’, secondly that "it is only from
beliefs that objective over individual validity attaches to
many of our subjective institutions and experiences, and
that all proof is relative and not absolute".Thus, it is
claimed that one has "theoretical relativism united with
practical absolutism”
How far this approach is limited, is clear; the ground
of beliefs is rationality but the rationality being itself
thoroughly grounded in relativism we have here a perfect
spectacle of theoretical skepticism combined with
practical belief-certainties and these are in turn based on
intellectual hypotheticals, based on sense-data, value-data
and so on.

What has this to do with certainty which is one of the

claims of Philosophy? Deway cautions not to seek
certainty for, that is impossible, since in a changing and
self-making universe the only certainty is uncertainty itself
: the Nature of Reality becomes uncertain, indeterminate
though it could be tried to be made certain only by being
untrue to its basic nature. This conception of coherence
is a working hypothesis and different from the idealistic
coherence in an Unchanging Reality within which changes
take place but not in the whole.

Current Philosophy of religion thus clearly postulates

that ‘there is no way of securing objective truth except by
419 420
 THEORIES ABOUT GOD
There have been many conceptions about the nature
of God. Indeed they have ranged very much. The central
conception is however that God is useful,and valuable. He
is said to be capable of being and granting the most
valuable things to man. Thus we can list all types of
demands made on God.
i. The Todas worship God and know Him as the milk
supplier to all.
ii. Bagundians in Central Africa consider him as the
granter of health, wealth and success in war. So do
so many others including the Modern nations. No one
forget the prayers in churches and mosques and
temples and congregations for Victory in War II.
iii. Agricultural fertility is sought through prayer from
God. Most seasonal prayers and thanks offerings are
precisely these.
iv. Buddha spoke about the conquest of lower desires
including the desire to live. Whether Buddha even
thought of God as capable of granting this is very
doubtful. Unfortunately add this also as an example of
persons seeking triumph over desire. God as one who
conquest over desire is surely the opinion of some.
v. Mercy is God according to Islam and Vaisnavism
(Daya is the inseparable nature of God.) To limit this
to Islam is being untrue to facts.
vi. Cosmic oneness and Unity (Advaita) is said to be
the Idea of God in Brahmanism.
421
vii. Complete Actuality (Actus Purus) is God. In him there
is no matter at all. Which restricts and limits His
nature.
viii. Complete and continous Joy is said to be the idea of
God in Spinoza. He held that God is the one
substance which alone can explain all attributes
though the attributes are those through which alone
we know Him. Resignation to God is his ethics.
ix. Kant held God to be the source of the Highest
Good.Nothing is Good except the good will.
x. Mathew Arnod claimed God to be the power that
makes for Righteousness. This is indeed the claim
of Zarathustra also. Some scholars forgets this
aspect.
xi. God is held to be the ground of love between
individuals and referring this to Eduard Hartmann as
posing this view is to forget the great sage
Yanjnavalkya whose basic concept was this.
These views are unfortunately Stated by some
shoclars as found separately. I have shown in my Idea of
God how all these are implicit in the Upanisads.
Scholars talk of scale Values and refer to the table of
values or some such similar table. The significant test of a
chosen value is whether an individual rejects other values for
it. This rejection is always to be observed after enjoying a value
so called. It is posteriori decision that is to be observed. God
is sought after for all things but who seeks Him for Himself is
the question?
422
 Many scholars rightly take up the question that God
is personified value or the value of values.
The consideration of Pantheism, Polytheism,
Humanistic Godhead Monotheism are clearly studies
which reveal the complex nature of the Idea of God.
Each one of these theories draws attention to the
significance of God in relation to one view of reality. Thus
polytheism illustrates the uniform connection of the God-
idea with value experience as well as the wealth and
variety of that Experience. God is in every function and
operation of Nature and manifesting Himself in each
appropriate to it. It reveals the multiplicity – the eternal
multiplicity in the nature of God.
Henotheism which is called opportunistic
monotheism also, or katheno-theism, reveals the identity
of the Godhead in all the manifestations supremely
manifesting one cosmic function at a time. God is unified
powers, oneness in manyness, manifesting His oneness
in and through each one of the many.
Monotheism is the view that there is only One Creater
or God of the universe. Some persons consider that this
involves the view that God is also the cause of the evil in
this world -contrary forces to the values-dis-values so to
speak. This seems to be the great barrier to the
acceptance of Monotheism. Some thinkers however are
bold enough to accept the view that all evel is illusion,
which will pass when the Godhead is known.
423
Pantheism holds that God is All that is (Sarvam Khalu
idam Brahma); this too is said to include the evil as such
not acceptable. This is both monism and monotheism.
Brightman rejects God could be the cause of evil – evil
being an actual experience and ultimate- and thus rejects
all philosophical attempt at a System. Herein lies the basic
contradiction between dualistic religion and monistic
philosophy.
Agnistic realism holds that God’s nature is
unknowable beyond the means of our knowledge, though
there is no doubt that He is the source of all being. This is
said to have been entertained lastly by Herbert Spencer.
Humanism is the view that all knowledge is human
knowledge, and has this peculiar quality of seeking to know
Reality through human efforts and reason. It recognizes
that the human ideals are precisely realisable in God- who
is the above of all human values. God is not separated
either by ideals or actualities which are beyond the human.
Religion must find its evidence in the facts of human
experience and understanding. It rejects firmly all
aspirations and ideals that are not specifically recognized
as human love, values and good and so on. Dewy and
American thinkers have always counseled this nearness
of God to man and humanness of God. They would deny
God who is not human. Even Christianity is explained on
the principle of the humanity of God.
God is superhuman and supernatural revealer of
values which are not amenable to reasoning is the
424
conception of transcendentalists. Kierkegaard, in recent
times, Calvin and Luther held that God is revealed to man
in a direct measure and as transcendent to man in every
sense. Love and Grace and decending condescending
waves of God’s nature, not as flowing equal to equal, man
to man, fellowship or so.
There are some who hold that God is a system of
values -not a person of love and so on. Impersonalism holds
that this system has to be known.
Evolutionists have discovered that God could be said
to be evolving in the same way as man has. It is the
tendency of God to support or produce higher and
higher values, which is called the emergent values in
evolution – unknown predicates of being, and deity. This
naturalism or evolutionism has been held by Sameul
Alexander, Wiemann and others.
God has been held to be the revolutionary principle
introducing change in the very direction of evolution of man
for the continuity of evolution this is seen to involve
discontinuities requiring ingressions. This view is that of
Whitehead and others.
Indian thought has provided a composite theory of
God and Sri Aurobindo has explained the evolutionary
possibilities of Deity (Refer Idea of God by the author).
425
WAYS OF KNOWING GOD
Scholars have tried to explain that the following are
the ways of knowing God. (1) immediate experience of
God, (2) Revelation ,communication of truth by God
directly, (3) Faith, which is a gift of God, (4) A priori
principles of Reason demanding the acceptance of God
as necessary ground, (5) Action which is the will to believe
and act on the hypothesis of the existence of God, and (6)
Coherence- God as the principle of coherence in the
universe.
Briefly explaining the ‘ways’, we find that the direct
and immediate experience of God is like an
epistemological immediacy, which gives rather the intuitive
experience of oneself rather than God. Mystic institution
hardly leads up to the universe as such or God. It is the
beginning of the experience of oneself which willy nilly
enforces a further step towards the Godhead. But such a
transition happens in some.
Revelation as the truth spoken by God or got from
God by the prophets might accompany the former intuitive
apprehension of oneself and leading up to the Godhead.
The scriptures form the written down truths. One is
demanded to verify these experiences and reach up to
the Vision which was the possession of the Propherts and
Seers. Without this urge and command by the scripture
to realise, the Godhead remains a statement – a
meaningless thing.
426
 Faith in Indian Thought means sraddha, a willingness
to follow the paths laid down in the scriptures and
revelations and intuitions, to the end with a feeling of
certainty about their truth. But this is a gift of God to the
inner being. It may turn out to be to be barren. Usually the
substance of faith is in the believed veracity of the
revelations and the propherts – their truly realised word
and truth. (Aptavacana).
A priori principles depend for their acceptance on
the self-certainty to reason that they grant. Being not
inconsistent with reason, though inconsistent with the
perceptual and other evidence, a priori principles are one
way by which one begins to ask such questions as the
need for the Substance, Causality etc., which will make
life and experience intelligible. Without these life will be
chaotic. God thus becomes the postulate for system,
cosmos and intelligibility. The assumption of a priori
principles regarding the ultimate values involves the notion
of the ultimate Good and this is equated with God. The
meaninglessness of the world becomes the central
conclusion if God is denied.
Action is said to be the way of knowing God. Action
by itself is a type of activity assuming that God exists, truth
triumphs, and goodness is what all pursuing get happiness
and so on. But are these those that lead to God knowledge
or God realisation. Love of man and instrumental values
cannot lead to the highest notion of God at all. One however
thinks that he would realise God if he does act as if God
exists and order prevails and truth will succeed and so
427
on. Indian Thought at any rate held that karma-yoga is the
yoga that aims at union through performance of works
prescribed by scripture as capable of leading to that union
with God. Karma yoga has of course been extended to
cover cases which are actions dictated by or counselled
by prophets and saints, such as disinterested activities
towards all creatures and acts of kindness, charity and so
on. This however is not theconcept of the means of the
modern scholars.How actions can be the way of
knowledge is difficult to comprehend, for even the will to
believe and act is an instrumental way.
The existence of coherence will make us assure the
existence of One supreme God who alone can confer
coherence to the world. The idealist conception that one
must assume a system in order to arrive at it or believe
that one is arriving at it is rather native. Coherence as a
test of reason, is capable of being used along with
experience through verification. It rests on the belief that
the Reality being rational cannot but be coherent in respect
of all truths and consistent is respect of each truth. How
this can be a way of knowing God is difficult to
comprehend, though it may be said that it is neither a proof
for the existence of God nor an evidence of the personality
of God.
The general approach to this chapter thus is to show
that it is essentially a superficial theoretical approach. The
ways of knowing God are definitely two : Revelation and
Immediate Super-knowledge or Intuition, atma-saksatkara
a soul-knowledge unmediated by intellect or perception
428
or even poetic inspiration, (intuition). The ways are thus
through knowledge (or this intuitive – revelation), through
works (Actions prescribed by saints), and through devotion
or love of God and God only (bhakti). Altogether they all
demand a total integral dedication (self-surrender), and
reason may help and promote.
The pragmatic approach in the main believes that
we can never know anything for certain but can always
make an attempt towards the same. In fact the analysis of
Deweyean technique has been precisely to abjure the
quest for certainty, but aim at coherence of our present
knowledge which is being modified however by new
discoveries and techniques. Thus new techniques creative
new environments and they in turn throw up new lines of
possibility.
Coherence theory is said by him to be a way of
knowing or understanding God, since He can not be seen.
Requirements of his method are (i) collection of pre-
scientific religious data, (ii) construction of working
hypothesis to interpret all the facts collected, and the (iii)
verify the hypothesis. These three are indeed the method
of the empirical science.
Inductive enquiry such as this cannot but be
problematical knowledge. The Indian thought is more
systematic and has been a time tested one.
429
THE PROBLEM OF BELIEF IN GOD.
The belief in God cannot become a problem till one
experiences the need to grant an ultimate explanation of
the world in which we live. Scholars feel however that it
becomes a problem when one undertakes to construct a
metaphysical system which includes value-experiences.
A system is an explanation of all facts of experience
including value-experiences. Some thinkers hold that God
is the most significant explanation of the existence,
evolution, and so on of all the worlds. The Vedanta
considers God to be the explanation of all the creation,
sustention, destruction of all the worlds. But there are
others who consider that Nature is capable of explaining
all facts. Some consider human imagination is quite
capable of explaining all facts. But there are some who
hold that neither Nature nor human imagination can be the
explanation or cause of this universe.
Thee are conflicting conceptions of God. We ought
to know what we mean by God before we begin to define
whether such a God exists or is an explanation.
There are theories such as atheism- which deny belief
in the existence of God or rather deny that such a God as
the creator exists. The reasons are manifold. Firstly he
denies God because it cannot be explained all by means
of thepresent day science. Science relying on the sensate
knowledge would come to halt if it has to take explanations
from trans-scientific data. Science will come to stop and
superstition will step in. It is this fear of arrest of scientific
effort that has led to the dogmatic denial of God.
430
 The others are all having belief in God. The
conception of polytheism is that there are several Gods.
The corollary is that these gods are not in quarrel with each
other. But mythologies have created myths wherein these
gods are in rivalry. Popular religion is polytheistic and
mythological. The Gods are several superhuman powers
but in conflict and competition with one another. This is
denied because all Gods finally elect a God who is superior
to them and is the god of the Gods. Thus a rotational
Godhead or henotheistic Godhead emerges as a
necessity in the interests of the System of the Universe.
Thus Monism involves monotheism. One system involves
One God.
Further all Gods represent several powers or values.
All values finally are regulated by the harmonizing value
which is to be one only. Thus there should be One Rulling
Godhead regulating all others.
These two above formulations do not however
exhaust the conceptions of God. God is held to an Object
of human experience. It is held that superhuman individuals
do not need a God at all. Because they are gods. This
explanation however is simply unconvincing since
supershumans will have to have a regulative harmonizing
factor and this will their God. God thus is a human
experience or object of it, but it does not justify the
conclusion that it is not the object of the gods.
Some thinkers pose the problem of Reality as all
inclusive and God is said to be a part of that Reality. This
431
reality which is all embracive is the whole of which God is
a part. This view is not quite correct since though God is a
part of Reality,he governs the whole unity of Reality and
as such is the Sovereign of the whole and as such the
word part is entirely a misconception. God is not outside
Nature governing it, for Reality will embrace both the
Godhead and Nature Similarly the expression that God is
All Nature (Pan-thesim) or All is God is a principle of
absolute logical groundedness of all things in God and
His Nature. All pantheism goes beyond to the spiritual
concept of dependence of all on God. God’s spiritual
Nature goes beyond all nature but immanently or interiorly
governs all spiritually. It is not the monistic materialism of
Heackel that is meant by Pantheism. The alternative
whether Nature is a part of God again poses the problem
of dependence on God for its very existence as nature.
The world is a part of God only in this sense that it is what
it is because of the Godhead’s nature.
All these points are clearly answered by the views of
Sri Ramanuja who held that God is All, in so far as He
holds all material nature and the souls under His regulative
direction in respect of being, becoming and release or
realization or change. Nature and souls are parts of God
in so far as they are dependent on Him, and He is in them
all as the indwelling Being and above them all in so far as
He regulates all processes whether of creation or
sustention or destruction or redemption. God cannot be
considered to be the Unconscious producer of values, for
values are being built up by consciousness not otherwise.
432
 IS GOD A PERSON ? data are conscious experiences, (ii) that all physical forces
act on and produce conscious experiences in man, and
The conception of God as a person is natural to
(iii) that all evidence for law and order speaks for a
common sense and the popular view is that God is a
personal mind at work in the universe: this is course is
person in the sense that He is conscious being having
analogical inference, and (iv) that the existence of purpose
will, feeling and knowing, in infinite measure of course as
in revelatory of personal will and the world has purpose.
contrasted with ourselves whose faculties are limited and
(v) history of religion reveals that in all branches of human
finite. He is one with whom one can come into
experience there is some personal God at work.(vi) the
relationships of love and affection. This savours of course
very growth of value experiences or their emergence
of anthropomorphism, that is humanism. God is reduced
reveals the existence of a Personal God, who is the
to human terms and descriptions. God has been described
determiner of all values. (vii) personalism includes
as beyond all human terms being immeasurably superior
impersonalism and yields a more coherent and all inclusive
and different. To describe God or imagine Him to be of
explanation that impersonalism which cannot produce
the same shape and form and characteristics of man is
person. Lastly the evidence for God as personal consists
wrong utterly. Saints as well as sages have refused to
of empirical facts of religious persons. This is about the
reduce God to the level of themselves even when they had
most important arguments. Impersonalists claim that God
developed relationships with Him.
is not personal and if God is personal he cannot be God.
The real reason may be traced to the fact that God
Disbelief in God is also stated to be due to the fact
as the all controlling and ruling principle of the universe
of evil in the world. God cannot have created evil, and a
cannot be localized at any one place, or body.
creator God and existence of evil cannot go together. As
Omnipresence of God prevents localization. But is
pointed out it is an argument against the all creator God.
personality or the person to be localized in a body? Normal
view is that a person is an embodied being, physical is Consciousness being neural, it can be shown that
appearance and liable to all the ills and limitations of man conscious will cannot be an argument for the existence of
or embodied beings. God. God again is not necessary for explanations of
science, and is a positive hindrance to the growth of
The view of personality as unbegum and unending
scientific knowledge. God is superstition not an
energy of the Universal, that it is a conscious rational will
illumination.
is held by certain thinkers. Personality centers round the
possession of conscious will. The arguments adduced to The personality of God is unverifiable in the sense
prove that God has conscious will are (i) that all actual of knowing Him as any other sensory object. In fact all law
433 434
is impersonal, and the world is governed by laws. The
question of their being a person behind all laws is a
misapplication of the analogy of state-laws and their
making. Man’s demand that God should be like man leads
to the conception of personal God, and it is a kind of human
arrogance. A human God is no God. Lastly the concept of
personality is not an ultimate concept as inclusive of all
other concepts or as most valuable. In fact there have been
as many saints and seers who have accepted that the
Ultimate is transcendent to personality or person.

(E.g. Brahman of the Advaita Vedantia is super

personal, if not impersonal. God is transcendent to
humanity and towards which all humanity moves. The
immanence or God is not identifiable with the view that
God is just human, a struggling conscience or
consciousness like man himself. Ignorance of man is
incompatible with that omniscience of God. A truer
conception of God is that which upholds all the statuses
of God - as transcendent, as immanent, as incarnation
and as guide of man and the Goal of man. While the Guide
of Man and the Goal of Man are acceptable concepts of
God at the personal-emotional need based level the real
concept of God is that which cannot be defined and
expressed though real. God is a fact of experience in
religious and spiritual aspirations of the Man and is
something more that what can be defined - to say it is
Nothing is wrong but to say it is Nothingness is more true.

435