A GREAT confusion seems to prevail today, not only in the popular mind, but also in the minds of thoughtful men, in regard to the distinctive nature and function of morality, religion and spirituality. They are either lumped together and flung into the limbo of past relics, or only morality is singled out for conventional lip homage and use partly as a cloak and an expedient, and religion and spirituality dismissed with a superior disdain as incompatible with the culture and civilisation of a scientific and rationalistic age. Even those, who seriously ponder over the problems of life and death and endeavour to envisage the destiny of man and the means of its fulfilment, extract a code of ethics, a set of lofty moral rules and principles from the great religions and make them do duty for spirituality. The Sermon on the Mount, the Dhammapada or the Nitisutras are considered the very essence of the religions from which they have sprung, and it is believed that a devout following of their injunctions in the growing light of one's intelligence is the sanest and safest method of spiritual progress. An ethical eclecticism has thus come to be regarded by some as the high water-mark of spiritual culture, because it is rational, practical and attractively catholic, and there is an instinctive dread and distrust of all that is mystic or esoteric. The overweening ignorance of the human mind refuses to believe that there can be any higher planes of consciousness or subtler formulations of energy beyond what it perceives and conceives. The boundaries of man's little consciousness are held to be the boundaries of Reality, of which man, in his present state, is the sole witness, assessor and possessor. This conceit of the human mind pens it in the narrow province of Matter and precludes any excursion into the immeasurable reaches beyond. It deadens man's finer perceptions, atrophies his subtler faculties, and reduces his proud mastery over Nature to a crippling psychological serfdom.
And yet, in spite of the satisfied subjection to Matter, or
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probably as an inevitable reaction to it, the consciousness of man is awaking, very slowly, tentatively, and under a cloud of misgivings, to the truth of the supraphysical realities, and an infinite vista is opening before it of an integral freedom and self-fulfilment. It has already begun to knock at the doors of the subliminal, peer into the caves of the subconscient, and in a few exceptional individuals, here and there, gaze up into the superconscient. It will not, therefore, be without some help to the seekers of Truth and a harmonious perfection in life, if we try to study, in the light of the Mother's teachings, the distinctive features and functions of morality, religion and spirituality and their respective contribution to the growth of human consciousness and culture.
Anthropologists tell us that the consciousness of the primitive man was essentially religious. Whether it was animism, fetishism or totemism, there was a natural, instinctive feeling in him of a Presence or Presences hovering all about him and open to his call for help and healing, if he could only propitiate them. Based on this feeling, there developed a half-mysterious, half- superstitious cult of sacraments and sacrifices out of which later on branched off magic, thaumaturgy, etc. At this stage of evolution, there was no distinct conception of morality; individual and social life automatically adjusted themselves to the varying demands of circumstances and environment. There was not much sense of sin or guilt chilling or curbing the natural expression of the aboriginal passions and impulses, and it was only the herd-instinct, the inborn gregarious habits that held the social units together and prevented a violent disruption or disintegration. Gradually, as reason developed, the individual ego also developed with it, asserting, on the one hand, its personal ideas and tastes and rights and, on the other, the imperative need of making life conform to the rhythm of the light of an expanding consciousness brought to it. This was the beginning of morality—a growing sense of sin or guilt corresponding to
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an increasing perception of the possibility of a pure rhythmic and harmonious living.
It is not true, as some sociologists maintain, that morality is an outcome of the multiplying social factors that demanded a discipline or regulation of life to counter the menace of its disruptive tendencies. Morality, according to them, is a mate- rial growth, a covenant and convenience agreed upon for the sake of a smooth running of the wheels of life. But the origin of ethics lies not in the outer mechanism of the individual and collective existence, but in the evolutionary development of reason and the balancing and enlightening principle of sattwa in man. It can be said that morality is a gift of religion, if by religion is meant a contact, however rudimentary, of the human consciousness with the light and harmony of the higher. Like every evolutionary growth in man, the principle of sattwa, in which there is a pronounced emergence and lead of the buddhi or reason, is quickened and fostered by a higher pressure and is not a child of material contingencies. But in its active self- formulation in society, ethics has to make terms with the outer factors of existence, which cloud its original perception and diminish its co-ordinating and controlling capacity. It becomes then a mere construction of the human mind. And this explains the incompetence of ethics to deal successfully with the obstinate, ancestral elements of human nature—either it represses and strangles them or, which is more frequent, makes a com- promise with them and rests content with a mere veneer and a make-believe. If it wants to be strictly logical and consistent, it ends in an unpractical, self-stultifying extremism which plays havoc with the normal poise of life and impresses the mass mind by its relentless self-mortification.
There is another intrinsic defect of morality : it is that it proceeds on a fixed basis of a division into "the good and the bad". Because it is a creation of the human mind, it goes by analysis and division and fails to arrive at any complete harmony and unity. It "sets up an ideal type into which all must force themselves. This moral ideal differs in its constituents and its ensemble in different times and different places. And yet it proclaims
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itself as a unique type, a categoric absolute; it admits of none other outside itself, it does not even admit a variation within itself. All are to be moulded according to its single ideal pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard contrary to the variety of life and the freedom of the spirit. Creating some- thing mental, fixed and limited, it asks all to conform to it. All must labour to acquire the same qualities and the same ideal nature.”¹
Turning to the practical side of morality, we find that in most cases a whole life is spent in a strenuous endeavour to put into practice some of the most appealing (this appeal varies according to individual culture and temperament) of the precepts or maxims of ethics. The control of anger or greed- or lust proves an exhausting enough affair, and yet the result is hardly ever complete and conclusive. The reason of man which takes the leading part in the practice of morality, finds itself often floored before the inconvenient facts of the world, the stubbornness of the habitual trends of life and nature, and the embarrassing recurrence of the very passions and propensities it tries to get rid of. This happens because the reason of man has little knowledge of the working of the complex elements of human nature and less power to cope with them. Its characteristic way of dealing with them is to fix upon one or two or a few of them at a time, give them an exclusive and exaggerated importance and strive to coerce them into a preconceived pattern. A single principle is sometimes deified as the central truth of life and hammered into a mutilated nature. This narrow rigidity of ethics stands in the way of the flexible? many-sided movement of human nature, and results in a sort of hot-house growth and a lop-sided development. It is, moreover, usually, attended with a settled gloom or sombreness of
¹ Words of the Mother.
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spirit which recalls the monastery or the convent.
A frequent untoward consequence of an unbending practice of morality is a magnification of the ego. This may sound a bit paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true, as a clear-eyed introspection is sure to reveal. Even the very humility which is practised by the moralist subtly tends to feed the ego and fill it with a secret sense of gratification. This sattwic ahankāra, the egoism of virtue, is more difficult to overcome than its cruder rajasic and tamasic forms, for it is conscious of some light and poise in itself and, drunk with the sense of its unrelaxed tapasyā or self-discipline, feels no need of seeking or surrendering to a higher light. Its chain of gold is an ornament in its eyes and it wears it with an implicit pride. In some extreme forms of self- justifying rigour, morality goes to the extent of becoming not only unspiritual, but even anti-spiritual.
The way out for the moralist from the hold of his mind-made ethics is to realise that he is a pilgrim of eternity and should not, therefore, rest in any half-way house, however clean and con- genial it may be. Ethics is only a stage in the evolution of human consciousness, and to cling to a stage is to forfeit the power and privilege of the final fulfilment. Deliverance for him lies in a sincere seeking for and an unconditional surrender to a higher light and a plastic following of its guidance.
Religion
Unlike morality, religion has its roots in the deeper parts of human nature. It is as old as man himself, and has been passing through various stages to help him on his way to the Spirit. In its evolved form "it belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of man’s higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name of God or Spirit or Truth or Faith or Knowledge or the Infinite, some kind of Absolute, which the human mind cannot reach and yet tries to reach.”¹ If religion retains the original vision and spiritual inspiration which gave it birth, it can be a
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capable guide of man to the kingdom of the Spirit. But very often its golden kernel is overlaid with mental accretions and its freedom and suppleness of movement are replaced by a rigid fixity of forms. Instead of leading the human consciousness towards the Spirit or the eternal Truth, it imprisons it in its dogmas and doctrines, cults and ceremonies, and comes to constitute a positive hindrance to the spiritual life. In its desire to make its appeal wide, it lends itself to many distortions and ends in a flat compromise with the forces of Ignorance. "All religions have each the same story to tell. The occasion for its birth is the coming of a great Teacher of the world. He comes and reveals and is the incarnation of a Divine Truth. But men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organization out of it. The religion is equipped by them with a government and policy and laws, with its creeds and dogmas, its rules and regulations, its rites and ceremonies, all binding upon its adherents, all absolute and inviolable. Like the State, it too administers rewards to the loyal and assigns punishments for those that revolt or go astray, for the heretic and the renegade.”¹
This is true of all organised credal religions, and accounts for their inability to stand the searchlight of the scientific reason. They have ceased to set the human soul afire and stimulate and canalise its aspiration for the Infinite. They have failed to provide a field for it to grow and expand and advance towards its divine self-fulfilment. They have hemmed it in and entangled it in their elaborate formalism. Instead of becoming a jumping-board to the Eternal, they have become a drag and a snare.
But their utility in the evolution of human consciousness, so long as they steer clear of dilution, mixture and perversion, cannot be questioned. "In all religions we find invariably a certain number of people who possess a great emotional capacity and are full of a real and ardent aspiration, but have a very simple mind and do not feel the need of approaching the Divine through knowledge. For such natures religion has a use, and it is even necessary to them; for, through external forms like the ceremonies
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of the Church, it offers a kind of support and help to their inner spiritual aspiration...Religion has been an impulse to the worst things and the best; if the fiercest wars have been waged, and the most hideous persecutions carried on in its name, it has stimulated too supreme heroism and self-sacrifice in its cause. Along with philosophy it marks the limit the human mind has reached in its highest activities.”¹
The main work of religion is to awaken the inner being of man and give it an ample scope for self-development and self-perfection. It is like a bridge for the human consciousness to pass from Nature to the Spirit. It should be primarily concerned with the preparation of "man’s mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge.”²
If religion is to accomplish its real mission, it must start with a double movement of revival and reform. It must re- vive its spiritual core and purify its forms of all dross and distortion. Forms are indispensable in life, for without them life would be robbed of its very raison d’etre, which is diversity, but they must be plastic and transparent enough to reveal the Spirit and not bury it under their dense and cumbrous externalities. Forms should be like symbols, at once pointing to and expressing the Formless. But the forms of religion are often darkened and disfigured by the very material with which they have to deal—the abounding impurities of the lower nature of man. A constant renovation and quickening of the central truth and the informing spirit, a constant adaptation and change of forms, and a progressive approximation to the Spirit are the condition of keeping a religion undefiled, undecaying and effective in the social economy of mankind.
Spirituality is the native light and force of the Spirit. It is
² The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.
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at once the sole means and the end of man's self-transcendence. It does not proceed, like religion, with a set of dogmas and doctrines and a round of rituals and try to reach the consciousness of man through them, it touches, on the contrary, his consciousness first, and through it effects a change, sometimes a revolutionary change, in his nature. But because it is the authentic power of the Spirit, it is beyond the grasp of the human reason, and is, therefore, readily branded as mystic, occult or esoteric. But, in fact, spirituality would not be what it is, if it were not mystic, not a power and principle transcendent of the human mind and capable of illumining and transforming it by virtue of its very transcendence. Spirituality effects a living contact between the limited human consciousness and the infinite consciousness of the Spirit, and this contact cannot but be overwhelming and stunning to the mind. A genuine spiritual experience is not like a mental thought, idea or imagination, it comes from the unexplored depths or heights of the being and leaves an indelible impress upon the consciousness, if it does not at once give it a new and decisive orientation. It is the only power that can lift man out of the morass of his ordinary existence and restore him to his infinity and immortality. It is the only power that can awaken his soul and make it the master of his nature, which is now in the hands of the lower forces of life. Neither morality nor religion can change man and his society; it is the very lightning of the Spirit that has to be infused into them to quicken a new birth. If we admit that the Spirit is the essential and universal truth of existence, the one, immortal Self of all beings, and that body, life and mind are its instruments of self-expression in the material world, then we cannot escape the conclusion that the power of the Spirit is the highest power we can avail ourselves of for the cure of the complex malaise which afflicts humanity today. The ideas of the mind or the ardours of the heart, however powerful they may be, can never reach the root of the malaise, and have no compelling hold over the impetous energies of life.
But the reason of man fights shy of spirituality, which seems
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to it so immense, impalpable and uncertain. Besides, the element of mystery which is usually associated with spirituality is a positive bugbear to the human reason, and it is ever on the watch for the failings and impostures of pseudo-spiritual spiritism in order to condemn spirituality. But even the highest achievements of reason have not helped man to attain to any abiding harmony and happiness in life, it has only made him more ego-centric, as Aldous Huxley rightly insists, and restless and unhappy. Speaking of those in whom the mental life is awakened, the Mother says that they are "restless, tormented,, agitated, arbitrary, despotic. Caught altogether in the whirl of the renewals and transformations of which they dream, they are ready to destroy everything without the knowledge of any foundation on which to construct, and so with their light made only of blinding flashes, they increase yet more the confusion rather than help it to cease.”¹ This does not mean that there is any inherent, insuperable difficulty and defect in the intellect of man which condemns him for ever to a life of stumbling half-knowledge and disquieting disharmony. The difficulty is not in the intellect itself, but in its egoism and its inveterate tendency to divide and analyse, and concentrate on parts to the exclusion of the rest. But, says the Divine Mother to the Mother, "This intellectual faculty which makes man vain and leads him into error., is the very faculty which can also, once enlightened and purified, lead him further, higher than the universal Nature, to the direct and conscious communion with the Lord of us all. He who is beyond all manifestation. This dividing intelligence which enables him to separate himself from me, enables him also to scale the heights to be climbed, without his advance being enchained and retarded by the totality of the universe which in its immensity and complexity cannot achieve so prompt an ascent.”²
Spirituality, as we have said above, is the dynamic of a higher, luminous, and infinite consciousness, and is not, like morality and religion, a working of the human mind. It is the breaking of a lid, the tearing of a covering, or the opening of a door; it
¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother.
² ibid.
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is a leap into the unknown or an invasion of the unknown into our consciousness. Whatever its beginning or the trend and tempo of its working, it is bound to appear mysterious and incalculable to the weak and limited human mind. But the bold leap or the head-long plunge has to be taken, for that is the next evolutionary step, if mankind is to transcend itself, not only in rare individuals, but as a race, and justify its existence upon earth by a divine self-perfection.
Spirituality is a free choice of our being and not, like religion, an imposition of society upon it. Being a free choice, it engages and permeates our whole consciousness, and illumines and widens it with a rapidity and radicality absolutely unknown to either morality or religion. It can not only liberate our soul, but also liberate and transform our whole nature, rendering it a fit instrument of the Divine. Spirituality is the end of which morality is the beginning and religion the middle term. All the previous preparation of man discovers its secret sense in this final saltus and consummation—the recovery of the light and bliss and purity and power of the Spirit.
But spirituality demands a sacrifice and surrender of the entire being and consciousness of man, not for their self-extinction, but for their self-fulfilment. An ungrudging self-giving alone can bring about his ultimate release and transfiguration. It will not do to keep bits of himself tied to the various objects and pursuits of the world, all has to be gathered and given, so that all may be united with the Eternal. "When you come to the Yoga [spiritual self-discipline leading to Union], you must be ready to have all your mental buildings and all your vital scaffoldings shattered to pieces. You must be prepared to be suspended in 'the air with nothing to support you except your faith. You will have to forget your past self and its clingings altogether, to pluck it out of your consciousness and be born anew, free from every kind of bondage. Think not of what you were, but of what you aspire to be; be all in what you want to realise. Turn from your dead past and look straight towards the future. Your religion, country, family lie there; it is the DIVINE.”¹
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