... good or for ill, you have to obey those rules. This is moral law. You can break the moral laws only when you have another call from above - the spiritual. Responding to this higher call, Buddha left the world, for the good of the world, and Sri Aurobindo left the world for the sake of a greater world. Moral laws can be ignored only when the spiritual call is there, not otherwise. So this... this is the call of the spirit! The call of the spirit does not obey this moral law because it is a higher law; it is the law of God, whereas the moral laws are the laws of man. This is, in a nutshell, the distinction Page 55 between the two. So the Japanese and those who are strictly moral, I'm afraid they don't, or very rarely, hear the voice of God, because they have adhered,... you have to break some of the moral rules - the moral barriers. But so long as you don't hear that voice, you have to obey the moral law. In our land here, you see, we have become spiritual. Moral laws are not for us brothers. The first thing we have established in our spiritual life is freedom. Now the word "brother" reminds me of a joke. I've fallen into this joking mood! This joke ...
... consciousness, a sincerity that stand all tests. Now, I may put you on your guard against... people who live in their vital consciousness and say, "I indeed am above moral laws, I follow a higher law, I am free from all moral laws." And they say this because they want to indulge in all irregularities. These people, then, have a double impurity: they have spiritual impurity and in addition social ...
... something—I think it is precisely in this very book that Sri Aurobindo has spoken about it—about people who live in their vital consciousness and say, "I indeed am above moral laws, I follow a higher law, I am free from all moral laws." And they say this because they want to indulge in all irregularities. These people, then, have a Page 439 double impurity: they have spiritual impurity and ...
... time arguing and gossiping! And they send me letters. The whole mental ego of all of them is seething with agitation. You've seen them? * This is the exact text of Mother's answer: "Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth, besides they vary considerably according to the country, the climate and the period. Discussions are generally sterile and without... the trouble of looking at". Then I look. "And this (laughing), isn't worth the bother"! On the 15th, that boy, the communist architect who was here, left, because he found we "didn't respect moral laws enough"!... Word for word. He left. But then his thought is coming all the time — not "thought": something from here (heart), it comes and comes. He must be very unhappy at having left! And so ...
... conduct; but conduct for the Indian mind is only one means of expression and sign of a soul-state. Hinduism only incidentally strings together a number of commandments for observance, a table of moral laws; more deeply it enjoins a spiritual or ethical purity of the mind with action as one outward index. It says strongly enough, almost too strongly, "Thou shouldst not kill," but insists more firmly ...
... morality unless you submit yourself to a law that is higher and much more rigorous than any moral law. 28 May 1947 You can break the moral rules only when you observe the Divine Law. Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth. Besides, they vary considerably according to country, climate and period. Discussions are generally sterile and without productive ...
... Blessings. 31 August 1966 Freedom is to do only what the Supreme Consciousness makes us do. In every other case one is a slave, whether of the will of others, or of conventions, or of moral laws, or of vital impulses, or of mental fancies, or, above all, of the desires of the EGO. 21 September 1969 Freedom is far from meaning disorder and confusion. It is the inner liberty that ...
... I seem to be told, "This is worth seeing." So I look at it. "And ( laughing ) don't bother about that"! On the 15th, that boy, the Communist architect who was here left, because he found that "moral laws aren't sufficiently respected'!... His very words. He left. But then, his thought keeps coming all the time—not "thought": something from here ( the heart ), it keeps coming and coming. He must be ...
... and living being.’ 23 Further on in the same book, he writes: ‘If we are to be free in the Spirit, if we are to be subject only to the supreme Truth, we must discard the idea that our mental or moral laws are binding on the Infinite or that there can be anything sacrosanct, absolute or eternal even in the highest of our existing standards of conduct.’ 24 ‘For the Sadhaka [practitioner] of the integral ...
... and laws that he essays to turn into universal dharmas. If we are to be free in the spirit, if we are to be subject only to the supreme Truth, we must discard the idea that our mental or moral laws are binding on the Infinite or that there can be anything sacrosanct, absolute or eternal even in the highest of our existing standards of conduct. To form higher and higher temporary standards as ...
... The Mother on Auroville Guidance in Yoga Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth, besides they vary considerably according to the country, the climate and the period. Discussions are generally sterile and without productive value. If each individual makes a personal effort of perfect sincerity, uprightness and good ...
... equivalent of religion —dharma —is still more complex. Dharma is not religion though it has become customary to translate "religion" by "dharma." Dharma is law—it includes the social and moral laws; also the law of one's own being, one's own nature is said to be dharma— swadharma. August 7, 1926 (A disciple:) What are the characteristics of Indian politicians? They ...
... life an attitude of worship, an attitude very similar to that of the mystic. Even if the world is not rooted in some absolute and omniscient reality, even if the world is not governed by inexorable moral laws, even then it is possible to formulate and develop a noble attitude towards life. A Free Man's Worship was first published in December 1903, when Russell was only thirty-one, and is considered ...
... SATYENDRA: Moral law is not the creator and upholder of creation. SRI AUROBINDO: No, prior to man there was no moral law. In the material or vital world, moral law doesn't exist. It comes in with man, and at a certain stage of his development it is useful. Even then, it is a social necessity, because without some kind of moral law society can't exist. But to say that the world is regulated by moral law... law is to deny the facts of existence. That is absurd. There are two ways: one can either go beyond moral law as we seek to do by spirituality or one can uphold moral law as an ideal to be realised. This is understandable. If there is a moral legislator of the world, why does he give the same punishment for different sins? PURANI: K says man ought to learn lessons from these things. Vinoba Bhave maintains... AUROBINDO: That doesn't always hold. The head may ache without any stomach upset or the hand may indulge in stealing without the back getting beaten. PURANI: In his view the question is whether the moral law is partially active or absolutely active. Is there any room for accident or chance? SRI AUROBINDO: Why take for granted that these are the sole alternatives? There may be so many other factors ...
... are other things in the Infinite and therefore other laws and forces here and of these the moral law, however great and sovereign to itself, has to take account and is compelled to accommodate its own lines to their curve of movement. And if that is so our plain course, if we are to see the true connections, is to begin by studying the separate law and claim of these other forces: for till it is done... the law of vital Karma, brings in a law of mental and moral Karma and lifts along the ladder of these scales to something more, to a potency of spiritual action which may even lead him to an exceeding of Karma itself, a freedom from or of birth and becoming, a perfecting transcendence. Man's exceeding of the physical law does not come solely by his evolution of a moral sense in a non-moral world... its physical energy and is concerned with no other law or justice. No law of Karma, the moral law included, could exist, if there were not to begin with this principle as the first foundation of order. What then is the relation of man to this physical Nature, man this soul intervening in and physically born of her in a body subjected to her law of action? what his function as something that is yet ...
... ________________ * Sri Aurobindo: The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Edition, Vol. 20, p. 190. Page 50 Beyond the moral law are spiritual ideals. These ideals are not limited to moral data but embrace the totality of our being and totality of existence. The true divine law is not fully represented in exclusive formations of the mind or even in religious creeds that collide with other religious... hedonism that embodied the force of collectivistic ideals. This moral law advocated, in effect, the search for maximum pleasure for maxi mum number of people. To use the terms of Indian philosophy, the demands of vyashti and samashti came to be pressed forward against the claims of ahambhava . The existence of the collectivistic law external to the individual suggests a power other than that of... uplifting himself to a state of intrinsic and universal values. Consequently, it came to be advocated that the needs and desires of individuals are to be surpassed in obedience to the moral law, and even the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by Conscience or by the categorical imperative. In regard to the conflict between the individual and the society ...
... not my moral and spiritual becoming, but only attempt to explain its phenomena when they have happened by imposing polysyllables and fearful and wonderful laws of pathology, morbid heredity, eugenics and what not of loose fumbling, which touch only the draggled skirts of the lowest psycho-physical being. But here I need guidance more than anywhere else and must have the recognition of a law, the high... tread, that in the mental and moral world as in the physical universe there is no chaos, fortuitous rule of chance or mere probability, but an ordered Energy at work which assures its will by law and fixed relation and steady succession and the links of ascertainable cause and effectuality. To be assured that there is an all-pervading mental law and an all-pervading moral law, is a great gain, a supporting... high line of a guiding order. To know the law of my moral and spiritual being is at first and last more imperative for me than to learn the ways of steam and electricity, for without these outward advantages I can grow in my inner manhood, but not without some notion of moral and spiritual law. Action is demanded of me and I need a rule for my action: something I am urged inwardly to become which I ...
... fortune. The idea of Dharma is on the contrary predominantly moral in its essence. Dharma on its heights holds up the moral law in its own right and for its own sake to human acceptance and observance. The larger idea of Dharma is indeed a conception of the true law of all energies and includes a conscience, a rectitude in all things, a right law of thought and knowledge, of aesthesis, of all other human... successful conflict with the ideal of Right and the demand of the higher law. Right ethical action comes therefore to seem to man at this stage the one thing binding upon him among the many standards raised by the mind, the moral claim the one categorical imperative, the moral law the whole of his Dharma. At first however the moral conceptions of man and the direction and output and the demand of return... power of the conception of a mental truth, justice, right, the conception of Dharma. The greater practical part of the Dharma is ethical, it is the idea of the moral law. The first mind movement is non-moral or not at all characteristically moral, has only, if at all, the conception of a standard of action justified by custom, the received rule of life and therefore right, or a morality indistinguishable ...
... morality and religion in their deepest core seek for but fail to realise. Yoga replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. No more in this operation is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the individual nature; the spiritual law that Yoga presents respects the individual nature, modifies it and perfects it, and in... real self. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, permit a short or a long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and ever looking for going beyond into a plane of a spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To the yogic consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but as an expression of a complex of certain qualities which are for the time... about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. Sometimes, the absoluteness of the moral values is sought to be derived from some religious sanction. Thus religions have attempted to erect a system and declare God's law through the mouth of the Avatar or Prophet. Such systems have proved more dynamic and powerful than the dry ethical idea. But quite ...
... mind by law and tradition, jus, mores , and outside its conventional circle he allows himself an easy latitude. The reason generalises the idea of a moral law carrying with it an obligation man should heed and obey but may disregard at this outer or that inner peril, and it insists first and most on a moral law, an obligation of self-control, justice, righteousness, conduct, rather than a law of truth... workings of the intelligence than it yields to moral right. In this material world it is at least doubtful how far moral good is repaid by vital good and moral evil punished by a recoil, but it is certain that we do pay very usually for our errors, for stupidity, for ignorance of the right way of action, for any ignoring or misapplication of the laws that govern our psychical, vital and physical being;... to the higher law of the soul, but to an outward moral law, a code of conduct. For then in place of a lifting enthusiasm we have the rigidity of the Pharisee, a puritan fierceness or narrowness or the life-killing tyranny of a single insufficient side of the nature. This is not yet that higher mental movement, but a straining towards it, an attempt to rise above the transitional law and the vitalistic ...
... give a moral law to a child is evidently not an ideal thing; but it is very difficult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may find in himself a higher and truer law. But here one must proceed with circumspection and insist on the difficulty of discovering that true law. The majority of those who reject human laws and proclaim... own eyes, at least to the eyes of others. They give a kick to morality, simply because it is a hindrance to the satisfaction of their instincts. No one has a right to sit in judgment over moral and social laws, unless he has taken his seat above them; one cannot abandon them, unless one replaces them by something superior, which is not so easy. In any case, the finest present one can give to a... mere tolerance must have a global comprehension or understanding. 5) "The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material." (Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle ) Published ...
... to do what is God's will. That is a sort of religious law to them, while here it is a moral law, seen from the standpoint of Reason. SATYENDRA: Christians have the idea of going to heaven by doing their duty. SRI AUROBINDO: Their idea is more than that. They want to do what bears the seal of God's will on it, as they say. A religious law is there. When Reason got the upper hand on religion it... are determined by oneself and not by others. But then what about the laws of morality? They are made by others. And if one is supposed to act according to oneself and thus be free, one may disobey them. PURANI: Kant speaks also of heteronomy and gives the maxim that one must follow only that rule which one can make a universal law. SRI AUROBINDO: His idea of freedom is like the Sanskrit sloka:... it began to question religion's foundations, and the rationalists advocated the doing of duty from the ethical, the moral point of view, as a social demand. The rationalists have very fragmentary notions of what is involved. ...
... For the maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the law of the nation? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the... sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra, the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the standard which he obeys is the dharma , that collective Indian conception of the religious, social and moral rule of conduct, and especially... solution or an escape from the dark riddle of the world. It is the sensational, emotional and moral revolt of the man hitherto satisfied with action and its current standards who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves and there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma . 1 That for the ...
... what? For the maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the law of the nation? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse... sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra, the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the standard which he obeys is the dharma,' that collective Indian conception of the religious, social and moral rule of conduct, and especially... Gita. Sattwa, rajas and tamas are the three chains which bind us and, like Arjuna, most of our being is rajasic and pragmatic, with a degree of purer sattwa in respect to our attitude towards moral law, society and the claims of others upon Page 63 us.' To study Arjuna is to study ourselves. We have included here a most illuminating study of Arjuna, found in Sri Aurobindo's Essays ...
... give a moral law to a child is evidently not an ideal thing; but it is very difficult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may find in himself a higher and truer law. But here one must proceed with circumspection and insist on the difficulty of discovering that true law. The majority of those who reject human laws and proclaim... eyes, at least to the eyes of others. They give a kick to morality, simply because it is a hindrance to the satisfaction of their instincts. No one has a right to sit in judgment over moral and social laws, unless he has taken his seat above them; one cannot abandon them, unless one replaces them by something superior, which is not so easy. In any case, the finest present one can give to ...
... to take human life any more than to eat human flesh? It is obvious that here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and that law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the awakened inner perception of man, the moral being. There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rule principally dependent on external... shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct seek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin; do not grieve." The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law. First, by the renunciation of desire and a perfect equality... all-sufficient law. A little consideration of the situation with which the Gita deals will show us that this could not be its meaning. For the whole point of the teaching, that from which it arises, that which compels the disciple to seek the Teacher, is an inextricable clash of the various related conceptions of duty ending in the collapse of the whole useful intellectual and moral edifice erected ...
... between the social good and the individual good. • A higher law of morality seems to prescribe what may be called intrinsic good or intrinsic right without reference to consequences. Indeed, at a higher level of development of civilisation and culture, we find a law of conduct emerging from the moral intention and will, and moral will is considered good because it is goodwill. Here goodwill is... when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. In this operation, no more is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the nature of an individual. The spiritual law respects the individual nature, modifies it and, perfects it, and in this sense,... consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide a sort of long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for ...
... succeed only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. No more in this operation is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the individual nature. The spiritual law respects the individual nature, modifies it and perfects it, and in this sense, it is ... progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide Page 24 a short or long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities which are, for the... but the situation is so confusing that there is a great need to clarify the entire domain of moral and spiritual values which would also throw considerable light on what we should mean by psychic and spiritual education. A question is often raised as to whether there is any valid distinction between moral and spiritual values. In answer, it must be said that much depends upon what we intend to include ...
... ethical hedonism that embodied the force of collectivistic ideals. This moral law advocated, in effect, the search for maximum pleasure for maximum number of people. To use the term of Indian philosophy, the demands of samasti came to be pressed forward against the claims of aham bhdva. The existence of the collectivistic law suggests a power other than that of personal egoism and induces or compels... main standards of human conduct that make an ascending scale. The first is personal need, preference and desire; the second is the law and good of the collectivity; the third is an ideal ethic; the last page - 77 is the highest and divine ideal and the divine law of the nature. (i) Standard of conduct which is prescribed by psychological and ethical but egoistic hedonism, falls into... human demand for pleasure, it cannot be denied that the collectivistic idealism and higher forms of altruism, too, have their own roots in human nature. The law of competition, which is rooted in the egoistic psychology, is not the only possible law for organizing the life of the individual and of society; cooperation, too, is rooted in human nature, and co-operation is not necessarily an offshoot of ...
... between the social good and the individual good. A higher law of morality seems to prescribe what may be called intrinsic good or intrinsic right without reference to consequences. Indeed, at a higher level of development of civilisation and culture, we find a law of conduct emerging from the moral intention and will, and moral will is considered good because it is goodwill. Here goodwill is... only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. In this operation, no more is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the nature of an individual. The spiritual law respects the individual nature, modifies it and perfects it, and in this sense, it... consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide a sort of long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for ...
... interests, many other elements of its being to manifest, many lines to follow, many laws and purposes to pursue. The law of the world is not this alone that our good brings good to us and our evil brings evil, nor is its sufficient key the ethical-hedonistic rule that our moral good brings to us happiness and success and our moral evil brings to us sorrow and misfortune. There is a rule Page 382 ... ordinary solutions disappears, but that is a loss only to love of dogma or to the mind's indolence. The whole law of the cosmic action or even the one law governing all the others cannot well be the measure of a physical, mechanical and chemical energy, nor the law of a life force, nor a moral law or law of mind or of idea forces; for it is evident that none of these things by its single self covers or accounts... have a mental, moral and spiritual significance, if the action of universal Nature is something quite different from the soul's action in character, in meaning, in the law of her being that constitutes it, if it is not itself the energy, the work of a Mind, a Soul, a Spirit. If the individual energy is that of a soul putting out action and receiving a return in kind, physical, mental, moral and spiritual ...
... of universality and universality finds its concentrated centre of fullness in the individual. Beyond the moral law are spiritual ideals. These ideals are not limited to moral data but embrace the totality of our Page 218 being and totality of existence. The true divine law is not fully represented in exclusive formations of the mind or even in religious creeds that collide with other... hedonism that embodied the force of collectivistic ideals. This moral law advocated, in effect, the search for maximum pleasure for maximum number of people. To use the terms of Indian philosophy, the demands of vyashti and samashti came to be pressed forward against the claims of ahambhava. The existence of the collectivistic law external to the individual suggests a power other than that of... uplifting himself to a state of intrinsic and universal values. Consequently, it came to be advocated that the needs and desires of individuals are to be surpassed in obedience to the moral law, and even the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by Conscience or by the categorical imperative. In regard to the conflict between the individual and the society ...
... Cambridge, 1922-55, Vol, II, p. 551). R.C, Zaehner opines that it was composed in the third or fourth century B.C. {Hinduism, New York, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 93). 3.Dharma = right moral law. 4.The Message of the Gita, as interpreted by Sri Aurobindo, edited by Anilbaran Roy (George Allen & Unwin Ltd,, London, 1946), pp. 67, 68-69. 5.Ibid., p. 70, fn. 1 (Continued... Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow. That is why ...
... and supplication and atonement; he is capable too of partiality, and his partiality can be attracted by gifts, by prayer and by praise. Therefore instead of relying solely on the observation of the moral law, worship as prayer and propitiation is still continued. Along with these motives there arises another development of personal feeling, first of the awe which one naturally feels for something vast... life as reposing on a certain principle of divine justice, which he reads always according to his own ideas and character, as a sort of enlarged copy of his human justice; he conceives the idea of moral good and evil and looks upon suffering and calamity and all things unpleasant as a punishment for his sins and upon happiness and good fortune and all things pleasant as a reward of his virtue. God... begins with the conception of some Power or existence greater and higher than our limited and mortal selves, a thought and act of worship done to that Power, and an obedience offered to its will, its laws or its demands. But Religion, in its beginnings, sets an immeasurable gulf between the Power thus conceived, worshipped and obeyed and the worshipper. Yoga in its culmination abolishes the gulf; for ...
... or Page 370 probable laws of the universal working which are relevant to it and must enter into the account. First, it is sure that Nature has laws of which the observance leads to or helps well-being and of which the violation imposes suffering; but all of them cannot be given a moral significance. Then there is the certainty that there must be a moral law of cause and consequence in the... own nature and hatred because it is its denial or perversion, leads to a greater sum of misery to myself as to others. And of all true moral good and real evil this may be said that the one tends towards some supreme Right, the ṛtam of the Vedic Rishis, the highest law of a highest Truth of our being and that Truth is the door of the spirit's Ananda, its beatific nature, the other is a missing or perversion... superficial significance. And at any rate in the ordinary notion of Karma we are combining two different notions of good. I can well understand that moral good does or ought to produce and increase moral good and moral evil to farther and to create moral evil. It does so in myself. The habit of love confirms and enhances my power of love; it purifies my being and opens it to the universal good. The habit ...
... between the social good and the individual good. g.A higher law of morality seems to prescribe what maybe called intrinsic good or intrinsic right without reference to consequences. Indeed, at a higher level of development of civilisation and culture, we find a law of conduct emerging from the moral intention and will, and moral will is considered good because it is goodwill. Here goodwill is... only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. In this operation, no more is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the nature of an individual. The spiritual law respects the individual nature, modifies it and perfects it, and in this sense, it... consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide a short of long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but only as an expression of a complex of certain qualities, which are, for ...
... train and subdue his lower personality and scrupulously attune it to a higher law both of the personal and the communal life. The Gita's message to the mind occupied with the pursuit of intellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists on salvation by the observance of established dharmas, the moral law, social duty and function or the solutions of the liberated intelligence, is that... individual suffering and social strife, unsettling and disturbance and regards abstention from violence and battle as the only way and the one right moral attitude. A spiritualised ethics insists on Ahinsa, on non-injuring and non-killing as the highest law of spiritual conduct. The battle, if it is to be fought out at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal... the rest of the race it prescribes only a gradual advance, to be wisely effected by following out faithfully with more and more of intelligence and moral purpose and with a final turn to Page 568 spirituality the law of their nature. Its message touches the other smaller solutions but, even when it accepts them partly, it is to point them beyond themselves to a higher and more ...
... of existing laws and forms for the sake of a freer larger life necessary to the world's progress. There is still left the moral law or the ideal and these, even to many who think themselves free, appear for ever sacred and intangible. But the sadhaka, his gaze turned always to the heights, will abandon them to Him whom all ideals seek imperfectly and fragmentarily to express; all moral qualities are... is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura. The social law, that second term of our progress, is a means to which the ego is subjected in order that it may learn discipline by subordination to a wider collective ego. This law may be quite empty of any moral content and may express only the needs or the practical good of the society as each society conceives... conceives it. Or it may express those needs and that good, but modified and coloured and supplemented by a higher moral or ideal law. It is binding on the developing but not yet perfectly developed individual in the shape of social duty, family obligation, communal or national demand, so long as it is not in conflict with his growing sense of the higher Right. But the sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon ...
... economic age of mankind, a period in which the ethical mind persisted painfully, but with decreasing self-confidence, an increasing self-questioning and a tendency to yield up the fortress of the moral law to the life-instinct, the aesthetic instinct and intelligence flourished as a rather glaring exotic ornament, a sort of rare orchid in the button-hole of the vital man, and reason became the magnificent... self-development down to the latest of the kind, the strangely inspired vitalistic philosophy of Nietzsche. The common defect of these conceptions is to miss the true character of man and the true law of his being, his Dharma. Nietzsche's idea that to develop the superman out of our Page 232 present very unsatisfactory manhood is our real business, is in itself an absolutely sound teaching... a half-divine nature of the self-conscious intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, intelligently emotional, intelligently dynamic Page 234 being who is capable of finding and understanding the law of his own action and consciously using and bettering it, a reflecting mind that understands Nature, a will that uses, elevates, perfects Nature, a sense that intelligently enjoys Nature. The aim of ...
... knowledge and the effectivity that it produces the highest elements that morality in the deepest core seeks are fulfilled. But Yoga replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self- perfection, spontaneously expressing itself through individual nature. The spiritual law that yoga presents respects the individual nature, modifies and perfects it. And in this sense, it is flexible for each individual and can... movement, it may, if necessary, permit a short or a long period of governance by a moral law but always as a provisional device. It always looks forward to a time when one can arrive at a higher plane of consciousness in which the Right and the Good can find spontaneous expression. To the yogic consciousness, moral virtue is valuable as an expression of certain qualities which are for the time being... into a domain higher than body, life, and mind. In other words, Yoga is an exploration of consciousness through consciousness. Religion is seen to be a source of moral values, and the Page 80 absoluteness of the moral values is sought to be derived from some religious sanction. Thus religions have attempted to erect systems and declared God's commands through Avatar or the Prophet ...
... To give a moral law to a child is evidently not anideal thing; but it is very difficult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may find in himself a higher and truer law. But here one must proceed with circumspection and insist on the difficulty of discovering that true law. The majority of those who reject human laws and proclaim... the eyes of others. They give a kick to morality, simply because it is a hindrance to the satisfaction of their instincts. No one has a right to sit in judgment over moral and social laws, unless he has taken his seat above them; one cannot abandon them, unless one replaces Page 48 them by something superior, which is not so easy. In any case,... tolerance must have a global comprehension or understanding. 5. "The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material."(Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle) Published ...
... are alien to his vision. Ethical powers of the life-forces and intellectual powers of the mind are synthesised with the physical and sensuous powers of matter. But this synthesis is aesthetic: moral law ( dharma ), philosophical ideas and the world of the senses are aesthetically transformed:"... morality is aestheticised, intellect suffused and governed with the sense of beauty." 85 Sensual love... recognises it as the essence of the three ideals of human life: dharma...tri-varga-sāraḥ 85 i.e. sensual love and material prosperity should be guided and purified by the principle of higher moral law. 87 This expresses also the idea propounded by Krishna when he declares, in the Gita, that in all creatures he is that kāma which is not contrary to dharma : dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu... ages, moral, intellectual and material, are harmonised in him but the spiritual tendencies "are also outlined with extraordinary grandeur." 93 The aesthetic sensuousness of Kalidasa is nowhere so intensely articulated as in his descriptions of nature. These descriptions are however not for the sake of descriptions alone but they also are the concretisation of the physical, moral and ...
... stumbling path and to enthrone our nature's obscure ignorance and not at all find the true truth and complete law of existence. (Vide, SABCL, Vol. 13, pp. 549-50) (2)"...the pursuit of intellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists on salvation by the observance of... moral law, social duty and function or the solutions of the liberated intelligence, is... indeed a very necessary... developed at the same time. When we say so, we are surely not referring to any conventional "moral training" with the help of moral text-books lifelessly imparted by the teacher who acts as a "hired instructor" or a "benevolent policeman" without any correspondence with his own personal conduct. That sort of moral training cannot but make the child insincere and a hypocrite, mechanically and artificially... being, with his fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual and social life. The aim of education should be to help every individual child to develop his own intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his communal life and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities. Thus the distinctive individual psychology of the child should be the guide in the matter of his upbringing ...
... to take human life any more than to eat human flesh? It is obvious that here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and that law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the awakened inner perception of man, the moral being. There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of Page 67 conduct each valid on its own plane, the rule principally... shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct seek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin; do not grieve." The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law. First, by the renunciation of desire and a perfect equality... nt law. A little consideration of the situation with which the Gita deals will show us that this could not be its meaning. For the whole point of the teaching, that from which it arises, that which compels the disciple to seek the Teacher, is an inextricable clash of the various related conceptions of duty ending in the collapse of the whole Page 64 useful intellectual and moral edifice ...
... being most desires, misfortune and suffering what it most hates and dreads, it proceeds, when it accepts the moral demand upon it for the curbing of its propensities, for self-restraint from doing evil and self-exertion towards doing what is good, to strike a bargain, to erect a cosmic Law which will compensate it for this strenuous self-compulsion and help it by the dread of punishment to adhere to... affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces, and all this vast interplay cannot be determined in its results solely by the one factor of an all-governing moral law and its exclusive attention to the merits and demerits, the sins and virtues of individual human beings. Nor can good fortune and evil fortune, pleasure and pain, happiness and misery and suffering... were governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral,—supposing that that is the intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in this presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retribution without any reformatory meaning or purpose,—then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice ...
... plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher not lower than the moral,—it is founded on union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness... movements to those who have no business to know it, who are incapable Page 205 of understanding or who would act as enemies or spoil all as a result of their knowledge.... No moral or spiritual law commands us to make ourselves naked to the world or open up our hearts and minds for public inspection. Gandhi talked about secrecy being a sin but that is one of his many extravagances.' 17... greatly the mind of his hearers. The idea behind is that his function is an indispensable service to the society, quite as much as the Brahmin's, but, that being disagreeable, it would need a special moral heroism to choose it voluntarily and he thinks as if the soul freely chose it as such a heroic service and as reward of righteous acts—but that is hardly likely. The service of the scavenger is ind ...
... plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher, not lower than the moral—it is founded on union with Page 422 the Divine and living in... not only consider the temporary good to humanity, but certain inner laws. He thinks the harm, violence or cruelty to other beings is not compensated and can not be justified by some physical good to a section of humanity or even to humanity as a whole; such methods awake, in his opinion, a sort of Karmic reaction apart from the moral harm to the men who do these things. He is also of the opinion that... strong mind and mental will and others are vital men in whom the vital passions are stronger or more on the surface. Some do not think control necessary and let themselves go. In sadhana the mental or moral control has to be replaced by the spiritual mastery—for the mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. That is the main ...
... to do otherwise is sin, demerit, pāpa . Ethical mind declares a law of love, a law of justice, a law of truth, laws without number, difficult to observe, difficult to reconcile. But if oneness with others, oneness with truth is already the essence of the realised spiritual nature, there is no need of a law of truth or of love,—the law, the standard has to be imposed on us now because there is in our... truth in its own freedom, free from all constructed laws, while yet its life is a fulfilment of all true laws of becoming in Page 1033 their essence of meaning, and an ignorant self-divided existence which seeks for its own truth and tries to construct its findings into laws and construct its life according to a pattern so made. All true law is the right motion and process of a reality, an... gnostic being; it is this unity that gives him his liberty. The freedom from law, including the moral law, so frequently affirmed of the spiritual being, is founded on this unity of its will with the will of the Eternal. All the mental standards would disappear because all necessity for them would cease; the higher authentic law of identity with the Divine Self and identity with all beings would have replaced ...
... born to dwell with me in the forest, 0 princess of Mithila, you are incapable of being abandoned by me even as compassion cannot be given up by a man of self knowledge. (29) I shall abide by the moral law actually followed by the virtuous (dwellers in the forest) in the past, 0 one with comely limbs! Follow me (now even) as Suvarcala (wife of the sun god) does the sun god. (30) Of course it cannot... herself (with the articles of wearing apparel and ornaments bestowed on her by her father in law), Sītā, who had comely limbs, mounted with a delighted mind that chariot, which was resplendent like the sun. (13) Having carefully arranged in the hind part of the chariot the raiments and jewels which her father in law, duly taking into account (the period of) her exile in the forest, had bestowed on Sītā... this even in thought; (for) it is highly deprecated. (12) So long as my father. Emperor Daśaratha (a scion of Kakutstha) survives, let service be rendered to him (by you); for such is the eternal moral code." (13) Feeling highly delighted when admonished thus by Śrī Rāma , Kausalya of benign aspect, for her part, said "So be it!" to Śrī Rāma , who did things without undergoing any exertion. (14) ...
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