The Development of Religious Consciousness

by Swami Krishnananda

We cannot consider the human mind to be idiotic—that it thinks erratically, without any meaning. It has a system of its own. Its acting is an indication of a great mystery and perfection existing beyond itself. The mental operations are indica­tions and, therefore, they have a system of their own. The mind is holistic in its operation. It is a Gestalt. Thoughts are not a chaotic, slipshod action of the mind. The mind is a great organisation; it is a whole by itself.

In the henological argument, this psychological whole suggests the existence of a metaphysical cosmic Absolute whole. There are many other arguments brought forward by Indian Nyaya philosophers such as Bodayana Acharya, the details of which I am not entering into now. The idea behind it is that the consciousness of a Beyond is the reason for the development of the religious consciousness.

Generally, in conditions of life which we usually call primitive, a wonder behind the operations of nature became the impulse for adoration of that thing which is the cause of wonder. Why are the stars moving in this manner? Why is there rainfall? Why is there summer? Why is there winter? Why is there wind? How is it that the Sun rises in this manner? As every effect is considered to have a cause behind it, the mind cannot free itself from the necessity to think in terms of causes. Every event has a cause behind it. As the events are beautifully organised, the causes behind these beautiful organisations should be intelligent existences. These are the original concepts of the gods behind nature.

The prayers of the Rig Veda Samhita, right from the beginning to the end, seem to be approving this phenomenon in religious history—that the senses, which are the main perceptual apparatus in the human being, see a vastness spread out before them; and because this vastness, which is multitudinous in nature, requires an explanation in terms of something that is behind this multitudinousness, in the beginning we may concede that every item of the multitude has a divinity behind it. This is why it is sometimes believed that there are many gods in heaven. We call it heaven because it is beyond natural phenomena. The cause should be beyond the effect; so, the cause is transcendent. We may consider the cause of natural phenomena as a heavenly operation—a kingdom of gods. Many things are there, so there must be many gods behind each one. This is supposed to be the beginning of religious awareness, if we are to believe the findings of historical researchers in the rising of the religious consciousness. We cannot say that this is the only way of looking at things; this is one way, the empirical way, the inductive method, which modern historians of religious philosophy employ.

The Rig Veda has all the features of this kind of perception of the consequences of the divine operations behind everything. But the quest did not end there. The inquisitiveness of the human mind is so deep that it can never be satisfied. It goes on asking more and more questions, again and again, “How is it? Why is it like that?”

If there are many different divinities, an angel operating behind everything, all which is endless in its variety, then what would be the relationship between these divinities? They will be like scattered existences, with no concourse or relationship among them. A higher advance in the consciousness of these many gods felt like accepting that these divinities must be working in groups. Just as a single human being cannot achieve anything, and for that reason people join organisations, societies, institutions, etc., a single god cannot be the explanation for any phenomenon. There must be group gods—Vishva Devas, as they are called in the Rig Veda Samhita. Many gods must be in collaboration, as a group or a society of gods. Here also, the quest did not end.

While there can be many groups, what is the relationship of one group to another group? In a national setup, if there were many villages and commissionaries operating independently, there would be no unity in the concept of the nation. The districts and the commissionaries and villages, etc., have to be brought together into a larger concept of the national administration. So, this group psychology, or the idea of group gods, was not found satisfying, finally. We may say that it took centuries for the human mind to go on advancing itself gradually, stage by stage. It is not that every day a new thought comes. For centuries, one thought may continue; after some centuries, another thought in an advanced form begins.

We can accept that there is also a unity among the community of gods. Indra is the ruler of the gods, we say in mythological epics. Why should there be a ruler of the gods? Are the gods not complete in themselves? Are the collectors and the commissioners and state secretaries not complete in themselves? Maybe they are complete, but they require coordination from a higher authority, which is the concept of the constitution of the government. It is the central pivotal determining factor. Many gods, or even groups of gods, cannot satisfy us. The government can be only one; we cannot have two governments.

Even today, when there are many governments in the world, people are not satisfied. There are statesmen who dream of what may be called a world government. Why should we have many governments? If there were a world government, there would be no conflict of any kind. Everything would be interrelated beautifully, harmonised perfectly. Maybe there would be no wars and conflicts of any kind, and all contention would cease. This is the hope of humanity.

The mind is not satisfied with anything. It wants to be complete in every way; and we cannot have two complete things together, like two great men, because two great men cannot join unless there is a third thing greater than these two great men. This brought the religious quest to the concept of monotheism: there is one God. One God rules the whole universe. He is the creator, the preserver, the dissolver, and the destroyer. We in India, in Hindu circles, call it Brahma-Vishnu-Siva. Every religion conceives God as having a threefold function: there is a perpetual creation going on, there is a continual sustenance and maintenance in perfect order of what is created, and there is a dissolution taking place.

At every moment there are new productions of cellular activity in our body. New cells are formed; creation takes place every moment in our body. These cells are main­tained in a perfect order, in an anabolic fashion, constructively, and they have to transform themselves into a newer setup of greater advancement in the structure of our personality. There is a catabolic activity taking place, because otherwise we would have the same cells always, and would not grow at all. So, Brahma-Vishnu-Siva are operat­ing not as one thing today, another thing tomorrow, and a third thing on the following day. The three gods act immediately, simultaneously, if we can conceive of such a possibility.

At every moment there is creation, preservation, and destruction. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are one God only, finally—three functions of the one God. Monotheism is the doctrine of one God. In India, the great teachers of monotheism are Acharya Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha, Nimbarka, Sri Krishna Chaitanya Deva, and the great protagonists of the Saiva Agamas, and even the Sakta Agamas. There is one divinity finally, they say. Still, there is no full satisfaction. God has created the world; all right, we accept it. But is God inside the world or outside the world?

The Nyaya and the Vaiseshika philosophers in the East have considered that God is extra-cosmic. God is above the world, unconnected with the world, transcendent to the world, and therefore extra-cosmic. This is the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika. Even the Ishvara propounded by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras is of that nature. Ishvara is only an apparatus. He does not enter the world. He operates the world from a distance, like a carpenter making a table or chair, or a potter fashioning mud pots.

The relationship between God and the world is not clear. Many thought God is inside the world—the whole world is God. Western philosophers dubbed this kind of thought as pantheism, which means ‘all God’. The whole world and creation is only God. But this is considered to be a foolish notion, and not acceptable finally. We cannot say that God has become the world as milk becomes curd or yoghurt, because curd cannot become milk once again; so if God has exhausted Himself in this world, there would be no such thing as reaching God afterwards because He has exhausted Himself here in the world. So, great thinkers later on coined this word ‘pantheism’. God may be immanent, but He is not pantheistic; He is also transcendent, at the same time.

Difficult is this concept. How would God be inside, as well as not inside? Here philosophical argument fails; reason cannot go further. It says, “Thus far, and no further.” When intellect fails, true religion begins. Religious perception, or religious awareness, is an intuitive process. It is a self-identical recognition of Being-as-such, or God knowing God. The theistic concept also brought these problems. When did God create the world? This question follows when we accept that God created the world, because creation is a temporal process. Space and time are necessary in order that the world may be created, so God must have created space and time first, before creating the world.

But space and time also are products of the process of creation. And so, how do we explain creation? What is the substance out of which the world is made? Call it space-time, or whatever—this substance out of which God has created the world should have a relationship to God. This relationship is inexplicable because if we say He has fashioned a thing out of a material, like the Prakriti of the Samkhya, then there would be no connection between the Creator and the created. Samkhya tells us that Purusha has no connection with Prakriti. If that is the case, people who are involved in Prakriti cannot contact Purusha.

Theism has many difficulties, such as the perception of evil in the world, chaos, and ugliness. Everything is not beautiful. Who created evil? If God created the world, He must have also created evil and sin. But this is abhorrent; we cannot say that. No sensible person will say God created evil and sin.

Then, when God created the world, He did not create sin. Who created it? No individual can be called the creator of sin, because sin is an aberration from the Universal Whole, and unless the aberration has already taken place, the individual cannot come into existence. Therefore, we cannot say it exists in the individual. It cannot exist in God, also. These problems arise due to the theistic conception of God.

Beyond that is the monistic conception, the conception of the Absolute. In the West, Hegel represents this mode of thinking; and in the East, the Upanishads and principally Acharya Sankara give a presentation of this to some extent. The whole thing ends in monism, the acceptance of an indescribable, incomprehensible, astound­ing Absolute. Religion leads to this final conclusion in its aspiration for perfection. Since the Absolute cannot be outside the seeker of the Absolute, the very consciousness of the Absolute is a kind of freedom attained. “Knowing Brahman is being Brahman,” say the Upanishads. To know the Absolute is to be the Absolute.

Minds which are impure, which cannot free themselves from the various prejudices  inseparable from human nature, cannot conceive the Absolute. Therefore, a great many disciplinary processes have been prescribed before entering into the argument of God as the Absolute. They are called the yamas and niyamas. Here we are faced with a danger of touching an impossible thing, if the means of this touch or contact is not strong enough. That is why the seeking soul, which is the seeker of the Absolute, is not the mind that seeks it. The Absolute, planted in the human individual as the Atman, seeks it. That is why they say the Atman is Brahman, the Self is the Absolute.

Here religion reaches its climax in an astounding manner. If it is pursued vigilantly, with sincerity and purity of heart, it will end this turmoil of transmigratory existence, and we will attain what is called final liberation, or Moksha.