The Philosophical Foundations of Religious Consciousness

by Swami Krishnananda

When we read about the lives of kings, heroes and prophets, and about the lives of incarnations and deities, and so on – even of demons, as it is delineated in the Epics and the Puranas – we practically become them, for the time being, by an en rapport association with that about which we are reading, as it happens when we witness a good dramatic performance or even a movie. We get changed. A cathartic action takes place in our psyche when that which we like is presented very poignantly before us, and it becomes completely overt. Many a time our affections are hidden on account of social taboos. They are brought out very perspicaciously in the presentations of dramatic actions.

This is the case with the Epics and the Puranass, which are dramas written by the ancient masters, where evil that is dark and affection which is persistent are both presented vividly before us and we see ourselves, as it were, by an externalised projection of our own psyche in the personalities that act in the drama. We vibrate in harmony to the music and the gesticulation. We nod our head, our eyes shed tears, and our whole body vibrates. Did you have this kind of feeling? Did you have this kind of reaction in your mind when you read the Ramayana for instance, or the Mahabharata? It titillates you, it throbs you, it energises you, it enraptures you. It makes you a completely different person because, for the time being, you are Yudhishthira. You feel like crying by the observation of the righteousness that has gone to the extreme in a personality like Yudhishthira. By the indomitable strength of Bhima, you become like an animal – that is, like an elephant, as it were – when you go on seeing, again and again, the portrait and the actions of Bhima. The dexterity, the wisdom, the agility and the success of Arjuna, the divinity of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, Rama’s greatness, and also the epics of the West that I mentioned, all present actually in a visible form, in a concrete presentation, as it were, all that is inside us.

The Epics and the Puranas have this specific function to perform – namely, to bring out our psychic potentials into overt action. That is to say, we must physically see what is inside us. It can be seen by actual dramatic enactment in a theatre. But no theatre can be larger than the Mahabharata or the Ramayana, and the actors there exhaust every potentiality. The hundreds of personalities about whom we read in epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata or even the Vishnu Purana or Srimad Bhagavata, etc., complete the list of all the possible potentialities and expressions of human nature. We become cleansed completely, as it were, after the study of these Epics.

Very few of us might have read them. We read only abridgements, précis, etc., and we know some little titbits or episodes of these Epics. They should be read in their entirety. We will feel that we have been completely washed, in and out. Also, God who was a distant authority, high in the heavens, is made to come down to the level of a real beloved Sri Krishna with his Radha, or Rama and Lakshmana who are the well-wishers of people.

The purpose of these Suhrit Samhitas, or the Epics and the Puranas particularly, is to make God an affectionate object. The worship of God is an act of love that we manifest in our personal life. It is not an instruction coming from an authority or a boss that we are obeying – as is the case with the Smritis and the Vedic Samhitas – which is a different matter altogether. We do it, but that is not enough because our feelings are drying up inside while our understanding is enhancing itself in philosophical considerations. The feelings cannot dry up. They will be like dry seeds, ready to manifest one day or the other, to our own detriment, if they are not taken care of intelligently.

Therefore, the great sages who were the masters of religious instruction thought it proper to also bring out the feelings of the human being in religious awakening. God should be a friend, philosopher and guide, and an object of beauty. Do we consider God as a beautiful person? Has anybody thought over this? God is a dread, a Justice of the highest court. He is a legal enactor. He is a person who imposes Himself on others. Do we like such a person? For fear of consequences, we may like that person; but fear of consequence is not really our whole-hearted submission. God is not merely power and authority, but also beauty and attraction.

The fact that we relegate God only to the realm of power and authority and completely ignore His beauty and attraction is a peculiar stigma, we should say, in the presentation of proper religion. Religion becomes painful, bitter, difficult to practise, and we have no time for it, generally speaking; it is somehow or other reluctantly undertaken as a kind of necessary evil. This should not be the attitude. It is an attraction that pulls, it is so beautiful and grand, and millions of full moons cannot compare with the beauty of the face of God. Some of these facets have been brought out in the Srimad Bhagavad Mahapurana where is described the grandeur and the beauty and the attraction of the avatara Bhagavan Sri Krishna.

We cannot imagine God as a beautiful person because we have been brainwashed into the feeling that He is an authority. He is a creator, He is a power, and He insists on what He thinks is right, whether we like it or not. This kind of idea has gone into our head wrongly. God is a compassionate mother: mata dhata pitamahah. He is the supporter, and kind like a mother, though He is very strict like a father. Not only that – apart from His being the abode of truth and goodness, He is also beautiful.

The three values of life are supposed to be embodied in the great values called truth, goodness and beauty – i.e., philosophical accuracy, ethical confirmation and aesthetic beauty. All these three should be blended together in order that something be finally acceptable. If it is philosophically justifiable but ethically not good, that would not be complete. Ethically good but philosophically not acceptable is also not good. If both are there but it is not attractive, then also it is not good. The Puranas present a picture of God before us as ultimate truth, ultimate ethicality, morality and justice, and the greatest attraction, beauty and taste. Raso vai sah: God is tasty, nectar-like, honey. We can drink Him. Who can think of God like this? Thayumanavar, a great Tamil Saint, sang “ananda tene: O Honey of bliss!” This is how we have to cry to God. Not “O Lord, controller of the heavens!” or “O Justice of the Supreme Court, the Terror!” This is not necessarily the way of looking at God. “O Honey that I can drink!” “O Milk that flows!” “O Heart of my heart!” “O Apple of my eyes!” “O Beauty of beauties!” The Bhagavata, the Epics and the Puranas have done great justice to bring out these potentials of human beings where we well up in the totality of our personality and we cease to be that little potential of animal and vegetable. We become completely human. Not only that, but the divine potentialities also are brought out in the Suhrit Samhitas.

Much more can be said about these Epics and Puranas. Every student of religion should read these epics. Not merely the Mahabharata and the Ramayana – even the western Eddas, Aeniads or the Iliad or the Odyssey of Milton’s Paradise Lost  - all these are wonderful things which will bring your heart in consonance with your philosophical understanding. An intuitive grasp will be generated in your personality and you will know that religion is not merely an occupation, or a performance, or a way of living among many other possible ways of living; it is the only way possible for living in the world. That is the only manner in which you have to conduct yourself. It is en rapport of your personality with the Ultimate Reality of life which is the best in every form, every way.

The Srimad Bhagavata Purana excels the other Puranas in this respect because it gives a complete picture of the whole of the creative process including the avataras of Narayana, which are about twenty-four in number, and also the genealogy of the rulers of the Solar and the Lunar lines, concluding with the end of the world itself. The Srimad Bhagavata is considered as one of the noblest of religious texts available in the world.

Vidyavatam bhagavate pariksha is another viewpoint of the Srimad Bhagavata. It is not merely rasa, or taste; it is also a literature that tests the ability of a scholar. If you want to know whether a person is really scholarly or not, give him the Srimad Bhagavata Purana and ask him to expound it. It is difficult not only because of the complexity and toughness of the Sanskrit style but also because of the implications, the profundities and the hidden meanings behind the great verses. The pinnacle of the Srimad Bhagavata is reached in the tenth skanda where the threefold phase of Sri Krishna’s life – the Vrindavana lila, the Mathura lila and the Dwaraka lila – is described. The Kurukshetra lila is mentioned very little in the Bhagavata. For that, you have to go to the Mahabharata. These will tell you how a perfect gentleman, how a perfect hero, a perfect yogi, a perfect householder, a perfect sannyasin, a perfect god lives in the world. Purana Purushottama, the complete incarnation, is delineated there – not because we have to hear the story of the great man, but because we have to mould ourselves into the possibility of becoming such a kind of person. He is the example of the great superman of the East; and, man is to become superman. You, I, everybody – one day or the other we have to become supermen. We cannot exist merely as men crawling on the earth like insects.

Why are these great stories of the power of Rama, the greatness of Krishna, the goodness of Yudhisthira, the strength of Bhima, and the agility of Arjuna told to us? We have to become like that, so that we become perfect – expert in action like Arjuna, strong like Bhima, good like Yudhisthira, great like Krishna, and indomitable like Rama. The Epics and the Puranas tell us these stories in a touching way, breaking the cords of our hearts and making us religious even without our wanting it. Such is the greatness of the second category of scriptures in India, the Suhrit Samhita, apart from the well-known Prabhu Samhita which consists of two aspects, as I mentioned – the Veda Samhitas and the Smritis. And in other countries also there is the Torah and the Talmud in the Jewish religion, the Christian dogma and its mysticism, the original traditional Shia and Sunni and Sufism in Islam, and there are many other aspects of this kind of dual presentation of the traditional and mystical aspects of religion. India has every aspect of religion and is considered to be a repository of religious consciousness of all these, blended in abundance; and as I particularly mentioned to you, the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, together with the Srimad Bhagavata Purana, will fill you with joy.

Religion has to fill you with joy; otherwise, it is not religion. If somehow or the other, unwillingly, you have to get up in the morning and wipe your eyes and take a cold bath because it is told in the scripture, this is not religion. It is joy; it is good:  “It does me good; I am happy; I am healthy; it is my duty.  I invoke God in the early morning hours. Suryanarayana is rising in the east; prostration to Him! He is the life and the soul and the well-being of everybody, the prana sakti, the very prana, the life breath of people, rising in the east! Prostration to Him!” Joy, happiness, bliss, freedom, release from tension of every kind and making you a healthy individual both inwardly and outwardly is the function of religion.