Religion and Social Values

by Swami Krishnananda

During this period of Sadhana Week, it is obviously your intention to gather a new strength into your own selves and return home as a rejuvenated personality, and not as a person who has attended a festival, a mela or a rejoicing—after which, generally, your energies are depleted. You go as a weakened person after a dramatic performance or a presentation which stimulates your vitals, stirs up your emotions, and agitates the cells of your body. Sadhana Week is not a dramatic performance. It is not an enactment by performers on a stage, and it is not your function to witness the presentations as if they are performances in a theatre.

You have come with a different purpose, with personal difficulties which are eagerly waiting to come to the surface of your consciousness when the door opens and when you are left to your own selves. The din and bustle of life—the activities, the responsibilities, and the types of relationships you maintain in human society—manage to keep you out of yourself. They so dexterously operate that you feel you are leading a normal life.

That which is normal does not present any difficulties before us. Anything that pinches us, like a nail in the bottom of the shoe—that which irks us and keeps us out of alignment, whether outwardly in our social relationships or inwardly within our own selves—these symptoms which keep us restless in any measure, and anxious to some extent, may be considered as symptoms of certain behaviours and operations within our own selves which cannot be regarded as normal.

The normalcy of the physical body, which we call health, is also a state where we are buoyant with a new type of freedom. The greatest freedom is health, in which condition of freedom from every shackle we feel buoyant and often forget our own selves. The healthier we are, the less we think of ourselves. When an illness of any kind enters our body, we become conscious that we are. We begin to be aware of each limb of the body. An eye, an ear, a tooth, a finger, a toe, or any blessed part of our body attracts our attention when it is set out of tune with the normal function of the body.

So is the illness of man in general. The continuous consciousness of ourselves and people around us, with a consciousness attending upon it as an awareness of our peculiar adjustable relationship with people which keeps us perpetually aware of our personal relationship with others, keeps us also in a state of anxiety of an indescribable character. No one knows definitely what would happen to oneself the next moment, and there is an apprehension that something untoward may happen.

While anxiety about the future may be permitted if nothing unpleasant is going to be expected in the future, it becomes intolerable when we always expect something which may be to the detriment of our well-being. This anxiety, this apprehension, arises from our own selves. It does not come from outside; it does not drop from the trees. There is a wholesale maladjustment of ourselves right from the outer skin down to the deepest of whatever we can be, and so whatever we speak is an artificial expression of our conduct. We do not and cannot reveal the whole of ourselves in our expressions. When we think, we are guardedly thinking about circumstances, lest repercussions may impinge upon us. We are always at daggers drawn, under a pressure of a feeling that we are not in our own homes. There is a necessity felt by every one of us to be vigilant, as if we are on a battlefield.

Go down deep into your own mind and think for yourself. Who has peace in this world? That tentative comfort that you may be enjoying in life—either due to your placement in society, your financial status or your physical condition—is, again, a matter of apprehension. Who can be always healthy? Who can be always wealthy? And who can be always secure in this world? Hence, who can always have peace? This medical analysis of the mental states of people will reveal not happy conclusions. But unhappiness is loathsome. Illness is what we detest, and comfort is the aim of our social and physical existence. While inwardly we are secretly made to be conscious of something which is at sixes and sevens with the world, outwardly we are pressurised, due to another circumstance, to comfort ourselves that everything is all right.

There is a very peculiar attitude that we develop towards our own selves which can be very safely defined by a single word: duplicity. We do not maintain a true relationship with our own selves. At the very outset, we manage to be untrue to our own selves in order that we may live in an untrue relationship with people. It is sometimes felt that in order to justify one falsehood, another falsehood may have to be heaped over it. A single falsehood does not stand on its own legs. We are acutely aware of something peculiar in our own selves which cannot stand the logic of nature or, perhaps, the will of God; and with this circumstance, we have to live in this world.

We have been forced to accept that we somehow have to live in this world. We do not ask people, “Is it necessary for me to live in this world?” The question is already answered by our own selves: It is necessary. That it is necessary to live in this world is not learned by us from books. It is not a sermon that we have received from our Gurus or Masters. We have come to a conclusion definitely, by our own selves, for reasons we alone know: It is necessary to exist in this world. A hypothesis is already taken for granted. And this necessity to exist is—very, very unfortunately for us—involved in a network of complicated adjustments that we are required to make every moment of time, so that every minute that we pass seems to be an artificial existence. We are perpetually aware as to what is around us, as a field marshal may be looking around in the battlefield to see what is moving and operating in all ten directions. What rest can we have here? But rest we must have. We have already concluded that it must be there; and we have to move Earth and heaven to gain this acquisition.

The inward suspicion with regard to one’s own capabilities in the understanding of the nature of this world, and the powers that one can wield in this world, go hand in hand with the suspicion that we develop with everyone else in the world. We cannot trust anybody wholly, because we cannot trust ourselves wholly. This is because the trust, or the distrust, as the case may be, is only a description of an attitude that we generally develop in regard to anything—firstly, in regard to our own selves, and secondly, in regard to others. The distrust in regard to ourselves—in regard to the knowledge that we have and the powers that we wield—naturally has to condition the feelings that we have in regard to other people in the world, so that we cannot wholly trust our own brother. We have to be guarded even with him, for a secret reason which each one knows and no one can publicise. What a pitiable state of affairs that we have a secret attitude which conditions our public attitude in respect of the whole world—a secret which cannot be publicised, yet which conditions our public behaviour.

This very difficult-to-understand situation of our own mental operations is perhaps the background of very bitter analyses which were ruthlessly conducted by psychoanalysis about the nature of man in this world. Medical examination is not always a pleasant thing to undergo. Very unpleasant it is, for various reasons. And even to find time to go deep into our own mental makeup is not a happy thing. When we go into the corners of the citadel in which we are living, we will not scent fragrance, and perhaps we will not find even a clean floor to sit upon. Within ourselves is a world of dustbins, cobwebs, and undiscovered, uninhabited abysmal niches which refuse to come to the surface, or into the daylight of understanding. There are corners in our own selves which we do not want to see.

Are there not corners in your own room which you hide from visitors because they are not clean? There is a basket where you have thrown torn pieces of paper. There is an old cloth which you have been using for wiping your floor. There is a kitchen which is all pell-mell. You have only a drawing room with a beautiful sofa to receive VVIPs. Such a drawing room we have within our own selves; but the unwanted corners, unfortunately for us, are a majority in their number. The drawing room within ourselves is very small in extent, and very few VVIPs can go inside. But we manage to behave very well with these VIPs, and shake hands with them knowing very well what we have inside our hearts: quarrels, disharmonies, court cases, daily skirmishes and a doubt as to whether it is good to die or live with such peculiar, suspicious surroundings within our own precincts. Nevertheless, we manage to shake hands with people and sit in parlance.

This sad state of affairs cannot go on for a long time. Every dog has his day, and we have our day. But that day cannot be every day. This is the beginning of a right pursuit in the direction of the true values of life. As we know very well, by common sense, that no enterprise can be embarked upon in life without perfect health of the body, the basic prerequisite of any adventure is physical health, first and foremost. Likewise, in your noble pursuits with whose sublime notions you have come to this Sadhana Week, the fulfilment of these purposes requires a basic presupposition and requirement: mental health.

Everyone here is mentally healthy; it is perfectly clear. But the mental health that we are considering and referring to under the circumstances of the nature of the aspiration with which you have come here is something different from the normalcy of the mental operations of man. And if you like to call it so, you may say there is a supernormal condition of mental functions. It is this that can be the means of the fulfilment of your noble aspirations in the field of religion or spirituality, or on the path of God-realisation. An unhealthy mind is like a sick body, which will retard any progress in any direction—because sickness attracts attention immediately, and it will not permit the diverting of the mind in any other way.

The sickness of the mind from a purely philosophical, religious or spiritual point of view is not that particular sickness which is treated in facilities for the psychopathological. This is a different thing altogether, which requires a different set of instruments to gauge the performances of each one’s own mind.

The other difficulty with us is that another person cannot easily help us in this matter, because very few can go into our own mind. Though there are ways and means of studying another’s mind, these are not easy ways. They require deep training and a highly impersonal conduct of the mind to appreciate the exact conditions in which another’s mind operates. But we are the best judge of our own self.

The personal and social conditions of life take much of our time. Do you not believe that the large part of the day is taken up by your social engagements and personal needs? Are you not convinced that you have very little time to devote to what you call religion, or the path of the spirit? Do you not have a perpetual complaint that you cannot afford to find time for religious pursuits or to live a spiritual life, inasmuch as you have other engagements—the calls of life which are pressing in their nature? Do you not also believe that these pressing circumstances which pull your attention in their direction are very important for you? Be very, very honest and dispassionate in this analysis. Do not misguide yourself that you are a lover of God. There is no need to placate oneself in matters which are very serious.

Now, the time that you have to devote to secular pursuits, as they are usually called, is large in extent. These pursuits are very pressing, with great commitments and impossible obligations in life, due to which you have to run and catch the fastest vehicle that can take you to your destination. Let each one ponder over one’s own obligations and aspirations in their collaborative relationship. How is it that you have persuaded yourself to believe that the larger part of the day has to go to that which presses very heavily upon your head? This persuasion comes because of the reality you associate to these obligations. They are very real, very necessary, and their reality is of such an intensive nature that any neglect on your side will catch you by the throat. You know it very well.