Religion and Social Values

by Swami Krishnananda

What a reality is enshrined in these secular calls of life! How can you ignore them in the name of God, in the name of religion, in the name of Guru, in the name of the Divine Name? If you say, “God is a greater reality. Guru is more important than any other wealth or occupation that I have. Religion is my pursuit,” have you been able to instil the religious spirit or the spiritual outlook into your daily occupations? Or, are you still regarding them as two different departments of activity?

Here again, there is a jumble in our thinking. We are not very clear in our thoughts. Often, we think that religion is different from secular life. To be an executive engineer is not leading a spiritual life; the engineer is convinced about it. He is convinced, at the same time, that he has to devote the larger part of his time to his executive engineer’s work. Again, the consequent persuasion follows. Somehow, sneakingly, the feeling enters that the larger part of the day—which is to be devoted to his job—is a larger, greater, more intensive reality than the call of religion or spirituality. Here the cat is out of the bag, as they say; the truth comes out.

There is a very difficult knot that you have tied within your own selves, and that inside core of this psychological knot is utter darkness. No light can penetrate it, so you cannot know that you are in this circumstance. You cannot be aware what the trouble is. Sometimes, you feel that there is no trouble at all. Especially when you are physically healthy and financially wealthy—social status is there and everybody smiles at your face—it may appear that nothing is wrong in this world. But you cannot expect such rewards from life always.

Sometimes, you may be warned that this is not the true state of affairs. You get warnings from various sides—from your office, from your social relationships, from your own body also—that things are not exactly as you think. There is something different from what you are imagining in your mind. Now, this is a point which is not visible outside to the naked eye because it is only inside, not outside. But the urges of your mind, which channelise themselves through the avenues of the senses, pull you out of yourself in the direction of your activities in office and factory, etc. so forcefully and impetuously that you have no consciousness that there is a dark patch within your own self, which even an X-ray cannot discover. This dark patch obstructs the movement of light from within you. And, just as a dark spot in a moving film may be projected on the screen and you will see the black spot on the screen, although actually it is not on the screen—it is in the film that is moving through the projector, which is seen outside—likewise, you will project this black spot onto other people. You will see all people in this world as evil: “There is no good man anywhere. Everyone is wretched, stupid and idiotic.” This difficulty, which is sociological, may be a consequence of a psychological lacuna, as you can understand from the illustration of how a defect in the film can make the screen outside appear defective inasmuch as nobody looks at the film but everyone sees only the screen outside.

There is much to say about our own selves; but we cannot become objects of our own study. Since all our studies are laboratory investigations and observations through telescopes, microscopes, etc., we cannot study our own selves. This little lacuna, this knot, this confusion, this dark spot, this rubbish within cannot be seen by ourselves because there is no instrument that we can apply against us. It is not an object; it is a subject, to put it more precisely. As we are subjects, we cannot become objects. We cannot become other than what we are; hence, we cannot study our own selves. The syllabuses of our educational institutions do not prescribe the study of one’s own self. It is all a study of somebody else, as if somebody else is the most important thing in the world, and one has nothing to say about one’s own self. The truth is the other way around.

Due to a total misguiding movement of the mind, an overemphasis is laid on that which is not ourselves, while secretly our love for our own selves is the most intense. There is an altruistic manifestation of a secret selfishness in man, mostly. Thus, the world goes. It is not for nothing that the great master said that the world is maya, a tremendous illusion. In what sense it is an illusion, you will have to study for your own self. At least, in one sense, I have mentioned to you what it is like: a projection of a picture which is not the true picture of the world, and an engagement of your whole personality in the witnessing and visualisation of the performance of this untrue picture of the world. Do you not call this maya? What else is maya, if not this?

Now you should be a little clear as to why you are unhappy in this world. Nobody makes you unhappy—not your boss, not your subordinate, not your husband, not your wife, not anybody. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” as the poet put it. There is something very strange within our own selves in many a sense, not only in one sense. Anatomically and physiologically, we are strange complexes. The more we study the anatomical, physiological and biological structure of man, the greater is the miracle and marvel that we see in our own self. Strange is the bodily performance—the muscular and the nervous operation of man. Strange is the way in which the vital breath blows. Miraculous is the way in which we are breathing and how the lungs operate. Wonder again is the way in which we digest our food and one substance is chemically converted and transmuted into another substance in the alimentary canal. Wonder again is the way in which we are thinking and apprehending two things at the same time—a very, very unsatisfactory worldly environment around us, and a great hope for perfection on the other side.

There is a still greater marvel within every one of us which is the cause of these marvellous operations in our intellect, our reason, our mind, our breathing, our body, and in our social relationships, also. There is a marvel behind marvels. Every discovery of man, scientifically, artistically or philosophically has been a revelation of a marvel that works in this world. Every scientist discovers a marvel. “Oh, what a wonder!” he cries out in the joy of his discovery. Psychologists discover a marvel. Biologists cry out, “Eureka! What a marvel!”—all this because the secret of life is itself a great marvel.

These words that I have placed before you are in the form of an introductory description of the conditions from which you have to move higher on, upwards to that which you are aspiring for in Ashrams, in institutions, in temples, in religious scriptures, and in Sadhana Weeks.

The first step that you have to take in the practice of sadhana, or the learning of the art of spiritual living, is to understand what that first step is. Everyone knows that the first step cannot be the second step; it has to be the first only. But what is the first step? The first step is the very condition in which you are now. If you are studying in the second standard, the first step is the second standard. From there, you move to the third standard. If you are in the tenth standard, the initial step is the tenth standard only; from there, you go to the eleventh standard and onwards. But it has to be finalised as to what is the standard in which you are existing now. Perhaps, none of you are uniformly in a single standard. None of you are born on the same day and at the same minute. Therefore, from the point of view of the evolutionary law of the universe at least, none of you can be said to be literally on a par with another. You may be all disciples of the same Guru; you may be all reading the same scripture; you may all belong to a single religious faith; you may be living in the same house, in the same Ashram or institution. Nevertheless, you may be different from one another from the point of view of a subtle discovery of the standpoint of your own total makeup, psychophysically.

Many of you cannot know your own level, and will not find it easy to discover the circumstances of your life. It requires a superior investigative faculty. Rarely can people know the truths of their own selves. You can know your strengths and weaknesses to some extent, if you are honest to yourself. But if, as it is the case with most people, you are wrongly convinced that milk and honey are flowing in this world and you are on velvet, that would be an overestimation from which you have to guard yourself. There is no need to underestimate yourself as a sinner and a good-for-nothing fellow in this world. That also may not be a true picture of yourself. Nor may it be true that you are on a high pedestal of living and you are a master of all the arts. So, let there be a true assessment of yourself.

How are you going to make this assessment? Many of you would find it difficult to find a guide. People live in distant places or large cities, and have many difficulties in life. How will you find a suitable guide? Where such a guide is possible, go to that guide and ask that superior: “What do you advise me, sir, at this present moment of time in the condition in which you discover me now?” If this is not possible, sit alone for a few minutes before you go to bed at night—after you finish your dinner, chat with your family members and read the newspaper or whatever you do. When all that is done and you are free to go to bed, do not suddenly lie down. Let the family go to sleep, but do not go to sleep. Sit alone and close your eyes: “Am I really a great man inside? Have I any importance? Is there any significance in me which is worth reckoning in life? Is there any importance attached to me?”

Importance—significance, value, greatness, whatever it is—is a description of either your social association or relationship with people, your physical condition, your mental structure, or your physical achievement. “Am I great, spiritually?” Put a question to yourself. “Am I a highly achieved person in the religious and spiritual fields? Am I a highly accomplished person in an intellectual and rational field, or in a scientific field?” You will receive a very, very uncomfortable answer to your question. “Am I a perfectly well-built physical stalwart? Am I really a very significant and valued person in human society?” What else is there in life except the value that you have in respect of your relationship with other people, the value that you attach to your own physical strength, the value that you attach to your own educational or artistic and scientific achievements, or your religious and spiritual heights? In what sense are you important in this world? You would be really sorry when you receive the answers from your own self. Perhaps you would not be able to sleep after a thorough investigation of your own self in all these directions. What is there in you, except these things that I have mentioned?

Most of us are only socially related individuals. We have nothing to call our own except that which is bestowed upon us by our social relationships. Family circumstances also come under social relationship; and nothing can be so brittle as social relationship. If that is the stand we are taking to assess ourselves, sorry indeed is our state of affairs.

Let each one take a diary or a notebook in one’s hand. Keep it secret. You need not show it to anybody else. “What is my importance? What have I achieved? I am twenty years of age—thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years of age. What are my achievements in the social field, the vital, artistic, intellectual, scientific and spiritual fields?” Each one of you will get an answer from your own self. That answer is the stand on which you have to take the first step. The first step that you have to take in your ascent towards the perfection that you are aspiring for is the answer that you get to these questions privately received in your bedroom when you are absolutely alone—unseen, unbefriended, and unknown to people.

But you are too busy. You have no time to sit like this. You come tired, exhausted. Who can sit like this? If you are interested in your own welfare, you should not say, “I am tired, fed up, overworked in the factory or office and also in the house. I have come home and will go to bed.” Who will not be interested in one’s own self? If you are really concerned with your welfare, how will you not find time to think of your welfare? How could you be exhausted? You will not be exhausted.

These preliminary remarks may suffice for this day for you all to contemplate as a foundational arrangement that you can make within your own mental field and discover the nature of the pedestal, or the step in the ladder of evolution, on which you are standing, and from which you have to ascend further.