Religion and Social Values

by Swami Krishnananda

In every moment of time, a circumstance arises in everyone’s life when the conditions of the fourfold cycle manifest themselves; and inasmuch as God is timeless, the conditions of time may not always operate, because there is also the timeless element in man. We have the power to summon God, though we also have the weakness of getting subjected to nature’s laws. So we are difficult individuals, very hard to understand, and every bit of the secret of the universe is present within ourselves. Every switch of every connection with everything in the world is present within us. Man is the switchboard of the whole cosmos. We can operate all the planes of existence by touching some parts of our body, without moving an inch from where we are sitting. This is the facility that is provided to man—the greatness, rather. But his utter weakness is that he cannot do this operation, for reasons that we have to discover by a further analysis. What is this difficulty?

There are people in this world who belong to two camps. There are those who say that religion has killed man; it has driven him into an imaginary realm of the other world of happiness which he is seeking, and which he cannot find in this world. Inasmuch as religions speak of another world where alone we can expect felicity, and it is always said that this is a world of sorrow—Mrityu Loka, the world of death—there is nothing that can attract us here. “Vairagya is my aspiration,” says the spiritual seeker. “I give up this world. I practice renunciation, self-abnegation. I take to religious practice.”

If this is the attitude of all people, there is nothing that one can do with this world. There is no such thing as a welfare program for human society, or even a love of one’s own neighbour. The question does not arise at all. There is no neighbour for us because the world is not there for us. This is a religious gospel that can be found in the scriptures of all the faiths of the world, and sometimes it is regarded as the interpretation of the teachings of the prophets of religions. Many have taken to this line of approach that the world is Satan’s dominion; it is evil to the core. It is a temptress, it is a network of sensory relations, it is a three-dimensional illusion, and the earlier we get out of its clutches, the better for us. God is in the heavens, and the love of God cannot go hand in hand with the love of the world. Renunciation is the high watermark of religious aspiration. Vairagya is the last word of religion.

All fakirs, monks and nuns—seekers of God— left their homes, father and mother, wife, husband, children, property, and went to live in forests and deserts. They have no concern with humanity or with any living being, or with the Earth itself as a whole. This attitude sometimes becomes the last word in religion, and the only word of religion. Man is naturally forced to become callous even to his body. He regards starvation, fasting, vigil, and a drying up of his senses as the essence of religion. He closes his eyes and bolts his ears and paralyses his senses completely. He gets emaciated physically and socially. Neither does he want anything from the world, nor has he anything to do with the world. Do you not think that this has been the voice of the religions of the world? 

It appears that there was some mistake in this gospel, though there may be some truth in what these people say. Because of the extreme step that these gospels took in the history of their growth, a reaction was set up. Whenever there is an extreme of behaviour even in our body, there is a reaction from the organism in the form of an ache, a pain or a high temperature which arises to rectify the extreme step that has been taken by certain attitudes of the body—such as overeating, fatigue, and so on.

No man does anything in this world; nature alone does everything. The whole universe is a single body, and the world or nature as a whole— the universe, if we would like to call it that— behaves in the same way as the body behaves. Just as no limb of the body acts independently, no man can work independently here. We have neither a friend nor an enemy in this world. We cannot love anybody nor hate anybody, just as we cannot have a particular attachment to one part of our body or hate any part of the body.

I will again repeat that the world behaves in the same way as this body behaves. So whenever there is an excessive activity of a particular part of the body, there is a reaction set up by other parts of the body. Every medical person knows this; even common sense knows this. So any step in the direction of an excess, whether it is a secular move or a religious move, is counterbalanced by the total reaction of nature which can take the form of a historical revolution, a financial crisis, an earthquake, a social catastrophe or an epidemic which will wipe out nations; and unthinkable sorrows may descend upon man.

We should not say that some people are acting. People are not acting; nature is acting. As I told you, there are no people here. There is only a widespread movement of the fingers of nature. I am a finger, you are a finger, and every atom is a finger of nature. So neither this nation is doing something, nor is that nation doing anything. Neither are we doing anything, nor is anybody else doing anything. Nature is doing everything—just as neither are the fingers of our body doing anything, nor is our nose doing anything, nor are our eyes doing anything, but the whole body is doing everything. It is the order of the requisition of the organism of our psychophysical setup that behaves in the form of a headache, a sneeze, a stomach ache, or fatigue of our legs. It is not the legs that ache; the whole body is demanding that ache. Likewise, no nation is behaving in any manner; it is the whole of the universe behaving in one particular required way to set up an extreme step that has been taken either by financiers, capitalists, poor people, selfish persons, religious people, or whatever be the section of people. Any ignored aspect of nature takes up arms, as any ignored limb of the body takes up arms. It wants to be listened to. Even a child who is ignored will cry loudly, at the top of its voice, so that we will hear only its voice and we cannot hear anybody else’s.

The cults and the creeds and the movements in society today, whether they are social or political, are reactions set up by nature, not by man. There is no man. Such a thing does not exist anywhere. Nature does not see people around; it sees only its own limbs. It simply shakes its body. As we stretch our legs when we are tired of sitting in one asana for a long time, nature will stretch her legs when her leg is aching because of a forced bending of that limb to the needs of certain sections of human beings. This is a larger outlook with which we may behold things, rather than studying things only from a political angle or historical viewpoint, or a merely geological or astronomical way of thinking.

The universe is neither political, sociological, geological, nor astronomical. These are only our complacent ways of studying things. For the whole of the universe, there is no astronomy, geology, politics, sociology, just as for our body there is no anatomy, physiology, medicine, etc. They are only our names, and our way of studying and interpreting. It is what it is. Until we learn the art of thinking in this context of nature’s setup, we are not educated persons. We are only holding a piece of paper with some ink scribbled over it, calling it a certificate or a degree. This piece of paper with a little ink splashed over it is not going to be our support when nature shows her claws and her teeth. 

This gospel of religion to which I made reference just now, while it took its stand on certain correct presuppositions in the light of the higher values of life, went wrong in ignoring certain existent values. Man is not merely a religious being; he is also many other things. We may be aspirants after God—and we have to be such aspirants, granted—but we are not only this. You may be a Commissioner or a Collector. Who can say that you are not that? You are that. But if you go on behaving like a Commissioner or a Collector everywhere—in the bathroom, in the marketplace, in the shop, with your wife, with your children, with everybody— you know what will happen to you.

So, that you are a Commissioner is not gainsaid. You are that, and you have to behave like a Collector or a Commissioner when you are required to behave like that. But you are also something else. You are the husband of a wife. You are the father of a child. You are perhaps a sick man requiring medical aid, or you have some frustrated emotions. You have many sorrows in spite of the fact that you are a Cabinet Minister. Now, how can you say that you will simply brush aside all your requirements of the other side and behave only like a Commissioner or a Cabinet Minister? Thus, these religions have made this mistake of catering to only one side of man’s needs. They always behave like Presidents or Prime Ministers. They never thought that they are also hungry stomachs, and they have other small needs which cannot be completely set aside in the name of this great designation of a Prime Minister.

This was the mistake of the religions. That is why religions are now tottering with feeble legs in this world, and people think that perhaps religions will be wiped out completely, even as your post of a Commissioner or a Collector can be wiped out by one jolt from the body which will snatch you away from this world. If your physical condition is ignored, if you do not know that you are a sick man, your Commissionership can be wiped out in one second by that blow of death. Religion can vanish in one second, as is the tendency these days, due to reactions from ideologies, outlooks and philosophies which have something else to say. The philosophy of the stomach is sometimes different from the philosophy of the brain. It is not the same thing. It is the philosophy of the stomach that is speaking nowadays, and the brain is keeping quiet.

Thus, the sorrows of people, which are manysided, are the consequences of reactions set up by the organic structure of the whole of nature. To live a healthy life is, therefore, to live a life of participation in the order of the larger organism to which you belong. You should not imagine that you are only one thing, and not many other things. You are a citizen of a nation. You belong to some country and, therefore, you have some obligations as a citizen of this nation. You cannot say, “I am the Atman and, therefore, I have nothing to say to anybody.” You are not the Atman to such an extent, though it is true that you are the Atman. I bring the analogy once again. Do not forget it. You are not only that, though you are also that.

You have a family obligation, and an obligation to your own community, to your body, to your mind, to your moral sense, to your aesthetic callings, to your rational requisitions—and to your spiritual aspirations, finally and lastly. All these things have to be taken into consideration. Therefore, religion, spirituality, which is also called yoga, is a union of yourself with all the phases of life at once. Just as a successful man is not merely a Collector but also everything else that he is at the same time, a simultaneous awareness of this involvement in the whole setup of life, and not only to behave just from one angle of vision, is the wisdom of life.

“Yoga is union” has often been repeated, again and again, by teachers and masters—but, union with what? You suddenly say, “Union with God; union with the Atman.” This is your glib reply. This reply will not be sufficient unless it is properly interpreted and understood. It is union with Reality. And if you think God is the only reality, the Reality, and yoga is an attempt at union with that Reality, we grant this definition as perfectly valid. But the weakness of man insinuates itself even into this definition of the concept of Reality and God. The weakness of the religions that went to the extremes, about which I mentioned just now, begins to operate even here, and the true concept of God does not enter our heads. We always pray looking up to the skies: “O Lord, have mercy upon us. Free us from these sorrows of life, from this encumbrance, this torture. Take me to Your abode and keep me on Your lap.” This is how we generally pray to God. This is our idea of God.

This is not a correct idea of God. As you call God by a name that is not applicable to Him wholly, He also does not respond to you correctly. Unless the call is complete, the response cannot be complete. If a partial wing of yourself—or rather, an imperfect side of your nature—independently calls out to a God according to its own partial definitions and concepts, a response comes corresponding to this imperfect call, and the imperfectness of that response can have a repercussion on the other aspects of your nature which have not been consulted in your call. That is why you have family problems, troubles in offices, and anxieties everywhere. Whatever the number of japa or the rolling of beads that you perform in the calling of God, you have not been able to receive a response because you have always managed to resent a correct understanding of the circumstances of your life and the nature of God Himself. And, as I tried to explain earlier, you have not been able to understand even the first step that you have to take. You have tried to take the last step, while you are on the lowest pedestal of life.

All religious enthusiasts try to take the last step in religious pursuits and go to the utter extreme, to the ruin of their heath and their social associations. Rebirth cannot be avoided if you directly attempt to approach a pedestal of union for which you are not meant when a neglected call pulls you forcefully down to the level of the Earth. The Earth has its gravitation. It will not allow you to fly in the air, and anyone who tries to fly in the air without proper wings will damage his body by falling down on the Earth.

Thus, it is not enough if you regard yourself as devotees, disciples of a Guru, religious seekers and spiritual aspirants. You must have also the wisdom to discover why you have failed in your pursuits. This is another great question which requires further investigation and study.