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Pujya Dr. K.C. Varadachari
- Volume -2 |
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QUEST FOR UNIVERSAL RELIGION |
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From the dawn of history man has been seeking to
achieve uniformity in his dealings with Nature
and society, into both of which he has bee born.
That this uniformity should be immanent in both
these it is needless to emphasize, for it is
almost axiomatic that the laws of nature and
social existence are those, which are inherent
in both. They are not imposed from without or
from above, but from within.
The naturalistic religion should exemplify this
inherent law-abidingness in all Nature, and the
discovery of these laws of nature would be amply
helpful in making man’s life in Nature both
useful and happy. The earliest thinkers
therefore sought to know Nature and her Laws so
that they could live in accordance with the laws
of nature. This also is a rational mode of
adaptation or adjustment, and since the laws are
universal, or rather must be considered to be
universal, it follows that natural reverence for
laws of nature would be the basic background of
a naturalistic religion – a religion of science
so to speak. This could be called universal, but
not religion because religion has the unique
quality of sublimity and holiness, and is the
connection with or experience of the Spirit
behind all nature as a whole and as self.
As a rational method of discerning the Uiversal
behind all Nature, science is capable of
producing a sense of wholeness of the Abstract
One law behind all the phenomena of external
nature. But it gives only the form of Nature,
and not the Spirit behind and underlying all
Nature. We have seen that Swami Vivekananda
speaks of the Experience of the Abstract Oneness
underlying all the varied manifestations or our
phenomenal existence. He speaks about the
impersonal as supremely exciting, much more than
that of the personal, and the many, which are
but the surface natures of the Impersonal and
the One. However, Reality in being reduced to
this abstract Experience loses much of the
supreme Values which are demands of the
religious consciousness, which are to be had
fully in a deeper personal relation than the
impersonal or the superficial personal.
The Scientific Universal or the rational
universal is external and abstract, though the
abstract itself cannot be realised apart from
the many which it governs as law or being.
Religion of Science, therefore, cannot be truly
religious except that one beholds in the laws a
thing that provokes admiration and delight. But
it therefore also follows that attempts to
arrive at a Universal usually end up in
conceiving an abstraction rather than a reality.
However the abstraction can be the greatest
common measure of all that exists, though it is
distinguished by being called the essence rather
than existence. Professor A.N. Whitehead in his
work has spoken of the greatest generality that
mathematics arrives at, and reveals that this
greatest generality is capable of helping us to
unravel the inmost secrets of the most concrete.
Indeed it is even possible to conjecture that
the more general a concept is, the more dynamic
it is in the understanding of the functions of
the particular. Mathematics becomes most capable
of revealing the microcosmic levels of knowedge
just as well as it does those of the
macrocosmic. All knowledge is being, reduced to
the level of general formulae. Philosophy may
rejoice over this discovery of the
potentialities of mathematical knowing, and it
has also used it for the furtherance of its own
exactness. But there are limits to this truth of
the generality. And therefore it may not help
the experience of the concrete as the
manifestation of the Abstrct; of existence as
the expression of the essence. Whilst philosophy
may afford to arrive at the general and the
impersonal, and this is its goal, religion is
practically dedicated to an understanding and
union with the individual and the particular in
its relation to the whole or the All. The
Universal becomes the All.
Thus, a rational religion may arrive at the
General form of Reality without realizing the
significance of the concrete, or rather by
denying it. It is usually stated that Vedanta of
Advaita is the most rational religion because it
is the religion of the greatest generality, the
most common features being present in it. That,
by itself, would not make for religion though it
would be a very important feature about it, its
most philosophic or scientific feature about it.
Critics there are who do not see how religion,
which is a matter of emotion or unitedness or
union with the Ultimate (which may be the most
General or Universal), could go with it. So much
so there are thinkers who feel that religion and
rationality are impossible. They would say a
rational religion would be neither rational nor
a religion, Religion has to deal with the
supra-rational reality and with perhaps a
supra-rational existence. Therefore in a sense
it appears to be beyond the natural. It is
therefore called the experience of the
supra-natural, of course within the bounds of
Nature.
If it is claimed that we could arrive at a
really religious experience only for and by the
human individual, it would be a psychological
problem rather than a natural one. It is to use
the word natural in a different sense, natural
for man to have religious experience rather than
experience of Nature. The Study of psychology of
religious experience has been most fully taken
up by modern pshychologists. No doubt Freud has
claimed that religion is an illusion, and of
course illusion have no future, what with the
growing world and the wealth of scientific
knowledge. Religion might be abolished by
dialectical materialism and economism but it
clings on to the individual however much
scientised to might be. That religion of the
society could be universal religion is a modern
myth. Society cannot be a supernatural concern
but a natural concern, and external to the
individual in so far it does what one has to do
with other fellow human beings. The world has
been too much with us, as the poet wordsworth
said, and no doubt however much social welfare
programmes or dharmas or duties to the other
individuals loom large for the proper upkeep of
the harmony of social existence, it would not
suffice to exhaust the religious concern of the
individual. Modern group psychologies and social
Psychologies and Philosophies, along with
political theories, have stressed the need for
the creation of dedicated uniformities of social
organizatin which could stimulate universal
social patterns of organization. Indian thought
on this matter expressed itself very early in
the country’s history. She formulated the four
patterns of social grouping based on functions
within society: The wise man who knows the
Ultimate Reality, the disciplined dedicated
person wishing the true welfare of each
individual perse and of all both here and beyond
the mortal existence; the king who has to
protect and preserve functional uniqueness and
social purpose of each and every individual
courageously, dispassionately, and detachedly;
the citizen who has to continue to be dutiful to
the business of commerce and production, and who
has to give charities and partake in social
improvements and endowments; and the general
servant of all. Thus the brahmana-purohita,
kshatriya-rajayan, vaisya-janah, and
sudra-dasabhutas were shown to be universal
patterns of behavioural and functional groupings
everywhere. Plato’s scheme reflects this, and
may be an adoption from India.
All the criticisms of the above system are
against its being rigid and hereditary, and also
because of the alleged previlegedness of
vocation. The broad division of men into
contemplatives and workers had somehow helped to
produce the conception of previlegedness and
superiority of the former over the latter. This
is not of course intrinsic or inherent to the
vocation. But this is a universal phenomenon and
the modern reaction against it is but a natural
dialectic. Similarly the rigid and hereditary
concepts are undergoing scientific verification
in the areas of biology and social dynamics,
together with a study of the necessity for
conservatism in certain areas of human conduct
and tradition.
The other concept of Ashrama, or the four stages
of human life, is a unique feature of Hinduism,
and is a realistic appraisal of the stages or
ages of man and their educational and vocational
relevance and values. The Brahmacarya is the
stage of studentship, grhastha-carya is of the
householder; Vanaprastha is of the retired and
aged and matured person who lives for dharma
alone and is courageous in his dedication to
spiritual life; and the last is that of the
Sannyasi who has opted out of ordinary duties of
the social life and dedicated himself fully to
the attainment of the release and liberation.
Modifications and amplifications of these
functions have taken place through the history
of India and elsewhere, and yet it is in India
alone that the dharma-sastras have codified
these duties riidly. Tradition, thus preserved,
has made for a normal life of continuity and
guidance.
Similarly the goals of individuals in society
have been laid down from the psychological
angle, such as search for wealth, for pleasure,
for dharma and for liberation. The four goals of
man include all man’s goals and aspirations, and
well may one man seek all the four at once, or
simulataneously, or successively, according to
his caste-function or age-function. But as all
people everywhere tend to become rigid owing to
habit or custom, we have quite a dharma-sankara,
functional mixture or inter-crossing that makes
decisions on ethical-cum-social behaviour
difficult.
A universal religion based on socio-ethical
basis seems, therefore, both a necessity and yet
impossible, for religion exceeds this
social-ethical rationality and/or
sub-rationality of instinctive drives.
However, from a spiritual point of view, even a
socialistic pattern of thics which takes full
consideration of the exigencies and realities of
cultural organization would have to seek goals
beyond the human life, for obviously all things
change; “the old order changeth yielding place
to the new lest one good custom should corrupt
the world.” True enough, the patterns of
behaviour that stood the test of centuries of
invasion by all types of races and cultures is
being today declared to be a bar to the future
progress of man in a technological age. It is
because the socio-ethical structure and form of
Indian organization was rooted in the spiritual
and the eternal and not on the humanistic goals
of economic welfare.
The four freedoms profoundly declared during the
last years of the Second world war hold out more
hope for man here on this planet, and have made
for the global concern that human institutions
as universal had to face. The ethical concern of
these United Nations Organisations is profoundly
dynamic. But no one would say that they could do
duty for the religious aspirations of mankind.
For the aspirations of man for pure spirituality
are different in kind from the natural, the
rational, and the ethical.
The attempts to make man endeavour to devote
himself to a total concern with the natural, the
rational, and the ethical are bound to fail. It
is usually stated that politics demands a total
dedication of man to it: so have scientists
demanded of their novitiates. Modern politics
whishes to absorb all of man to its pruposes,
leaving hardly and time for any other thing. No
other loyalties are permitted. So too for a very
long time have total dedication and loyalty been
demanded of every wife, and so aspirant to
spiritual life. This is the concentration, the
loyalty of a one-pointed mind, devotion or
bhakti, but despite all the admonitions and
persuasiveness of devotees of social life, man
has after a time left these goals to search for
the incomprehensible.
So the Universal Religion based on ethico-social
loyalties and goals does not seem to be truly
universal or religious. These are necessary for
the maintenance of the frame of society, and the
place of the individual in it, but whilst
psychologically harmonizing, it does not exhaust
his higher aspirations. Religion seems to be
something to which all things move, as if
attracted to it by a power not capable of being
generated from outside it.
Great stress has been laid on the ethical
disciplines of ahimsa, aparigraha, asteya,
brahmacharya and satya for true social living by
almost all thinkers of the world. It is true
that these virtues are both individual, as well
as social and national necessities for a
harmonious society of humanity. A religion of
humanity is best realised when these cardinal
virtues are practiced and no exceptions are
made. Undoubtedly the present state of evolution
of man does not permit the practice of these
virtues by all groups, but it seems to be
absolutely necessary for all those who have gone
to a stage and age when the yonder shore is
calling. The preparation for a good death seems
to be a great concern for all those who are
going out of the social and natural field. To
some the concept of rebirth or immortality, of a
continuous return, is an exhilarating
immortality of hope, but to those whose
experiences of this world have been none too
happy a non-return seems to be favourbale.
Immortality is not clearly visualized as
identical with non-return; rather it seems, as
the Buddhists hold an extinguishments of the ego
that yearns for escape and abjures all desire
for return. Therefore the task of life seems to
be to do acts which would extinguish the
personal immortality or the return to earth
consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo asserts the existence of two kinds
of immortality, the one of constant return to
innumerable bodies and experiences, the
immortality of non-death to the soul that
constantly is reborn, and the other the
immortality of non-return and of advance into
the highest experiences of the Ultimate. It
means the assumption of the two realms, the
eternal and non-temporal and the temporal, and
in both one experiences immortality as the
necessary datum. But the renunciation of
immortality of the individual soul or ego is the
view of the nihilistic ethics and
quasi-religion. This however is not a universal
dogma of all religions, though there are all the
divergences of points of view as to what happens
after one dies, or after one attains the
Ultimate or the Immortal. The seer of the
Kathopanisad has fully illustrated the magnitude
of this difficulty, though clearly the region
from which and in which this question was put
(neglected by all scholars) is the sphere to
which the dead go – the region of Yama. This
makes all the difference to the ordinary
explanations about life after death, which is
really the region of religious problems and of
religious concern. However the quest for
universal religion cannot be restricted to the
ethical and sociological area of being; Nor to
the political.
Turning to another area wherein religion is said
to prevail, namely mythological, it is found
that this has been the most difficult thing to
define. Myths have governed man’s history even
more than his reason has done. Irrational as
they may sound and colouring the whole of life,
they bring into man’s terrestrial life ideas and
images, forces and powers, from a level of mind
which is other than that of perception or
reasoning, but not yet of the transcendent as
such. It is of the intermediate region so to
speak. The study of comparitive mythology is
most rewarding as well as revealing in so far as
it shows, as Professor Carl G. Jung has shown, a
world Unconscious common to all humanity which
operates in different ways but produces about
the same mythos. Similarly, the researches of
Anand K. Coomaraswamy has elucidated the basic
shape and recurrent occurance of the same and
analogous myths of creation, deluge, spiritual
ascent and descent; the struggles of the forces
of light and of darkness; the exchange of roles
of these powers determined by the ages or time
or evolution. Many others have since done some
provocative work. There have been of course very
or over-imaginative works on comparitive
mythology, especially of Sri Narayana Aiyangar,
which almost keep us dazed by the application of
one kind of mythos to interpret all the myths of
the world. Nor could we accept the view that all
mythology is capable of interpreting to our
intellect or imagination the deepest religious
forces. As Bergson pointed out in his work,
there is always a fact to be reckoned with,
namely the tendency of every myth to start with
an opening illumination and a closing tendency
to limit the sphere and power of illuminative
evolution.
Religion in India is basically governed by the
two major epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. These two are considered to be real
historical occurances by Hindus. Some have seen
in history the myth, also the allegory and the
intermediating philosophy, the concrete
exemplification of the roles of ethics,
sociology and politics as well as liberation. It
could be said that Hinduism lives in and through
these two epics, and the popular bases of all
religious activity are to be found in them. The
Bhagavad Gita, inset in the Mahabharata, is seen
to be a deep mythology of spiritual activity, of
incarnation, of evolution of social ideals and
individual emancipation. The Open Mythos of
Hinduism obviously has relevance to all mankind
more than the myths of Greece and other
countries such as Norse and Yiddish and so on.
Biblical myths have also been greatly
influential but it is clear that they cannot be
made universal, or even parts of universal
religion. T.S. Elliot and others had tried to
integrate the myths of the world into one poetic
imagery but with very little success. This does
not mean that the study of comparitive mythology
will not be rewarding or mutually corrective;
and it may yet produce a science of universal
mythology.
Poets have always reveled in mythology both of
the closed and the open variety. Some of the
dogmas of religion have been reflected from
mythology, and indeed constitute the core of
superstitious beliefs in most religions. Popular
religions draw their sustenance and security
from these myths, and they prevented most
persons from moving towards higher mystical
life. We can discern that the great poets have
tried to emanicipate the spirit from the
form-and-story structure of myths everywhere.
Milton and Dante have done profound work for
Christianity. The Sufis of Islam have done much
to spiritualise the myths. Similarly the Puranas
have provided abundant opportunity for the poets
of Hinduism to infuse the spirituality of the
highest realization into the consciousness of
the people – the ordinary humanity. Religion of
the people or the mass has been nourished only
by the poets of the true myths, the liberating
myths rather than the closed myths which provide
titillating satisfactions of the lower appetites
– such as the Homeric myths, as Plato pointed
out in his “Republic”.
Religion of Mythology cannot be universalised
until the human being has been universalised in
his spiritual consciouness. Until the open
mythology’ of the Ramayana and Mahabharata is
fully understood as representing the liberating
nature of the human spirit from his terrestrial
bondage, it would be difficult to have a
religion or universal religion based on
mythological integration. The attempt of Sri
Aurobindo to provide a mythology of liberation
and supermentalisation of humanity in his
“Savitri” – which is called a Symbol and a
Legend – is a profound revelation of the great
poetry of the Mahabharata an the Veda and the
Ramayana and all the puranas as contrasted with
poems of mere folklore and fantasy. The real
mythology has to proceed from above rather than
strike its roots below. Therefore religion
requires an anchorage at a higher level of
poetry rather than at a lower.
Cosmic mythologies have been helpful in
postulating the creator and sustainer and
destroyer of the universe. All races and
cultures have these legends. But the other
functions of the Divine are of the nature of
personal religion helping the individual to
reach up to that revelation and vision of the
Cosmic Being. These are the myths of advents or
avatars, God-personalities in human or other
form, who lead the souls to the higher vistas
and statuses. Hinduism has a continuous history
of these advents again and again descending to
save, to punish and to establish the dharma or
order of the world or its laws suited to the
world, and to its different beings or peoples.
To save the good, to punish the wicked or evil,
are primary concerns of individual relationship
of God with his people or the souls. Hinduism
accepts these fully, and other religion either
accept only one such advent or none at all. But
the incarnating diety is of love, personal, yet
not exclusively for any one person. The
mythology of Hinduism, unlike those of other
religions, is rich with God-descent and provides
a sure ground of God-fellowship and realization
on Earth of the Kingdom of Heaven, or of God
here itself. The whole thing is however not just
a myth – for the descent is historical and
recognized as such when it occurs.
But comparitive mythology is yet in its infancy.
Nor could we build the universal religion on the
basis of a composite mythology.
Therefore universal religion can neither be
based on a common or general natural philosophy,
nor on mythology, nor on psychology and ethics.
Religion has its real base in spiritual
experience of the Transcendent which has meaning
for man beyond his mere terrestrial life. That
it is based on the spiritual aspirations for
freedom is real; but it is also the search and
hankering after the ultimate sense of Reality
that one does not get from the world and its
wealth and pleasures, or even the securities of
its laws in science, in ethics, society and
mythology. In a spiritual sense the human
individual seeks sense of existence,
significance and meaning for his own transitory
existence, for his growth or birth in this
scheme of space-time, in and amidst social
environment that gives him a varied fate.
In terms of a higher consciousness, beyond all
the several avenues of knowing, seing, willing
and so on, one perhaps might be able to arrive
at one’s own meaning and existence. Our studies
of the religious attitudes has brought us to
that differentiating experience of religion –
namely its mystic experience, usually had by
some seers and communicated by them in an
objective way that has meaning for the inner
man.
Comparitive Mysticism is a new field again and
this has been taken up for the study of the
universality of mystic experience all over the
world. World’s religions to have a core of
mystic insight, direct unmediated awareness of
the cosmic Oneness or Spirit. Mysticism is the
experience of spirit as the Ultimate ground of
all existence, an experience that is
supra-rational and supra-relational. Such
experiences are rare, but they are nonetheless
basic to spiritual life. Mystics are spread all
over humanity, and are born in all levels of
hierarchy of mankind – such as the varnas,
asramas and religions. Mysticism can be the
experience of the Ultimate Supra-personal, and
its certitude flows into cosmic or universal
activity of a different order than all other
types of activity. Mystics are souls of light,
children of freedom, who could tolerate no
bondage nor accept any. They are in a sense
opting themselves out of society in order to
give society a new sense of values. They are the
eternal and continuous witnesses to the need for
transvaluation of all values. Hindu mystics are
in fact the great RISHIS who speak with a direct
light and acquaintance of the Ultimate Reality –
the Saccidananda. They have no fear of the
transitory, or of death, for they belong to the
Immortal and the Eternal and the Infinite realms
of light. The Upanisad speak of the regions of
light, of the immortal and the unchanging, open
to the seer of the one in the many, of the many
in the One, and the One who is All. The worlds
of the Spirit are beyond the Sun, the Moon and
the Fire, and these latter derive their light
from That. That is the Reality “Om Tat Sat” –
the existence. That is delight, Ananda, beyond
all vijnana and mind and senses. Such Mysticism
is surely the goal of all souls yearning for
infinity. It is the creative source of all
imagination and beauty. This Spirit
interpenetrates all that is.
The Mystic experiences of Jacob Boehme,
Jallaluddin Rumi, Walt Whitman and others like
Bruno, give the higher metaphysical note of the
Spirit. Much lesser mysticism informs the purely
Christian and Bhakti experiences of the later
medieval mystics. In every case they are not
usually ‘within the fold’ of the organized
society and religions.
Mystics express themselves in poetry, and in
poetry their deepest aspirations and visions are
found. Though we would extract philosophy from
it, yet it is transcendental to human existence
and valuations. Yet they have a greater humanity
about them, a deeper note of love, a finer sense
of reality than any. Truly enough they have a
missionary zeal to transform the world around
them; they speak of the coming of the Golden
Age, of the passing away of the present one of
darkness if not of its doom. They are the
prophets of he future. Their social
consciousness is trans-human for it seeks to
bring to society he sense of infinite
spirituality and compassion for all life.
Perfect individuals themselves, they lack the
essential egoism that mars the individual and
bedevils the socialists. Paradoxical as they
appear, a heavenly light and peace abounds in
everything that they do. In a sense they are
mahatmas, universal souls, of universal
consciousness, unlimited by space and time.
However it appears that mystics are born like
poets, not made, though one could venture to
suggest that Hinduism tried again and again to
provide the institute where they could be made
and born. However, natural mysticism has taken
roots all over the world, and it is in a sense
from these mystics that the religions have had
to draw their spiritual sustenance and vitality.
Religions without seers but with books alone for
guidance, religions which cannot produce further
prophets or mystics but only reciters of the
hymns of the past and of mystic-world, cannot
but find themselves drawn away from spirituality
and may end lastly in becoming secular in
unbecoming ways.
The foundation of a universal religion based on
mystic philosophy may at once appear to be the
most legitimate expression of a world-need.
The satisfaction of the individual’s real
nature, svarupa or svabhava, as a spiritual
being, lies in his fullest realization of his
divine possibility. Man has to transcend his
rational soul and attain to the divine selfhood,
or in some way become related inseparably with
that divine essence. Mysticism reveals the
highest that man has so far attained on this
terrestrial plane. But it has not become the
differentiating attribute. This would require a
further evolution of man himself of which the
fore-runners are the mystics of the world.
A religion which would be acceptable to all
spiritual seekers may be the mystic one, but
whether it could ever be the common religion of
all humanity is a difficult question to answer.
The ideal of humanity has been the realization
of harmony of all peoples. This was envisaged by
ancient seers of India, of Hinduism clearly at
the dawn of human evolution; for man had
betrayed the tortuous nature of human
co-existence, its inevitable frictions and
fights, and mutual thirst for slaughter and
sinning. A transcendence over the human nature
was a necessity which could be made by the
practice of virtues backed by the yearning for
love of all beings. Love seem to be the
discovery of the human being as a necessity for
living in family, in community, in the world
itself. It was a relation or drive that brought
God and man, man and man, and man and nature,
all into one organic interdependent family.
Universal Religion, even if it is not to be
transcendental and mystical in its scope and
function, would survive if love could be made
the means of association, of function, of
structure and mutual assistance of all, without
differentiations of caste, creed, age and sex.
Love was made to be the nature of God as well as
the essence of the soul. Both need each other
because of love. Love as attraction to the other
or another is a basic quality. But within the
limits of humanity, love always has its polar
opposite hate, and all plays of love are
interspersed with the hate-motive also. Though
love has been exalted by mystics as positive,
and hate denounced as negative, it has been held
that love is the only Good whereas hate is the
evil. But when one is taught also to love one’s
enemies there is shown to be a transcendence
over this duality in a way, though it is by no
means a full transcendence. Even when such a
love of enemies was shown by the Apostle or
Avatar of this creed, it produced a more
historic hate than ever witnessed. History has
only made the Apostles of this enemy-love the
breeders of hate of all those who are not of
their dogma. Religions of love, of prema or
priti, of man have been sustained by the spirit
of divine nature of the quality of love itself.
Love seems to have been the one force that links
one with another whether temporarily or
permanently. But here again we are confronted
with the spiritual problem of universal love and
how it expresses itself.
Love has been acclaimed as the purest form of
religion, but it has been difficult to define or
describe it, what with its variety of relational
conditions. Absolute love without an object of
love or non-dual love is very much of an
impossibility. However it can be monotheistic.
If religion belongs to the super-sensuous, love
must also be of the super-sensuous; to reduce it
to the love of man is to seek not God but
something very different.
Love involves duality, but it also involves
loving of others as one loves oneself. Love,
Swami Vivekananda points out, never asks but
always gives itself up wholly. Love knows no
fear and conquers it, and love is itself its own
end, and an end in itself. Swami Vivekananda
holds that it can never be a means. (Vol. VI.
p.70). One loves sugar they say, but one does
not wish to become sugar. But this example,
utilized to refute non-duality, does not truly
represent the nature of love. Love is not a
taste nor a matter of taste. Love is a seeking
for union – not of course mere copulation or
sexual union. It is not at all the lust or
libido or the essence of lila or play. It is
prema or priti with the Ultimate Divine; it is
the spiritual dynamics by which even the most
contradictory force is made to come to terms
with it and unite itself with it. It is not a
question of enjoyment but a melting of oneself
in the transcendently perfect object of one’s
evolution or life. Life is even treated as a
kind of means towards the fulfillment of love.
Could we base a universal religion on this
foundation of love alone? This is a question of
great importance. If religion is the linking up
of oneself with Reality as it is in Itself and
for itself, then love, as the individual’s total
consummation of union, is capable of being the
expression of religious attitude. The Divine
Reality then might, conceivably, be the
reciprocal mergence of itself in the individual,
and treat the individual as an end in itself and
for itself. This is an experience of the highest
spiritual quality. Love becomes the unifying
principle of union or unity, or even
inter-mergence.
It may be that compassion or sympathy for the
other souls, and a means by which one goes to
the rescue of others and uplifts them is good as
a social religion, but obviously this is not
what is meant by love, unless it is also an urge
to lose oneself in the others.
The above will reveal how very difficult it is
to arrive at a comprehensive or differentiating
conception of Universal Religion.
Any universal religion has to satisfy the
philosophical, psychological and spiritual needs
of the individual called upon to undertake that
path towards the highest perfection of his
nature. A religion is not merely a matter of
dogma or creed but an experimental methodology
towards achieving one’s perfection or
fulfillment or realization of freedom from all
bondage; such as those of the cycle of births
and deaths, ignorance and delusion, that the
impermanent is permanent or that one’s physical
existence is all.
But any universal religion based on naturalistic
conceptions or sociological and mythological
conceptions cannot truly become universal, or
religion, for they are but partial fulfillments.
Religion does need a philosophy of nature, a
philosophy of self and a philosophy about God,
but these do not exhaust it. Though universal
harmony between souls is a dominant goal, and
man’s evolution in this world has to be made
easy, yet religion when it aims at the
realization of union with the Ultimate reality
of oneself and all is of transcendental
importance.
A study of the different religions spread over
the world grants a picture. As Professor Archie
Bahm says, if Hinduism is spiritualistic,
Europeanism is dualistic and pluralistic though
God-centered theistic, Chinese is naturalistic
and so on. Humanistic religions make man the
goal of one’s works or service, and through man
or the creature, they seek to reach at God in
all creatures. The spiritual religions on the
other hand seek to reach the creatures through
the Creator or God. Whilst the Upanisad says
that one loves all because of the love of the
Self, the modern version is its inversion, one
loves God because he loves all. The Universal
Religion of service of all others seeks to move
to the creator through the creatures even as one
displays one’s emotions or sentiments to any
parent by affecting love of their children. This
might be a kind of vatsalya – love shown to the
mother by showing it to her child. This is the
movement from below even like an inference from
effect to cause. The Upanisadic mode has been to
move from the Creator or cause to the effect,
the creatures. Which is more natural is a
question which each individual has to decide for
himself: success is the ultimate criterion –
that is, by whatever method one can attain the
Divine Knowledge that is the best, the universal
method.
The difficulty of speaking intelligibly about
the possibility of Universal Religion lies
precisely in the whole concept of religion as
being supra-rational, and all attempts to make
religious experience intelligible become
attempts at rationalization. The experience of
the transcendent cause cannot be on the plane of
ordinary physical causality. The super-sensuous
is super-sensuous, and cannot be represented in
terms of sense-images or symbols. So also one
cannot speak of the Divine attributes or think
about the object of religious experience in
terms of our sensory experiences. The universal
method of describing the transcendent has always
been through negatives. As the Upanisads say by
a series of negations – neti neti, not this, not
this. The Western Eckhart also described God as
neither this nor that. This is the wisdom about
the transcendent that man could distil from all
experiences. A universal Religion based on this
experience of Negation would hardly be
satisfactory. As for the positive descriptions
that have been attempted to be given they are
all ‘of holiness’ of wonder, of luminous, not
personal and so on. These are not emotive terms
but they do convey what Hinduism had always
accepted, that man is not restricted to the
limits of reason but has other ways of knowing
God open to him provided he dedicates himself to
it.
The elements of any universal religion have been
expounded, but they have all been shown to be
individually incapable of being religious in so
far as they do not give the force and power to
lead man to the experience of his creator, or
the Ground of being and immortality of bliss, or
harmony with all reality.
The modern world is seeking the establishment of
one World, one Government, and even perhaps the
thoughtful people consider that sooner or later
we must have one religion for all mankind. As
swami Vivekananda pointed out, the ideal of
having One religion and One Church however
ecumenical, cannot be, for the goal seems to be
a religion for each individual, and this
constitutes universality. When every individual
discovers for himself a religion, that is the
direct experience of his Ground or Creator or
God, then that religion would be really
universal. Though Reality is One, and is to be
experienced as Religion or Spirit, it is for
each individual to be directly experienced
within himself that would constitute its
universality.There are therefore no signs of
attaining One Religion for all humanity. However
it seems that rational man utopianises and
strives for it.
Hinduism appears such a one because of its
spiritual formulations, all-inclusive aspiration
for the transcendental which is the ground of
all manifestations, whether of Itself or of the
individuals who are always in transcendental
contact with that ground. This transcendental
contact or oneness is what all types of Vedanta
assert in their religious or spiritual concern.
This transcendental contact is described as
oneness ,advaita or ekibhava; as organic
inseparability – aprathaksiddha ekibhava; as
indissoluble relationship in essence between the
Divine transcendent and the individual souls of
dependence absolute. The souls never utterly
lose their essential nature, and it is this
relational absoluteness that is forgotten in the
adventures with independence of the souls from
the One Divine. Regarding the Divine
Transcendent itself which is absolute and
ground, all are utterly of It, in It; but when
it does take statuses of the creator etc, of
advent and of being the inner ruler immortal of
all beings, there are the theistic and other
fellowship and selfship formulations which cover
the entire gamut of Divine-Human relationships.
In the supreme comprehensiveness of its theism
as well as its supra-theism, Hinduism reeals its
realistic and empiricistic acceptance of the
several ways of Union with the Divine in
manifestation as it is in essence always.
It is this all-comprehensiveness of its
definitions and their transcendent unity
available to the mystic vision and experience as
well as our own ordinary experience that makes
Hinduism acceptable to the best minds all over
the world, and encourages the experience on the
part of other religions of the other statuses of
the One Divine Reality offered to them by
Hinduism.
It is in this sense that Hinduism was offered to
the world by Swami Vivekananda, and it is in
this spirit that the Mahatma embraced it as his
most satisfactory dharma. It is this dynamic
supremental nature that made Sri Aurobindo
expound it with all his serious yogic
attainment. It is this again that had given
satisfaction to the philosophic mind of
Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. |
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