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Pujya Dr. K.C. Varadachari
- Volume -2 |
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SYNTHESIS OF RELIGIONS AND
SPIRITUALITY |
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The goal of universal religion or world religion
is entertained by almost all thinkers as
eminently desirable. However it is not easily
established. The competitive spirit between all
religions to become the world religion is not
likely to promote this consummation.
Christianity, Islam had tried to spread the
doctrines of Christ all over the world and thus
tried to civilize the people of the world. Owing
to very many factors not Christian in themselves
it is well-known that Cristianity has spread to
all continents. The spirit of proselytization
has promoted, incidentally, the study of the
various religions for the purpose of comparing
and contrasting the religions of the prospective
converts with the religion of Christ. In all
cases it has been in favour of the latter.
When, however, the vast literature of the Hindus
got interpreted and translated it became clear
to most scholars that it is not so easy to
establish the superiority of the Christian
religion over the Hindu. Eminent scholars like
the leaders of India, whom we have expounded
during these lectures, had shown that Hinduism
is a serious rival to the Christian; but it was
also shown that Christian Way of Religion is but
one of many ways which Hinduism itself had
trodden. It was asserted by some historians that
possibly some latter cults of Vedanta like the
Vaisnava owed much to Christian influences; But
it is well-known that thebasic doctrines of the
vedants were far earlier than theChristian.This
has been shown by Dr. Radhakrishnan in his
works.
The doctrines of the Trinity of Christinaity
have been anticipated in a different form in
Hinduism, and the transcendence of God, his
immanence and mediating nature have all been
anticipated. Shades of difference would always
remain but the identity of conceptions is not to
be dismissed.
The ideas of God in the several religions could
be syncretised or synthesised. So too the ideas
regarding the individual soul could be shown to
be capable of being synthesised. Even the Nature
of the world according to the several religions
could be unified. Such unifications would give
philosophical satisfaction. The religions have
major concern with the way of relationship
between the Transcendental Reality of power of
God and the human individual. Though this is
simple enough thesis, yet it is known that a
religion as an institution gathers certain other
features, such as Mythology, Ritual or Worship,
in addition to the revelations which had brought
the consciousness of God into the lives of men.
The historical evidences in the lives of a line
of men of such incidences of experienceability
of God.
Thus almost every religion has built up an
institution for its preservation and
continuance, firstly to be of help on the path
of human aspiration to meet God. This yearning
for God is clearly discernible at every level of
human existence and all that every human
individual had been doing is to seek ways and
means of fulfilling this aspiration. But not all
religions realized, as Hinduism did, that in
whatever way one sought to meet the maker of
God,in that way reaches him or helps the seeker
to realise Him.
In most religions the manner of reaching God is
prescribed to be only in one way, and that way
alone could lead upto God. This idea of an
exclusive path, so to speak, on the one hand
denies that there are other paths, and on the
other encourages fanaticism. Whilst it is true
that, broadly speaking, the way to Union or
Realisation of God as the Supreme Creator and
Father is most efficacious, yet it is not to be
denied that there are other ways of reaching
upto Him. But it is to be emphasized that there
are good ways of love of God which would promote
union whereas the wrong way of hatred and belief
cannot promote this union. This divergence of
paths must be recognized in religion. But it is
true that even a contrary approach is said
ultimately, to help attainment of God. For
example enmity is said to promote constant
remembrance of God; and thus produce
concentration of meditation; and the hate itself
would be transformed into love of God. Though
one starts with hatred or unbelief in religion
later on one begins to feel love for god.
This however would not explain the case of the
mythical stories of Hiranayakasipu and Ravana
and Sisupala, who had, till the last, followed
the path of virodha to God.
No world religion, however comprehensive, would
subscribe to this attitude, nor even be prepared
to call it religious, except Hinduism.
Religion cannot be equated with the aesthetic
approaches to reality which subscribe to
manifold ways of devotion of sentiments.
The omni-inclusive description of god which
Hinduism hold is capable of being accepted by
all religions; but here again the several forms
of names of God are not equally capable of
leading us to liberation or freedom. In fact the
philosophical terminology that names God as
Existence (Sat) is not said to be capable of
appealing to one who would like to call God as
Father, or Creator or Ruler or Inner Conscience
of Timeless or Immortal and so on using a
thousand other names. Individual approaches by
different religions have given satisfaction to
devotees who find that connotation helpful. The
lover speaks of God as the Beloved or Love; the
humble servant of God calls Him his Master; he
who feels naturalness as son calls Him Father,
and so on.
As Mahatma Gandhi put it, it is difficult to
make every one call God by the same name or
grant to Him the same meaningful relationship as
every other. We must recognize this individual
difference and submit to poly-vocality or
multiple-names for the same, or recognise that
God is poly-faceted, though one only. This is a
significant gain in higher religions but it is
not always that every religion recognises this
identity of the Godhead behind the multiplicity
of names. On the other hand we have strenuous
quarrels about the names of God, or the names
signify different personalities and powers which
are, in mythology, set up one against the other.
Conflicts among religious people belonging to
different sects have not been rare, and a
syncretism seems to be strictly possible within
certain limits. We may all agree to suspend our
devotions or we may agree to suspend opposition
and objection to others calling their God and
our God by the names they like.
Religions also depend on the different myths,
and mythologies have grown either as
biographical data in the case of historical
personalities or as symbolic data coming through
ages. The puranas contain many stories which may
all be considered to be historical records in
spiritual history or real history. The five-fold
nature of the puranas (purana panca Laksana)
giving creation – accounts of the universe, the
philosophy and dharma, the dysastic histories of
historical personalities, the avatar- or
incarnational episodes of the Supreme Being have
guided the general cultural formation of the
entire people of this vast continent. They, in
one sense, have been philosophically explained
by the schools. Every religion starting with
revelational knowledge of one individual and his
history had produced universal symbol of him, so
that it might be adopted by all individuals and
for all time. However this symbol and constantly
to be renewed or rejuvenated by the followers of
that religion, or by seers and saints devoted to
exploring and experiencing the inner reality
veiled or revealed by the symbol. Thus we find
that every religion in addition to a mantra
develops tantra, and these become ideals at the
beginning and idols at the end of an age.
In one sense a religion that has lost its
ancient force has to renew itself by means of
other symbols. Symbols in one area do not graft
themselves on to other symbols, nor wholly
replaces them. This persistence of symbols is a
fact of great concern to people who would like
to abolish all symbols and have a religion
without any symbols. In doing so one either
substitutes other symbols of greater merit, or
as it happens, one removes one of the most
important props of belief and uproots the
religious attitude itself. This uprooting of
religious attitude in modern times by decrying
tantra or symbols is a phenomenon of universal
concern today. Since the symbols themselves have
begun to lose interest for the modern man, a
collection of symbols or even a fervent
resuscitation of the symbol to its originsal
meaning cannot rouse men. Just as sacrifices in
gorgeous scales have ceased to have interest for
almost every body, from the most ordinary man
who may be expected to be struck by gorgeousness
to the most intellectual whose imagination may
be expected to be fired by them , symbols have
begun to lose their fascination. Sophistication
has begun to be applied to things of the earth
and industry rather than sculpture and dance and
sacrifices and Art. The great art of religious
symbolism had come to its nadir of existence.
Religions of the past no longer enthuse any one
much. A syncretist attempt to bring them all
together may be a noveltly, but after a brief
spell will lose its attractiveness or
evocativeness of the spiritual.
The rituals of religion comprise prayers and
worships of the Godhead. These may be in respect
of the idols of symbols of the Unseen Godhead
who is pervading everywhere. The rituals in
Temples follow the path of anthropomorphic
service; and it is no less significant of the
rituals of the Churches or of those who reject
the worship of any human form of representative
of the divine in any form. The ritual of prayer
or worship is in incantation, or repetition, or
counting the beads, or falling prostrate in a
particular way or performing the prayers at
certain specific hours. There are disciplines or
the manner of doing worship or reciting the
prayer which are said to have magical efficacy
in bringing the individual in closest contact or
union with God or His intermediary. No religion
seems to be exempt from the ritual which starts
from supreme simplicity and ends up in
inexplicable complexity.
The integration of rituals again poses problems
which are difficult to overcome or solve, and we
would only be again establishing religions which
are new and which have a few adherents. Thus
sects have multiplied in all religions which
accept the minimum, or greatest common measure,
of agreement but actually vie sequestered lives
of their own but no one remains thus isolated or
insulated from otherssects of the same religion.
Religions had perpetually identified themselves
with the works of social amelioration and social
reorganization, as extension programmes of
spiritual realization. This service attitude
whilst most welcome, also had led to turning
these social institutions into political centers
of power, at first very innocuous and ethical
determinants, but later as forces of either
revolution or reactionary conservatism. In most
cases religions tended to become institutions of
conservatism of tradition, ritual or power and
so on. This grants stability to the
institutionand to religion itself. In universal
religion these institutions of conservatism
become mutually exclusive and refuse to
integrate and thus make religion impossible.
Thus it comes to this that neither on the basis
of a single philosophy for all religions, nor
symbolism nor ritual nor tradition could there
be a common world religion for all individuals.
Whether the religions are of the East or the
west it appears that we have to be satisfied
either with having each his own religion, the
religion into which he is born, or have no real
religion at all. For all that we get from the
study of the history of conversions and
proselytizations is the simple fact that no one
altogether escapes the unconscious and
subconscious scaffolding of the religion of his
birth. Even upbringing in an altogether new
surrounding does not remove this religious
unconscious from operating subtly all through
one’s life. This would be an interesting
psychological study in itself, and important for
the future of religious unifications, but it
would not even then help the formation of a
Universal or world Religion.
As pointed out, a religion that permits all
faiths, all dogmas, all rituals, symbols and
myths has a chance of helping mutual instruction
on these different dimensions or levels of
religion. That is stated to be Hinduism by swami
Vivekananda. Dr Radhakrishnan has stated this in
more intellectual and philosophical terminology.
Mahatma Gandhi has said that since no one likes
to think another’s religion is better than one’s
own, no one religion can become the world
religion. But obviously we know that there is
also the other tendency to like other’s wares
over one’s own and hence conversions become
possible. Perhaps the disillusionment that
follows after the conversions should make one
pause in this respect.
A free flow of individuals from one religion to
another, and vice versa, could be useful as a
training ground for bringing into being a world
religion. This has been attempted in many ways
by inter-fellowship of faiths, and of course
those who have profited by this intercourses of
minds in matters of personal religious
experiences have more and more tended to become
world-religion conscious. But the whole problem
of today is that our concern for world
government, world welfare, world peace and world
religion are all operating simultaneously and
forcing us to become world-conscious. Enforced
neighbourliness has, in all levels, produced an
explosive situation, and the urgency for a
common understanding and a working arrangement
in all levels seems to be a world imperative,
and immediately to be acted upon.
Therefore every religion has striven to this
goal and has failed to satisfy the religious
craving for God-vision of liberation of all
people. Will Hinduism lift itself up to this
stature, or what next, is the question. One’s
hope seems to be to develop the techniques by
which religious experiences have happened in the
past, and by which some of the most leading
religious people had shaken off the restricting
myths, rituals, customs, and differences and
arrived at the mystical experiences of divine
Union, transcendent love and perfection.
Therefore today the tendency has been for almost
all religious people to set aside the dogmas of
religion and accept the methods of union.
Exercises of religion or spiritual awakening
have become things of deepest concern
everywhere. Though each religious institution,
or philosophical system, has provided certain
kinds of exercises suitable for experiencing the
divine through form or symbol, the modern
eclecticism or syncretism seeks to go to the
root of the matter in seeking Divine Comunion
within the circle of religion or sect if
possible, but without it if necessary! This
shows the urgency of the spiritual yearning or
hunger in almost all the intellectuals of today.
As pointed out, what men yearn for is
spirituality rather than religiosity. Not so
much the love of God as the experience of the
Ultimate Reality, or God himself. Not beliefs in
rituals, nor myths, nor even philosophies, but
verifications of whatever is possible in
experience. Experience of the temples, churches
and Mosques and other places of worship had been
stimulating to some individuals at all times,
and have also been places that have been avoided
by some of spiritual mystics, who had arraigned
them in their teachings. The revolt against
rituals and the caste system, combined with the
revolt against all types of hierarchical social
arrangements and had produced reactions
everywhere. Men have challenged the beliefs and
customs in religion and religious organizations
as not in consonance with the best deliverances
of mystic visions.
Mysticism, rather than religion, has become the
modern approach. The question would be whether
mysticism could be the basis of universal
religion; or are we to seek a universal
mysticism to be substituted in the place of
universal religion?
The tendency of mysticism to be open to
experience of the higher order of reality is
well known. Every religion has a nucleus of
mystical vision, which gives on the sense of
freedom or liberty and love and certitude of
reality or truth. Mysticism is the experience of
the transcendent reality, which is seen to
support the entire world of immanence is
religious experience; transcendence is mystical
experience. Religion demands devotion and
service to the Ultimate, whereas mystical
experience or spirituality is the enjoyment of
liberty and fulfillment in oneself and in all.
The transfiguration of the seen world happens in
mystical experiences, which are the basis of
mythology. The liberating nature of the
experience is such hat even the ego seems to
melt away in the One Divine Nature. The fading
away of the self is an experience of mystical
unity or dissolution of the knower, the known
and the knowing. It is that Tan-maya state which
is difficult to describe, but capable of being
experienced at gifted moments.
Whilst religion calls upon the individual to
unite himself with the Ultimate Godhead or God
as a person, and in all ways in which a person
is to be met and worshipped, mystical experience
calls upon the individual to lose himself in the
Divine. The impatience of the mystic almost
makes him deny all regulations of religion or
its institutions, and improvise other
alternative rites and symbols also which in the
mystic’s view are elevating and highly
evolutionary. All this is not quite clear.
However we can say that the religious man
develops a mystic awareness or cosmic awareness,
whereas such an awareness seems to be absolutely
the qualification for being a mystic.
Therefore the emphasis of mystic experiences is
laid for the sake of the continuous growth of
the individual towards cosmic consciousness or
the One-Consciousness, whereas all emphasis on
religious experience is for experiencing the
particular way of union provided by the Divine
whole for the individual. The inter relation, or
mutual support, of these two tendencies is
capable of fulfilling the important role of
integration of religion and mysticism.
If we consider that Spirituality is the nature
of the spirit or self as a self-conscious being
hungering after an all-inclusive experience of
reality, including itself, by which the
individual lives and moves and has its being,
then the mystic utterances of the Upanisads
asserting the identity between the World Self or
Universal Self and the individual’s Self are
mystical. The experience itself is not only
liberating but also supremely blissful.
When Swami Vivekananda said that Spirituality is
the goal of religion, he was showing that
religion, if it has to serve any purpose, should
lead one, or help in the process of leading one,
to the spiritual experiences of oneself;
religion is in one sense just a means to the
Ultimate End. In fact Advaita Vedanta in
exalting the Transcendent Experience of Oneness
had relegated the godhead to the realm of
religion, the realm of one’s personal
relationships. It was, in a sense, sacrilegious
to reduce God to the secod place in the
existential hierarchy. But it was sought to be
rectified by saying that the Mystic absolute and
the religious God are but two faces of the same
Reality. This reconciliation made by Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda
has been a welcome modification of the extreme
position taken by religion and mysticism.
Regarding World Religions Prof Archie Bahm
writes that most religions are world religions,
or at least they regard themselves as succh.
But mankind yet lacks a world religion in the
sense that it is the only one or only true one
and in the sense that it is superior to others
because it embodies within itself the virtues of
all other religions. However the latter is the
claim made by Hinduism, for in a sense it
embodies all the virtues of the other religions.
The Hindu concept of the Deity as enunciated by
the Bhagavad Gita and the Pancaratra Agama
reveals the Divine as having five statuses, as
Para-Transcedent, as Vyuha, omnipervading cosmic
creator, sustainer and destroyer ,fourfold in
nature; Vibhava as Avatar or historical descent
significant for biological evolution and
establishment of the planes of conscious and
unconscious and supraconscious evolution, Hardra
(inner ruler Immortal, or antaryamin), and
lastly the Archa the Image or Icon consecrated
and worshipped in the temples and other places
like the home. The trinity is clearly visualized
as even the acceptance of the visible and the
transcendental invisible indescribable. Further,
Hinduism has provided modes of apprehension of
these five statuses of the Deity, through
Supreme Grace of the transcendent, through
revelation and scripture, through itihasa and
purana, through inference and analogy and
through perception. The supreme purpose and goal
of man is stated to be liberation in respect of
the Highest or Para; dharma in respect of the
second and third i.e. Vyuha and kama or supreme
divine desire in terms of the fourth is Hardra;
and wealth or artha in terms of the last or
Arca. The all-inclusiveness of the Divine is
experienced in mystical and religious vision
which is echoed by the Upanisadic “Sarvam
Khalvidam Brahna” and “Vasudeva sarvam iti”, or
“Isavasyam idam sarvam”, God is everything and
All, and He is the existence, Consciousness –
and Delight or bliss.
The all inclusiveness or the comprehensiveness
of the above religio-mystical synthesis should
be experienced in order to be appreciated. The
five statuses are the one ultimate itself, which
has descended for its own purposes of
self-expression or lila which is creation.
Man’s supreme religious and mystical experience
would be to behold all the fivefold statuses in
one all-embraching Vision, or at least to
experience them in succession which does not
interrupt their oneness. This vision was
vouchsafed to the Alvars, to the Vedic Seers,
and in the Bhagavad Gita. It is not eclectic
stringing of these statuses but an organic
inter-relatedness of the statuses from the
highest subtlest to the grossest solid descent
that makes for the supreme integrality of the
mystico-religious experience. A mystical
experience alone could give as only the
Transcendent in Vision; a religious would grant
only the creator-immanent in the creation or the
avatar. The integration of both is the
achievement of the Vedantas.
This synthetical view of the nature of the Deity
or God is also integral and should prove a basis
for a universal conception or religion. It is
also something that satisfies both religious and
the spiritual: it is rationally satisfying and
may form the basis of a system. It provides for
the different levels of aspiration and
evolution. Though there has always happened the
phenomenon of being satisfied with the lowest or
visible form of God-presence or some such
symbolic presence of the highest recognized and
worshipped and served as such, yet in this
scheme the individual usually passes from the
external to the inner heart-experience of God.
These two may be sufficient, for all practical
purposes, for some of the religious people.
However the inner self eggs the individual on
towards the transcendent mystical experience, or
towards the conception and vision of the
creator. The search for a cosmic creator or an
explanation of the phenomenon of the world
process is a rational one, and philosophical
search for cause or ground of the world process
satisfies the reason in man.
The historical is the most human aspect of the
Deity, for it is in this form or descent that
the individual begins to see the manifestation
of perfections within the context of the human
mould or type, and within the conditions of
space and time and process. Most religions would
very much strive to call this the truly
religious experience – experience the infinite
in terms of, and in relations with, the finite
beings; of perfection in the context of the
imperfect; and the universal in terms of
particular. In fact the glory of the Deity is
experienced by these thinkers, humanists only in
terms of the human situation, human
relationships. The Deity is the Leader, Saviour,
the Guru, statesman, if not merely a Conqueror
and Emperor. He may also be the father of the
Nation, light of the world, Universal Redeemer.
His existence would easily lend itself to a
symbol and legend or a Myth. As some theologians
would have it, the Advent of God would be
unique, irrepeatable, and inimitable. It is said
that the Advent of Jesus, marked by the
culmination on the Cross, has a unique quality
not found in other advents; and we have no need
to deny this because the other advents also are
unique, and there cannot be another Krishna or
Rama or Bhargava or Vamana or for the matter
another Gandhi or Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
The significance of the Advent is such that it
reveals divine properties or qualities which the
Hindu thinker calls the six perfections,
aisvarya, virya, jnana, bala, sakti and tejas.
These are the radiating perfections, bha-ga-van
of the Divine nature which are pure, (amala),
untarnishable (vimala) pellucid (nirmala) and
infinite and un-diminished whatever the kind of
body the Divine takes in the Advent. We could
reveal the immense quality of the Divine Nature
which no human association or birth in any caste
or race could reduce (acyuta). Above all the
Advent descends to uplift the world to a greter
and vaster dharma and not merely to re-establish
the old order by restoring the old foundations.
The eternal order is that to which all creation
is moving, and it is in terms of the eternal
order (sanatana dharma) that at each age the new
order is being adopted by the omniscient vision
of the Advent, or his associates, the sages,
whose vision undimmed always gazes on the
eternal. It is this experience of the divine man
in person that makes sense of the created world.
Historical religions stress this aspect of the
religious and the personalistic. It is the
immanence, or inherence, or possibility of the
perfect person in the Transcendent and the
Creator statuses that makes even mystical
thinking personalistic, as in the hymns of the
great devotees – alwars, nayanmars and the
Gnostics. It is true that there are some Hindu
sects like the Saiva Siddhantins, who do not
think that God takes a human or mortal birth
(and that he has no need to do so because of his
omnipotence). Such sects think of His
intercession on behalf of the devotees (as for
the granting of supreme vision) as being usually
direct. However the humanity of God is fully
brought out in the advents which reveals more
purposes than one.
A synthetic religion, which any universal
religion would have to be, would have to accept
this version of the Divine Advent which enriches
the entire earth-processes or evolution.
The incarnational conception of God bridges the
gulf between the Absolute Transcendence and the
total Immanence in Nature of God. Any attempt to
conceive the former as the only Real makes
religion impossible, though it may be mystical
experience. The conception of God as Love does
envisage this advent or avatarana fully. That
does not mean that love is superior to Truth,
but only that Truth and Love are essential
features of the Divine Manifestation, However,
some religions emphasize the aspect of Truth
whereas others emphasize the aspect of Love. As
it has been said the six perfections of the
Divine nature, Bhagavan, might each be
considered to be the ideal of God or Human
personality, and a classification of the
religions could be made accordingly.
The impersonal ethical religion of Taoism is
exalting. The impersonal meditation of the Zen
is equally devoted to the experience of the
transcendence over all process. In fact the
“Satori” is said to be suddenly reached. Satori
means enlightment. Originally it is stated to
have been taught in India and carried to China
by Boddhadharma of Kanchipura (South India)
about 552 A.D. Known as Dhyan (Chan, Zen) it was
one of sudden englightment.
“A special transmission outside the scripture
No dependence upon words and letters
Direct pointing to the soul of man
Seeing into one’s nature” *
Satori is beyond the intellect; it is seeing
one’s own nature and know that Nature is not
one’s own. The vision may come suddenly or arise
slowly. In any case, applied in the context of
Buddhism, it meant the arising of the void, the
sunya, which is all-embracing.
One attains the condition
“Imperturbable and serene the ideal man
practices no virtue
self-possessed and dispassionate he commits no
sin
Calm and silent he gives up seeing and hearing
Even and upright his mind abides nowhere”.**
The ideal of the impersonal trans-mental state
has been perfected by Buddhism, and in Zen it
has found variations.
A theistic version of this Satori may be
ventured. Satari is the Sanskrt name of a great
saint of Sri Vaisnavism, in fact its founder,
who is said to have lived about the 8th century
A.D. by historians of today, but placed
somewhere in 5000 B.C. by traditionalists. It
means the enemy of Sata or the breath that leads
to the next birth. This breath (jiva) movement
to next life is cut away once for all by means
of supreme devotion to the Ultimate
Godhead-Narayana Krsna. One does not know when
and how this word came to mean also total
surrender to God alone, and to none other, for
the sake of deliverance.
In any case the aim of religion has been to be
in tune with God and through him with the entire
world. Spirituality has meant the complete
transformation of one’s very being and nature
into Inifinity, and it has even been considered
to be anti-thetical to religious experience. The
denial of the efficacy of all organization or
institutions and rites, rituals and so on by
some of the mystics is evidence of the mystical
anti-religious tendency. It is also affirmed
that mysticism can even deny religion and the
authority of religion. But an integral scheme of
life would demand the recognition that once
mysticism establishes the freedom from religion
then prevailing, it in its turn produces its own
pattern of ritualism and cultism. Thus we know
that Islam was a protest against the increasing
tendency to worship Jesus Christ and His Virgin
Mother. The recognition that God is not to be
stepped down to the level of his son or his
emanation or descent is very important, as
important as the recognition in India of the
difference between Isvara and Brahman as in the
mystical idea of Sankara. The absoluteness or
transcendence over creation of Brahman has been
hailed as the metaphysical mystic status,
whereas the Isvara has been recognized as the
creational power along with the universe or in
relation to the universe. We see then that
religion is relational, mysticism is
supra-relational if not transcendental. But
every effort to transcend the level is a
mystical effort, whereas every recognition of
the transcendent in relation to oneself or the
creation is religious. In the twofold Vedanta we
have the recognition of the two statuses of
Brahman and the Isvara. In the Pancaratra Agama
we have the recognition of the five-fold Divine
nature which integrates organically the mystical
with the religious Godhood.
The mystical aim has one more goal. It aims at
taking the whole life for its province, on the
one hand, and on the other the total denial or
renunciation of life and the world. Though the
God of religion is claimed to be the sovereign
creator etc of the universal, and as such
satisfies the mystic halfway, the dynamic nature
of the mystic is such tht he is actively engaged
in breaking all bonds of freedom.
The history or religions reveals the tendency of
all of them to become close societies. The loss
of effective power to make for strenuous ascent
to Godhood is uniformly present. Even as in the
case of philosophy, where old philosophies
required reformulations for being living, so too
religios require periodic re-filling in order to
be vital expressions of the consciousness of the
individual embracing it. Modern religious life
is described as comprising only the regularity
of doing certain practices such as temple-going,
or Sunday or Friday or Thursday church or
mosque-going, and hearing or seeing the rituals.
Even the dutiful incantations and repetitions do
not lead one to the experience of God in any one
of the five statuses. Externality and formalism,
however gorgeous and imposing, do not cut much
ground or rouse the heart to a great endeavour.
The attempts to interest man in social work or
service of God in man have equally begun to
prove barren of spiritual, mystical, or
religious results. This state or religion seems
to be not exceptional but rather the law of all
institutions proper to man.
All efforts are being made to urge man towards
religion. To rouse man from his slumber seems
possible only when he is given a really
worthwhile goal or target. The great disaster
ahead of him seems to be the total ruin of man
in the world of shadows, of pleasures that bring
unhappiness, disease and disgrace. The old
doctrine of illusoriness of the world seems to
have lost all threat-provoking capacity. The
Buddhist counsel that all life is suffering has
not made man turn away from it. The call to save
himself from the hell-fire and doom awaiting
man, the sinner, around the corner, hasnot been
taken seriously by any one. The wrath of God
even when experienced through the constant
evidences of earth quakes, fires, typhoons,
air-crashes, wars, pestilences and draughts,
have not provoked much response. Men continue to
go on. Only a few men are prodded to think
within themselves and seek a godly guidance. We
have become morbid and melancholy because
religious do not seem to solve any of the real
human problems. Death seems to have lost its
sting and seems to be vastly more preferable to
the life that we live. Though man’s triumphs in
knowledge of Nature and conquest of it have been
sometimes stimulating the yearning for doing the
same, yet it has been clearly disheartening to
see that no one really thinks that religion has
a future.
The materialistic attitude can be described as
one of either a life hitched to ephemeral values
and pleasures evanescent, or of unrelieved
gloom. Human welfare has been more prominently
in the front and humanism seems to be a living
faith for many who feel that man’s primary
concern is not with God but with man. Even our
prophets are interpreted to teach us the faith
in humanity, human values and human destiny, and
the concern of the incarnations themselves has
been shown to be man. Even his evolution to a
higher level of consciousness, or his liberation
from the round of deaths and births have been
given up. Humanism is the religion of worship of
human values and human welfare. Secularism is
the non-religious concern with human activities,
and materialism regards all processes even of
life and values as flowing from Nature and
motion, without any spirit. Consciousness, too,
is shown to be material product. Between these
secularisms and materialisms all our human
activities are centered. God is fifth wheel to
the coach.
This situation has been common to most man tired
of the eulogies paid to religion and higher
mental activities to solve the problem of human
misery. Human misery could be solved by human
reason, however fumbling it might be, however
muddled its operation. Man has been learning
through trial and error. Religion without reason
has been of no use, and reason without religion
has had great success. Thus all the great truths
said to belong to Religion and Mysticism have
been rediscovered in the context of our life by
reason. These arguments are once again to the
fore. Except for the traditional respect that
men bear to religion and religious experiences,
no one really thinks that religion adds to the
weight of our reason in human conduct. In such a
condition it has become imperative to show that
reason itself requires, for its greater acivity,
the life of spirit or religion which gives a
faith that outlasts life. Strange as it may
seem, there are men who claim that their
prophets are ‘living’ though dead a two thousand
years ago, whilst the ideas of today are stated
to be dead and meaningless. The living Gods of
the ancient past yet lay heavy hands on the
present, and religion becomes an enchanting
relic of the past re-enacted today.
Modern attempts to synthesise religion and
spirituality in terms of humanism or secularism
are too rational and limited in their scope to
be of lasting importance. Nor can there be any
reconciliation between religions which insist on
dogmas and myths without opening themselves to
spiritual awakening. The old spirituality had
become religious dogma and formalistic and
materialistic too. A new spirituality needs a
re-opening of the mind to things which are
beyond the old mind and its rationalities. As it
was pointedout, the new dimensions of our
present age demand new extensions of our logic
and reason. It is possible only by going beyond
our present humanity and its rationality and by
diving below matter on the one hand, and soaring
above reason on the other, so as to have
glimpses of the axioms of the Infinite Spirit
from which alone all the great prophets received
their illuminations. May be in an age of
democracy when each individual has come to a
sense of personal existence and commitment, each
individual has to open up to the flashes of
insight from above, and from within, and from
below. Then alone will a real synthesis of
religions and Mysticisms take place, and men may
be aware of the birth of a new universality with
a different logic and language. |
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