THE RIGHT APPROACH TO RELIGION

By HAR KRISHAN SINGH

(Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)

Truth is higher than everything else, but higher still is true living.

–Guru Nanak.

In my view, a man’s value does not depend on what he learns, or his position or fame, or what he does, but on what he is and inwardly becomes.

–Sri Aurobindo.

If you live one sixth of what is taught you, you will surely attain the goal.

–Sri Ramakrishna.

It is not difficult to know the good, but it is difficult to put it in practice.

–Tsu King.

The man who knows the principles of right reason is less than the man who loves them, and he less than the man who makes of them his delight and practices them.

–Confucius.

Thou wouldst exhort men to good? But hast thou exhorted thyself? Thou wouldst be useful to them? Show by thy own example what men philosophy can make, and do not prate uselessly.

–Epictetus.

Improve others not by reasoning but by example. Let your existence, not your words be your preaching.

–Amiel.

I

No knowledge can be of any effective value which does not give man the capacity to have mastery over his circumstances, which does not give him power over the mechanical workings of Nature in himself or in the universe. It is this promise of mastery and power which gives him a dynamic impetus to pursue increasingly comprehensive, harmonising, integrating and synthesising knowledge.

In modern times, man is put in circumstances that threaten his very existence. Through Science, he is after acquiring more and more knowledge to achieve mastery over his circumstances, over the forces of Nature. He is mustering material energy to gain knowledge and power. But having realised these energies, he is not in a position to have an adequate control over them inasmuch as they have become a source of danger to the entire human race.

This is because of the exclusive occupation of Science with the realities of life. Science’s deferment or unreadiness to probe the underlying forces of Nature that manipulate the workings of life has led to an unbalanced pursuit of knowledge. It has either ignored or denied the spiritual element. The psychological and spiritual faculties, which alone would best know what place a particular kind of knowledge and its application should take in the total development of man, and which alone would best know how to utilise the material forces of Nature for human progress, not only safely but with the greatest benefit to mankind or to all creation, remain undiscovered.

Thus scientific discoveries which have revolutionised the material well-being and comforts of man are not an unmixed blessing. Recent atomic discoveries have become a constant source of fear to man, with a telling effect on his very nerves. The modern man lives in the most pitiable and the most vulnerable conditions of life. Life is to him maximum physical well-being plus maximum psychological unrest.

Sri Aurobindo says that, if the attempts of Science for a control of the mind and of the life-processes, by a knowledge, of the material instrumentation and of the process of our normal and abnormal functionings and activities of mind and life, succeed, “it might not be without danger for the existence of the human race, even as now are certain other scientific discoveries misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally unready for the handling of powers so great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control applied without any knowledge of the secret forces which underline and sustain our existence.”

This does not mean that pursuit of scientific knowledge is of no value, or that Science is an evil which has to be cast off immediately or ultimately. Rather, it is indispensable for the fullness of human development, though by no means of the premier or even the most essential importance for any harmonious, enlightened and peaceful collective living. It is indeed a very essential contribution to richness of life.

Scientific knowledge, in modern times, has been zealously pursued as if the inevitable last key for progress had been found in it. But, for all the material comforts available to man, he is none the happier than his fore-forefathers centuries back. Rest, peace and unmixed joy remain inaccessible and foreign to him.

The obvious reason is that, in his psychological and spiritual stature, he is yet a dwarf. He is psychologically and spiritually bankrupt. He is yet an animal in his infra-rational make-up. His mental capacities and behaviour are too occupied with, and locked up in, his infra-rational existence. The springs of real joy and satisfaction are yet un-discovered and unfathomed. Seeking to master nature, without mastering himself, he is a complete illusion, and lives in complete ignorance of the science of living.

It is not that, to discover the true science of living, man has to ignore or abhor scientific knowledge. But, possessing psychological and spiritual knowledge, which is far more comprehensive, universal, enlightening, unprejudiced, sympathetic, self-creative, unegoistically powerful, and stationed at a higher level of consciousness wherefrom he will be in a position to have a detached over-vision of things, he will be able to influence, realise and utilise the knowledge of phenomena with a more effective grasp of it than he at present has. Not only that, but, with the addition of a spiritual element of a higher reality, the very mathematics and scope of scientific knowledge will change. Not only will its field of development widen, and its progress accelerate, but it will acquire a new upward turn and bring a revolutionary change in its whole structure, with a promise of unforeseen possibilities.

Apart from the material achievements of Science, its one most important psychological contribution has been the preparation of the field in the mind by which it can receive still greater and higher truths on more stabilised bases, on sounder and surer foundations of undogmatic and impartial intellectual perception, on systematic, unambiguous and logical thinking. It has succeeded in eliminating the falsity of superstitions, of cock-sure dogmatic assumptions of irrelevant prepositions, and of mythological fancies. It has done a great service adopting the method of experiment, observation and investigation or arriving at knowledge so that the results are always open to re-examination and verification. This insistence of Science on evidence, facts and verifiable experiments, and on rationalistic and methodical pursuit, has been of immense help in the training of the mind to become an unbiassed and unprejudiced seeker after knowledge. It is another matter that Science, because of its earth-bound character, and because of its consideration of the physical as the sole reality to be probed and investigated and occupied with, has failed to acquire the total view of reality. The cause of such limited scientific vision, as well as the effect of it, is that immense occult forces behind physical existence are yet unknown to unintegrated Science.

Sri Aurobindo says that Science, “masterful in knowledge of processes and in the creation of apt machinery, but ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being, cannot perfect our nature, and therefore cannot perfect our life.” So, as the true seeker of reality must seek after total knowledge and total power, which can perfect our nature and our life, it is necessary that he should first have knowledge of the foundations of his being and existence. “Assuredly,” says J. Tauler, “whoever wishes to discover the universal truth must sound the depths of his own heart.” It is here that the necessity of spiritual knowledge comes.

II

It is only when one finds out the insufficiency of the knowledge of disjointed phenomena to guide man in the practical problems of his life that the urge comes to man to knock at the doors of the unknown. Wisdom dawns: wisdom which is the eternal principle of all things, “the mother of pure love and of all science and of sacred hope”–(Ecclesiasticus). It is by identity with the Reality itself that one has true knowledge, lasting knowledge. Sri Ramakrishna who gives divine meaning to the pursuit of this deeper eternal knowledge, says, “He alone is truly a man who is illumined by the light of the true knowledge; others are only men in name.” “The seeker who would travel in the paths of the teaching of the King of the Ancients,” says Baha-ullah, “should purify his heart of the dark dust of human science.....for it is in his heart that the divine and invisible mysteries appear transfigured.” These are the men who have lain their hands on the source of true knowledge and wisdom, and who, having realised the essence of things, the spirit, the reality, in their own being, point the way for others to follow.

Since Science has limited its inquiry to the visible, the perceptible and the tangible, the other hidden forces that influence, interfere, move and alter the phenomenal workings of the world, and, far more, determine them, are a closed chapter to it. It has no contact with them, no insight into them, no approach to the perception of them, because, belonging to supra-physical reality, they are not subject to laboratory experimentation, though none the less real, concrete, perceptible and experiential. Intuition takes the place of reason. Experience takes the place of experiment. This is because Science has no known methods yet by which it can acquire the knowledge of these occult forces and faculties. Its present methods are not valid or applicable in the region of metaphysical knowledge. Scientific method useful as they are in the world of physical phenomena, are powerless and yet for the subtler fields of spiritual knowledge, and have to be replaced by more appropriate and more effective methods for the discovery of the sources of greater wisdom.

Herein are to be applied spiritualistic and mystic methods. Spirit and mystery are continually at the fringe of reason and knowledge. Religion is one of the methods which opens out to man metaphysical fields of knowledge, hidden powers of knowing, of feeling and of willing. The utility of religion is in its providing man a field of growth wherein he can develop the needed faculties and instruments of supra-physical knowledge, and prepare himself to enter the very source of reality and have direct experience of it.

Spiritual knowledge is not empirical in the manner of its being derived through the agency of the senses, but it is empirical in the sense that it is experienced, though through intuition, and thereby it is more concrete than experience through the senses or through the untrained intellect, which experience is both inconsistent and incomplete in character. And this deeper experience of reality, through psychical and spiritual methods, is not something cut off or secluded from the experience of the senses or the experience of reason. It is not an illusory perception or a psychological hallucination. It is knowledge which is communicable to different parts of our being, to our intellect, to our sensations and to our body, etc. It is equally communicable to other persons, though not as easily as the Rule of Three or the Theory of Gravity or the Theory of Relativity.

Empirical knowledge starts by an experience of the senses.. It succeeds the experience of the senses. Spiritual knowledge precedes this experience. The senses can share the knowledge of the spirit, fully, only later: in the beginning, less intensely and less concretely, for the very simple reason that the experience of the spirit is independent of the experience of the senses, or of psychical faculties even. The spirit is more sensitive, and is closer to the noumenal world, to the planes of shear Reality to which it has easier access. The senses, adapted to have knowledge of the phenomenal world, have no direct means to know Reality.

But we can arrive at this knowledge of Reality only when we have known how to look within and to find the reality of our own being. Farid-ud-din-Attar says, “Only from his own soul can man demand the secret of eternal beauty.” This is why Guru Nanak exhorts mind to discover its true nature: “Thou art the image of Light, know thy true source and reality.” The knowledge is hidden in the mind itself. Says Sri Aurobindo, “Nothing can be taught to the mind, which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him...All teaching is a revealing; all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process.”

Knowledge, as described, is a value to be pursued, to be applied to the conditions of life, so that the nature and texture of life are changed. So is the solution to the problems of life sought, and so is the remedy to the ills of humanity discovered. If we want to utilise this knowledge for the transformation of our being and of our nature, it is not only to understand it as one aspect of reality, as part of the mass of human knowledge. We should seek it and we should pursue it as something that concerns our very life, concerns our very purpose and aim in life. And if this supra-physical knowledge is to give us a total philosophy of true living, it has to become our total occupation in life.

“A change into a higher consciousness or state of being,” says Sri Aurobindo, “is not only the whole aim and process of religion……but it is also the very trend of our life itself, the secret purpose found in the sum of its labour.” “If it is merely some part of ourselves, intellect, heart, will or vital desire-self, which, dissatisfied with its own imperfection and with the world, strives to get away from it to a greater height of existence, content to leave the rest of the nature to take care of itself or to perish, then such a result of total transformation would not eventuate…..there is a labour of Nature in us to ascend with all our selves into a higher principle of being than it has yet evolved here.”

For the transformation of life on the basis of higher and higher spiritual knowledge, and for the flowering and fulfilment of the mundane existence into divinity, unpolluted generalisation and canalisation of that spiritual knowledge is very essential.

It is to achieve this canalisation that seers, saints, avatars and prophets have striven, down the ages. Religion is the natural inheritor and successor to these achievements, and, in whatever mutilated form, it has preserved the main lines of that canalisation. Though various religions have their systematised methods of acquiring the realisation of the higher reality, on the practical side they have tended to be more or less authoritatively dogmatic. There, faith has the most important role to play. There is hardly a religion wherein an unquestioning acceptance of its ideas and all verbal translations of these ideas are not demanded. In certain beliefs, no enquiry into the validity or otherwise of their truth, or into the extent of their truth, is allowed. Their truth is considered to be the Supreme Truth. “Religion has opened itself to denial,” observes Sri Aurobindo, “by its claim to determine the truth by divine authority, by inspiration, by a sacrosanct and infallible sovereignty given to it from on high; it has sought to impose itself on human thought, feeling, conduct, without discussion or question.”

But religion, by the very fact of its being a philosophy and a science of a greater and higher life, should be an awakening, liberating and illuminating power. And, because spiritual knowledge precedes and exceeds all knowledge, it is the fosterer of future possibilities of the individual as well as of the human race. Soul or Spirit is the next instrument of knowledge after Mind or Reason, and it is an inevitable step in the evolutionary advance of Nature.

Any religious philosophy which must ultimately stand as an ever-living truth should not be dogmatically authoritative. It should always be open to inquiry and examination, and it should be satisfying to the awakened and illumined thought of Man. It should, above all, open the vista of fulfilment in practical life to an individual’s deepest and sublimest aspirations.

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