The Necessity of Religion(2)

The Discovery of States Higher Than Waking or Dreaming

But by this time the search had begun and the search was inward. Human beings continued inquiring more deeply into the different stages of the mind and discovered higher states than either the waking or the dreaming. This state of things we find in all the organized religions of the world, called either ecstasy or inspiration. In all organized religions, their founders, prophets, and messengers are declared to have gone into states of mind that were neither waking nor sleeping, in which they came face to face with a new series of facts relating to what is called the spiritual kingdom. They realized things there much more intensely than we realize facts around us in our waking state. Take, for instance, the religions of the Brahmins. The Vedas are said to be written by Rishis. These Rishis were sages who realized certain facts. The exact definition of the Sanskrit word Rishi is a Seer of Mantras--of the thoughts conveyed in the Vedic hymns. These Rishis declared that they had realized--sensed, if that word can be used with regard to the supersensuous--certain facts, and these facts they proceeded to put on record. We find the same truth declared amongst both the Jews and the Christians.

Some exceptions may be taken in the case of the Buddhists as represented by the Southern sect. It may be asked--if the Buddhists do not believe in any God or soul, how can their religion be derived from the supersensuous state of existence? The answer to this is that even the Buddhists find an eternal moral law, and that moral law was not reasoned out in our sense of the word. But Buddha found it, discovered it, in a supersensuous state. Those of you who have studied the life of Buddha, even as briefly given in that beautiful poem The Light of Asia, may remember that Buddha is represented as sitting under the Bo-tree until he reached that supersensuous state of mind. All his teachings came through this, and not through intellectual cogitations.

Thus, a tremendous statement is made by all religions; that the human mind, at certain moments, transcends not only the limitations of the senses but also the power of reasoning. It then comes face to face with facts that it could never have sensed, could never have reasoned out. These facts are the basis of all the religions of the world. Of course, we have the right to challenge these facts, to put them to the test of reason. Nevertheless, all the existing religions of the world claim for the human mind this peculiar power of transcending the limits of the senses and the limits of reason; and this power they put forward as a statement of fact.

Renunciation and Its Relation to Ethics

Apart from the consideration of the question how far these facts claimed by religions are true, we find one characteristic common to them all. They are all abstractions as contrasted with the concrete discoveries of physics, for instance; and in all the highly organized religions they take the purest form of Unit Abstraction, either in the form of an Abstracted Presence, as an Omnipresent Being, as an Abstract Personality called God, as a Moral Law, or in the form of an Abstract Essence underlying every existence.

In modern times, too, the attempts made to preach religions without appealing to the supersensuous state of mind have had to take up the old abstractions of the Ancients and give different names to them as "Moral Law," the "Ideal Unity," and so forth, thus showing that these abstractions are not in the senses. None of us have yet seen an "Ideal Human Being," and yet we are told to believe in it. None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect person, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress. Thus, this one fact stands out from all these different religions, that there is an Ideal Unit Abstraction, which is put before us, either in the form of a Person or an Impersonal Being, or a Law, or a Presence, or an Essence. We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal.

Every human being, whosoever and wheresoever he or she may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human being has an ideal of infinite pleasure. Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed everywhere, are due to the struggle for this infinite power or this infinite pleasure. But a few quickly discover that although they are struggling for infinite power, it is not through the senses that it can be reached. They find out very soon that that infinite pleasure is not to be got through the senses. In other words, the senses are too limited and the body is too limited to express the Infinite. To manifest the Infinite through the finite is impossible, and sooner or later we learn to give up the attempt to express the Infinite through the finite. This giving up, this renunciation of the attempt, is the background of ethics. Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.

Ethics always says, Not I, but thou. Its motto is, Not self, but non-self. The vain ideas of individualism, to which people cling when they are trying to find that Infinite Power or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up--say the laws of ethics. You have to put yourself last, and others before you. The senses say, "Myself first." Ethics says, "I must hold myself last." Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane. The Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable.

So we have to give up the plane of matter and rise to other spheres to seek a deeper expression of the Infinite. In this way the various ethical laws are being molded, but all have that one central idea, eternal self-abnegation. Perfect self-annihilation is the ideal of ethics. People are startled if they are asked not to think of their individualities. They seem so very much afraid of losing what they call their individuality. At the same time, the same people would declare the highest ideals of ethics to be right, never for a moment thinking that the scope, the goal, the idea of all ethics is the destruction, and not the building up, of the individual.

The Necessity of Spiritual Religion

Utilitarian standards cannot explain the ethical relations of people. For, in the first place, we cannot derive any ethical laws from considerations of utility. Without the supernatural sanction as it is called--or the perception of the superconscious as I prefer to term it--there can be no ethics. Without the struggle towards the Infinite there can be no ideal. Any system that wants to bind people down to the limits of their own societies is not able to find an explanation for the ethical laws of humanity. The Utilitarian wants us to give up the struggle after the Infinite, the reaching out for the Supersensuous, as impracticable and absurd, and in the same breath asks us to take up ethics and do good to society. Why should we do good? Doing good is a secondary consideration. We must have an idea. Ethics itself is not the end, but the means to the end. If the end is not there, why should we be ethical? Why should I do good to others and not injure them? If happiness is the goal, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What prevents me?

In the second place, the basis of utility is too narrow. All the current social forms and methods are derived from society as it exists, but what right has the Utilitarian to assume that society is eternal? Society did not exist ages ago, possibly will not exist ages hence. Most probably it is one of the passing stages through which we are going towards a higher evolution, and any law that is derived from society alone cannot be eternal, cannot cover the whole ground of the human nature. At best, therefore, Utilitarian theories can only work under present social conditions. Beyond that they have no value. But a morality, an ethical code, derived from religion and spirituality, has the whole of infinite human being for its scope. It takes up the individual, but its relations are to the Infinite, and it takes up society also--because society is nothing but numbers of these individuals grouped together; and as it applies to the individual and his or her eternal relations, it must necessarily apply to the whole of society, in whatever condition it may be at any given time. Thus we see that there is always the necessity of spiritual religion for human beings. We cannot always think of matter, however pleasurable it may be.

It has been said that too much attention to things spiritual disturbs our practical relations in this world. As far back as in the days of the Chinese sage Confucius, it was said, "Let us take care of this world: and then, when we have finished with this world, we will take care of other world." It is very well that we should take care of this world. But if too much attention to the spiritual may affect a little our practical relations, too much attention to the so-called practical hurts us here and hereafter. It makes us materialistic. For we are not to regard nature as our goal but something higher.

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