{"id":1173,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:04","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:04","slug":"19-religion-as-the-law-of-life-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/19-religion-as-the-law-of-life-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-19_Religion as the Law of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nCHAPTER <\/font><\/span>
\nXVII<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n 
\n<\/font>
\nReligion as the Law of Life<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                               
\nSINCE the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the
\nuniversal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual
\nconsciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and
\ntherefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in
\nall its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last and highest
\nguide; culture, as it is understood ordinarily, cannot be the directing light
\nor find out the regulating and harmonising principle of all our life and
\naction. For reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the
\nproblems of life, and culture in order to attain the Transcendent and Infinite
\nmust become spiritual culture, something much more than an intellectual,
\naesthetic, ethical and practical training. Where then are we to find the
\ndirecting light and the regulating and harmonising principle? The first answer
\nwhich will suggest itself, the answer constantly given by the Asiatic mind, is
\nthat we shall find it directly and immediately in religion. And this seems a
\nreasonable and at first sight a satisfying solution; for religion is that
\ninstinct, idea, activity, discipline in man which aims directly at the Divine,
\nwhile all the rest seem to aim at it only indirectly and reach it with
\ndifficulty after much wandering and stumbling in the pursuit of the outward and
\nimperfect appearances of things. To make all life religion and to govern all
\nactivities by the religious idea would seem to be the right way to the
\ndevelopment of the ideal individual and ideal society and the lifting of the
\nwhole life of man irito the Divine.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nA
\ncertain pre-eminence of religion, the overshadowing or at least the colouring
\nof life, an overtopping of all the other instincts and fundamental ideas by the
\nreligious instinct and the religious idea is, we may note, not peculiar to
\nAsiatic civilisations, but has always been more or less the normal state of the
\nhuman<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-162<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmind and of human
\nsocieties, or if not quite that, yet a notable and prominent part of their
\ncomplex tendencies, except in certain comparatively brief periods of their
\nhistory, in one of which we find ourselves today and are half turning indeed to
\nemerge from it but have not yet emerged. We must suppose then that in this
\nleading, this predominant part assigned to religion by the normal human
\ncollectivity there is some great need and truth of our natural being to which
\nwe must always after however long an in- fidelity return. On the other hand, we
\nmust recognise the fact that in a time of great activity, of high aspiration,
\nof deep sowing, of rich fruit-bearing, such as the modern age with all its
\nfaults and errors has been, a time especially when humanity got rid of much
\nthat was cruel, evil, ignorant, dark, odious, not by the power of religion, but
\nby the power of the awakened intelligence and of human idealism and sympathy,
\nthis predominance of religion has been violently attacked and rejected by that
\nportion of humanity which was for that time the standard-bearer of thought and
\nprogress, Europe after the Renascence, modern Europe. This revolt in its
\nextreme form tried to destroy religion altogether, boasted indeed of having
\nkilled the religious instinct in man, – a vain and ignorant boast, as we now
\nsee, for the religious instinct in man is most of all the one instinct in him
\nthat cannot be killed, it only changes its form. In its more mode- rate
\nmovements the revolt put religion aside into a corner of the soul .by itself
\nand banished its intermiscence in the intellectual, aesthetic, practical life
\nand even in the ethical; and it did this on the ground that the intermiscence
\nof religion in science, thought, politics, society, life in general had been
\nand must be a force for retardation, superstition, oppressive ignorance. The
\nreligionist may say that this accusation was an error and an atheistic
\nperversity, or he may say that religious retardation, a pious ignorance, a
\ncontented static condition or even an orderly stag- nation full of holy
\nthoughts of the Beyond is much better than a continuous endeavour after greater
\nknowledge, greater mastery, more happiness, joy, light upon this transient
\nearth. But the catholic thinker cannot accept such a plea; he is obliged to see
\nthat so long as man has not realised the divine and the ideal in his life, –
\nand it may well be even when he has realised it, since<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-163<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe divine is the
\ninfinite,<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>progress and not unmoving status is
\n<\/font>the necessary and desirable
\nlaw of his life,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nnot indeed any <\/font> <\/span>
\nbreathless rush after novelties, but a constant motion
\ntowards a greater and greater truth of the spirit, the thought and the life not
\nonly in the individual, but in the collectivity, in the communal endeavour, in
\nthe turn, ideals, temperament, make of the society, in its strivings towards
\nperfection. And he is obliged too to see that the indictment against religion~
\nnot in its conclusion, but in its premiss had something, had even much to
\njustify it,<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>not that religion in itself must be, but that
\nhistorically and as a matter of fact the accredited religions and their
\nhierarchs and exponents have too often been a force for retardation~ have too
\noften thrown their weight on the side of darkness, oppression and ignorance,
\nand that it has needed a denial, a revolt of the oppressed human mind and heart
\nto correct these errors and set religion right. And why should this have been
\nif religion is the true and sufficient guide and regulator of all human
\nactivities and the whole of human life?<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>We need not follow the rationalistic or
\natheistic mind through all its aggressive indictment of religion. We need not
\nfor instance lay a too excessive stress on the superstitions, aberrations,
\nviolences, crimes even, which Churches and cults and creeds have favoured,
\nadmitted, sanctioned, supported or exploited for their own benefit, the mere
\nhostile enumeration of which might lead one to echo the cry of the atheistic
\nRoman poet, "To such a mass of ills could religion persuade mankind."
\nAs well might one cite the crimes and errors which have been committed in the
\nname of liberty or of order as a sufficient condemnation of the ideal of
\nliberty or the ideal of social order. But we have to note the fact that such a
\nthing was possible and to find its explanation. We cannot ignore for instance
\nthe blood- stained and fiery track which formal external Christianity has left
\nfurrowed across the mediaeval history of Europe almost from the days of
\nConstantine, its first hour of secular triumph, down to very recent times, or
\nthe sanguinary comment which such an institution as the Inquisition affords on
\nthe claim of religion to be the directing light and regulating power in ethics
\nand society, or religious wars and wide-spread State persecutions on<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-164<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nits claim to guide the
\npolitical life of mankind. But we must <\/font>
\nobserve the root of this evil, which is not in true
\nreligion itself, <\/font> <\/span>but in its infrarational
\nparts, not in spiritual faith and aspiration, but in our ignorant human
\nconfusion of religion with a particular creed, sect, cult, religious society or
\nchurch. So strong is the human tendency to this error that even the old
\ntolerant Paganism slew Socrates in the name of religion and morality, feebly
\npersecuted non-national faiths like the cult of Isis or the cult of Mithra and
\nmore vigorously what it conceived to be the subversive and anti-social religion
\nof the early Christians; and <\/font>even <\/font> <\/span>
\nin
\nstill more fundamentally tolerant Hinduism with all its <\/font> <\/span>
\nspiritual broadness and enlightenment it led at one
\ntime to the milder mutual hatred and occasional though brief-lived persecution
\nof Buddhist, Jain, Shaiva, Vaishnava.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The whole root of the historic
\ninsufficiency of religion as a guide and control of human society lies there.
\nChurches and<\/font>,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\ncreeds have, for example,
\nstood violently in the way of philo<\/font><\/span>sophy
\nand science, burned a Giordano Bruno, imprisoned a Galileo, and so generally
\nmisconducted themselves in this matter that philosophy and science had in
\nself-defence to turn upon Religion and rend her to pieces in order to get a
\nfree field for their legitimate development; and this because men in the
\npassion and darkness of their vital nature had chosen to think that religion
\nwas bound up with certain fixed intellectual conceptions about God and the
\nworld which could not stand scrutiny, and therefore scrutiny had to be put down
\nby fire and sword; scientific and philosophical truth had to be denied in order
\nthat religious error might survive. We see too that a narrow religious spirit
\noften oppresses and impoverishes the joy and beauty of life, either from an
\nintolerant asceticism or, as the Puritans attempted it, because they could not
\nsee that religious austerity is not the whole of religion, though it may be an
\nimportant side of it, is not the sole ethico-religious approach to God, since
\nlove, charity, gentleness, tolerance, kindliness are also and even more divine,
\nand they forgot or never knew that God is love and beauty as well as purity. In
\npolitics religion has often thrown itself on the side of power and resisted the
\ncoming of larger political ideals, because it was itself, in the form of a
\nChurch,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-165<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nsupported by power and
\nbecause it confused religion with the Church, or because it stood for a false
\ntheocracy, forgetting that true theocracy is the kingdom of God in man and not
\nthe kingdom of a Pope, a priesthood or a sacerdotal class. So too it has often
\nsupported a rigid and outworn social system, because it thought its own life
\nbound up with social forms with which it happened to have been associated
\nduring a long portion of its own history and erroneously concluded that even a
\nnecessary change there would be a violation of religion and a danger to its
\nexistence. As if so mighty and inward a power as the religious spirit in man could
\nbe destroyed by anything so small as the change of a social form or so outward
\nas a social readjustment! This error in its many shapes has been the great
\nweakness of religion as practised in the past and the opportunity and
\njustification for the revolt of the intelligence, the aesthetic sense, the
\nsocial and political idealism, even the ethical spirit of the human being
\nagainst what should have been its own highest tendency and law. Here then lies
\none secret of the divergence between the ancient and the modern, the Eastern
\nand Western ideal, and here also one clue to their reconciliation. Both rest
\nupon a certain strong justification and their quarrel is due to a
\nmisunderstanding. It is true in a sense that religion should be the dominant
\nthing in life, its light and law, but religion as it should be and is in its
\ninner nature, its fundamental law of being, a seeking after God, the cult of
\nspirituality, the opening of the deepest life of the soul to the indwelling
\nGodhead, the eternal Omnipresence. On the other hand, it is true that religion
\nwhen it identifies itself only with a creed, a cult, a Church, a system of
\nceremonial forms, may well become a retarding force and there may therefore
\narise a necessity for the human spirit to reject its control over the varied
\nactivities of life. There are two aspects of religion, true religion and
\nreligionism. True religion is spiritual religion, that which seeks to live in
\nthe spirit, in what is beyond the intellect, beyond the aesthetic and ethical
\nand practical being of man, and to in- form and govern these members of our
\nbeing by the higher light and law of the spirit. Religionism, on the contrary,
\nentrenches itself in some narrow pietistic exaltation of the lower members or
\nlays exclusive stress on intellectual dogmas, forms and cere-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-166<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmonies, on some fixed
\nand rigid moral code, on some religio-political or religio-social system. Not
\nthat these things are alto<\/font>gether negligible or that they must be unworthy or unnecessary or that
\na spiritual religion need disdain the aid of forms, ceremonies, creeds or
\nsystems. On the contrary, they are needed by man because the lower members have
\nto be exalted and raised <\/font> <\/span>before they can
\nbe fully spiritualised, before they can directly feel <\/font>
\nthe spirit and obey its law.
\nAn intellectual formula is often need- ed by the thinking and reasoning mind, a
\nform or ceremony by the aesthetic temperament or other parts of the
\ninfrarational being, a set moral code by man’s vital nature in their turn
\ntowards the inner life. But these things are aids and supports, not the
\nessence; precisely because they belong to the rational and infra- rational
\nparts, they can be nothing more and, if too blindly insisted on, may even
\nhamper the suprarational light. Such as<\/font>\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/span>they are, they have to be offered to
\nman and used by him, but not <\/font>to be imposed on him as his sole law by a forced and inflexible
\ndomination. In the use of them toleration and free permission of variation is
\nthe first rule which should be observed. The spiritual essence of religion is
\nalone the one thing supremely needful,\u00a0
\n<\/span>the thing to which we have always to hold and subordinate to it every
\nother element or motive.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But here
\ncomes in an ambiguity which brings in a deeper <\/font> <\/span>
\nsource<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>of
\ndivergence. For by spirituality religion seems often to <\/font>
\nmean <\/font> <\/span>
\nsomething remote from earthly life, different from it,
\nhostile to it. It seems to condemn the pursuit of earthly aims as a trend
\nopposed to the turn to a spiritual life and the hopes of man on
\n<\/font>earth as an
\nillusion or a vanity incompatible with the hope of man in heaven. The spirit
\nthen becomes something aloof which man can only reach by throwing away the life
\nof his lower members. Either he must abandon this nether life after a certain
\npoint, when it has served its purpose, or must persistently discourage, mortify
\nand kill it. If that be the true sense of religion, then obviously religion has
\nno positive message for human society in the proper field of social effort,
\nhope and aspiration or for the individual in any of the lower members of his
\nbeing. For each principle of our nature seeks naturally for perfection in its
\nown sphere and, if it is to obey a higher power, it must be because<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-167<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

that power gives it a
\ngreater perfection and a fuller satisfaction even in its own field. But if
\nperfectibility is denied to it and therefore the aspiration to perfection taken
\naway by the spiritual urge, then it must either lose faith in itself and the
\npower to pursue the natural expansion of its energies and activities or it must
\nreject the call of the spirit in order to follow its own bend and law, dharma.
\n<\/i>This quarrel between earth and heaven, between the spirit and its members
\nbecomes still more sterilising if spirituality takes the form of a religion of
\nsorrow and suffering and austere mortification and the gospel of the vanity of
\nthings; in its exaggeration it leads to such nightmares of the soul as that
\nterrible gloom and hopelessness of the Middle Ages in their worst moment when
\nthe one hope. of mankind seemed to be in the approaching and expected end of
\nthe world, an inevitable and desirable Pralaya. But even in less pronounced and
\nintolerant forms of this pessimistic attitude with regard to the world, it
\nbecomes a force for the discouragement of life and cannot, there- fore, be a
\ntrue law and guide for life. All pessimism is to that extent a denial of the
\nSpirit, of its fullness and power, an impatience with the ways of God in the
\nworld, an insufficient faith in <\/font>
\nthe divine Wisdom and Will that created the world
\nand for <\/font> <\/span>ever
\n<\/font> <\/span>guide it. It admit a wrong notion about that supreme
\nWisdom and Power and therefore cannot itself be the supreme wisdom and power of
\nthe spirit to which the world can look for guidance and for the uplifting of
\nits whole life towards the Divine.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The Western recoil from religion, that
\nminimising of its claim and insistence by which Europe progressed from the
\nmediaeval religious attitude through the Renascence and the Reformation to the
\nmodern rationalistic attitude, that making of the ordinary earthly life our one
\npreoccupation, that labour to fulfil ourselves by the law of the lower members,
\ndivorced from all spiritual seeking, was an opposite error, the contrary
\nignorant extreme, the blind swing of the pendulum from a wrong affirmation to a
\nwrong negation. It is an error because perfection can- not be found in such a
\nlimitation and restriction; for it denies the complete law of human existence,
\nits deepest urge, its most secret impulse. Only by the light and power of the
\nhighest can the lower be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished. The<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-168<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nlower life of man is in
\nform undivine, though in it there is, the<\/font>
\n<\/font> <\/span>secret of the
\ndivine, and it can only be divinised by finding the higher law and the
\nspiritual llumination. On the other hand, the impatience which condemns or
\ndespairs of life or discourages its growth because it is at present undivine
\nand is not in harmony with the spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, and
\nham tamah. <\/i>The world-shunning monk, the mere ascetic may indeed well find
\nby this turn his own individual and peculiar salvation, the spiritual
\nrecompense of his renunciation and Tapasya, as the materialist may find by his
\nown exclusive method the appropriate rewards of his energy and concentrated
\nseeking; but neither can be the true guide of mankind and its law-giver. The
\nmonastic attitude implies a fear, an aversion, a distrust of life and its
\naspirations, <\/font>t<\/font><\/span> and one cannot wisely guide
\nthat with which one is entirely out of <\/font> <\/span>sympathy,
\nthat which one wishes to minimise and discourage. <\/font>
\nThe sheer ascetic spirit, if
\nit directed life and human society, could only prepare it to be a means for
\ndenying itself and getting <\/font> <\/span>away from <\/i>its
\nown motives. An ascetic guidance might tolerate the lower activities, but only
\nwith a view to persuade them in the end to minimise and finally cease from
\ntheir own action. But a spirituality which draws back from life to envelop it
\nwithout being dominated by it does not labour under this disability. The
\nspiritual man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in
\nthe ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived <\/font>
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>fully the life of man and
\nfound the word of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth. He has
\nrisen above these lower limitations and can view all things from above, but
\nalso he is in sympathy with their effort and can view them from within; he has
\nthe complete inner knowledge and the higher surpassing knowledge.<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\nTherefore he can guide the
\nworld humanly as <\/font> God <\/font> <\/i><\/span>
\nguides it
\ndivinely, because like the Divine he is in the life of the world and yet above
\nit.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>In spirituality, then, understood in this
\nsense, we must seek for the directing light and the harmonising law, and in
\nreligion only in proportion as it identifies itself with this spirituality. So
\nlong as it falls short of this, it is one human activity and power among
\nothers, and, even if it be considered the most important and the most powerful,
\nit cannot wholly guide the others. If it<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-169<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nseeks always to fix them
\ninto the limits of a creed, an unchangeable law, a particular system, it must
\nbe prepared to see them revolting from its control; for although they may
\naccept this impress for a time and greatly profit by it, in the end they must
\nmove by the law of their being towards a freer activity and an untrammelled
\nmovement. Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is
\nitself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to
\nexpand and grow towards perfection by the law of one’s own nature, dharma. <\/i>This
\nliberty it will give to all the fundamental parts of our being. It will give
\nthat freedom to philosophy and science which ancient Indian religion gave, –
\nfreedom even to deny the spirit, if they will, – as a result of which
\nphilosophy and science never felt in ancient India any necessity of divorcing
\nthemselves from religion, but grew rather into it and under its light. It will
\ngive the same freedom to man’s seeking for political and social perfection and
\nto all his other powers and aspirations. Only it will be vigilant to illuminate
\nthem so that they may grow into the light and law of the spirit, not by
\nsuppression and restriction, but by a self- searching, self-controlled
\nexpansion and a many-sided finding of their greatest, highest and deepest
\npotentialities. For all these are potentialities of the spirit.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-170<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XVII   Religion as the Law of Life                                   SINCE the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}