{"id":3508,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3508"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:01","slug":"19-religion-as-the-law-of-life-vol-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-human-cycle\/19-religion-as-the-law-of-life-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-19_Religion as the Law of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nCHAPTER XVII<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nRELIGION AS THE LAW OF LIFE<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nS<\/font>INCE<\/b> the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the
\nuniversal, the one is the secret summit of existence and to reach
\nthe spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and
\naim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the
\nindividual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason
\ncannot be the last and highest guide; culture, as it is understood ordinarily, cannot be the directing light or find out the
\nregulating and harmonising principle of all our life and action.
\nFor reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of
\nlife, and culture in order to attain the Transcendent and Infinite must become spiritual culture, something
\nmuch more than an intellectual, aesthetic, ethical and practical
\ntraining. Where then are we to find the directing light and the
\nregulating and harmonising principle? The first answer which
\nwill suggest itself, the answer constantly given by the Asiatic
\nmind, is that we shall find it directly and immediately in religion.
\nAnd this seems a reasonable and at first sight a satisfying solution; for religion is that instinct, idea, activity, discipline in man
\nwhich aims directly at the Divine, while all the rest seem to aim at it only
\nindirectly and reach it with difficulty after much wandering and stumbling in the pursuit of the outward and imperfect
\nappearances of things. To make all life religion and to govern all
\nactivities by the religious idea would seem to be the right way
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 192<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

to the development of the ideal individual and ideal society and
\nthe lifting of the whole life of man into the Divine. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA certain pre-eminence of religion, the overshadowing or at
\nleast the colouring of life, an overtopping of all the other instincts and fundamental ideas by the religious instinct and the
\nreligious idea is, we may note, not peculiar to Asiatic civilisations, but has always been more or less the normal state of the
\nhuman mind and of human societies, or if not quite that, yet a
\nnotable and prominent part of their complex tendencies, except
\nin certain comparatively brief periods of their history, in one of
\nwhich we find ourselves to-day and are half turning indeed
\nto emerge from it but have not yet emerged. We must suppose
\nthen that in this leading, this predominant part assigned to religion by the normal human collectivity there is some great need
\nand truth of our natural being to which we must always after
\nhowever long an infidelity return. On the other hand, we must
\nrecognise the fact that in a time of great activity, of high aspiration, of deep sowing, of rich fruit-bearing, such as the modem
\nage with all its faults and errors has been, a time especially when
\nhumanity got rid of much that was cruel, evil, ignorant, dark,
\nodious, not by the power of religion, but by the power of the
\nawakened intelligence and of human idealism and sympathy,
\nthis predominance of religion has been violently attacked and
\nrejected by that portion of humanity which was for that time
\nthe standard-bearer of thought and progress, Europe after the
\nRenascence, modem Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis revolt in its extreme form tried to destroy religion altogether, boasted indeed of having killed the religious instinct
\nin man,\u2014a vain and ignorant boast, as we now see, for the religious instinct in man is most of all the one instinct in him that
\ncannot be killed, it only changes its form. In its more moderate
\nmovements the revolt put religion aside into a comer of the soul
\nby itself and banished its intermiscence in the intellectual, aesthetic, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 193<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npractical life and even in the ethical; and it did this on
\nthe ground that the intermiscence of religion in science, thought,
\npolitics, society, life in general had been and must be a force
\nfor retardation, superstition, oppressive ignorance. The religionist
\nmay say that this accusation was an error and an atheistic perversity, or he may say that a religious retardation, a pious ignorance, a contented static condition or even an orderly stagnation
\nfull of holy thoughts of the Beyond is much better than a continuous endeavour after greater knowledge, greater mastery, more
\nhappiness, joy, light upon this transient earth. But the catholic
\nthinker cannot accept such a plea; he is obliged to see that so long
\nas man has not realised the divine and the ideal in his life,\u2014and
\nit may well be even when he has realised it, since the divine is
\nthe infinite,\u2014progress and not unmoving status is the necessary
\nand desirable law of his life,\u2014not indeed any breathless rush
\nafter novelties, but a constant motion towards a greater and
\ngreater truth of the spirit, the thought and the life not only in
\nthe individual, but in the collectivity, in the communal endeavour, in the turn, ideals, temperament, make of the society, in its
\nstrivings towards perfection. And he is obliged too to see that
\nthe indictment against religion, not in its conclusion, but in its
\npremiss had something, had even much to justify it,\u2014not that
\nreligion in itself must be, but that historically and as a matter of
\nfact the accredited religions and their hierarchs and exponents
\nhave too often been a force for retardation, have too often thrown
\ntheir weight on the side of darkness, oppression and ignorance,
\nand that it has needed a denial, a revolt of the oppressed human
\nmind and heart to correct these errors and set religion right. And
\nwhy should this have been if religion is the true and sufficient
\nguide and regulator of all human activities and the whole of
\nhuman life? <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe need not follow the rationalistic or atheistic mind
\nthrough all its aggressive indictment of religion. We need not for <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 194<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ninstance lay a too excessive stress on the superstitions, aberrations, violences, crimes even, which Churches and cults and
\ncreeds have favoured, admitted, sanctioned, supported or exploited for their own benefit, the mere hostile enumeration of
\nwhich might lead one to echo the cry of the atheistic Roman
\npoet, "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 liberty or the ideal of social order. But
\nwe have to note the fact that such a thing was possible and to
\nfind its explanation. We cannot ignore for instance the bloodstained and fiery track which formal external Christianity has
\nleft furrowed across the mediaeval history of Europe almost from
\nthe days of Constantine, its first hour of secular triumph, down
\nto very recent times, or the sanguinary comment which such an
\ninstitution as the Inquisition affords on the claim of religion to
\nbe the directing light and regulating power in ethics and society,
\nor religious wars and wide-spread State persecutions on its claim
\nto guide the political life of mankind. But we must observe the
\nroot of this evil, which is not in true religion itself, but in its
\ninfrarational parts, not in spiritual faith and aspiration, but in
\nour ignorant human confusion of religion" with a particular creed,
\nsect, cult, religious society or church. So strong is the human
\ntendency to this error that even the old tolerant Paganism slew
\nSocrates in the name of religion and morality, feebly persecuted
\nnon-national faiths like the cult of Isis or the cult of Mithra and
\nmore vigorously what it conceived to be the subversive and antisocial religion of the early Christians; and even in still more
\nfundamentally tolerant Hinduism with all its spiritual broadness
\nand enlightenment it led at one time to the milder mutual hatred
\nand occasional though brief-lived persecution of Buddhist, Jain,
\nShaiva, Vaishnava. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe whole root of the historic insufficiency of religion as <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 195<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\na guide and control of human society lies there. Churches and
\ncreeds have, for example, stood violently in the way of philosophy and science, burned a Giordano Bruno, imprisoned a Galileo,
\nand so generally misconducted themselves in this matter that
\nphilosophy and science had in self-defence to turn upon Religion
\nand rend her to pieces in order to get a free field for their legitimate development; and this because men in the passion and
\ndarkness of their vital nature had chosen to think that religion
\nwas bound up with certain fixed intellectual conceptions about
\nGod and the world which could not stand scrutiny, and therefore
\nscrutiny had to be put down by fire and sword; scientific and philosophical truth had to be denied in order that religious error
\nmight survive. We see too that a narrow religious spirit often
\noppresses and impoverishes the joy and beauty of life, either from
\nan intolerant asceticism or, as the Puritans attempted it, because
\nthey could not see that religious austerity is not the whole of religion, though it may be an important side of it, is not the sole
\nethico-religious approach to God, since love, charity, gentleness,
\ntolerance, kindliness are also and even more divine, and 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
\nresisted the coming of larger political ideals, because it was itself,
\nin the form of a Church, supported by power and because it confused religion with the Church, or because it stood for a false
\ntheocracy, forgetting that true theocracy is the kingdom of God
\nin man and not the kingdom of a Pope, a priesthood or a sacerdotal class. So too it has often supported a rigid and outworn social
\nsystem, because it thought its own life bound up with social
\nforms with which it happened to have been associated during a
\nlong portion of its own history and erroneously concluded that
\neven a necessary change there would be a violation of religion
\nand a danger to its existence. As if so mighty and inward a power
\nas the religious spirit in man could be destroyed by anything so
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 196<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsmall as the change of a social form or so outward as a social readjustment! This error in its many shapes has been the great
\nweakness of religion as practised in the past and the opportunity
\nand justification for the revolt of the intelligence, the aesthetic
\nsense, the social and political idealism, even the ethical spirit of the human
\nbeing against what should have been its own highest tendency and law. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nHere then lies one secret of the divergence between the ancient and the modem, the Eastern and Western ideal, and here
\nalso one clue to their reconciliation. Both rest upon a certain strong
\njustification and their quarrel is due to a misunderstanding. 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
\nin its inner nature, its fundamental law of being, a seeking after
\nGod, the cult of spirituality, the opening of the deepest life of the
\nsoul to the indwelling Godhead, the eternal Omnipresence. On
\nthe other hand, it is true that religion when it identifies itself
\nonly with a creed, a cult, a Church, a system of ceremonial
\nforms, may well become a retarding force and there may therefore arise a necessity for the human spirit to reject its control
\nover the varied activities of life. There are two aspects of religion,
\ntrue religion and religionism. True religion is spiritual religion, that which
\nseeks to live in the spirit, in what is beyond the intellect, beyond the aesthetic and ethical and practical being of
\nman, and to inform and govern these members of our being by
\nthe higher light and law of the spirit. Religionism on the contrary
\nentrenches itself in some narrow pietistic exaltation of the lower
\nmembers or lays exclusive stress on intellectual dogmas, forms
\nand ceremonies, on some fixed and rigid moral code, on some
\nreligio-political or religio-social system. Not that these things are
\naltogether negligible or that they must be unworthy or unnecessary or that a spiritual religion need disdain the aid of forms,
\nceremonies, creeds or systems. On the contrary, they are needed
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 197<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nby man because the lower members have to be exalted and raised
\nbefore they can be fully spiritualised, before they can directly
\nfeel the spirit and obey its law. An intellectual formula is often
\nneeded by the thinking and reasoning mind, a form or ceremony
\nby the aesthetic temperament or other parts of the infrarational 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 essence;
\nprecisely because they belong to the rational and infrarational parts, they can be nothing more and, if too blindly
\ninsisted on, may even hamper the suprarational light. Such as
\nthey are, they have to be offered to man and used by him, but
\nnot to be imposed on him as his sole law by a forced and inflexible domination. In the use of them toleration and free permission of variation is the first rule which should be observed. The
\nspiritual essence of religion is alone the one thing supremely
\nneedful, the thing to which we have always to hold and subordinate to it every other element or motive. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut here comes in an ambiguity which brings in a deeper
\nsource of divergence. For by spirituality religion seems often to
\nmean something remote from earthly life, different from it, hostile to it. It seems to condemn the pursuit of earthly aims as a
\ntrend opposed to the turn to a spiritual life and the hopes of man
\non earth as an illusion or a vanity incompatible with the hope of
\nman in heaven. The spirit then becomes something aloof which
\nman can only reach by throwing away the life of his lower
\nmembers. Either he must abandon this nether life after a certain
\npoint, when it has served its purpose, or must persistently discourage, mortify and kill it. If that be the true sense of religion,
\nthen obviously religion has no positive message for human
\nsociety in the proper field of social effort, hope and aspiration or
\nfor the individual in any of the lower members of his being. For
\neach principle of our nature seeks naturally for perfection in
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 198<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nits own sphere and, if it is to obey a higher power, it must be
\nbecause that power gives it a greater perfection and a fuller satisfaction even in its own field. But if perfectibility is denied to it
\nand therefore the aspiration to perfection taken away by the
\nspiritual urge, then it must either lose faith in itself and die power to pursue
\nthe natural expansion of its energies and activities or it must reject the call of the spirit in order to follow its
\nown bent and law, Sharma.<\/i> This quarrel between earth and
\nheaven, between the spirit and its members becomes still more
\nsterilising if spirituality takes die form of a religion of sorrow
\nand suffering and austere mortification and the gospel of the
\nvanity of things; in its exaggeration it leads to such nightmares of the soul as
\nthat terrible gloom and hopelessness of the Middle Ages in their worst moment when the one hope of mankind seemed to be in the approaching and expected end of the
\nworld, an inevitable and desirable Pralaya. But even in less pronounced and intolerant forms of this pessimistic attitude with
\nregard to the world, it becomes a force for the discouragement of
\nlife and cannot, therefore, be a true law and guide for life. All
\npessimism is to that extent a denial of the Spirit, of its fullness
\nand power, an impatience with the ways of God in the world, an
\ninsufficient faith in the divine Wisdom and Will that created
\nthe world and for ever guide it. It admits a wrong notion about
\nthat supreme Wisdom and Power and therefore cannot itself be
\nthe supreme wisdom and power of the spirit to which the world
\ncan look for guidance and for the uplifting of its whole life towards the Divine. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Western recoil from religion, that minimising of its
\nclaim and insistence by which Europe progressed from the mediaeval religious attitude through the Renascence and the Reformation to the modem rationalistic attitude, that making of the
\nordinary earthly life our one preoccupation, that labour to fulfil <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 199<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nourselves by the law of the lower members divorced from all
\nspiritual seeking, was an opposite error, the contrary ignorant
\nextreme, the blind swing of the pendulum from a wrong affirmation to a wrong negation. It is an error because perfection cannot be found in such a limitation and restriction; for it denies
\nthe complete law of human existence, its deepest urge, its most
\nsecret impulse. Only by the light and power of the highest can
\nthe lower be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished. The
\nlower life of man is in form undivine, though in it there is the
\nsecret of the divine, and it can only be divinised by finding the
\nhigher law and the spiritual illumination. On the other hand,
\nthe impatience which condemns or despairs of life or discourages
\nits growth because it is at present undivine and is not in harmony
\nwith the spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, andham tamah.
\n<\/i>The world-shunning monk, the mere ascetic may indeed well
\nfind by this turn his own individual and peculiar salvation, the
\nspiritual recompense of his renunciation and Tapasya, as the
\nmaterialist may find by his own exclusive method the appropriate rewards of his energy and concentrated seeking; but neither
\ncan be the true guide of mankind and its law-giver. The monastic attitude implies a fear, an aversion, a distrust of life and
\nits aspirations, and one cannot wisely guide that with which one
\nis entirely out of sympathy, that which one wishes to minimise
\nand discourage. The sheer ascetic spirit if it directed life and
\nhuman society could only prepare it to be a means for denying
\nitself and getting away from its own motives. An ascetic guidance
\nmight tolerate the lower activities, but only with a view to
\npersuade them in the end to minimise and finally cease from
\ntheir own action. But a spirituality which draws back from life
\nto envelop it without being dominated by it does not labour under this disability. The spiritual man who can guide human life
\ntowards its perfection is typefied in the ancient Indian idea of <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 200<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe Rishi, one who has lived fully the life of man and found the
\nword of the supra-intellectual, supra-mental, spiritual truth. He
\nhas risen above these lower limitations and can view all things
\nfrom above, but also he is in sympathy with their effort and can
\nview them from within; he has the complete inner knowledge
\nand the higher surpassing knowledge. Therefore he can guide
\nthe world humanly as God guides it divinely, because like the
\nDivine he is in the life of the world and yet above it. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn spirituality, then, understood in this sense we must seek
\nfor the directing light and the harmonising law, and in religion
\nonly in proportion as it identifies itself with this spirituality. So
\nlong as it falls short of this, it is one human activity and power
\nothers, and, even if it be considered the most important and the most powerful, it cannot wholly guide the others. If it
\nseeks always to fix them into the limits of a creed, an unchangeable law, a particular system, it must be prepared to see them
\nrevolting from its control; for although they may accept 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
\nan untrammelled movement. Spirituality respects the freedom
\nof the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand
\nand grow towards perfection by the law of one’s own nature,
\ndharma.<\/i> This liberty it will give to all the fundamental parts of
\nour being. It will give that freedom to philosophy and science
\nwhich ancient Indian religion gave,\u2014freedom even to deny the
\nspirit, if they will,\u2014as a result of which philosophy and science
\nnever felt in ancient India any necessity of divorcing themselves
\nfrom religion, but grew rather into it and under its light. It will
\ngive the same freedom to man’s seeking for political and social
\nperfection and to all his other powers and aspirations. Only it
\nwill be vigilant to illuminate them so that they may grow into <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 201<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe light and law of the spirit, not by suppression and restriction, but by a self-searching, self-controlled expansion and a
\nmany-sided finding of their greatest, highest and deepest potentialities. For all these are potentialities of the spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 202<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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