The Science of Religion/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
The Universality, Necessity, and Oneness of Religion: The Distinction between Pleasure, Pain, and Bliss: God
First we must know what Religion is, then only can we judge whether it is necessary for all of us to be religious.
Without necessity there is no action. Every action of ours has an end of its own for which we perform it. People of the world act variously to accomplish various ends. There is a multiplicity of ends determining the actions of men in the world.
But is there any common and universal end of all the actions of all the people of the world? Is there any common, highest necessity for all of us which prompts us to all actions? A little analysis of the motives and ends of men’s actions in the world shows that, though there are a thousand and one proximate or immediate ends of men in regard to the particular calling or profession which they take up, the ultimate end which all other ends merely subserve comes to be the avoidance of pain and want and the attainment of permanent Bliss. Whether we can at all permanently avoid pain and want and get Bliss is a separate question, but as a matter of fact, in all our actions, we obviously try to avoid the former and get the latter. Why does a man act as a probationer? Because he wishes to become an expert in a certain business. Why does he engage in that particular business? Because money can be earned therein. Why should money be earned at all? Because it will put an end to personal and family wants. Why must wants be fulfilled? Because pain will thereby be removed and Bliss or happiness be gained. As a matter of fact, happiness and Bliss are not the same thing. We all aim at Bliss, but through a great blunder we imagine pleasure and happiness to be Bliss. How that has come to be so will be shown presently. The ultimate motive is really Bliss, which we feel inwardly; but happiness—or pleasure—has taken its place, through our great blunder, and the latter has come to be regarded as the ultimate motive. That this is a perversion will later be obvious, though for convenience these terms may sometimes be here used interchangeably.
Thus we see that the fulfillment of some want, removal of some pain, physical or mental, from the slightest to the acutest, and the attainment of Bliss, form our ultimate end. We can not question further why Bliss is to be gained, for no answer can be given. That is our ultimate end, no matter what we do—enter a business, earn money, seek friends, write books, acquire knowledge, rule kingdoms, donate millions, explore countries, look for fame, help the needy, become philanthropists, or embrace martyrdom. And it will be shown that the seeking of God becomes a real fact to us when that end is kept rigorously in view. Millions may be the steps, myriads may be the intermediate acts and motives; but the ultimate motive is always the same—to attain permanent Bliss, even though it be through a long chain of actions. Man likes to and has to go along the chain to get to the final end. He commits suicide to end some pain, perpetrates murder to get rid of some form of want or pain or some cruel heart-thrust. He thinks he will thereby attain a real satisfaction or relief, which he mistakes for Bliss. But the point to notice is that here, too, is the same working (though wrongly) towards the ultimate end.
Some one may say, “I do not care anything about pleasure or happiness; I live life to accomplish something, to achieve success.” Another says: “I want to do good in the world. I do not care whether I am in pain or not.” But if you look into the minds of these people also, you will find that there is the same working towards the goal of happiness. Does the first want a success that has in its achievement no pleasure or happiness? Does the second want to do good to others, yet himself get no happiness in doing it? Obviously not. They may not mind a thousand and one physical pains or mental sufferings inflicted by others or arising out of situations incidental to the pursuit of success or the doing of good to others; but because the one finds great satisfaction in success, and the other intensely enjoys the happiness of doing good to others the former seeks success, and the latter others’ good, in spite of minor troubles.
Even the most altruistic motive, the sincerest intention of advancing the good of humanity for its own sake, have sprung from the basic urge for a chastened personal happiness, approaching Bliss. But it is not the happiness of a narrow self-seeker. It is the happiness of a broad seeker of that “pure self” that is in you and me and all. This happiness is Bliss, a little alloyed. So with Pure Bliss as a personal motive for altruistic action, the altruist is not laying himself open to the charge of narrow selfishness, for one can not himself have Pure Bliss unless he is broad enough to wish and seek it for others, too. That is the world law.
So if the motives for the actions of all men are traced further and further back, the ultimate motive will be found to be the same with all—the removal of pain and the attainment of Bliss. This end being universal, it must be looked upon as the most necessary one. And what is universal and most necessary for man is, of course, religion to him. Hence religion necessarily consists in the permanent removal of pain and the realization of Bliss or God. And the actions which we must adopt for the permanent avoidance of pain and the realization of Bliss or God are called religious. If we understand religion in this way, then its universality becomes obvious. For no one can deny that he wants to avoid pain permanently and attain permanent Bliss. This must be universally admitted, since none can gainsay its truth. Man’s very existence is bound up with it. If he says he does not want Religion, he must needs say he does not like existence, which he can not possibly do. For existence means struggle, which in ultimate analysis means satisfying of wants, that one may attain Bliss. And this is what we understand by Religion.
You want to live because you love Religion. Even if you committed suicide it would be because you love Religion, too; for by doing that you think you will attain a happier state than you find while living. At any rate, you think you will be rid of some pain that is bothering you. In this case your religion is crude—too crude to bear the name of religion. But it is Religion, just the same. Your goal is perfectly right, the same that all persons have. For both you and they want to get happiness, or Bliss. But your means are ridiculous. Because of your ignorance you do not know what will bring you to Bliss, the goal of happiness; so you think of killing yourself to get it.
So in one sense every one in the world is religious, inasmuch as every one is trying to get rid of want and pain, and gain Bliss. Every one is working for the same goal. But in a strict sense only a few in the world are religious, for only a few in the world, though they have the same goal as all others, know the most effective means for removing, for good, all pain or want—physical, mental, or spiritual—and gaining permanent Bliss.
You have to bid good-bye for a while to the rigidly narrow orthodox conception of Religion, though that conception is in a remote way connected with the conception I am bringing out. If for some time you do not go to church or temple, or attend some of its ceremonies or forms, meantime working toward religion in your daily life by being calm, poised, concentrated, charitable, squeezing happiness from the most trying situations, then ordinary people of a pronounced orthodox or narrow bent will nod their heads and declare that, though you are trying to be good, still, from the point of view of real religion, or in the eyes of God, you are “falling off,” as you did not of late enter the precinct of the holy places. While of course there can not be any valid excuse for permanently keeping away from the holy places, there can not, on the other hand, be any legitimate reason for one’s being considered more religious for attending church, while at the same time neglecting to apply in daily life the principles which the church upholds, viz., those that make ultimately for the attainment of permanent Bliss. Religion is not dove-tailed with the pews of the church, nor is it bound up with the ceremonies performed therein. If you have an attitude of reverence, if you live your daily life always with a view to how you may bring undisturbed Bliss-consciousness into it, you will be just as religious out of the church as in it. Of course this should not be understood as an argument for forsaking the church, for the church is usually a real help in many ways. The point is that you should put forth just as much effort outside of the church hours to gain eternal happiness as you forego while from the pews you are passively enjoying a good sermon. Not that listening is not a good thing, in its way, for it certainly is.
The word religion is derived from the Latin religare, to bind (see p. 58). What binds, whom does it bind, and why? Leaving aside any orthodox explanation, it stands to reason that it is “we” who are bound. What binds us? Not chains or shackles, of course. We are talking of Religion, not of a slave dealer, so can not be bound that way. Religion may be said to bind us by rules, laws, or injunctions only. And why? To make us slaves? To disallow us the birthright of free thinking or free action? That is unreasonable. Religion must have a sufficient motive, its motive in “binding” us must also be good. The very fact of binding, then, is not enough; there must be a purpose or motive for binding us, which is the chief thing. What is that motive? The only rational answer we can give is that Religion binds us by rules, laws, injunctions, in order that we may not degenerate, that we may not have pain, misery, suffering—bodily, mentally, or Spiritually. (Bodily and mental suffering we know. But what is Spiritual suffering? To be in ignorance of the Spirit is Spiritual suffering. The latter is present, always, though often unnoticed, in every limited creature, while bodily and mental suffering come and go.) What other motive of the word “binding” than the above can we ascribe to religion that is not either nonsensical or repelling? Obviously other motives, if any, must be subservient to the one given.
Is not the definition already given of Religion consistent with the above-mentioned motive of the word “binding,” the root meaning of Religion? We said that Religion, in part, consists in the permanent avoidance of pain, misery, suffering. Now Religion can not lie merely in getting rid of something, such as pain, but it must also lie in getting hold of something else. It can not be purely negative, but must be positive, too. How can we permanently get away from pain without holding to its opposite—Bliss? Though Bliss is not exactly opposite to pain, it is, at any rate, a positive consciousness to which we can cling in order to get away from pain. We can not, of course, forever hang in the air of a neutral feeling—that is neither pain nor the reverse. I repeat that Religion consists not only in the avoidance of pain, suffering, etc., but also in the attainment of Bliss, or God (that Bliss and God in one sense mean the same thing will be discussed later).
By looking, then, into the motive of the root meaning of Religion (“binding’’) we arrive at the same definition of Religion as we reached by the analysis of man’s motive for action.
Religion is a question of fundamentals. If our fundamental motive is the seeking of Bliss, or happiness, if there is not a single act we do, not a single moment we live, that is not determined ultimately by that final motive, should we not call this craving a deep-seated one in human nature? And what can Religion be if it is not somehow intertwined with the deep-rooted craving of human nature? Religion, if it is to be anything that has life value, must base itself on a life instinct or craving. This is an a priori plea for the conception of Religion set forth in this book.
If you say there are many other human instincts (social, self-preserving, etc.) besides a craving for happiness, and ask why we should not interpret Religion in the light of those instincts, too, the answer is that those instincts are either subservient to the instinct of seeking happiness or are too indissolubly connected with the latter to affect substantially our interpretation of Religion.
To revert once more to the former argument (page 6), that which is universal and most necessary to man is Religion to him. If what is most necessary and universal is not Religion to him, what then can it be? That which is most accidental and variable can not be it, of course. If we try to make money the one and only thing requiring attention in our life, then money becomes Religion to us—‘‘the Dollar is our God.” The predominant life motive, whatever it may be, is Religion to us. Leave aside here the orthodox interpretation, for principles of action, and not intellectual profession of dogmas, or observance of ceremonies, determine, without the need of our personal advertisement, what religion we have. We need not wait for either the theologian or the minister to name our sect or Religion for us—our principles and actions have a million tongues to tell it to us and others. But the amusing part of it all is that back of whatsoever thing we worship with blind exclusiveness is always one fundamental motive. That is, if we make money, business, or obtaining the necessities or luxuries of life the be-all and end-all of our existence, still back of our action lies a deeper motive: we seek these things because they banish pain and bring happiness. This fundamental motive is humanity’s real Religion; other secondary motives form pseudo-religions. Because Religion is not conceived in a universal way it is relegated to the region of clouds, or thought to be a fashionable diversion for women, the aged, or the feeble.
Thus we see that the Universal Religion (or Religion conceived in this universal way) is practically or pragmatically necessary. Its necessity is not artificial or forced. Though in the heart its necessity is perceived, yet unfortunately we are not always fully alive to it. Had we been so, pain would long since have disappeared from the world. For ordinarily what a man thinks to be really necessary he will seek at all hazards. If the earning of money is thought by a man to be really necessary for the support of his family, he will not shrink from running into dangers to secure it. It is a pity we do not consider Religion to be necessary in the same way. Instead, we regard it as an ornament, a decoration, and not a component part of man’s life.
It is also a great pity that though the aim of every man in this world is necessarily religious, inasmuch as he is working always to remove want and attain Eternal Bliss, yet due to certain grave errors he has been misdirected and led to consider the true Religion, the definition of which we have just given, as a thing of minor importance. What is the cause of this! Why do we not perceive its real necessity in place of its apparent necessity? The answer is—society, and our inherent tendencies in an indirect way. It is the company we keep that determines for us the necessity we feel for different things. To do good to people is what has been taught from our childhood as necessary and edifying, and so we now believe it. Consider the influence of persons and circumstances. If you wish to orientalize an occidental, place him in the midst of the Asiatics; or if you want to occidentalize an oriental, plant him among Europeans—and mark the results. It is obvious—inevitable. The man of the West learns to love the customs, habits, dress, modes of living and thought and manner of viewing things of the East, and the man of the East comes to like those of the West. The very standard of truth seems to them to vary. However, most people will agree that the worldly life, with its cares and pleasures, weal and woe, is worth living.
But of the necessity of the Universal Religion few or none will ever remind us, and so we are not quite alive to it. It is a truism that man can not look beyond the circle in which he is placed. Whatever falls within his own circle he justifies, follows, imitates, emulates, and feels to be the standard of thought and conduct. What is beyond his own sphere he overlooks or lessens the importance of. A lawyer will praise and be most attentive to what concerns law. Other things will, as a rule, have less importance for him.
The pragmatical or practical necessity of the Universal Religion is often understood as merely a theoretical necessity, Religion being considered an object of intellectual concern. If we know the religious ideal merely through our intellect, we think we have reached this ideal and that it is not required to live it or realize it. It is a great mistake on our part to confuse pragmatical necessity with theoretical necessity. Many would perhaps admit, on a little reflection, that Universal Religion is surely the permanent avoidance of pain and the conscious realization of Bliss, but few, due to their inertness, understand the importance and practical necessity that this religion carries with it.
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Now it is necessary for us to investigate the ultimate cause of pain and suffering, mental and physical, in the avoidance of which the Universal Religion partly consists.
First of all we should assert, from our common universal experience, that we are always conscious of ourselves as the active power performing all of our mental and bodily acts. Many different functions are we performing, indeed—perceiving, apperceiving, thinking, remembering, feeling, acting, etc. Yet underlying these functions we can perceive that there is an “Ego,” or “Self,” which governs them and thinks of itself as substantially the same through all its past and present existence. The Bible says, “Know ye not that ye are Gods and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in thee?” All of us as individuals are so many reflected spiritual selves of the universal Blissful Spirit—God. Just as there appear many images of the one sun, when reflected in a number of vessels full of water, so are we apparently divided into many souls, occupying this bodily and mental vehicle, and thus outwardly separated from the One Universal Spirit. In reality, God and man are one, and this separation is only apparent.
Now, being blessed and reflected Spiritual selves, why is it that we are utterly unmindful of our Blissful state and are instead subject to physical and mental pain and suffering? The answer is, that the Spiritual self has brought on itself this present state (by whatever process it may be) by identifying itself with a transitory bodily vehicle and a restless mind. The Spiritual self being thus identified, feels itself sorry for or delighted at a corresponding unhealthy and unpleasant or healthy and pleasant state of the body and mind. Because of this identification, the Spiritual self is being continually disturbed by their transitory states. To take even the figurative sense of identification: a mother who is in deep identification with her only child suffers and feels intense pain merely by the very hearing of her child’s probable or real death, whereas she may feel no such pain if she hears of the death of a neighboring mother’s child with whom she has not identified herself. Now we can imagine the consciousness when the identification is real and not figurative. Thus the sense of identification with the transitory body and restless mind is the source or root-cause of our Spiritual self’s misery.
Identification of the Spiritual self with the body and mind being the primary cause of pain, we should now turn to a psychological analysis of the immediate or proximate causes of pain and to the distinction between pain, pleasure, and Bliss.
Because of this identification the Spiritual self seems to have certain tendencies, mental and physical. Desire for the fulfillment of these tendencies creates want, and want produces pain. Now these tendencies or inclinations are either natural or created, natural tendencies producing natural want and created tendencies producing created want. A created want becomes a natural want in time through habit. Of whatever sort the want may be, it gives pain. The more wants we have, the greater the possibilities of pain. For the more wants we have, the more difficult is it to fulfill them, and the more wants remain unfulfilled, the greater is the pain. Increase desires and wants, and pain is also increased. Thus if desire finds no prospect of immediate fulfillment, or finds an obstruction, pain immediately arises. And what is desire? It is nothing but a new condition of “excitation” which the mind puts on itself—a whim of the mind created through company. Thus desire, or the increase of conditions of “excitation” of the mind, is the source of pain or misery, and also of the mistake of seeking to fulfill wants by first creating and increasing them, and then by trying to satisfy them with objects rather than lessening them from the beginning.
It might appear that pain is sometimes produced without the presence of previous desire, for example, pain from a boil. But we should observe here that the desire to remain in a state of health which, consciously or subconsciously, is present in our mind and is crystallized into our physiological organism, is contradicted in the above case by the presence of the unhealthy state, viz., the presence of the boil. Thus when a certain exciting condition of the mind in the form of a desire is not satisfied or removed, pain results.
As desire, I have pointed out, leads to pain, so it leads also to pleasure, the only difference being that in the first case want involved in desire is not satisfied, while in the second case want involved in desire seems to be satisfied by the presence of external objects. But this pleasurable experience, resulting from the fulfillment of the want by objects, does not remain long but dies away, and we retain only the memory of the objects that seemed to have removed the want. Hence, in future, desire for those objects brought in by memory revives, and there arises a feeling of want which, if unfulfilled, again leads to pain.
Pleasure is a double consciousness—made up of an “excitation” consciousness of possession of the thing desired and of the consciousness that pain for want of the thing is felt no more. That is, there is an element of both feeling and thought in it. This latter contrast consciousness, i.e., the entire consciousness (how much pain I felt when I did not have the thing and how I now have no pain, as I have got the thing I wanted), is what mainly constitutes for men the charm of pleasure. Hence we see that consciousness of want precedes—and consciousness of the want being fulfilled enters into—pleasurable consciousness. Thus it is want and the fulfillment of want with which the pleasure consciousness is concerned. It is mind that creates want and fulfills it.
It is a great mistake to regard a certain object as pleasurable in itself and to store the idea of it in the mind in the hope of fulfilling a want by its actual presence in the future. If objects were pleasurable in themselves, then the same dress or food would always please every one, which is not the case. What is called pleasure is a creation of the mind—it is a deluding, ‘‘excitation’’ consciousness, depending upon the satisfaction of the preceding state of desire and upon present contrast consciousness. The more a thing is thought to excite pleasurable consciousness and the more the want of it is harbored in the mind, the more the possibility of hankering after the thing itself the presence of which is thought to bring a pleasurable consciousness and its absence a sense of want. Both of these states of consciousness lead ultimately to pain. So if we are to really lessen pain, we are, as far as possible, to free the mind gradually from all desire and sense of want. If desire for a particular thing, supposed to remove the want, is banished, deluding, “excitation” consciousness of pleasure does not arise, even if the thing is somehow present before us. But instead of lessening or decreasing the sense of want, we habitually increase it and create new and various wants for the satisfying of one, resulting in a desire to fulfill them all. For instance, to avoid the want of money we start a business. In order to carry on the business we have to pay attention to thousands of wants and necessities that the carrying on of a business entails. Each want and necessity in turn involves other wants and more attention, and so on. Thus we see that the original pain involved in want of money is a thousand times multiplied by the creation of other wants and interests. Of course it is not meant that the running of a business or earning of money is bad or absolutely unnecessary. The point is that the desire to create greater and greater wants is bad.
If in undertaking to earn money for some end we make money our end, our madness begins. For the means becomes the end and the real end is lost sight of. And so again our misery commences. The question may be—how does our misery begin? The answer is this. In this world every one has his duties to perform. Let us, for the sake of convenience, review the former instance. The family man has to earn money to support his family, which means the doing away of his wants and those of his family. To earn money, let us suppose he starts a business and begins to attend to the details that will make it possible and successful. Now what ordinarily happens after a time? The business goes on successfully and money perhaps rapidly accumulates until it is much more than is necessary for the fulfillment of his wants and those of his family. Now one of two things happens. Either money comes to be earned for its own sake and a peculiar pleasure comes to be felt in hoarding, or it may happen that the hobby of running this business for its own sake persists or increases the more. We see that in either case the means of quelling original wants—which was the end—has become an end in itself—money or business has become the end. Or it may happen that new and unnecessary wants are created and an effort is made to meet them with things. In any case our sole attention drifts away from Bliss (which we, by nature, mistake for pleasure and the latter becomes our end). Then the purpose for which we apparently started business becomes secondary to the creation or increase of conditions or means. And at the root of creation or increase of conditions or means there is a desire for them which is an excitation or feeling, and also a mental picture of the past when these conditions gave rise to pleasure. Naturally the desire seeks fulfillment by the presence of these conditions; when it is fulfilled, pleasure arises, when not fulfilled, pain arises. And because pleasure, as we remarked already, is born of desire and is connected with transitory things, it leads to excitation and pain when there is a disappearance of those things. That is how our misery commences. To put it briefly: from the original purpose of the business, which was the removal of physical wants, we turn to the means,—either to the business itself or to the hoarding of wealth coming out of it,—or sometimes to the creation of new wants, and because we find pleasure in these we are drawn away to pain, which, as we pointed out, is always an indirect outcome of pleasure.
What is true of the earning of money is also true of every action of the world. Whenever we forget our true end—the attainment of Bliss or the state, condition, or mode of living eventually leading to it—and direct our sole attention to the things which are mistakenly thought to be the means or conditions of Bliss, and turn them into ends, our wants, desires, excitations go on increasing, and we are started on the road to misery or pain. We should never forget our goal. We should put a hedge round our wants. We should not go on increasing them from more to more, for that will bring misery in the end. I do not mean, however, that we should not satisfy necessary wants, arising out of our relation to the whole world, and become idle dreamers and idealists, ignoring our own essential part in promoting human progress.
To sum up: pain results from desire, and in an indirect way also from pleasure, which stands as a will-o’-the-wisp to lure people away into the mire of wants to make them ever miserable.
Thus we see desire is the root of all misery, which arises out of the sense of identification of our “self’’ with mind and body. So what we should do is to kill attachment by doing away with the sense of identification. We should break the cord of attachment and identification only. We should play our parts, as appointed by the Great Stage Manager, on the stage of the world with our whole mind, intellect, and body, inwardly as unaffected or unruffled by pleasure and pain consciousness as are the players on an ordinary stage. When there is dispassion and severing of identification, Bliss-consciousness arises in us. As long as you are human you can not but have desires. Being human, how then can you realize your divinity? First rationalize your desires, then stimulate your desire for nobler things, all the while trying to attain Bliss-consciousness. You will feel that the cord of your individual attachment to those desires is being automatically snapped. That is to say, from that calm center of Bliss you will ultimately learn to disown your own desires and feel them as being urged in you by a great Law. So Jesus Christ said, “Let Thy will be done, O Father, not my own.”
When I say that to attain Bliss is the universal end of Religion, I do not mean by Bliss what is usually called pleasure, or that intellectual satisfaction which arises from the fulfillment of desire and want and which is mixed with an excitation, as when we say we are pleasurably excited. In Bliss there is no excitement, nor is it a contrast consciousness that “my pain or want has been removed by the presence of such and such objects.” It is a consciousness of perfect tranquillity—a consciousness of our calm nature unpolluted by the intruding consciousness that pain is no more. An illustration will make the thing clear. I have a boil, and feel pain; when cured I feel pleasure. This pleasurable consciousness consists of an ‘‘excitation”’ or feeling, and a contrast thought-consciousness that I am no longer feeling the pain of the boil. Now the man who has attained Bliss, though having had a boil on his leg, will feel, when cured, that his state of tranquillity had neither been disturbed, when the boil was, nor regained when it was cured. He feels that he passed through a pain-pleasure universe with which he really has no connection or which can neither disturb nor heighten the tranquil or blissful state which flows on without ceasing. This state of Bliss is free from both inclinations and excitement involved in pleasure or this pain.
There is a positive and a negative aspect in Bliss-consciousness. The negative aspect is the absence of pleasure-pain consciousness; the positive one is the transcendental state of a superior calm including within itself the consciousness of a great expansion and that of “all in One and One in all.” It has its degrees. An earnest truth-seeker gets a little taste of it, a seer or a prophet is filled with it.
Pleasure and pain having their origin in desire and want, it should be our duty, if we wish to attain Bliss, to banish desire and what seriously fans desire. If all our improvements—scientific, social, and political—are guided by this one common universal end,—removal of pain,—why should we bring in a foreign something—pleasure—and forget to be durably fixed in what is tranquillity or Bliss? He who enjoys the pleasure of health will inevitably sometimes feel the pain due to ill-health, because pleasure depends upon a condition of the mind, viz., the idea of health. To have good health is not bad nor is it wrong to seek it. But to have attachment to it, to be pleasurably or painfully affected by it, is what is objected to. For to be so means entertaining desire, which will lead to misery. We must seek health not for the pleasure in it but because it makes the performance of duties and the attainment of our goal possible. It will some time or other be contradicted by the opposing condition, viz., ill-health. But Bliss depends upon no particular condition, external or internal. It is a native state of the spirit. Therefore it has no fear of being contradicted by the opposing condition. It will flow on continually for ever, in defeat or success, in health or disease, in opulence or poverty.
Now the above psychological discussion about pain, pleasure, and Bliss, with the help of the following two examples, will make clear my conception of the highest common necessity and of the God-head, which was touched upon incidentally at the beginning. We remarked at the outset that if we made a close observation of the actions of men, we should see that the one fundamental and universal motive for which man acts is the permanent avoidance of pain and the consequent attainment of Bliss, or God. The first part of the motive, i.e., the permanent avoidance of pain, is something we can not deny, if we observe the motives of all the best and worst actions performed in the world. Take the case of a person who wishes to commit suicide and that of a truly religious man who has dispassion for the things of the world. There can be no doubt about the fact that both of these men are trying to get rid of the pain which is troubling them. Both are trying to permanently put an end to pain. Whether they are successful or not is a different question, but so far as their motives are concerned there is unity. (The question of the means of permanently doing away with pain will be discussed later on.) But are all actions in this world directly prompted by the desire for the attainment of permanent Bliss, or God, the second part of the common motive for all actions? Does the debauchee have for his immediate motive the attainment of Bliss? Hardly. The reason for this we pointed out in our discussion about pleasure and Bliss. We found that because of the identification of the Spiritual self with the body it has got into the habit of indulging in desires and the consequent creation of wants. These desires and wants lead to pain, if not fulfilled—and to pleasure, if fulfilled—by objects. But here occurs a fatal error on the part of man. When a want is fulfilled man gets a pleasurable excitement and fixes his eye, through a sad mistake, solely upon the objects which create this excitement, and supposes them to be the main causes of his pleasure. He entirely forgets that he had formerly an excitation in the form of desire or want in his own mind, and that later he had another excitation in his mind superseding the first one, in the form of pleasure which the coming of objects seems to produce. So, as a matter of fact, one excitation arose in the mind and was superseded by another in the same mind.
Outward objects are only the occasions—they are not causes. They are mistakenly thought to produce pleasure. Desire for delicacies by a poor person can be satisfied by an ordinary sweetmeat, and this fulfillment will give rise to pleasure. But the desire for delicacies on the part of a rich person can perhaps be satisfied only by the best of Christmas cake, and the fulfillment will also give the same amount of pleasure. Then does pleasure depend on outward objects, or on the state of mind? Surely the latter. But pleasure, as we said, is an excitation. Therefore it is never justifiable to drive away the excitation in desire by another excitation, viz., that felt in pleasure. Because we do this our excitations never end, and so our pain and misery never cease. What we should do is to set at rest the excitation that is in desire and not to fan or continue it by excitation in pleasure. This setting at rest is rendered possible, in an effective way, only by Bliss-consciousness which is not callousness but a superior stage of indifference to both pain and pleasure. Every human being is seeking to attain Bliss by fulfilling desire, but he mistakenly stops at pleasure, and so his desires never end, and he is swept away into the whirlpool of pain.
Pleasure is a dangerous will-o’-the-wisp. And yet it is this pleasurable association that becomes our motive for future actions. But alas! this has proved to be as deceptive as the mirage in a desert. Since pleasure, as was said before, consists of an excitation-consciousness plus a contrast-consciousness that the pain is now no more, we prepare ourselves, when we aim at it instead of at Bliss, for running headlong into that cycle of empirical existence which brings pleasure and pain in never-ending succession. We fall into horrible distress because of the change in our angle of vision from Bliss to pleasure, which latter crops up in place of the former. Thus we see that though the true aim of mankind is the avoidance of pain and the attainment of Bliss, yet owing to a fatal error man, though trying to avoid pain, pursues a deluding something named pleasure, mistaking it for Bliss. That the attainment of Bliss and not pleasure is the Universal and Highest Necessity is indirectly proved by the fact that man is never satisfied with one object of pleasure. He always flies from one to another. From money to dress, from dress to property, thence to conjugal pleasure—there is a restless continuity. And so he is constantly falling into pain, even if he wishes to avoid it, by the adoption of what he deems proper means. Yet an unknown and unsatisfied craving seems ever to remain in his heart.
But a religious man (the second example which I proposed to show) always wishes to adopt proper religious means by which he can come in contact with Bliss-God.
Of course when I say that God is Bliss, I mean also that He is Ever-existent and that He is also conscious of His Blissful Existence. And when we wish Eternal Bliss or God, it is implied that with Bliss we also wish Eternal, Immortal, Unchangeable, Ever-conscious Existence. That all of us, from the highest to the lowest, desire to be in Bliss has been proved a priori, and by a consideration of the motives and acts of men. To repeat the argument in a slightly different way: suppose some Higher Being should come to us and say to all people of the world, “You creatures of the world! I will give you eternal sorrows and misery along with eternal existence; will you take that?’’ Would any one like the prospect? Not one. All want eternal Bliss (Anandam) along with eternal existence (Sat). As a matter of fact, consideration of the motives of the world also shows there is no one but would like to have Bliss or Anandam. Similarly, no one likes the prospect of immediate annihilation; if it is suggested, we shudder at the idea. All desire to exist permanently (Sat). But if we were given eternal existence without the consciousness of that existence, we would reject that. For who is there that would embrace existence in sleep? None. We all want conscious existence. Furthermore, we want Blissful Conscious Existence. We want Satchidanandam—that is God. But for a pragmatical consideration only we emphasize the Blissful aspect of God and our motive for Bliss, leaving out two other aspects—Sat and Chit, i.e., Conscious Existence. Also other aspects of Him are not dwelt on here.
Now, what is God? If God be something other than Bliss, and His contact produces in us no Bliss, or produces in us only pain, or if His contact does not drive pain away from us, should we want Him? No. If God is something useless to us, we want Him not. What is the use of a God who remains always unknown and whose presence is not inwardly manifest to us at least in some circumstance in our life? Whatever conception of God we form by the exercise of reason or intellect, viz., Transcendant, Immanent, etc., will always remain vague and indistinct unless really felt as such. In fact, we keep God at a safe distance, conceiving Him sometimes as a mere Personal Being, and then again theoretically thinking Him to be within us. It is because of this vagueness in our-idea and experience concerning God that we are not able to grasp the real necessity of God and the pragmatical value of Religion. This colorless theory or idea does not bring conviction to us. It can not change our lives, influence our conduct in an appreciable way, or make us try to know God.
What does “Universal Religion’’ say about God? It says that the proof of the existence of God lies in ourselves. It is an inner experience. Recall to your mind at least some moment in your life in prayer or worship when you felt that the trammels of your body had nearly vanished, that the duality of experience— pleasure and pain, petty love and hate, etc.—had almost receded from your mind. Pure Bliss and tranquillity had been welling up in your heart and you were enjoying an unruffled calm—Bliss and contentment. Though this kind of higher experience does not often come to all, yet there can be no doubt of the fact that all men, some time or other, in prayer or in mood of worship or meditation, perceive it in a less marked degree, at least. Is this not a proof of the existence of God? What other direct proof than the existence of Bliss in ourselves in real prayer or worship can we give of the existence and nature of God? Though there is the cosmological proof of the existence of God,—from effect we rise to cause, from the world to the world-maker,—and there is the teleological proof as well, from the telos (plan, adaptation) in the world, we rise to the Supreme Intelligence that makes the plan and adaptation. There is also the moral proof—from conscience and the sense of perfection we rise to the Perfect Being to whom our responsibility is due. Still, we should admit that these proofs are more or less the products of inference. We can not have full or direct knowledge of God through the limited powers of the intellect. Intellect gives only a partial and indirect view of things. To view a thing intellectually is not to see it by being one with it: it is to view it by being apart from it. But Intuition, which we shall later explain, is the direct grasp of truth. It is in this Intuition that Bliss-consciousness, or God-consciousness, is realized.
There is not a shadow of doubt as to the absolute identity of Bliss-consciousness and God-consciousness, because when we have that Bliss-consciousness we feel that our narrow individuality has been transformed and that we have risen above the duality of petty love and hate, pleasure and pain, etc., and have attained a level from which the painfulness and worthlessness of empirical consciousness become glaringly apparent. And we also feel an inward expansion and all-embracing sympathy for all things. The tumults of the world die away, excitements disappear, and the “all in One and One in all” consciousness seems to dawn upon us. A glorious vision of light appears. All imperfections, all angularities, sink into nothingness. We seem to be translated into another region, the fountainhead of perennial Bliss, the starting point of one unending continuity. Is not Bliss-consciousness, then, the same as God-consciousness, in which (God-consciousness) the above states of realization seem obvious? It is evident, then, that God cannot be better conceived than as Bliss coming within the range of every one’s calm-experience. No longer will God be a supposition, to be theorized over. Is this not a nobler conception of God? He is perceived as manifesting Himself in our hearts in the form of Bliss in meditation—in prayerful or worshipful mood. If we conceive of God in this way, i. e., as Bliss, then and then only can we make Religion universally necessary. For no one can deny that he wishes to get Bliss, and if he wishes to get Bliss in the proper way, he is going to be religious through approaching and feeling God, who is described as very close to his heart as Bliss.
This Bliss-consciousness or God-consciousness can pervade all our actions and moods, if we but let it. If we can get firm hold of this, we shall be able to judge the relative religious worth of every minor action and motive on this earth. If we are once convinced that the attainment of this Bliss-consciousness is our Religion, our goal, our ultimate end, then all doubts as to the meaning of multifarious teachings, injunctions, and prohibitions of the different faiths of the world will disappear. Everything will be interpreted in the light of the stage of growth for which it is prescribed. Truth will shine out, the mystery of existence will be solved, and a light will be thrown upon the details of our lives, with their various actions and motives. We shall be able to separate the naked truth from the outward appendages of religious doctrines and see the worthlessness of conventions that so often mislead men and create differences between them. Further, if religion is understood in this way there is no man in the world—be he a boy, youth, or an old person—who can not practise it, whatever may be the station of life to which he belongs, be it student or professional life, or be he a lawyer, doctor, carpenter, brazier, scholar, or philanthropist. If to abolish the sense of want and attain Bliss is Religion, who is there that is not trying to be religious and will not try to be so in a greater degree, if proper methods are pointed out. Herein does not arise the question of the variety of religions—that of Christ, of Mahomet, or of the Hindus. Every one in the world is inevitably trying to be religious, and can seek to be more completely so by the adoption of proper means. There is no distinction here of caste or creed, sect or faith, dress or clime, age or sex, profession or position. For this Religion is Universal.
If you said that all the people of the world ought to accept the Lord Krishna as their God, would all the Christians and the Mahomedans accept that? If you asked every one to take Jesus as their Lord, would all the Hindus and Mahomedans do that? And if again you bade all accept Mahomet as their Lord, would all the Christians and Hindus agree to that? But if-you say, “Oh, my Christian, Mahomedan and Hindu Brethren, your Lord God is Ever-Blissful Conscious Existence (Being),’’ will they not accept this? Can they possibly reject it? Will they not demand Him as the only One who can put an end to all their miseries?
Nor can one escape this conclusion by saying that Christians, Hindus, or Mahomedans do not conceive Jesus, Krishna, or Mahomet respectively as their Lord God,—they are thought to be only the standard-bearers of God, the human incarnations of divinity. What if one thinks that way? It is not the physical body of Jesus, Krishna, or Mahomet that we are primarily interested in, nor are we so much concerned with the historical place they occupy. Nor are they immemorable to us because of their different and interesting ways of preaching God. We revere them because they knew and felt God. It is that fact that interests us in their historical existence and in their manifold ways of expressing the truth. They might or might not be on the same plane. Let the hard-shelled theologians and difference-hunters in religion fight over that question eternally and vainly. But did they not belong to a more or less close family of God? Did they not all realize God as Bliss and reveal. real blessedness as true godliness? Is not that a sufficient bond of unity among them,—let alone other aspects of Godhead and truth they might have realized and expressed. Shouldn’t a Christian, a Hindu, and a Mahomedan find a mutual interest in each other’s prophets, inasmuch as each of them cherished in his heart God-consciousness as primarily Superior Bliss-consciousness? As God unites all religions, is it not the conception and realization of Him as Bliss, if not anything else, that unites the consciousness of the prophets of all religions?[1]
One should not think that this conception of God is too abstract, having nothing to do with our spiritual hopes and aspirations, which require the conception of God as a Personal Being. It is not the conception of an Impersonal Being, as commonly understood, nor that of a Personal Being, as narrowly conceived. God is not a Person, as are we in our narrowness. Our being, consciousness, feeling, volition have but a shadow of resemblance to His Being (Existence), Consciousness, and Anandam. He is a Person in the transcendental sense. Our being, consciousness, feeling are limited and empirical; His are unlimited and transcendental. Nor should He be thought of as Abstract, Absolute, Impersonal, Unconditional, Remote, and beyond the reach of all experience—even our inner one. He, as I have remarked, comes within the calm experience of men. It is in Bliss-consciousness that we realize Him. There can be no other direct proof of His existence. It is in Him as Bliss that our spiritual hopes and aspirations find fulfillment—our devotion and love find an object. No other conception of a Personal Being who is nothing but ourselves magnified is required for us. God may be or become anything—Personal, Impersonal, All-merciful, Omnipotent, etc., etc. What we say is that we do not require to take note of these. Whatever conception we have put forth exactly suits our purposes, our hopes, our aspirations, and our perfection.
Nor should we think that this conception of God will make us dreamy idealists, severing our connection with the duties and responsibilities, joys and sorrows, of this practical world. If God is Bliss and if we seek Bliss to know Him, we can not neglect the duties and responsibilities of the world. In the performance of them we can still feel Bliss, for it is beyond them, and so they can not affect it. We transcend the joys and sorrows of the world in Bliss, but we do not transcend the duties and responsibilities in the sense of neglecting them. For in doing everything—eating, drinking, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, sorrowing, feeling pleasure, performing every minute duty of the world—we do nothing, we eat, drink, see, hear, feel, smell, taste nothing,—we feel no sorrow nor pleasure. We remain unattached; all actions flow from our nature—that is human. We, bathed in an unending flow of Bliss, feel our “self”? to be the dispassionate seer of all our actions. Our narrow egoism vanishes, the All-Ego dawns, and Bliss spreads through our being. We feel that we are playing our appointed parts on the stage of the world, without being inwardly affected by the weal and woe, love and hate, that the playing of a part involves.
Verily, in all respects the world can be likened to a stage. The stage manager chooses people to help him in the enactment of a certain play. He allots particular parts to particular persons—all of them work according to his directions. One the stage manager makes a king, one a minister, one a servant, another the hero, and soon. One has to play a sorrowful part, another a joyful one. If each one plays his part according to the directions of the stage manager, then the play, with all its diversities of comical, serious, sorrowful parts, becomes successful. Even the insignificant parts have their indispensable places in the play. The success of the play lies in the perfect playing out of each part. Each actor plays his part of sorrow or pleasure realistically, and to all outward appearances seems to be affected by it; but inwardly he remains untouched by it or by the passions he portrays—love, hate, desire, malice, glory, humility. But if any actor, in the playing of a part, identified himself with a certain situation or a particular feeling expressed in the play and lost his own individuality, he would be thought foolish, to say the least. A story will bring out the latter point clearly.
Once in the house of a rich man the play of Ramayan was staged. In the course of the play it was found that the man who should play the part of Hunuman (monkey), the attendant-friend of Ram, was missing. In his perplexity the stage manager seized upon an ugly simpleton, Nilkamal by name, and sought to make him enact the part of Hunuman. Nilkamal at first refused, but was forced to appear on the stage. His ugly appearance excited loud laughter among the spectators and they began to shout in merriment, “Hunuman, Hunuman!” Nilkamal could hardly bear this. He forgot that it was a play, and bawled out in real exasperation and disgust, “Why, Sirs, do you call me Hunuman? Why do you laugh? I am not a Hunuman. The stage manager made me come out here this way.” This excited further roars of laughter from the audience and they began to shout in right earnest, “Hunuman, Hunuman!” Nilkamal, mad with rage and disgust, not understanding the meaning of all this, retired from the stage exclaiming, “I am not a Hunuman; how can I be made a Hunuman.”
Nilkamal failed to distinguish between the real Hunuman and the Hunuman of the play. In this world our lives are nothing but plays. But alas! we identify ourselves with the play, and hence feel disgust, sorrow, pleasure, etc. We forget the direction and injunction of the Great Stage Manager. In the act of living our lives—playing our parts—we feel as real all our sorrows and pleasures, loves and hates—in a word, we become attached, affected. This play of the world is without beginning and end. Every one must play his part, as assigned by the Great Stage Manager, ungrudgingly; must play for the sake of the play only; must act sorrowful when playing sorrowful parts, or pleased when playing pleasurable parts, but should never be inwardly identified with the play—with its sorrows and pleasures, loves and hates. Nor should one wish to play another’s part. If every one aspires to play the role of a king, the play will be impossible.
He who has attained to the superior stage of Bliss-consciousness will feel the world to be a stage and play out his part as best he can, feeling it as such, remembering the Great Stage Manager (God), and knowing and feeling His nature in its every aspect—His plan and direction.
Note.—The derivation of the word “religion” from religare, to bind (see page 10) has been adopted by St. Augustine, Lactantius, Lucretius, and Servius. (See Enc. Brit., 11th Edition.)
- ↑ Bliss-consciousness is also stressed in so-called atheistic religions,—such as Buddhism. The Buddhistic ‘‘Nirvana’’ is not, as mistakenly supposed by Western writers, a “blowing out of light,” an extinction of existence. It is rather the stage where narrow individuality is blotted out and transcendant calm in universality is reached. This is exactly what comes of higher Bliss-consciousness, though the name of God is not attached to it by the Buddhist.