The Religion We Need
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SWAMI ANANYANANDA RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY The Religion We Need SWAMI ANANYANANDA wo great forces have been exerting physical existence of man. But science, with their powerful influences on the all its gifts to humanity, has not touched Tminds of men during the past few even the fringe of the life of the spirit. The decades. They are science and humanism. soul of man is hungering for spiritual solace. Science and humanism have become the dominant features of the modern age. The other side Science has achieved astounding results for Look at the other side of the picture of the happiness of man and, let us hasten to science, its dreadful and destructive side. add, also for the unhappiness of man. Humanity today is at the mercy of science. Humanism has led mankind in two different Man has created a Frankenstein’s monster directions: proletarian socialistic which is threatening to destroy its very authoritarianism, on the one hand, and creator. Science has placed in the hands of secularized democratic governments and man such deadly instruments of death and institutions, on the other, both of which, destruction which, if let loose in a moment working purely on secular humanistic of miscalculation or misunderstanding, will principles, have betrayed man and robbed make short work of all our boasted human him of his spiritual essence. civilization. This is a possibility which The progress that science has made science has created for man today. Is this to today is the symbol of man’s untiring efforts be the end of all human culture, its to conquer nature and to make it serve his civilization, and its proud achievements? own ends. In this, he has taken amazing What is the drawback in our scientific strides which are nothing short of a miracle. culture? The answer is that while man is Applied science has conferred on man extending the frontiers of his knowledge, he innumerable benefits, making his life more is not correspondingly growing in wisdom comfortable and less burdensome. In every that comes from spiritual culture. Man today sphere of activity, science and the things of is losing faith in the higher values of science have got mixed up so inextricably religion; he lacks a spiritual basis for his life. with our lives that we can hardly realize Secularized humanism, in one direction, what would have happened to us without has gradually led to the formation of them. Science is still probing deeper into the totalitarian socialistic States, where all secrets of nature. What will yet be possible human endeavour is turned towards the for science in this realm is beyond one’s glorification of the State. In the opposite imagination or guess. That is the picture of direction, secularized humanism has led to science we get when we look at its the establishment of democratic beneficent aspect, its constructive side, governments and institutions, where the which has brought ease and comfort to the dignity and worth of the individual are 6 Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture January 2019 THE RELIGION WE NEED recognized and respected, and where interference. True, the concept of mankind- individual efforts and State endeavours are as-a-whole is taking a realistic form on the directed towards the welfare of the physical plane. Science and technology have community. made the physical integration of humanity a In totalitarian countries, the State is reality today; but for its emotional supreme; the individual, his good and integration, which is so very essential for its welfare, all must fit into the pattern of the future progress, humanity is lacking the State. The State is the new god of these requisite spiritual approach and basis. socialistic countries. At the altar of this mighty god of the monolithic society, the The tragedy high priests are the handful of men at the The tragedy of our times is that, with all summit of the social pyramid, in whose the progress achieved by science and hands are concentrated all forms of power, humanism, mankind is nowhere near the social, economic, and political, and who goal of peace. Mankind has arrived at the ‘know all, do all, and decide all’. Their word crossroads; it is facing a crisis in civilization. is law, and no opposition to it is ever Neither science nor humanism can restore it countenanced. The individual’s interests to a settled condition. It is only the must be subservient to the interests of the understanding of the spiritual values and State—the will of the government that is. bringing them to work in all the spheres of In the democracies, however, the human activity that can restore man’s lost individual occupies the supreme position. equilibrium. What is needed at this juncture The government is a servant of the people. is a widening of horizons, a spiritual The government in a democracy is ‘of the awakening, a recovery of faith, to go beyond people, by the people, and for the people’. the merely physical and the psychological The State is a Welfare State, which works and recognize the spiritual, which is the for the happiness and progress of the deepest core and the real basis of the whole individual and the community. These two universe. Far deeper than any social, forms of society, socialistic and democratic, economic, or political readjustment, both purely humanistic in approach and mankind is in need of a readjustment on the working in two different directions, are spiritual plane. Mankind should recover its contending for leadership in the world today. faith in things spiritual. Science and There is yet another feature of the humanism must work with a new spiritual modern world. In the international sphere, vision and shed their secular character. It is humanism is finding expression in the then that these two forces will find laudable efforts of men and nations for the fulfilment and be a blessing to humanity. advancement of mankind through world Nurtured for decades in the thought and organizations, not only in the political, atmosphere of science, men in general had social, and economic spheres, but also in the forgotten to believe in the spiritual order of educational, scientific, and cultural fields. things. But, today, when they have arrived at These organisations are working on the the crossroads, they are willing to believe. principle that the whole of humanity is one As Kingsley Martin says: ‘Men and women vast family, and that every nation should be are now unable to face the loneliness and helped to preserve its peculiar characteristic aridity of the gospel of science, and and practise its beliefs without hindrance or therefore, though without any settled faith in Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture January 2019 7 SWAMI ANANYANANDA religious dogmas, seek a personal religion to mythology. It is a way of life founded on give them inner comfort. They do not certain fundamental truths that are eternal believe but they desire to believe. I see very and universal. It is a way of life in God and clearly every day . that the will to believe for God. It is the practice of the presence of cannot be overcome.’ It was Blake who said: God. It is a way in which one lives, moves, ‘Man must and will have some religion. If he and has one’s being in God. It is a conscious has not the religion of Jesus, he will have the effort to manifest the divine qualities that are religion of Satan.’ That is precisely what has in man, and to make them permeate his happened in the realms of science and thought, word, and deed. It is a life by which secularized humanism. Mankind is in one becomes divine and helps others become despair today. A sense of spiritual divine, too. It is a life which enables man to homelessness is growing strong in the minds pierce through the veil of matter and to of men. It cannot continue for long. To live behold the self-effulgence of the spirit, in without faith is impossible. Even as nature whose light all things are illumined and by abhors a vacuum, the soul of man has a whose presence everything lives and moves. horror of emptiness. It is a life of universal consciousness, where Sectarian religion, ritual ridden and all petty notions of individuality, of ‘me’ and dogmatic, with inflexible beliefs and steel- ‘mine’, disappear. Spirituality is ‘a flight of framed doctrines, does not and cannot the alone to the Alone’. In the final spiritual satisfy the free spirit of the modern man. He realization, the individual consciousness is needs, and is in search of, a rational faith. merged with the universal Consciousness. We must present him, in the words of There is complete absence of all duality. In Dr Radhakrishnan, with a religion that is the words of the Upanishad: ‘distinctive, universally valid, sufficient, and authoritative, one that has an understanding Yatra nànyat pashyati nànyat shrinoti nànyat vijànàti sà bhumà— of the fresh sense of truth and the awakened (Chàndogya Upanishad, VII.xxiv.1) social passion, . which does not mock the free spirit of man by arbitrary dogmas or It is a state ‘in which one sees nothing else, hesitating negations, a new vision of God in hears nothing else, understands nothing whose name we can launch a crusade against else’. It is a life that is infinite and immortal. the strange cults which are now competing It is not possible for man to live without for mastery over the souls of men’ (Recovery faith. He must have some kind of faith to of Faith, p.