Religious Catholicism

A comparative study of religions increases our confidence in the universality of God and our respect for the human race. It induces in us not an attitude of mere tolerance which implies conscious superiority, no patronising pity nor condescending charity, but genuine respect and appreciation. Such tolerance becomes the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the infinite. Belief in exclusive claims and monopoly of religious truth has been a frequent source of pride, fanaticism and strife. Hatred is fed on the feeling that it is returned. To hate is in fact to acknowledge one’s inferiority and fear. He who wishes to revenge injuries by hatred lives in misery. The vehemence with which some religions were preached and the savagery with which they were enforced are some of the disgraces of human history. Secularism and paganism point to the rivalries of religions for a proof of the futility of religion. Averroes, the great Arab philosopher, rightly distinguished philosophic Truth (Tatvam) from the religious View (Matam). When we dispute over dogmas we are divided. But when we take to the religious life of prayer and contemplation we are brought together.

Philosophy is essentially practical, dealing as it does with the fundamental anxieties of humanity which are more insistent than abstract speculation. Religion may start with the individual, but it must end in a fellowship. Religion means courage and adventure, not resignation and fatalism. The different systems of thought, belief and practice, which developed from the dawn of reflection, may appear at firstsight to be more an encyclopedia of
varying philosophies and sects than a continuous and uninterrupted development of one system; closer second thought reveals a pervading unity which binds together the bizarre multiplicity of beliefs and practices. Each order of reality known to us is truly comprehended from a stand-point higher than itself. The significance of the physical World (Anna) is disclosed in the Biological (Prana), that of the biological in the Psychological (Manas), that of the psychological in the logical and the Ethical (Vijnana), and the logical finds its roaming in the Spiritual (Ananda). The different religious traditions clothe the one reality in various images and their visions could embrace and fertilize each other so as to give mankind a many sided perfection. What is needed is a fellowship (and not a fusion) of faiths. We need an outlook on life reverent to the eternal values and responsive to temporal events.

Religious catholicism is a movement and not a position, a process and not a result, a growing tradition and not a fixed revelation. It is a direction and not a destination. It is an attitude rather than an attainment. It has only a beginning and knows no end.

Our age has been rendered conceited by the multitude of new discoveries and inventions; but in the realm of philosophy any such progress is much less in evidence. Suppose we succeed in securing all the creature comforts that wealth can command, in the shape of good roads, water supply, excellent sanitation, free education for all, prompt and efficient medical aid, beautiful buildings to live in, nutritious and delicious food, luxurious clothing, plenty of leisure, unlimited picture houses, soft drinks and even the continued company of the other sex. Still we may not be happy. There are many who have all these comforts and conveniences and still suffer from emptiness of soul and nudity of spirit. They have no hopes to inspire, no ambitions to realise, no faith to live by, no happiness to which they can look forward. In the words or Dr. Radhakrishnan, “Man has far horizons, invisible hopes, thoughts that wander through eternity, projects that cannot be attained in time. To find the way to truth, to create a work of beauty, to understand another human soul, he is willing to scourge himself, endure hunger and thirst, to give up his all.’ Self-restraint, self-sacrifice, and merciful benevolence, is the theme of the Upanishads and the means to spiritual illumination. The recognition of this vital fact that man lives for a purpose larger than he sees, and is most himself when he realises it, has been the deepest phase of our higher life.

Even a philosopher of materialism, wedded to new-humanism, like the late Sri M. N. Roy, standing on the horns of a dilemma, declared that, ‘It looks as though we have to choose between a modern barbarism promising material well-being and security in a socially regimented and spiritually enslaved life and a relapse into medieval obscurantism in search of an illusory safety in the -waters of faith.’ By insisting on the application of physical concepts in the field of thought, we end in the impasse of determinism, mechanism and materialism. The merest moment of reflection might have shown how inappropriate the concepts of physics are in the world of mind; we think as readily of a mile as of a million miles and one flash of thought can circumnavigate the globe; our ideas elude every effort to picture them as material particles moving in space, in their flight and operation. Life escapes the solid concepts, for it is a matter of time rather than of space, it is not position, it is change, it is not quantity so much as quality; it is not a mere redistribution of matter and motion; it is fluid and persistent creation. Thought is a dance of molecules in the brain. Man exists by instinct; but progresses by intelligence. In the words of Henri Bergson, ‘Our Pandits of the laboratory have become a little too confident of their categories and thought to squeeze all the cosmos into a test tube.’ Materialism is like a grammar that recognises only nouns, but reality, like language, contains actions as well as objects, verbs as well as substantives, life and motion as well as matter.

Prof. Llyod Morgan who studies the subject from the biological side affirms that while resultants can be explained as a result of already existing conditions, emergents, like the advent of life, mind, and reflective personality, can not be explained without the assumption of Divine activity. Perhaps, scientific scepticism, of which Sir Eddington is an exponent, may lead in the end to the collapse of the scientific era, just as the theological scepticism of the renaissance led gradually to the collapse of the theological era. When the Hindu thinkers ask us to free ourselves from ‘Maya’, or illusion, they are asking us to shake off our bondage to the unreal values which are dominating us. They do not ask us to treat life as an illusion or to be indifferent to the world’s welfare. Increasing knowledge of science without a corresponding growth of religious wisdom, only increases our fear. Though we dominate the forces of nature, control the seas, conquer the air, increase production, combat disease, organise commerce, and make man the master of his environment, still he cannot live in safety. He is haunted by the fear of wars, and lives in the company of uncertainties. Hence, what is needed is an illumined mind, a changed heart, and a transformed will. Man is a being who is straining towards infinity in quest of eternity. When he attains integrality there is harmony in his life. Sir James Jeans, the great mathematician and astronomer, said ‘The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a machine’. The biologist, J. A. Thomson agrees that this world is not ‘a Soulless mechanism, and is not the work of blind chance; that there is a mind behind the veil of matter, give it what ever name we will’. Prof. Eddington regards consciousness as fundamental and matter as derivative from consciousness. Albert Eienstein, of the Theory of Relativity fame, categorically declared, ‘I believe in God…..who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of the Universe.’ Thus the old atheism is gone. Religion belongs to the realm of spirit and mind and cannot be shaken. God is the unifying principle of the Universe. If oriental inwardness and occidental activism could be truly coordinated, the problem of world religion would substantially be solved. The spiritual radiance of Hinduism, the faithful obedience of Judaism, the life of beauty of Greek Paganism, the noble compassion of Buddhism, the vision of divine love of Christianity, and the spirit of resignation to the sovereign Lord of Islam, together give us many-sided perfection.

In this connection it may not be out of place to refer to Mysticism. It is not confined to one epoch or to one country but has been a flowing current, sometimes subterranean but often manifesting itself throughout the ages in widely separated localities. In the language of a great Christian mystic, Eckhart of the thirteenth century, ‘God to a mystic ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.’ The Persian sinner Jami expressed the same idea in picturesque language by exclaiming in one of his poems ‘Seat me on thy Divan where there is no room for two’. The description of Devi in Soundaryalahari by Sri Sankaracharya who is at once a great seer and a fervent devotee, the Gopis’, ideal of intense love, and the craving for the fullest union in the Gita Govinda and Krishna Karnamritam, and the outpourings of the saints from the South, are typical of the yearning of the true mystic. What is needed is a reorientation of values, regrouping of our concepts and spiritualisation of our ideas and endeavours. Contemplation, if it is to be wholesome and valuable, must be married to practice. It must inspire action and ennoble the aims of practical life. While it remains secluded in the cloister, it is only a means of escape. Each generation is a trustee to a future generation of the material and moral treasure that man has accumulated through the ages. Elevation of the concept of utility to a parity with goodness, beauty and truth is mischievous and misleading. Detachment is opposed to attachment and not to enjoyment.

The real and lasting land-marks in the annals of humanity are not wars and kings but saints and scriptures. Emperor Tiberius was a contemporary of Jesus Christ. In his day, millions trembled at his nod. Nobody remembers him now. Those that live nobly even in their day, though they live obscurely, need not fear that they have lived in vain. Something radiates from their lives, some light that shows the way to their friends, to their neighbours, and also perhaps to long future ages. In 1786, Warren Hastings, recommending a translation of the Bhagawad Gita to the president of the East India Company, declared that ‘The writers of Indian philosophy will survive when the British domination in India shall long have ceased to exist and when the sources which yielded wealth and power will be lost to remembrance.’ The heritage of Hellas is epitomised in the two words–Meden Again–nothing in excess, engraved on the temple of Appollo at Delphi. So also a balanced and rhythmic life in harmony with Dharma and the appreciation of the inevitable, which is not to be confused with pessimism or a negative code of conduct, is the contribution of India to world thought, based as it is on the twin doctrines of Dharma and Karma. A famous church father in the middle ages, Bernard of Clairwax, in a Latin hymn asks ‘who will achieve universal peace’ and answers ‘the disciplined, the dedicated, the pure in heart and gentle in spirit’.

The threat to human civilization could be met only at the deeper levels of consciousness. If we fail to overcome the discord between power and spirit, we will be destroyed by the forces which we have the knowledge to create but not the wisdom to control. What is needed is unity within, through ‘Swadharma’ and understanding from without in terms of the Vedic injunction ‘Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti’ i.e., Truth is one though the sages call it by different names. Whatever be the truth of the Shakespearean dictum ‘Neither a borrower nor lender be’ we should always be borrowers and lenders; in the words of the Rig Veda; ‘Ano Bhadrah Krutavoyantu Viswataha’ ie., let noble thoughts come to us from every side. We need not be original in the sense of being merely aboriginal. We should note the impact of different cultures on one another, their inter-action and hope for the emergence of a new civilization based on truths of spirit and the unity of mankind. The tragedies and the catastrophies of the day are symbolic of the breakdown of the separatist tendencies. In the confusion of the contemporary scene we should not overlook the great movement towards integration. Philosophy had hitherto been concerned with interpreting life, but the time has come for it to change life, as Karl Marx cogently put it. Either we have to recover moral control and return to spiritual life or we pass out as so many other species. Taittiriya Upanishad enjoins ‘Satyam Vada Dharmam Chara’ i.e., Be truthful, let your conduct be righteous.

Man, a product of nature subject to its necessities, compelled by its laws, driven by its impulses, is yet a spirit who stands outside of nature. He has the capacity for self-transcendence, the ability to make himself an object. When the Upanishads ask us to grow from intellectual to spiritual consciousness, they ask us to effect an enlargement of our awareness, by which the difficulties of insecurity, isolation, and death are overcome; we are called upon to grow from division and conflict into freedom and love, from ignorance to wisdom. When the Upanishads speak of Jnana or gnosis, when the Buddha speaks of Bodhi or enlightenment, when Jesus speaks of the truth that will make us free, they refer to the direct spiritual apprehension of the Supreme, in which the gap between truth and being is closed. In the words of the Prasna Upanishad, life is created for the enjoyment of the soul, Sa pranam asrujata.

Saints are the citizens of the city of God. They know no limitations of time and space. They live for eternity and in eternity; their affections are not constrained or canalised by narrow or parochial considerations. They live and work for humanity. They are the ripest fruits of the intellectual and moral progress of the world and are born for its enlightenment. They are the essence of all that is noble, beautiful, good and true. They analyse what baffles analysis and describe what is indescribable. The personality of each is unique though he may have some elements in common with the others. Reciprocity is one of the greatest truths of life which is inculcated in the Gita text, Parasparam bhava yantah sreyah param avapsyadha. Attempts to rationalise the mystery, to translate into the language of concepts, that which is inexpressible, have resulted in different versions. Brahmabandhu Upanishad says, ‘The soul of the created being is a unity, only divided between creature and creature; unity and plurality at the same time like the moon mirrored in many waters.

Religion is a personal achievement. Each individual is a member of a community where he shares the work with others. But he is also an individual with his senses and emotions, desires and affections, interests and ideals. There is a solitary side to his being as distinct from the social, where he cherishes thoughts unspoken, dreams unshared, reticences unbroken. It is there that he shelters the questionings of fate, the yearning for peace, the voice of hope and the cry of anguish. When the Indian thinkers ask us to possess our souls, to be Atmavantam, not to get lost in the collective currents, not to get merged in the crowd of those who have emptied and crucified their souls, Atma hano janah, who have got their souls bleached in the terrible unmercy of things, they are asking us to open out our inward being to the call of the transcendent. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, we have a development of what Plato calls recollection the way by which we steadily withdraw from externality, from our functions which are at the mercy of life and enter into an essential being which is not the individual ego but the universal spirit. Discipline of the intellect emotion and will is a pre-requisite for spiritual perfection. The human heart is the scene of the age-old conflicts between good and evil. By the pursuit of ‘Moha’ or delusion we reach death. By the pursuit of truth we reach immortality. According to an Upanishadic saying God is the seat of truth ‘Yatra tatsatya paramam nidhanam’. Paramatma is truth, intelligence and infinitude Satyam, Jnanam Anantam Brahma.