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If Svami Vivekananda
wished to develop a college for the study of
comparitive religion, it was left to
Dr Radhakrishnan of Madras to fulfil that wish
by devoting himself to realise it. His own
valuable writings on the reign of religion in
contemporary philosophy, written very early in
his professorial career, as well as his
stimulating studies on Eastern religions and
Western thought, have shown how continuously he
has been at work to make clear the basic nature
of religion, and its realisation in the
different cultures of the world. The studies
reveal how greatly he had been influenced by the
deepest spiritual movements in India and
elsewhere through the centuries. This had led
to a dispassionate appraisal of all of them,
both in what they had contributed to the stream
of human evolution as well as in the directions
in which each one of them lagged behind in
achieving the spiritual goal.
The spiritual goal is
infinite and infinity itself. No terrestrial
limit could be applied to it, nor does it depend
on it as such. Individual saints have stepped
out of this terrestrial limitation and presented
the eternal. The comparitive study of the lives
of these saints would yield very important and
striking material for defining the spiritual
levels of each culture and religious pattern. It
is true that all religions, when sincerely
pursued as ways of spiritual attainment, would
lead to the goal, would reach God; some however
are long and strenuous and devious. Indeed it
is likely, as Hindu sages knew, that one reaches
the goal contrary to the manner by which it has
to be reached, avidhipurvakam. The old story in
which God offered alternatives to reach him
either through friendliness (maitri) or through
enmity (dvesa) to his most excellent servants
Jaya and Yijaya who had been cursed by some
sages to take birth, shows that one could attain
God through either path. Though the former is
prescribed in yoga, the latter is contrary to
it. This is of course catholicity and
tolerance, or could lead to it. No doubt the
several religions aspire to reach God, and
tolerance of the paths chalked out is helpful
and experimental, and above all supremely
democratic and individual.
The world is in need of
a new approach. Hindu thinkers or sages had
seen that is almost a continuous demand for new
events; and an awareness of the new dimensions
of the human problems provoke constant search
for harmonious solutions in each age. We find
that men cry out to God to take birth, or to
send his prophets and messengers to establish
righteousness, to punish the wicked and to save
the faithful. In certain literatures we find
that extreme urgency expressed with all anguish
and pain of the soul, as if the world is
engulfed and awaiting destruction. However each
age is answered and each nation is assured by
the birth of a saint; but it is a phenomenon
that leads to the study of the many ways in
which man prays for a new world and a new life.
The problems of
religion remain, despite all attempts to
establish a new relationship with God or the
Absolute things which are understood in a
terrestrial sense, or rather ‘a human’ sense.
There is of course all the certainty that there
are super-human or super-manic senses, but they
belong to an select sect and man is
unfortunately not included in it. In what
manner those persons know and see, touch, taste
and hear, one hardly can know, though
descriptions are not wanting in all mystical and
religious literature. In fact Sri Aurobindo
devotes quite a few chapters to delineate the
‘gnostic man’ or superman. To the man for whom
religion exists or is established as a path to
liberation, as a means to his emancipation from
all binding and limiting bonds and misery and
death, there is necessary a pragmatic or human
understanding of his place in the universe, a
place to which he might legitimately aspire and
attain. Peace in the soul, prosperity in all
things, and harmony with all mankind is an
undoubted trinity of interests that every man,
whatever his station in life is, seeks.
Man seeks fullness. He
is always sure that though what he seeks is not
always attainable he should still strive after
it; and ethical life for him is a means towards
this realisation of the good.
In his brilliant series
of lectures on Eastern Religions and Western
Thought, Dr Radhakrishnan throws out pregnant
criticisms not only of the ways of thought to
which the rationalists have accustomed the
present age, but also the ways of religion which
promises to succeed it. But after the rational
treatment which in a sense happened again and
again in the history of mankind, religion is not
likely to be the same again. However there are
certain broad axioms of his thought on religion
which could be shown to follow naturally from
the beginnings made by Svami Vivekananda and Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, his great master.
1. The
Reality is spiritual. Reality of the Unseen.
2. Man is
moving upward towards this realisation.
3. Humanity
is striving after Unity - this is the direction
of its aspiration, the light and the law that
moulds its direction or the direction of its
life-force.
4.
Intellectual thought is insufficient, but
historical or human history is important :
(European thought’s contribution). The Kingdom
of God is not of this world.
5. Religion
and humanism are not opposites : The divine and
the human are ever interrelated.
‘Humanism is the religion of the majority of the
intellectuals today’.
6. ‘Hinduism
adopts a rationalist attitude in the matters of
religion’. (p.20. ER & WT).
7. Religions
are religions of object and religions of
Experience. The former depend on faith and
conduct directed to a power without; the latter
attaches importance to the experience of God.
Hinduism and Buddhism belong to the second
category.
8. A
rationalist attitude means a study in a
scientific spirit, and religion is also studied
in this spirit of inquiry, not by faith but by
experimenting, observing, and discovering laws
of inner life through experience in the deepest
levels. God exists means God is experienceable
or attainable, (p. 22)
9. Knowledge
is awareness. This is different from logical
knowledge which is comparable to a finger which
points to an object and disappears when the
object is seen. (p. 24)
10.
‘Philosophy and religion are two aspects of a
single movement.’
11. Religion
is a natural development of a really human life,
(p, 25) . In this sense it is humanism, ‘in a
deeper sense.’True humanism tells us that there
is something more in man than is apparent in his
ordinary consciousness, something which frames
ideals and thoughts, a fine spiritual presence
which makes him dissatisfied with mere earthly
pursuits, (p. 25)
12. Maya does
not mean that the empirical world is illusion.
It is only ‘fragile’.
‘Reality and existence are not to be set against
each other as metaphysical contraries.’
13. “The
fundamental truth of a spiritual religion is
that our real self is the supreme being which it
is our business to discover and consciously
become, and this being is one in all.” (p. 32)
14. Mankind is
still in the making. Human life as we have it
is only the raw material for human life as it
might be. (p. 34)
The above axioms of his
thought reveal his wide perspective, distinct
indeed from those of the preceding thinkers.
There is absolute agreement on the nature of
reality as spiritual. It is also agreed that
man must become aware of this spiritual nature,
and more and more realise it in his person, so
to speak. His whole nature must become
spiritual. Spirituality means liberation or
freedom, and this spirituality is at the heart
of every thing in the universe to which he
aspires. Religion means this attainment through
spiritual experience.
But there are some who
consider that man is always perfect, being
spiritual, and his ignorance and imperfection
are not real. They hold that there is no
evolution of man into a spiritual being. There
is no birth and no realisation. The whole is
unborn, cannot be born. Dr Radhakrishnan’s view
is that the world’s soul, as yet unborn, will be
born even as man is in the making. So he does
not accept the ajata vada and the
illusion-theory of becoming, or of creation
etc., Nor does he accept the theory that maya is
the power of creativity in matters material.
Maya represents or explains the fragile nature
of the manifest world which is constantly
changing, or rather coming into being and
passing out of being. The fact of transitoriness
of material things and bodies is incontestable.
The bodies change but the spiritual nature goes
on interminably. Bodies age but the spiritual
nature experiences and goes on from one body to
another after fulfilling its desires in each one
of them, and therefore there is a continuity of
births and deaths. However we are not concerned
so much with the nature of the body in its
perishability but in its being the vehicle of
experience (anubhava). Religion has concern for
the soul of man, his immortal spirit playing in
and through the mortal and the changing nature.
Dr Radhakrishnan’s
great contribution to comparitive Religion is
contained in his Oxford lectures on Eastern
Religions and Western Thought. it is about the
only book today which presents succinctly and
lucidly the Eastern or Indian approach to
Comparitive Religious study. If Svami
Vivekananda tried to show how Hinduism is the
Mother of all Religions - all religions are
eastern not european - and how by shedding
certain aspects each religion had developed its
own emphasis, and thus separated itself from the
parent; if Mahatma Gandhi, following Sri
Ramakrishna as it were, tried to establish a
catholic egalitarianism between the religions
which could be permitted to claim similar
developments independently of the alleged source
in Hinduism or Vedism; Dr Radhakrishnan’s
approach may be said to lead to a hierarchy of
religion based on the levels of intuition and
levels of intellect. The Eastern religions are
all intuitive, inspired, and spiritually allied
to the Ultimate purpose, whereas the Hellenic
religions are over-intellectualised
rationalisations of the intuitive. However it
is clear that Dr Radhakrishnan himself seems to
feel that spiritual religion, which is Hinduism,
had very early in World History inspired and
guided the lines of development of Christianity
and Islam in their spiritual theories and
practices.
A consideration of not
only the philosophical bases of these religions
but also of the self-limitations which they had
imposed on themselves for the making of a better
life here on earth clearly indicates the causes
of the divergences in goals, A yearning for
the Divine in Himself or Itself does promote a
vision that transcends the earth and its
perfection. Perfection itself has to be
considered in the light of purification of the
spirit through experience, till it reaches its
perfection beyond the transient bodies or
matter. This is true of the spiritual religions
whose look is turned to the beyond. But it is
not so but turned around one’s surroundings when
adaptation to it and survival in it is the
goal. This is the goal of religions which seek
for perfection of adaptation and harmony with it
alone. In either case it is the necessity of
man to discover the power or illumination which
transcends his present powers, but which he
somehow feels is immanent in him.
Early enough in the
millenium before Christ, Greece underwent change
in its beliefs, thanks to the influx of ancient
Hindu thought through the Mysteries of Orpheus
and the philosophies of Pythogoras. Clearly,
Eleatics were influenced by the ‘abstract’
speculations of the Hindus. (p. 134). It has
been an unbroken influx before and after the
invasions of Alexander, perhaps more before than
after. Though Dr Radhakrishnan insists that his
endeavour is limited to showing or indicating
their affinity of type rather than their
identity of origin, it is nonetheless a pointer
to the mutual influence of a higher religious
stream on the lower Homeric religions.
Remarkable indeed are the affinities. The Aryan
names adorn almost all the pages of their
history of ancient religions, and perhaps it is
clear that it is in the Indian formulation that
these Aryan gods and goddesses attain a purity
and perfection in their qualitative holiness or
numinous nature. “The mystic tradition in Greece
is definitely un-Greek in its character.”
(p.135) As quoted by Dr Radhakrishnan
“Prophetic austerity
and mystic indifference are alike foreign to it
(Greece). « (p. 136 note 3.)
The nearness or identity of practices and
beliefs about the soul and its immortality
reveal more than mere natural coincidence.
“The beliefs held in
common are those of rebirth, the immortality and
godlike character of the soul, the bondage of
the soul in the body, and the possibility of
release by purification. If we add to them the
metaphors like the wheel of birth and the world
egg, the suggestion of natural coincidence is
somewhat unconvincing.” (p. 138)
Initiation was also considered to be of
great importance. To have initiation is to be
twice born. The first birth is the physical one,
the second is unto what is real in us, to be
changed in nature. The yearning of religion is
the desire for union with our true self. ...
The ideal of Dhyana or
theoria was inculcated, and that meant
contemplation of the divine reality. “For
Pythogoras, pure contemplation is the end of
man, the completion of human nature.” (p.141).
There are so many things in common between the
Upanisadic teachings and the Greek Platonics
that we could assert their interconnection. But
whether or not we accept the hypothesis of
direct influence from India through Persia on
the Greeks, a student or Orphic and Pythogorean
thought cannot fail to see that the similarities
between it and Indian religion are so close as
to warrant our regarding them as expressions of
the same view of life. We can use the one
system, to interpret the other. “ (p. 143)
Professor
Radhakrishnan’s exposition of the
characteristics of a universal religion have the
supreme merit of clarity and charity which are
brilliantly combined. His wide acquaintance
with the several features of world mysticism and
ethics and philosophy has made him a unique
personality. Idealism and practical wisdom
coupled with a deep piety for the ultimate
values have made for his knowledge of man and
his destiny, in and through the several avenues
of knowing and tradition. This has produced a
humanism that made it a laughing stock in
ancient philosophy.
Philosophy and religion
are for man, and man is not to be conditioned
and regimented into the schemes of philosophy
and religion. This is not subjectivism on the
contrary it emphasizes that our knowledge is
essentially governed by our mind, which is human
at the level of our education and It is very
difficult to ask for a divine way when all that
we have is only a human vehicle and
instrumentation. The most flattered human is not
divine but human. The concept of man has been
of course beautifully explained even in India as
in the Bhagavad Gita which, called the Divine
only the Highest or the Best Hunan
(Purusottama). No doubt that all religion is
human, and for the human, and it may lead to the
best that could evolve out of the human - his
highest possibility or potentiality. The basic
Upanisadic statement could be made to show that
the Brahman is what the atman could attain to -
and the potential and the manifest expression of
it are an organic unity — a process of growth or
evolution or unfoldment or even the breaking of
the obstacles to the self-revealaent of the
self. All these terms of human understanding of
the gap or the gulf between the Ideal and the
Actual is bridged firstly by the recognition of
the Reality of the equation between these two
terms. Their separation by whatever reason
brought about, illusory self-limitation or
creative dialectic, is the fact to be recognised
and overcome. Religion tries to do this through
the several religions, each of which is suited
to the fact or feature or mode of separation,
that exists between the Atman and the Brahman, -
the individual and the Divine All. It is
certainly possible even to hold that the several
expanding individuals may grow to such vast
dimensions that one begins to include the rest,
but then these inter-pervasive universes, or
individuals, or mahatmas, do need a common
universe of discourse and being which may
produce or creatively recognise the One that is
indeed the all. Man has infinite potentiality,
and it may be that the divine nature is also his
possibility, even as the human itself has been
the possibility of the animal before him, so far
as he is concerned. Hindu thought therefore is
a problem or adventure of infinite manifestation
of the infinite potentiality of the microcosm -
the atman or anvatma or life - to become Brahman
or universal life - visvatma or purusottama.
Professor Radhakrisnan’s most rewarding chapter
in his work Eastern Religions and Western
Thought, from the point of view of comparitive
religion forging ahead to a universal religion,
is entitled “Meeting of Religions” (pp.
306-343).
India has been
historically known to have been the meeting
place of almost all religions: perhaps it has
also sent out from ancient times its own
religion to other parts of the world. Whilst
other religions, especially those developed in
Europe as well as the Arabic sematic, developed
a zealous attitude to convert others to their
way of thinking, which they were convinced was
the best for all the rest of the world, whether
they were advanced or fitted or otherwise or
whether all things are the same for all men
differently constituted, India tried its level
best most of the time to foster inward
understanding of the goals of not only oneself
but also of others as well, and knew the wisdom
that to each is best that makes for his
realisation.
Today we have the
well-devised slogan : to each according to his
need, from each according to his ability : an
axiom of economic socialism, put forward by one
who seems to have known the mystic truth that
multiplicity, in order to be, must remain
multiplicity. Democracy would wither if
individuals coalesce or get absorbed in others.
Indian thinking, so beautifully expressed by the
Bhagavad Gita, has stated that each individual
has his own svadharma which he should develop
according to his svabhava - his own line of
growth, and to attempt at exchanging it with
others is fraught with great misery to all
concerned. The maxim of svadharma and svabhava
of Hindu Gita thinking is almost identical in
import with the slogan or axiom of ‘to each
according to his need and from each according to
his ability.’
But this perception is
not possible unless one gets out of his net-mesh
of doctrinairism and dogmatism. Traditional
development has helped individual growth and
evolution by and large, and Utopian population
shifting has uprooted people and has provided
for their extermination through atavism, and
decay.
Professor Radhakrishnan
says “The different religions have now come
together, and if they are not to continue in a
state of conflict or competition, they must
develop a spirit of comprehension which will
break down prejudice and misunderstanding and
bind them together as varied expressions of a
single truth.” (p. 306)
All religions have come
together in the world, but long ago they did
come together in India, and India then decided
that this comprehensive spirit is good for man
despite all provocations made, and insults
heaped and brutalities commited against its
religion of One Reality, One God that merely
permits the many but helps them and sustains
their growth and evolution as exemplars of the
One Supreme Brahman.
What was achieved in
those early times of Asoka * could well bear
implementation in the vaster arena
* Asoka’s
dictum : “ He who does reverence to his own sect
while disparaging the sects of others wholly
from attachment to his own, with intent to
enhance the splendour of his own sect, in
reality, by such conduct inflicts the severest
injury on his own sect.” (quoted on page 309)
of a world meeting of religions, the globe
itself that has, whether we like it or not,
shrunk in terms of time and space because of the
modern discoveries of science. “Obviously, says
Professor Radhakrishnan ‘the different races and
religious cults lived in harmony and adopted an
attitude of live and let live” (p. 307),
Despite conflicts which did take place, it
became clear that the Vedas realised that “ever
since the dawn of reflection the dream of unity
has hovered over the scene and haunted the
imagination of the leaders “ of that age. The
theoretical explanation was put forward in the
Rig Veda for this attitude of acceptance of
other cults. “The real is one, the learned call
it by various names Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” (I.
164.46) And again “priests and poets with words
make into many the hidden reality which is but
one” (X.114). “The oneness of the Supreme is
insisted on, but variety of description is
permitted.” Dr Radhakrishnan holds that “In the
boundless being of Brahman are all the living
powers that men have worshipped as gods, not as
if they were standing side by side in space, but
each a facet mirroring the whole”; though he
seems to concede that these may be considered to
be ‘refracted’ formations or just ‘symbols of
the fathomless’. In ancient times this attitude
of comprehensive tolerance was adopted by the
Chinese where the three religions of Taoism,
Confucianism and Buddhism have so far “melted
into one another that we cannot separate them
easily.” (p.309). It is but fair to say that
this attitude was not gained in a day.
Conflicts had taken place till men have begun to
see reason - human reason. Even today the
atmosphere for comprehensive spiritual
understanding of awareness has been brought
about only through revolutions and two World
Wars, and under the current threat of a Third
one. The sanity of man gets a chance when it is
suicidal and homicidal to indulge in insanity.
Reason, human reason,
might not grant stable insights, revelations
from above to all, but it does grant a sense of
expedient good behaviour. We know how the social
contract theory was an invention of the human
rationality to save man from fratricidal war
which was but another name for collective
suicide of humanity. It may not be a sovereign
force but potent enough.
Sectarian squabbles
there always have been, in India as elsewhere,
but whilst in India there have been attempts at
a positive integration of divine ideas and
concepts, in other parts of the globe there has
not happened anything more than an armistice, a
recognition of difference, an agreement to
differ, and that too when men seemed to lose
their attachment to spiritual truths or God.
The industrial age and economic determinism have
more and more begun to dictate a socialistic
pattern of society based on cooperation and
corporation. This is a basic differential
between the Indian or Hindu mind and the Western
Mind, Dr Radhakrishnan points out how Brahma,
Siva and Visnu were integrated as the three
poises of the One Divine.
Srsti sthityantakaranam brahmavisnuaivsbhidham /
sa samjnam yati bhagavan eka eva Janardanah //
Or the other
famous verses
Yah puman
Samkhyadrstinam
Brahma
vedantavadinam
vijnana matram
vijnanavadinam ekantanirmalam
yah sunyavadinam sunyo bhasako yo’rkatejasam
vaktamantartam bhokta drasta karta sadaiva sah
purusah samkhyadrstinam Isvaro yogavadinam
sivah sasikalankanam kalah kalaikavadinam
(Yoga Vasisista Quoted by Dr Radhakrishnan. p. 319)
All names may be given or invented to refer to the Sane Being in the
different darsanas or philosophies or
religions, and it is good to recognize this
significants fact. It is also known how Udayana
in his Kusumanjali, written to prove the
existence of God, had discerned this truth.
Determined by the approach to the Divine, One
receives his vision from that point of approach.
Even the atheist and materialist is received in
the Hindu fold as they also reach the Divine in
that way.
It is a truth that is
being slowly recognized by the mystics of other
religions whether Christian or Islamic, but more
by the former, for their windows of knowledge
are much more open to the breezes from eternity.
Dr Radhakrishnan
vigorously points out that it is necessary for
religious experience to be experienced and
recognized through the test of evolution of the
human spirit. “Let us frankly recognize that
the efficiency of a religion is to be judged by
the development of religious qualities such as
quiet confidence, inner calm, gentleness of the
spirit, love of neighbour, mercy to all
creation, destruction of tyrannous desires, and
the aspiration for spiritual freedom.” (p.
323) This is a serious practical test which
every one should apply, and then perhaps we will
all know that religion is yet a far off ideal.
Some may even draw the pessimistic conclusion
that it is an Utopian dream to be truly
spiritual or religious.
And spiritual goods are
not to be confused with the world’s currency, as
Dr Radhakrishnan says. The Christian missionary
had been much more obsessed by his excellences
which were in fact, undermining his own nature.
The brilliant replies Dr Radhakrishnan has
given, will reveal an underlying lack of
humility on the part of the missionary writers,
suffering under the burden of their evangelical
mission to save their own souls rather than that
of the other people who are less well placed in
the material plane of life. It is true that
some of the reformers in India were equally
obsessed by wordly values and sought to remedy
the situation of the people of India, especially
the downtrodden and the dispossessed, and spoke
a language of depreciation of tne spiritual
values. This is also the modern obsession among
the educated people as also the pandits seeking
equality with the materialistic comrades.
Perhaps it has invaded even the spheres the
monks and sanyasin and brought cynical sneers
from all those who see them as the exemplars of
the spirit of jnana vairagya.
This inversion of
valuations of the age of mystic renunciation and
service and Oneness of all Being has led to the
depreciation of the present age and loss of
faith in every one. The intolerant voice of the
missionary zealot is matched by an equivalent
fanaticism of the proselytizer with the
superiority complex making him say things which
are barren of all meaning and reality. At any
rate the Christian religion has no universal
possibility for humanity, unless it begins to
shed its institutionalised behaviour patterns,
whetherProtestant or catholic. One must realise
‘that different creeds are the historical
formulations of the formless truth’, and also
that religious mystics or rather. Svami
Vivekananda spoke bitterly against the fanatical
ideas of a One God and of One Creation also.
Dr Radhakrishnan
pertinently says “Unfortunately even as faith in
one’s nation kills faith in mankind, faith in
one religion seems to kill faith in others.”
(p.329). One’s faith must give faith to others
in their own faiths. Just as one’s manifestation
of love and sympathy to others seems to make
others feel the necessity to love in return and
adore the Supreme who has made this possible.
Further Dr Radhakrishnan says “Those who believe
in an immanent Logos are obliged to admit the
value of other faiths.” (p. 331)
The secret of tolerance
and love stems out of this recognition of the
immanent Logos, the Antaryamin in each and every
human being, whether of one’s own race, sect
caste or otherwise. The immanent Reason in all
is Universal Reason itself, *
* It is usual to criticise Hegel for having
asserted that what is, is right, because it
meant also that he was justifying the Prussian
Military State. The deeper meaning could be
elucidated that it has to be understood along
with the other dictum that the real is the
rational.
It is on the plane of
human rationality that we discover that reason
itself is universally present in all humans, and
works on an identical set of laws of thought. A
science of religion would discover the
uniformities of spiritual experience and the
Uniformities of thinking processes, as well as
the mythical and emotional psychologies. Thus
it is by showing the different ‘distortions’
‘refractions’ and ‘inversions’ and evolutions of
the several truths of religion in the different
climates and traditions of humanity sprawling on
the face of the globe, that we seize upon the
essential elements of universal religion, and
also develop a charity and positive tolerance to
all religious manifestations. It is then that,
as Dr Radhakrishnan says “a religion embraces
all mankind; For in a religion like Hinduism,
which emphasizes Divine Immanence, the chosen
people embraces all mankind; not merely those of
the semetic or aryan or any tribal and national
type of men alone.”
Professor Radhakrishnan
emphasises that religion at least must remain
the home of liberty, in this , following
Rousseau whoa he quotes; but he also perceives
the wisdom of Plato who insists that liberty has
only one law to obey, that is the law of
beneficence to society, or rather should we say
the beneficence to one’s own evolution to higher
and wider liberties open to him. The Hindu has
always recognised the need for the formation of
fellowships or Samgha or sat-sangha which
promotes the evolution of man towards his
liberty (moksa) as well as his harmony with
humanity. Men live from one community to
another entailing change of attitudes -
“sat-sanghatve nissanghatvam, nissanghatve
nirmohatvam” a true objectivity develops along
with a dispassionate attitude. Hinduism
recognizes that each religion is inextricably
bound up with its culture. This poses the
problem of association and fellowship between
individuals belonging to apparently different
religions, but seeking the same goal of liberty
in God, or dharma.
Dr Radhakrishnan’s
great work has been to answer the critics of
Hinduism, as also to direct criticisms against
them from a real and dispassionate standpoint.
Tall claims made by Christianity by followers of
modern Christianity are shown to be hollow and
pretentious. Whilst “we cannot dismiss as
negligible the sense of majesty of God and
consequent reverence in worship which are
conspicuous in Islam, the deep sympathy for the
world’s sorrow and unselfish search for a way of
escape in Buddhism; the desire for contact with
ultimate reality in Hinduism; the belief in
moral order in the universe and consequent
insistence on moral conduct in Confucius, it is
unfortunate that claims are made for the
exclusive salvation device of Christianity by
its leading expounders.” (p. 342) However, wise
men abound every where and the light of God is
pouring on them from above.
There is always a
necessity for instructing each other among good
men as counselled by the Bhagavad Gita Acharya
(bodhayanti parasparam) even as Jesus seems to
have instructed, “But go then and publish
abroad the Kingdom of God,” even as Asoka sent
to all directions messengers of freedom (moksa)
from misery; but this task could well be done
with imperialistic designs. As it was earlier
remarked, conquerors of nations were
accompanied, by missionaries to convert the
conquered by force. fraternity; those deeply
universal mystic truths absorbed by the Hinduism
from remote ages. And this recognition of equal
rights for all has compelled the ethical
conscience - but not of all missionaries - to
dedicate themselves to these triple goals of
human existence. More disastrous has been the
attempt to undermine, subvert other peoples
faiths, and this too is being exposed by modern
thinkers.
Dr Radhakrishnan’s
services to the emancipation of Hinduism, both
from its critics and its friends and followers,
have been singularly successful. His massive
knowledge of, and minute acquaintance with the
practices of religions has helped him to help
them to purify themselves before they attempt
exporting their religions.
Splendidly has he
presented the picture of the future of religion
-the religion in the making -
“Each religion has sat
at the feet of teachers that never bowed to its
authority, and this process is taking place
to-day on a scale unprecedented in the history
of humanity, and will have profound effects upon
religion. In their wide environment religions
are assisting each other to find their own souls
and to grow to their full stature. Owing to
cross-fertilization of ideas and insights,
behind which lie centuries of racial and
cultural tradition and earnest endeavour, a
great unification is taking place in the deeper
fabric of men’s thoughts. Unconsciously
perhaps, respect for other points of view,
appreciation of the treasures of other cultures,
confidence in one another’s unselfish motives
are growing. We are slowly realizing that
believers with different opinions and
convictions are necessary to each other to work
out the larger synthesis which alone can give
the spiritual basis to a world brought together
into intimate oneness by man’s mechanical
ingenuity. “ (p. 348)
The realisation of the
Universal Religion cannot but be on the lines of
a wider awakening of the consciousness to its
cosmic and global tasks. The Eastern Religions
and Western Thought was the work of Professor
Radhakrishnan,Professor Spalding at Oxford.
They bear the scholarly impress on every line,
that detachment that is appropriate to the task
of exposition. His only concern was to present
Hinduism as the best synthesis of the basic aims
of humanity as a whole, and it has stood that
test through long centuries.
Since then Professor
Radhakrishnan has moved towards the active life
of a Statesman, ambassador, Vice President and
President of Indian Republic. The philosopher
professor has become the philosopher Ruler or
President. Does this mark any change? Yet it
does. The same catholicity and tolerance
persists in all that he has been doing. His has
been a healing but firm touch. The ideals have
given him the challenge to execute them. The
ways of liberty, equality and fraternity have
broadened to permit a freer movement of the mass
of mankind.
The Constitution of India embraces these ideals
as instruments of execution. Socialism, not of
the dialectical materialism but of the
liberalistic kind, has been found to be capable
of promoting the fundamental freedoms of man.
Though these freedoms have been stated in the
language of materialism yet at bottom the spirit
of spirituality and mystic unity of mankind has
dictated their declarations again and again.
The march of dictators of the Left and the Right
on the world stage only high-lighted the
magnificent dream to be a thing to be realised.
The magnificent obsession of spirit to clothe
itself in the mantles of materialism or matter
has begun to be realised.
Dr Radhakriahnan has
been able to affirm that though God is the
concern of the religions, it is now Man who is
the concern of God, and spirit must explain
itself in terms of materialism. The paradox
seems to be the vengeance that spirit takes
against the logics of contradiction. Or is it
its disquieting laughter after all ?
Can secularism in
politics be the expression of spirituality? This
question has been answered by
Dr Radhakrishnan in the positive affirmation
he makes, in his latest speeches. Is this a
dichotomy, a hypocrisy or is it a legitimate
spiritual mode of apprehension of the opposition
between materialistic secularism and spiritual
aspiration ? Or is it a kind of choice we have
to make between materialistic and spiritual
secularisms ?
Some modern research
professors have raised a furore over this
secularisation of spirituality, by equating with
non-action, non-political life, whilst dubbing
all activity to be secular.
Dr.B.G. Tiwari
considers secularism as the “deification of
activity, self-fulfilment, success, fame,
accomplishment, possessions, excitement, risk
and the relentless striving to push ahead, and
the ethical theory which professes to regard
search for worldly goods as the true or the
highest goal of man’s efforts” (p.i. Secularism
& Materialism in Modern India). And under this
omnibus definition he brings all the reformers
including Svami Vivekananda- the patriot Monk,
Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar
Tilak, Jawaharlal Nehru and so on. He however
includes under the spiritual, as contradicting
the secular, exponents like Dr. S. Radhakrishnan
who he considers expounds Indian Ethics from the
Sankara point of view. (p. 17 ibid).
The axiological point
of view of ethics is one thing, and to mix it up
with a metaphysical and epistemological point of
view is another. Axiologically the world is
valueless and phantasmic from the point of the
ordinary man, who seeks the Ultimate meaning of
his own existence or of his dear ones who have
been snatched away. The renunciational
opportunities are precisely enumerated by the
Indian seers as the point of death, of
birth-pangs or moment of child-delivery, which
psycho-analysts call the trauma; after the
cessation of hunger and sex-hunger after
satisfaction. But the metaphysical reality of
the world, once denied, cannot be practised
consistently except by denying all karma whether
vaidika or tantrika. If there are two orders of
being, one an illusion and the other the
Reality, the renunciation of the former is the
logical step to be taken and Sankara did take
it. The practice of illusion of the world - the
sadhana of considering all to be illusory, like
the counterpart all is duhkha or misery, only
inculcates the liberation of the individual from
his world. It may enjoin him to join others
equally convinced about the unreality or
illusory nature of the world. Such an ethics
would certainly not seek to maintain this world
illusion but to destroy it or negate it this
would be nisprapanchikarana - naughting the
world. One may proceed to naught the world of
vyavahara. Even the practice of the four ends
in order would not achieve this: in any case the
criticism of the Western Critics against Advaita
or Sankara Mayavada ethics cannot be answered.
It is neither
consistent with the metaphysical assumptions nor
is it necessary to hold on to this with a zeal
meant for a better purpose. What Svami
Vivekananda saw clearly was that Advaita is much
more important as a concept that can relate the
two axiologically different realms - the realms
of transience and the realms of permanence, ie
of change and stability. Maya then need not be
emphasized, nor is it necessary to say that the
world is real in itself, and has to be sought
for its own sake. The sole aim is whether one
could confer on the changing world a semblance
of order and cosmos, a unity that would give
meaning to this whole process. Despite the
extraordinary ingenuity of the mayavadic
philosophers to prove the self-contradictoriness
and so on of the world of change and appearance,
and despite the impossibility of knowing
anything as it is in itself through the means of
knowledge available to man, yet the necessity to
act as if there is order and design or meaning
makes ethics possible. Deny this and then one
denies all activity. There is nothing at all
preventing one’s giving up one’s entire work,
effort and goals and all, and enter into that
condition beyond all change and cosmos or
anything of the limiting concepts of the
ordinary man.
Advaita, as the search
for Oneness or unity, is a highly spiritual and
ethical endeavour, and it is an instrument of
liberation of man from his terrific insecurity
in a world of change and chance. Science does
attempt this systematisation or unification of
all objective knowledge. It is not doing it
under the impulse or motivation of escape from
maya or illusion or deeming all these as just
illusion. The experience of Selfness or
Sarvatmabhava or Bhuma or omnipervasive Reality
would entail the abandonment of the
maya-concept, whether of the Yoga Vasista or the
pure metaphysical Sankara type.
The attempt to make
Maya a pivotal concept in the sense of cosmic or
metaphysical illusion is on the whole basically
irremediable if one wishes to substantiate the
existence of the human world, or the values that
one really seeks here. That is why it is quite
likely that though the intellect of Svami
Vivekananda was tuned to the metaphysical Maya
of Sankara, his own spiritual bias was for the
heart of Ramanuja which embraced both the world
here and the world beyond, the transcendent.
The bhakti of Ramanuja was not for this world
and its enjoyment, though some eminent followers
of Sri Ramanuja almost gave expression to the
view that the Divine experience in this world is
equal to that of liberation, moksa, from which
there is no return to this world at all. Dr
Tiwari’s definition of secularism is too
extensive in one sense and too restrictive in
another sense, and suffers from definitional
failure to make sense of his secularism.*
Radhakrishnan
himself steers clear of the dilemma of Maya and
Sankara’s brand of it. It is spirituality that
furnishes the light in regard to what it is by
which men get deluded, and what it is by which
one does not. His treatment of the doctrinaire
principles of Caturvarga, caturvarna, and
ashrama is according to the principles
underlying the Vaidiki dharma. But he, no less
emphatically than Svami Vivekananda, affirms the
need to instil the spirituality that pure
advaita or oneness can provide. Multiplicity
has its own basic values even as Oneness has,
but it is the measure of the spirituality of our
ordinary life as to whether multiplicity has
tendency to move towards oneness or oneness has
the tendency to preserve and maintain the many.
* B.G. Tiwari : Secularism and Materialism
in Modern India.
(Jabalpur
Cooperative Printing and
Publishing Society
Ltd. Jabalpur. 1964) |
