POST VIVEKANANDA RELIGION

In a profound sense we can say that Religion has not remained the same after the advent of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda.  The turns and twists that it had before and during their lives had been varied; and many ways were found to give it some kind of firm form and shape after they had channelised the spiritual energies of the Hindu people.  The earlier currents persisted and have been running their course, but even they had to follow certain definite lines of spiritual and religious practices.

The reformist cults had agreed to rethink their fundamentals on religion.  The most important attack against Hinduism has been its idol-worship.  It was definitely established as part and parcel of rational Hinduism, and indeed as rational as any symbol could be expected to be. No religion had escaped the process of symbolisation - the only question would be whether the symbols are adequate to the metaphysical truths they represent, or contrary to them, or indifferent to them.  Every symbol tends to lose its power to symbolize and becomes indifferent to it, and therefore new symbols seem to be called for.  India had a multitude of symbols to suit its variety of individuals and groups, and people had passed on from one to another group without losing sight of the goal of liberation which each one of these was and is being held to lead to.  This is a very great discovery.  Idolatory has ceased to be a religious superstition or a spiritual aberration.

The shift of emphasis in the approach to spirituality through religion is another important factor.  Religions, with their parochialism and sectarianism, have ceased to be indicators of a growing sense of God.  On the other hand the real indication for spiritual sense of God seems to be today the earnestness to seek a living union with God.  Thus the claim made by certain thinkers like Prof. Bouquet that Christ is a living God is no longer seriously accepted, for almost every religious man or spiritual aspirant has moments of perception or awareness of ‘livingness’ of God which makes all the difference in his relationship with God and the World.  In fact, whilst previously one’s living sense of God had provoked him to commit heinous crimes against humanity in the name of God, today not until he is a gentle and peaceradiating personality, without distinctions of caste, creed, race or colour, etc., would he be considered to be a person who has beheld the Living God.Personal experiences of God are not the unique property of any one religion or of any particular spiritual exercises.  In fact when religious people had tried seriously to verify their religious claims it became possible to realise that there is a universality and truthfulness in all religions, and no religion whatsoever seems to enfold all religions, their dogma or their rites; though it has been the claim of Hinduism which has a polyphasic nature to include all.  The dogmas of all religions could indeed be found within this polyphasic Oneness of Hinduism, as of its Godhead.

Undoubtedly there has occurred the phenomenon of loss of uniqueness, about which any one religion could formerly boast.  As a matter of fact the growth of patriotism or nationalism all over the world had led to research projects of discovering within one’s own culture and religion all that the more advanced cultures or alien cultures have revealed as their own unique developments.  This led to loss of advantage which enterprising proselytising religious missions had enjoyed.  Religion has begun to lose its exportable quality.  One’s religion has been shown to be sufficiently advanced for one’s own purposes.  This is not a little due to the emphasis laid by Svami Vivekananda on the equal ability of each religion to lead up to salvation or liberation or realisation of God or Union with the Spirit.

The rivalry between religions has lessened considerably.  The distinctions between the several religions however remain.  Reason has entered into the whole business and the philosophies of religion have un-doubtedly broken the barriers to understanding of one’s own religion, as well as a comparitive estimate of what each man ought to embrace in order to be a rational being or a sane citizen.

The self-introspection that has developed in the higher intellec­tuals, and to a large extent in the educated all over the world, has led to a practical application of the beliefs and tenets mouthed but not practised; as for instance the ideas of liberty or freedom for all, equality of all beings, and fraternity among all men.  The sincerity that has been called out has shown the enormous gap between precept and practice, and social justice has become the clamour of the modern age of universalism.

The modern keen interest in Hinduism has been aroused because what was just a habit of behaviour in matters religious has become a matter for living concern, a matter of national self-respect; as a self-discovery of the national soul which has been through ages, essentially spiritual.  The long course of events in history had made for several modifications of religious attitudes and aspirations.  A vast laboratory of spiritual experiments had been at work.  Thus the rise of Hinduism after the fall or fading away of Buddhism and Jainism had led to Sankara’s formulation of Advaita.  This was contemporaneous with the Hymnists of Sri Vaisnavism and Saivism as it were, and this tradition had been continuously operating, in South India at least.  The Schools of Vedanta alongside the dharma-sastras have produced a vast volume of rationalistic and religious literature coupled with the spiritual work of self-experience.

The Schools of Visistadvaita and Dvaita, engaged on the spiritual experience of God in all his polyphasic being, had provided the spiritual-religious background during the period of Islamic invasions.  Though some thinkers consider that the influence of Islam and Christianity is traceable in these two Vedantas, yet it must be pointed out that they developed from traditional movements which commenced centuries before the advent of Christ. The statement of Svami Vivekananda and the later information fully documented by Dr Radhakrishnan, both reveal the entirely native character of these Vedantas; and if at anything, modern research shows that they (the Muslims and Christians) have profitted by intercourse with India.  The studies on the developments of Zoroastrianism by Alkondavalli Govindacarya have high-lighted this position of ‘motherhood’ of Religions of Hinduism or VedantaAgama.  Theosophical work has not reduced the quality or quantity of the indebtedness of other religions to Hinduism.

This has brought to the fore the most important problem of Religion - the supreme quality that a religion must have to be a living force among humanity (and not so much the origins of each religion from a parent religion, which is liable to be historically contested and disputed, and accepted or not). Is it a dead force or a living force, and if so could old religions ever resuscitate themselves to play this role ? However satisfying they might be for an emotional self-satisfaction of one’s self-respect or national res­pect?  This is very important in view of the earnest and strenuous efforts and advertisements being made on behalf of religious revival through lectures, studies and researches.  Under Mahatma Gandhi grew Ashrams which functioned as political-religious centres for training men in the art of non-violent non-cooperation.  Thus, all over the country, asramas once again sprang up, not purely for spiritual and religious training and education, but for a moral and spiritual preparation for the ordeal of achieving political liberty. Such was the climate of socio-political life.  The work of the Ramakrishna Math as well as that of the Arya Samaj and theosophists began to take shape.Religion was stirred to its foundations.  Indian Philosophical studies were undertaken, and the necessity to look into our own philosophical literature became urgent in view of the remarks made about India not having any philosophy but only a religion

As every one can remember today, the complaint of the Westerner is that India has no religion at all but just a mysticism of a kind.  Thus India did not have a philosophy but only a religion, then it had no religion but only a mysticism. All these views have been ably challenged by Svami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Dr.Radhakrishnan.  It was asserted also that Indian Philosophy and Religion hardly knew anything about a science of ethics; but both the philosophers and mystics, and above all, Mahatma Gandhi, showed that India practices a nobler ethics than what passes for ethics in the now defunct ethical concerns in England.  The founding of the Asramas for spiritual and ethical practices is a return to the age-old tradition of soul-preparation for all kinds of work.  The study of Indian philosophy in Colleges and Universities has helped to reveal that there is enough solid thinking outside religious and spiritual speculation which could become the basis for a world philosophy.  The process, of course, has not come to any thing more than an elementary or preparatory stage, but it has commenced ! The future of Indian Philosophical studies is assured, especially when we are moving forward towards using the intuitive and supramental possibilities of thought to explore the infinities of Reality, not only in its spatial and temporal dimensions, but also in organic and supra-mortal terms.  The world itself has begun to see that the nineteenth century fictions have at last begun to evaporate.

No longer is there entertained the illusion of sovereignty of reason, even in the fields of science.  Hedonism, as an ethical goal is being given up, but the concept of welfare has also greatly enlarged itself.  It is true that extra-terrestrial religion has not much chance of success unless the transition to the other world already involves some stable realisations of the values of religion even on this earth.  Spiritual values destined for the enjoyment of the soul are found to be increasingly necessary for living here and for realising them in terms of our material life if it is not to remain sordid and mean.  Thus, freedom is not to be sought outside life and after death in another world, but here itself and in every sector of human activity, and for every one.  Similarly, equality has been slowly growing into the patterns of society, both social and political, and has not been permitted to be enjoyed only by members of any sacred brotherhood or church.  It has become a universal right even as freedom has become. But it is when all men are found to be governed not so much by equal rights and equal freedoms but by something that brings warmth and cheer into human relationships that life becomes valuable in itself.  Till now life had to be given up for gaining the values of freedom and equality. It had to be the price that man pays for gaining his humanity.  But deeper than these two, and perhaps even in spite of them, one has to love and be loved as children of one supreme Being.  Religion that has grown naturally had to be given up in order to realise the supreme rationality of human comradeship or fraternal unity.  And nothing expresses this love except acts of love, sympathy and sharing.  Not by sentiment, nor emotions of blood and race affinities, but by a superior rationality that recognizes that all are indeed One.  Fatherhood and Motherhood of God are very effective, and the analogies are nearer to one’s visualisation.  But to feel the same self in all, and all as being in that One Universal Self, and to feel also that all are the becomings of that One self demands a mystic vision of supreme penetrative power which ordinary religions could hardly offer.  But it is precisely this Vision and insight that the Hindu Upanisadic seer has promised as the spiritual basis of Human unity and Oneness.

All over the world the concepts of mystical equality and freedom, and even the idea of a kingdom of justice and love, have been common heritage. This would lead to the one insight that there is the tendency to realise identity of ideals, in respect of material (artha), emotional (kama), and duty (dharma) goals.  The idea of moksa, or liberation from the earth-life or eternal return to it out of fervant desire to be here alone, has receded. If the last is the meaning of religious or mystical yearning for the eternal and the permanent, that seems to have receded into the background.  Nobody takes the moksa-purusarthe seriously as a goal worth while pursuing.  Any attempts to discuss the problems of karma and rebirth are met with a smile; a smile that almost means that such problems are speculative ones; not germane to the issues of the present day. However, they were the deep problems that frightened the past age.  If materialism means the total disregardof problems of the future of life, then the present age is materialistic. And the problems of economics, science, law are all sought to be explained or governed not with a drive to the final purusartha or goal of the future life of man and society, but in terms of present enjoyment and peace. Thus spirituality is yoked to the chariot of the social and secular.  This has developed as a necessity because of the impossibility of getting spirituality, or rather religiosity, to promote inter-religions and inter-spiritual equality, justice, peace and prosperity.

Yasnin sarvani bhutany atmanyevabhut vijanatah/
            Tatra kah mohah kah sokah ekatvam anupasyatah//

The world as a whole, and in its parts, is riddled with problems of inter-existence and co-existence, as well as of inter-mixture and inter-action. No individual, social, racial, or religious group is able to develop its own way of being because of this phenomenon of inter-alliance and inter-action. A New world consciousness is emerging, and the old consciousness seems to be passing out.  There have been several societies and organisations which have been coming into being in order to solve the problem of unity and amity : Life Divine Societies, as well as Divine Life Societies, Sanmarga Sanghas, as well as Samarasa Sanghas, Sarvodaya and Divyajnana sabhas and Santa sadanas and Asramas, World Fellowships and World Unions.  Several thinkers and sages like Ramana, Sivananda, Sri Sitaram Omkarnath, Sai Baba, Meher Baba and so on have urged the birth of a new Consciousness of World Unity in Spirituality as well as in Materiality.

A sceptical opposition to spirituality has yielded place to a sense of, and need to, experiment with spirituality in terms of secular affairs.  The scientific mind has begun to reject more and more the view that the ordinary dualism of mind and matter is eternal, though within limits and functions this dualism cannot be avoided.  An ultimate monism does not deny the dualism between these which are two states of the same thing and which remain parallel except at critical points in human transcendental experience.  But this would yet lead to a still further dualism between matter-mind and Self or ego, which seems to be still more different from the Universal.  At the present stage of humanity the formation of a conscious self seems to be more urgent.  An ethical ego with a spiritual destiny seems to be the minimum need of a spiritual religion.  It is in, and for, bringing this about that the concept of universal spirituality with the triple or triunity of spiritual values like liberty, equality and fraternity has been made a paramount force in secular affairs.  They do enfold, and will more and more manifest, the triunity of Truth-Existence, Consciousness-Force, and Bliss-Peace in the higher realms of spirituality when it has begun to operate in and through every individual who has become a moral agent and a spiritual centre  for the One Reality that is Saccidananda.

The study of the trends that have been under way during the past hundred years have shown that we have been appraised of the basic elements of all religions in respect of the Metaphysical truth of God; the One knowing Whom we know all, and the goal of life as liberation from ignorance, delusion, division and misery and mutual conflicts, and lastly the awareness of the eternal life of the spirit even when it works in terms of space, time and causality.   The means to the Universal Realisation have to be as spiritual as the goal itself.  And this demands a supreme dedication that would turn the material and secular into embodiments of the spiritual reality, very much as an alchemist would attempt the transmutation of iron, or brass, or copper into Gold.  There is no alternative today to universal religion.  One must move towards its realisation, for cosmic events and discoveries and inventions by man make this inevitable.    He becomes a world citizen wedded to its fortunes or misfortunes and fears.

Religion or mysticism can no longer be the refuge of the scared and tormented soul but is required to do the task of ameliorating suffering through love, which is expressed through sympathy for suffering.  May be this is a poor substitute for the promises of an eternal life.  The attempts to make this kind of self-sacrifice, or the myth of it the eternal meaning of spirituality or emancipation, are perhaps to step down the old ideals.  There seems to be no alternative to this stepping down of religion into mere expressions of mundane love and social meliorism, and similar other things which make our present life a little more harmonious and humane.  Creative rationality might well suffice for this purpose.  So much so, religion has tended to mean this creative rationality as applied to social situations.  May be this is the triumph of secularism over spirituality, which has made the latter the means to its ends, whilst all the historical processes in society might produce varying degrees of operation of these two forces, producing a synthesis of varying spirituality.

Our survey of the studies made by the different thinkers, starting from Svami Vivekananda, who has been most influential and seminal, has high lighted the fact that this Neo-Vedentic Movement as Religion and as Universal religion embraces all the other religions, and goes forward to firmly draw the future of religion within the regions of possibility.  Hinduism has the native spiritual power, which it draws from the ancient and eternal foundations of reality as Experience, to explain and make rational the deepest aspirations of man, from his lowest and grossest levels to the supremest heights of spirituality and transcendence.  Man may be said to possess the key to the ascent.  Within him is the possibility of perfection, of divinisation, and such a man must be clearly apprehended not as the physical man, nor as the vital man, nor even as the sub-mental man, but as the rational man who has begun to see the distinc­tion between the transient and the permanent; between truth and falsehood; between intelligence and non-intelligence or consciousness and unconsciousness. Unless this point is reached one cannot qualify himself to be a Man.  Man must be endowed with the quality to think, to imagine, to doubt, and to aspire for truth, goodness, beauty and duty.  He must be capable of loving and sacrificing for these goals.  To develop men to this level itself is the educational goal of the spiritual man. Beyond that is the education for the Ultimate Realisation — the Universal Man.

Secondly, the philosophical, religious and mystical factors of Hinduism make it possible for it to be scientific and spiritual; scientific in the sense that the spiritual is shown to follow the natural evolution of man.  The evolutionary process has shown that the organic is a natural development of the inorganic, that the mental is a natural development of the organic, and so too the supramental process is a natural development of the mental.  It is further possible that the spiritual Ananda is a natural development of the supramental .There is no need for  break between the natural and the supranatural; and the gulf between life and after-life is only at the beginning unbridgeable.  Matter and Spirit are to each other not opposites but as immanence is to expression. Similarly, the spirit’s ‘involution’ into the supramental, of supramental into mental, of mental into vital or organic, of organic into the inorganic are nothing but natural processes.  The only point to note is that the involution on the one hand veils the spiritual qualities whilst exhibiting the grosser and heterogeneous qualities, while the evolution remanifests them.  Oneness or the unity, is veiled in the involution, multiplicity is either veiled or integrated or unified in the One.  Or putting it in other words, Oneness becomes unity in evolution, even as menyness becomes organic differentiation in involution. The concepts of homogeneity and heterogeneity are of course not to be equated with Oneness and Manyness.  The basic assumption is that these concepts refer to the primeval substance or Cit-sakti or Prakrti, which in turn is an efflore­scence of a deeper Spirit.  Spirituality constantly operates in and through its own prakrti and vikrtis which tend to create the several forms and institutions, and even revelations, so that they may be restored to flexibility and existen­tial being.

In previous times the formal and the spiritual operated as a corrective to each other at each level, and the giving up of form for the spirit meant, at any rate, the uselessness of form for getting spiritual meaning, or activity, or evolution, or survival, or realisation.  Religions have passed, for some races at least, several phases of this progress of forms, and higher choices of forms had given us meaningful religions.  But this is a whole gamut of being; the solids exist along with liquids and gases and so.  Similarly the inorganic exists, forming the bodies of the organic.  Lower forms of life continue to survive and proliferate along with the more advanced forms of life.  So too, geniuses have been born amidst the squalor of mediocrity, and the regressive, and the moron!

The attainment of one single humanity, established on uniformity of spirituality-formalist patterns, is a great dream.  If universal religion means the achievement of the highest spirituality in terms of the forms of religion that we have, then it must be pointed out  that, that dream cannot be realised.  It is perhaps necessary to recognize hierarchy, but it is equally necessary to emphasize the necessity to provide for evolutionary progress into other forms and patterns of spirituality which would involve the dynamic continuity of evolution of lower forms into higher forms, providing more and more awareness of cosmic harmony.  Perhaps, also, we have to assume involution to be the unseen process supporting the evolutionary process.  The descent or involution would be the divine activity, whereas the evolutionary movement would be the human.  That is why the human seems to manifest the divine nature, even as the divine reveals or exhibits the human and even sub-human nature.

A universal Religion would have to take cognizance of the basic spiritual nature of man and his world, in which the ascent to cosmic awareness or consciousness, and to Reality-consciousness, are provided for automatically without the twists and turns and the distortions and inversions which mar the process of evolution between the animal and man, and between man and cosmic nature.  Human individuals should cease to be particularised and insulated by barriers of all kinds, though they may have the limitations which the sense-organs and motor organs impose.  That is why the Hindu Religion embraces all other disciplines while providing its own method of spiritual illumination. That these methods had found their way into all other countries at a very early period is now being accepted as a fact of history, despite some scholars whose blind-spot is evident in all that they write.  They are blinded by their own prejudices and wish-fulfilment complexes.

That Hinduism itself needs purification, no one would question. But what exactly should be the kind of purification that has to be carried out ?  The polyphasic method of worship of icons, idols, trees, animals, and wen and so on have to be reconciled with a clearer understanding of the nature of worship and the purpose of worship.  Not all worship, even the Christian and the Islamic, is for the attainment of the highest beatitude or liberation,  Han has been worshipping, for much less, these icons or symbols of givers of the results or fruits sought.  For bread, for power, for riches, for child or son, for freedom from fear and death and misery and so on, all these have been the aim of worship.  Thus they all refer to extraneous factors, like artha, kama and dharma, and not to the self or soul.  The soul is identified with these goals and thus all these suffer from the delusion arising from attachment or identification of the soul with the body, and deeming sufferings of the body and social relationships as pertaining to the soul, that is truly spiritual.

Thus, prayer in Christian, Islamic, and other religions and even in certain levels of Hinduistic religion, is not truly spiritual.  It is the puri­fication of prayer that is our first requisite in universal Religion.  The purer and more spiritual the prayer, the more efficacious and universal and divinising it would be. . There are undoubtedly such prayers in the Upanisads -the Gayatri for example, or the Final verses of the Isavasyopanisad.  The value of prayer should not be underestimated.

The rituals have also to be purified.  The finest rite of man is his surrender (saranagati - mudra), his self-offering (bhara-nyasa), and total dependence on the Ultimate Godhead - the Godhead who can grant him his soul-nature.  The prostration to God and elders, or showing of reverence to them, is a ritual.  So too the offering of fruits, flowers and pure drinks like water, milk etc. are rituals of a pure kind of service.  The offering of incense and other fragrant things is also a similar honour.  The Divine has to be honoured by praise, not by flattery.  Such are the simple rituals, and these have been magnified and sophisticated by different races and religions, so much so the symbolic and the sophistications have merged and sometimes obliterated the original intention of service to the Divine.

Thus we may have to reorientate the rituals and prayers in order to emphasize the cosmic consciousness, or the omnipervading nature of the Deity or Spiritual Nature.  Perhaps all that men mean by service of man as an element of religion and spirituality is to reveal the fact of facilitating and helping the growth of man to his fullest stature as a spiritual being, by helping his physical, vital and mental growth in an integrated manner. Therefore to feed man; to give him emotional opportunities; to educate his emotions in a different way than hitherto; to correct and to channelise the mental foods; to prepare man for a real rationality that is universal; and to help him to search for universal ways of living and acting; and finally to help man with his religious and spiritual food that makes for his free individuality in the universe as a whole without surrendering the ultimate values for which he had stood at each and at every level of existence - all this constitutes the service of Man.

Such a universal spirituality was, and is, the goal of all universal selves - mahatmas, maharsis, siddhas, and so on.  Whether mankind likes it or not, whether it is much more divine to make this world a heaven in the pattern of man’s hopes or otherwise, the realisation of a condition or State of being that is permanent and blissful and harmonious (if not One) is the goal, and if this is said to be after one leaves this body, it is all the more to be welcomed.  This life would be a sojourn and a preparation for the yonder. If this world also can give us the glimpse and experience of that transcendent state, even if it be in flashes like lightning (vidyutiva), that  too is an intimation of the ultimate - a jivan-mukta or siddha or bhagavata condition, preparing for the same after the death of this body which has been stated to be karma-ridden.  The Aurobindonian hope of the transformation of matter into a divine vehicle capable of realisation seems to be logically sound as the next step in the evolution of the human nature.  But whether that is the precise condition for ushering the Divine Dawn is another matter.  But it does grant us a hope of a greater glory than just individual freedom from the particular karma-encasing body.  Religion emphasizes the mystery of death; spirituality points out the possibility of a life after death! Sri Aurobindo thinks that our mortal life itself can be transformed into immortal life, not symbolically, nor by apotheosis, but actually.  Svami Vivekananda and other mystics also believe that the earth is not just a purgatory but a laboratory for the making of Gods.
Evan Bergson holds this view.

An attempt is now underway to create a dialogue between the religions.  Divisions, inter-religious and inter-sectarian, are now sought to be bridged.  Thus it is a portent of the times that the two wings of Christianity - the Protestant Anglican and the Roman Catholic, are meeting together.  An ecumenical Christian religion must first precede the universal religion. Similarly the sectarians of Islam and other religions must seek to unite, not to confront, as unfortunately the religious—state concept has done e.g. in Pakistan.

The important question that arises is, can there be a universal religion alongside a secular state, or is a theocratic state necessary ? Without entering into the necessity of politics for religion or vice versa, it is necessary to remark that neither politics nor religion can produce true spiritual understanding or even provoke it, except when ethical values are universally accepted and followed, and sanctions are imposed for every violation.  The age of law, ethical law, must come into its own.  This is necessary for religious, national, and international levels.  It is a sign of the times that we have set up United Nations Organisations to tame men’s passions and ambitions to conform to international ethics and human spiritual dignity or freedom.

These are the basic values which have to be cherished with vigilance, and prosecuted without rest and with diligence in all the levels of human activity.  The indivisibility of these rights and freedoms, both ethical and spiritual, has more and more to be recognized for a proper spiritual growth towards higher evolution.

The ideal of a universal religion need not be a mere dream just because each individual thinks his religion is the best, even as perhaps as the Mahatma said each thinks his wife to be the most beautiful or affectionate. This subjectivity need not be overemphasized, though it has a merit of its own.  Universal Humanity demands a universal growth impulse through spiri­tuality for higher evolutions already heralded or envisioned by the world’s seers.  That all men should live the life in God, for God, and by God, is an aim or goal worthy of man.  But it demands much more dedication than mere cultural enlightenment.  If universal Yoga is the desirable goal, as it is, then it is necessary that it should be essentially spiritual and simple.  It depends upon the serious recognition of a way of life different from what mankind knows upto now.  It is transcendental living and a life without tensions and tears; a life in Cosmic Nature, and an awareness of the insignificance of life itself unless it be for the manifestation  of the Infinite and Oneness-producing Being.

Such is the meaning of the Divinisation of man which does not abolish man but enriches him with cosmic meaning and purpose.  It is true that it would not be possible to restore to religion or spirituality old forms and myths. Nor is our age sufficiently profound to be able to forge a new mythology either of creation or evolution which will carry conviction. Technology and science have produced more miracles, surely, but they have not been able to produce the sense of reverence for life  and a sense of ‘holiness’. A new spirituality must be capable of certain basic virtues or qualities : an incredible capacity for bringing about inner calm and peace; a sense of spiritual harmony that weaves a subtle halo of unity between the diverse; a wide awareness of truth, goodness, and beauty in big things as in small; and more than all, an irresistable impulse to root out all kinds of force that tend to break up, at the level of the spiritual, the harmony that is oneness.  While it is realised that it is perhaps the law of nature that disruption and decay exist, the spiritual society eternally tends to grow to vaster and wider realisations of cosmic and transcosmic consciousness. This is the meaning of mysticism for the modern man,  A mystical religion has more capacity to become universal than a mythical one, but even here there are down-going mysticisms as well as upward going mysticisms.

A rigidly personalistic or humanistic religion would tend to worship the status quo of human being, which humanity itself has already begun to get tired of.  Nor could an impersonalistic nihilism produce any thing more.  The growth is in terms of a truer mysticism which is one of growth into the deepest as well as the highest levels of Reality - an Existence awareness, that is Infinite.