Religion and Social Values :18.

 2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook :7.



If this is the attitude of all people, there is nothing that one can do with this world. There is no such thing as a welfare program for human society, or even a love of one’s own neighbour. The question does not arise at all. There is no neighbour for us because the world is not there for us. This is a religious gospel that can be found in the scriptures of all the faiths of the world, and sometimes it is regarded as the interpretation of the teachings of the prophets of religions. Many have taken to this line of approach that the world is Satan’s dominion; it is evil to the core. It is a temptress, it is a network of sensory relations, it is a three-dimensional illusion, and the earlier we get out of its clutches, the better for us. God is in the heavens, and the love of God cannot go hand in hand with the love of the world. Renunciation is the high watermark of religious aspiration. Vairagya is the last word of religion.


All fakirs, monks and nuns—seekers of God— left their homes, father and mother, wife, husband, children, property, and went to live in forests and deserts. They have no concern with humanity or with any living being, or with the Earth itself as a whole. This attitude sometimes becomes the last word in religion, and the only word of religion. Man is naturally forced to become callous even to his body. He regards starvation, fasting, vigil, and a drying up of his senses as the essence of religion. He closes his eyes and bolts his ears and paralyses his senses completely. He gets emaciated physically and socially. Neither does he want anything from the world, nor has he anything to do with the world. Do you not think that this has been the voice of the religions of the world?


It appears that there was some mistake in this gospel, though there may be some truth in what these people say. Because of the extreme step that these gospels took in the history of their growth, a reaction was set up. Whenever there is an extreme of behaviour even in our body, there is a reaction from the organism in the form of an ache, a pain or a high temperature which arises to rectify the extreme step that has been taken by certain attitudes of the body—such as overeating, fatigue, and so on.


No man does anything in this world; nature alone does everything. The whole universe is a single body, and the world or nature as a whole— the universe, if we would like to call it that— behaves in the same way as the body behaves. Just as no limb of the body acts independently, no man can work independently here. We have neither a friend nor an enemy in this world. We cannot love anybody nor hate anybody, just as we cannot have a particular attachment to one part of our body or hate any part of the body.
I will again repeat that the world behaves in the same way as this body behaves. So whenever there is an excessive activity of a particular part of the body, there is a reaction set up by other parts of the body. Every medical person knows this; even common sense knows this. So any step in the direction of an excess, whether it is a secular move or a religious move, is counterbalanced by the total reaction of nature which can take the form of a historical revolution, a financial crisis, an earthquake, a social catastrophe or an epidemic which will wipe out nations; and unthinkable sorrows may descend upon man.



We should not say that some people are acting. People are not acting; nature is acting. As I told you, there are no people here. There is only a widespread movement of the fingers of nature. I am a finger, you are a finger, and every atom is a finger of nature. So neither this nation is doing something, nor is that nation doing anything. Neither are we doing anything, nor is anybody else doing anything. Nature is doing everything—just as neither are the fingers of our body doing anything, nor is our nose doing anything, nor are our eyes doing anything, but the whole body is doing everything. It is the order of the requisition of the organism of our psychophysical setup that behaves in the form of a headache, a sneeze, a stomach ache, or fatigue of our legs. It is not the legs that ache; the whole body is demanding that ache. Likewise, no nation is behaving in any manner; it is the whole of the universe behaving in one particular required way to set up an extreme step that has been taken either by financiers, capitalists, poor people, selfish persons, religious people, or whatever be the section of people. Any ignored aspect of nature takes up arms, as any ignored limb of the body takes up arms. It wants to be listened to. Even a child who is ignored will cry loudly, at the top of its voice, so that we will hear only its voice and we cannot hear anybody else’s.

To  be  continued  ...