Religion and Social Values :20.

2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook :9



This was the mistake of the religions. That is why religions are now tottering with feeble legs in this world, and people think that perhaps religions will be wiped out completely, even as your post of a Commissioner or a Collector can be wiped out by one jolt from the body which will snatch you away from this world. If your physical condition is ignored, if you do not know that you are a sick man, your Commissionership can be wiped out in one second by that blow of death. Religion can vanish in one second, as is the tendency these days, due to reactions from ideologies, outlooks and philosophies which have something else to say. The philosophy of the stomach is sometimes different from the philosophy of the brain. It is not the same thing. It is the philosophy of the stomach that is speaking nowadays, and the brain is keeping quiet.


Thus, the sorrows of people, which are manysided, are the consequences of reactions set up by the organic structure of the whole of nature. To live a healthy life is, therefore, to live a life of participation in the order of the larger organism to which you belong. You should not imagine that you are only one thing, and not many other things. You are a citizen of a nation. You belong to some country and, therefore, you have some obligations as a citizen of this nation. You cannot say, “I am the Atman and, therefore, I have nothing to say to anybody.” You are not the Atman to such an extent, though it is true that you are the Atman. I bring the analogy once again. Do not forget it. You are not only that, though you are also that.


You have a family obligation, and an obligation to your own community, to your body, to your mind, to your moral sense, to your aesthetic callings, to your rational requisitions—and to your spiritual aspirations, finally and lastly. All these things have to be taken into consideration. Therefore, religion, spirituality, which is also called yoga, is a union of yourself with all the phases of life at once. Just as a successful man is not merely a Collector but also everything else that he is at the same time, a simultaneous awareness of this involvement in the whole setup of life, and not only to behave just from one angle of vision, is the wisdom of life.


To be continued ....