Religion and Social Values :19.

 2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook :8.



The cults and the creeds and the movements in society today, whether they are social or political, are reactions set up by nature, not by man. There is no man. Such a thing does not exist anywhere. Nature does not see people around; it sees only its own limbs. It simply shakes its body. As we stretch our legs when we are tired of sitting in one asana for a long time, nature will stretch her legs when her leg is aching because of a forced bending of that limb to the needs of certain sections of human beings. This is a larger outlook with which we may behold things, rather than studying things only from a political angle or historical viewpoint, or a merely geological or astronomical way of thinking.


The universe is neither political, sociological, geological, nor astronomical. These are only our complacent ways of studying things. For the whole of the universe, there is no astronomy, geology, politics, sociology, just as for our body there is no anatomy, physiology, medicine, etc. They are only our names, and our way of studying and interpreting. It is what it is. Until we learn the art of thinking in this context of nature’s setup, we are not educated persons. We are only holding a piece of paper with some ink scribbled over it, calling it a certificate or a degree. This piece of paper with a little ink splashed over it is not going to be our support when nature shows her claws and her teeth.


This gospel of religion to which I made reference just now, while it took its stand on certain correct presuppositions in the light of the higher values of life, went wrong in ignoring certain existent values. Man is not merely a religious being; he is also many other things. We may be aspirants after God—and we have to be such aspirants, granted—but we are not only this. You may be a Commissioner or a Collector. Who can say that you are not that? You are that. But if you go on behaving like a Commissioner or a Collector everywhere—in the bathroom, in the marketplace, in the shop, with your wife, with your children, with everybody— you know what will happen to you.


So, that you are a Commissioner is not gainsaid. You are that, and you have to behave like a Collector or a Commissioner when you are required to behave like that. But you are also something else. You are the husband of a wife. You are the father of a child. You are perhaps a sick man requiring medical aid, or you have some frustrated emotions. You have many sorrows in spite of the fact that you are a Cabinet Minister. Now, how can you say that you will simply brush aside all your requirements of the other side and behave only like a Commissioner or a Cabinet Minister? Thus, these religions have made this mistake of catering to only one side of man’s needs. They always behave like Presidents or Prime Ministers. They never thought that they are also hungry stomachs, and they have other small needs which cannot be completely set aside in the name of this great designation of a Prime Minister.

To be continued  ...