Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook : ( Last part ) “Yoga is union” has often been repeated, again and again, by teachers and masters—but, union with what? You suddenly say, “Union with God; union with the Atman.” This is your glib reply. This reply will not be sufficient unless it is properly interpreted and understood. It is union with Reality. And if you think God is the only reality, the Reality, and yoga is an attempt at union with that Reality, we grant this definition as perfectly valid. But the weakness of man insinuates itself even into this definition of the concept of Reality and God. The weakness of the religions that went to the extremes, about which I mentioned just now, begins to operate even here, and the true concept of God does not enter our heads. We always pray looking up to the skies: “O Lord, have mercy upon us. Free us from these sorrows of life, from this encumbrance, this torture. Take me to Your abode and keep me on Your la...

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 o...

 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, politic...

 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 ...

2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook :6 There is, therefore, a necessity to undergo a new and true type of education. Here again, we have some problem. We may feel a need, but we may not be able to fulfil that need easily because circumstances in the world are not favourable. People frighten us by saying that Kali Yuga has come and this is not an age to gain an insight into the reality of things. Their gospel is that until Treta Yuga comes, until the Kalki Avatar is over, man has no hope. But the whole world is a mystery still, and this gospel is not the final word. I do not think that the Kali Age which people speak of is confined merely to the time calculations given in our almanacs. It is a perpetual process which can be called by this name of the cyclic movements of Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali. In every moment of time, a circumstance arises in everyone’s life when the conditions of the fourfold cycle manifest themselves; and inasmuch as ...

2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook : 5. You stand on unstable ground when you conduct yourselves in this world on the basis of the knowledge that you have acquired through your studies. Your studies are not studies of the truths of things. That is why with all your studies, degrees and qualifications, you are still at a loss, and find yourself in a most unhappy situation, and do not know how to live in this world. This difficulty manifests itself after your studies are over. As long as you are a student, you have no problems because you are with your books; parents, or somebody, take care of you. You have no worry of any kind. But when the studies are over, the world looks at you as it is really: “Now, what do you say about me?” Just as an unsatisfied wife may keep quiet as long as her husband is in the office but puts forth her grievances the moment he returns from work, nature seems to be behaving in a similar way. It keeps quiet as long as ...

 2.The Mistake of Religions :  The Need for a Larger Outlook : 4. You love beautiful things, artistic arrangements. There is what is called the aesthetic impulse. Why does this impulse arise in you? How is it that you love only beauty and not ugliness? What is wrong with ugly things? You cannot answer this question. Ugly things are ugly things; beautiful things are beautiful things. “I do not like ugly things.” Why do you not like ugly things? What defects do you see in that which you call ugly? Why do you give it that name? Who asked you to give that peculiar designation of ugliness to that which you do not like? And why do you not like it? You cannot answer this question. “I like this. I do not like this. That is all.” The matter ends. There is an insatiable hunger of the intellect and the reason to know more and more. Here again, an insatiable appetite operates within you, in the body, in the mind and in the intellect. You pursue your studies, and pursue the...