He knows none other. He wants and takes; he desires and grasps; but
he is living among others who also want and take, who also desire
and grasp, and, there is a conflict between the desires of one man
and another. We will follow one man: He sees his neighbour's wife;
desires her; he takes her; perhaps, kills the husband--he is quite a
savage, remember. He sees in his neighbour's tent food that he wants;
he strikes the man down, and takes away the food. And he thinks: "I
have done well; I am happy; I have gained a beautiful woman; I have
gained food; I am no longer hungry. This is the path of happiness for
me." But he has made enemies. The friends of those whom he may have
struck down in his licentiousness, they are his enemies, and presently
he has to die, perhaps is killed in revenge. But, what we call Death
is only the striking away of the body in which the Spirit eternal is
dwelling, and this ignorant creature, when the body is struck away,
finds himself in the midst of people whom he robbed and murdered during
his life on earth. He is surrounded by enemies; he finds on the other
side antagonism and hatred; and he learns in the other world--the
world we call Preṭaloka or Kāmaloka--he learns there that to do these
things means sorrow, and that pain is the ultimate result of the desire
unjustly satisfied. It makes a little impression upon him. But during
his life, he has not only robbed and murdered: he has loved; perhaps
he has loved the woman he stole; perhaps he has loved the child that
was born of her. Those little seeds of love remain. The Spirit carries
them with him as he passes out of the body, and when he has suffered
in Preṭaloka the result of the evil he has done, he passes on to
Piṭṛloka and to Svarga, to enjoy the good that he has accomplished; and
the seed of love, selfish probably, desiring gratification, finds in
Piṭṛloka satisfaction, and the power to love increases. And where there
has been a seed of unselfish love, perhaps where the wife was ill,
and the husband sat up at night, tending and nursing her although she
was no longer a source of pleasure, but only a source of trouble and
annoyance; that unselfishness grows out of love, even the animal love,
or lust of the possessor, that remains as a little bit of unselfish
seed to bear flower in Svarga. When he reaches Svarga, and finds there
again the wife and the child he loved, then that little seed of love
begins to grow, and grows through the life, the heavenly life, of
happiness that he leads, and that is transmuted into a greater power
of loving, which he brings back with him to his next birth, so that he
finds himself on a higher plane of emotion than that he lived on in the
last.
Now in the savage the growth is very slow. Hundreds of lives sometimes
pass and little change is seen. But where the Sages I spoke of are
present, there the growth is more rapid, for there comes in the
recognition of the law, and the understanding of the sequence of
events. The man comes back again for many births, until he comes back
as an average common-place semi-civilised man. As a savage, he has
hardly any power of thought; through the lives that pass the power of
thought has grown. And now, you come to a man who, in a comparatively
civilised country, is born as an ordinary mediocre man--"the man in
the street," we often call him. Now his experience is more varied. He
has many loves and hates, many unjust desires, but also some higher
aspirations; and as he goes through a life, the result of his own
past, he gathers together fresh experiences, whereof presently more
faculty will be manufactured. Just as a sea-gull, sweeping through
the air, sweeps down into the ocean, catches a fish, comes up again
and flies away to feed upon the fish, so does the human being, out
of the great expanse of life in the higher world, sweep down into
physical existence to gain the food of experience there. He carries
it away through the gateway of death, and feeds upon it in the worlds
on the other side of death. Again, more fully and more subtly than
in the early stages of life, he reaps the result of the evil that he
has done; but his mind is now larger, his mind is more intelligent,
he traces the evil act bringing about the suffering, and that is
imprinted on the tablet of the mind. Then he goes on into Svarga, and
there turns over the good experience he has gained. The experience in
love-emotion, that turns into higher powers of loving, greater desire
to serve, greater recognition of the claims of others upon him, until
he has formed a better and higher love-emotion, ready to return with
him to his next experience of life. But he has also gathered much
thought; he has gained experience in knowledge; he has exerted mental
faculties. He gathers up all the mental experiences and these he works
up into intellectual faculties. Is it not written that man is created
by thought, and what a man thinks upon that he becomes? The life of
Svarga is a life of changing experience into faculty. Every experience
that you are making now, intellectual experience, you will weave into
mental power on the other side of death. Whatever you may have gained,
whatever knowledge you have acquired, that you carry with you through
the gateway of death, and you work it up into mental power during your
life in Svarga. You may have been weak in some faculty, in judgment,
we will say, and you made many errors in judgment here: you suffer for
them on the other side of death. You remember them in Svarga, and you
build up that experience into an increased power of judgment, and you
bring that back with you as an innate quality, and it shows itself in
your childhood as part of your intellectual equipment. And, so with
every faculty, with reason, with memory, with logic, with the power
of understanding; not one of your efforts here is wasted; they all
come back to you as food-experience in your heavenly life. You brood
over them, you change them into faculty, and that faculty is yours for
evermore. For that passes on into the intellectual side of the Spirit,
as the emotions pass on into the moral, which is the wisdom side;
and so, you come back to earth with higher intellectual power, with
greater moral faculty. That continues, on and on, life after life, and
when you are born into the world with high ability, it only means the
many lives you have studied, the many lives you have laboured in, the
many after-death periods during which you have assimilated.
See how the process resembles your life here, which is, indeed, its
reflection on the physical plane. You take food; you are satisfied.
That food passes down, and is digested. The nutritive part of that is
assimilated, and your brain, your muscles, your nerves, all grow by the
assimilated nourishment; and when it is assimilated you begin to feel
hungry again. You have used up what you took, and you are hungry for
more food, in order that you may grow again; and then, you have again
another meal, and the whole process is repeated.
So in your spiritual life also. You take the food of experience; you
digest it; you assimilate the nutritive part of it, and by that you
unfold the hidden powers of the Spirit, and, when you have assimilated
all, when nothing remains to be transmuted, then in the heavenly world
you are hungry for more experience, and your hunger brings you back to
birth in the world in which that hunger can be satisfied. That is the
Law. That is the Law of Reincarnation.
As you grow more and more in stature, your growth becomes more rapid.
And at last, a time comes, when you say: "I have had enough of this;
I no longer care for power--it ends in disappointment; I no longer
care for wealth--it is a burden rather than a joy; I no longer care
for the things that break in the enjoyment; I no longer care for the
things that perish in the using." And then there sets in the discontent
with the transitory goods of this world; there sets in that which is
called Vairāgya--dispassion. The objects no longer attract; and then
the man that has this Divine discontent within him begins to seek for
the permanent, begins to look for that which will satisfy; and there
is nothing that can satisfy the Divine Spirit in man save God Himself,
the Illimitable Life and Love. And so, as an English poet wrote--an
old-fashioned poet:
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let me, He said, pour on him all I can;
Let the world's riches which extended lie
Contract into a span. Then strength first made its way,
Then beauty followed, wealth and power and pleasure.
At last, when all was gone, God made a stay.
Perceiving that at last of all his treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should, said He,
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature,
So both should losers be. Then let him keep the rest,
But keep them in repining restlessness.
Let him be rich and weary, that at last,
If goodness move him not, yet restlessness
Shall toss him to my breast.
Now that is the truth. There is nothing in all this world that does not
break in your hands, when you have it. God is like a mother, and He
dangles in front of His children all the joys, the glittering baubles,
that earth can give. And, in front of one He dangles wealth, saying:
"Come, my child, and grasp the wealth." And the child, in trying to
grasp, puts out his power, and his strength develops, and his will
develops, and in the struggle to be rich many of the faculties of the
man and the power of will are developed, and when that has been done,
and the child grasps the bauble--it breaks. For the value was in the
struggle and not in the possession, for the Divine Spirit in man.
The Divine Spirit in man can never be satisfied with gold or wealth.
If a mother took up her child and carried it always, as some foolish
men would have God carry us, then when the child ought to be walking,
strengthening its legs, tumbling down and picking itself up again, it
would have been carried in its mother's arms, until when it was 6 or 7
or 8, it would be paralysed, and would never grow into a man at all.
And so it is with God's child, Man. "Struggle," He says. "See all the
beautiful things I have here for you." For God is in all the objects
of sense. God is in everything that attracts; there is no attraction
save in God, the only fair. And so, He hides Himself in gold, and He
hides Himself in pleasure, and He hides Himself in Power; and He
hides Himself in fame; and when the child has exerted himself and
gained the desirable object, God slips out of it and the attraction
vanishes, and so we grow and learn. It is the only way. We grow strong,
intellectually strong, morally strong, until nothing has power to
attract save the one supreme attraction, God Himself.
And so it is written, that when a man becomes weary he begins to
abstain from the objects of the senses. And then come the strange
words: "The objects of the senses turn away from the abstemious dweller
in the body." Why? because God is in them, and when they no longer
attract they have done their work, and they turn away to educate some
less developed man; and then, it is written, that the taste for them
still remains, but even the taste for them vanishes away when once
the Supreme is seen. There lies the truth. You feel distaste for the
lower only when you have seen the higher. When you have seen the
Supreme Beauty, the fragments of that Beauty down here can no longer
mislead; you see God in them, and keep a grateful memory of all that
they have taught you, in that they have led to the realisation of the
God hidden in them, the treasure which remains. When you have gained
the knowledge, the realisation of God, what has earth left, that earth
can give? He is all power; He is all might; He is all beauty; He is
all love; and you learn to know that nothing that has attracted you
can perish in its permanent reality. Although the form may break, and
change into another, it only increases your treasure in the riches
of the Supreme. You love a woman; it is well; for love is the great
purifier and the great uplifter of human hearts; but remember that her
loveliness is but a fragment of the Divine Loveliness, and that all
that attracts in her is the beauty of the Self shining forth through
the beauty of the form.
Not for the sake of the wife is the wife dear, but for the sake of
the Self the wife is dear; not for the sake of the husband is the
husband dear, but for the sake of the Self the husband is dear; not
for the sake of the son is the son dear, but for the sake of the
Self the son is dear.
But the wife and the husband and the son are rightly dear, because
there is dwelling in them the glory of the Self, and that remains for
ever, with all that has made it beautiful to you on earth; for God is
Love, and love can never die; and all the loving and beloved Jīvāṭmās,
that have been embodied in many forms, remain as your companions
through the everlasting ages of the Future.
Now when a man has learnt Vairāgya, then comes the great period of
Service. No longer does he work for anything for himself, but to carry
out the Divine Will in Evolution. Has not Shrī Kṛṣhṇa said that
He acts perpetually? Because, "if I do not act," He says, "all these
worlds would perish." "I have nothing to gain," are His words. But
they would perish, save for Him, and He goes on to say: "Let the
wise man, acting with me, render all action attractive." Action is
only a clog, is only a fetter, after man has gained all its fruit in
experience, when it is not done for the sake of sacrifice. But when
the action is consecrated to the Service of God and Man, that action
becomes wings that uplift, and not fetters that clog, the advancing
Spirit. And so, in the arrangement of castes that we have in India,
there is one great lesson that comes out. The Shūḍra, the lowest
caste, is the man who serves all. But the highest, above all castes,
the Sannyāsī, what is he but the Servant of humanity, reproducing on a
loftier plane the Service in which a Shūḍra is taking his first lesson
down here? The Shūḍra learns service to others, and accumulates what
he learns; the Vaishya learns to sacrifice material wealth in charity
to others; the Kṣhaṭṭriya learns to renounce life itself in defence
of others; the Brāhmaṇa learns to renounce all for knowledge, that he
may teach others. Then caste has taught its lessons, and the highest
of all services are the services done for the sake of sacrifice by
the liberated Spirit, the Paramahamsa, the man who has gone beyond
the illusion of the Separated Self. So wisely was planned the ancient
order, full of true significance.
The only other point that you have to remember is that all this is done
under inviolable Law. "As you sow, so shall you reap." There is a great
verse in a Christian Scripture too often forgotten by Christians: "Be
not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall
he also reap." No use for substitution; no putting on of an imputed
righteousness; no safety by a Saviour; you must reap your own harvest,
you must work out, earn, your own salvation for yourself. But this
remember: that your only limitation in taking up the strength of God
lies in you, and not in Him. That is where the doctrine of so-called
Divine Grace comes in. As the Sun shines all around you, as the Sun
shines upon your house, you may close all the shutters, and say: "I
don't want light; I shut my windows and my doors against the incoming
rays of the Sun." So may you say to the Supreme Sun, the Light and
the Life of the Universe: "I shut against you the doors of my heart;
I don't want you to penetrate within me. I close my doors; I close my
windows; your light shall not illuminate my Soul." And the answer of
the Divine is: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man open,
I will come in." There lies what men call Divine Grace. The grace is
ever there, shining upon your closed shutters. You may shut your door;
there is no change in the effulgence of the Sun. And so there is the
Divine Light ever around you. You turn your backs upon it, and you say
that it is dark; you have refused to see the Light, and you dwell in
the shadow that you yourselves have made. Well, stay there, as long
as you will. Play with the toys, as long as it pleases you. But know,
that the day will come when the breaking of the toys will leave you
desolate, and then you will open your hearts to the Supreme Love, and
say: "Light, come in, and fill my heart with Thyself, for Thou and I
are one, we were never separate; and I, the child of Man, recognise my
birthright, and I claim, in the Self-realisation of my Divinity, the
fruition of my life as Man."
RIGHT AND WRONG
FRIENDS:
The problem that we have to consider this morning is one of great
complexity and of great difficulty. Confusion as to "What is Right,"
as to "What is Wrong," is unfortunately very general among all, even
among educated people. The standard of Right, the canon of Right, that
is a matter that ought to be placed on some definite principle, some
intelligible axiom; and, if instead of such definite foundation, you do
not realise on what the standard is based, the result is necessarily
a confusion of conduct, a doubt as to how Right and Wrong are to be
determined. And so, sometimes, almost in despair of a rationally
intelligible law, you find people saying that Right is absolute, is
always the same invariably for man at all stages of evolution. The
result of that has been, both in the East and in the West, that a
standard of conduct laid down for the Yogī, the Sannyāsī is held to
be the standard to be held up before the comparatively undeveloped
man. The Sermon on the Mount, among Christians; the teaching of the
_Bhagavaḍ-Gīṭā_, of action without desire for fruit, among Hinḍūs;
these are regarded as universally binding; and the result is a divorce
between theory and practice, between the conduct which is actually
followed and the theory which is intellectually accepted. You find a
striking instance of that in the West, where the Sermon on the Mount,
nominally regarded as binding on every one, is entirely put aside as
regards the vast majority, and is held to have no bearing on National
conduct, or the treatment of one Nation by another. You find, for
instance, a Bishop of the Church of England who declared that if any
Nation followed the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount it could not
exist for a week. That is literally true. For if, when a man stole your
coat, you gave him your cloak, the result would be that the thief would
be doubly clothed, the honest man would go naked. If, when a man was
struck on the one cheek, he turned to the striker the other cheek, then
the oppressor and the tyrant would have free course, and the doctrine
of non-resistance of evil would triumph over the resistance which
means liberty and progress. And so, in the West, which has as a rule
a fair amount of common-sense, and is not too much given to logic in
practical matters, they resist evil, they resist the oppressor, they
strike back when a blow is given, and they do not submissively bow to
every tyrant and every injustice. Yet, unless you bring into accord
theory and practice, you have no rule of conduct which in any way is
an inspiration for life. Similarly in the East, where the doctrine is
taught in the _Gīṭā_ that action should be undertaken without desire
for fruit. There you have a doctrine for the Yogī, like Arjuna, to
whom the Song of the Lord was given; but if you say to the man of the
world, if you say to the man who does not regard the Divine Will as the
binding rule of conduct, "work without desire for fruit," you paralyse
his activity, for there is no other motive sufficiently strong to move
him to action. To work without desire for fruit means that your own
will is so consciously in accord with the Will of God, that you work as
earnestly for the benefit of the world as the ordinary man works for
fame, for power, or for money. That is the highest rule of conduct; but
if you teach the highest to the half-developed, you give them no ideal
at all which is practical, by which they can guide their lives; and the
result of that in India has been a paralysis of action, and a yielding
unduly to oppression and injustice, as the Sannyāsī would yield. Now
Hinḍūism, as taught by the Sages, was not of that type. Hinḍūism has
always had a relative morality. The whole of that part of its teaching
which divided society into castes according to evolution, the unfolding
of the spiritual life, is a recognition that ḍharma, duty, depends on
the stage of evolution reached by the man. The ḍharma of the Shūḍra
is not the ḍharma of the Kṣhaṭṭriya or of the Brāhmaṇa. The
Kṣhaṭṭriya is to keep order, he is to repress evil, he is to
encourage good, he is to punish the wrong-doer; but the Brāhmaṇa, the
ideal Brāhmaṇa, he ought to suffer any wrong done to him, for it is not
his ḍharma to resist. And so, it is written, that a man by following
his own ḍharma, he attaineth to perfection. That it is better to
follow your own ḍharma though imperfect, than to follow the ḍharma of
another, for the ḍharma of another is full of danger. That has been
forgotten in India, though, nominally, the caste system has persisted.
And so, with the teaching of the Āshramas; the duty of the student,
the Brahmachārī, is not the duty of the Gṛhasṭha, the householder,
and when that is forgotten and when the duties of the householder are
put on the shoulders of the student, you have then a debilitated race
of youth that is not allowed to grow to the stature of manhood which
follows youthful celibacy. The duty of the householder is not the duty
of the Vānaprasṭha; the duty of the Vānaprasṭha is not the duty of
the Sannyāsī; for the Sages, the Ṛṣhis that built the foundation of
Hinḍūism, they knew that morality was relative, and gave an evolving
ethical teaching suited to the evolving children of Man. Let us then,
with that preface, try to find some common principle to which we can
refer Right and Wrong.