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A Practical
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(This web site is under
reconstruction. Please reach Contents to
reach any part of this Book)
of The Shree Raamacharita
Maanasa
Introduction It is a
well-established fact that the Indian subcontinent led the world both
materially and spiritually for unknown millenniums before the Christian
era and even more than eighteen hundred years thereafter. This
prosperity attracted invaders and seekers both. (See Appendix In the
sixteenth century, when Muslims ruled parts of 2. According to some
modern Western thinkers, the greatest discovery of man was its
awareness of the capacity to think and of individual mind being in the
universal Mind. This was not the greatest discovery. Inhibited by its
beliefs, the West is still hovering round the greatest discovery. The
greatest discovery that man could ever make was made by rishis of It is
important to note that in the rishis' research all human beings were
one as human beings and one in God and therefore a part of His family
as a reality. Any differentiation on any account of habitat, race,
religion or custom could not exist for rishis’ research for man as man.
Rishis’ research is known as Sanaatana Dharma. Therefore a follower of
Hinduism derived from Sanaatana Dharma who differentiates between
people and people is not a true follower of Sanaatana Hinduism. For a
true Hindu all are one. The eight religions in This
oneness secured material prosperity of human beings and their freedom
from misery in its myriad forms and particularly freedom from need,
disease and fear. The Indian subcontinent enjoyed this freedom for
millenniums. This freedom eliminated the need for aggression outside.
In addition, rishis provided the philosophy underlying their methods to
carry conviction in any questioning mind in the efficacy of those
methods. This philosophy withstood the questioning of indigenous and
alien minds for millenniums to survive till today. This empowered mind
could make use of nine-tenth dormant potential of the human mind.
Modern education wholly resting on pure reason, science and their
methods in Sanaatana
Dharma comprises this discovery, methods for making use of it and its
philosophy. So, it survives for millenniums because all the people in 3. The rishis discovered
that it was the mind that was preeminent and not its products. A mind
less than fully powerful today takes us to the moon. Yet, it fails to
solve humanity's only problem of misery in its myriad forms. The
rationale of rishis' discovery was advanced. It could withstand
indigenous Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism and alien Judaism (Jews),
Christianity, Zoroastrianism (Parsees) and Islam and brilliant
questioning native and alien intellects. The rishis' methodology was
simple to make it the inhabitants' second nature. This secured the
subcontinent its material and spiritual prosperity. This great
discovery, its rationale, its methodology and its easy practicality on
one hand and on the other man's innate ever-unchanging nature of
divinity from which he cannot alienate himself comprise Sanaatana
Dharma. Sanaatana Dharma is therefore man's religion as a man.
Incidentally, man can live in a faith or his religion that has no
concept of God in the manner that many religions have. This Selection
however treats only that as a religion that has man, the Creator, the
creation and their benevolent and harmonious inter-relationship as
necessary elements of religion. 4. The people's faith in
their innate divinity or dharma to stick to it and live in it
made Sanaatana Dharma vibrant through ages. Its simplicity and a little
experience of living in it showed benefit to people to live in it for
generation after generation for the prosperity of society. Generations
of Indian thinkers of rarefied intellect and with divine or spiritual
vision over an unknown period of time who were called sages or rishis
researched and discovered the limitless power of the selfless mind to
produce matter and situations. After this, rishis left material
products of the mind, namely, scientific advance for others to pursue
for the good of people. Therefore, the sages continued to patronize
science and technology to keep them as instruments for their use to be
determined by a pure or selfless mind. For the sages the advance in and
use of science and technology was controlled by selfless mind to
prevent their misuse, as for example by the explosion of the atomic
bomb. The sages learnt how the mind could receive and could make use of
divine power and then share its products with all. All the research and
methodology for tapping the limitless power of our mind make up
Sanaatana Dharma. It is the sages' gift to humanity. Many educated
Indians today do not believe in our past prosperity or what brought it
about. This is the effect of alien language and a mind-set developing
from it in a century. (See Glossary) It
makes us forget our rich heritage which we can make use of today. 5. Apparently, time took
its toll in the fall of society when society created differentiation.
One example is the reduction of the concept of Varnas into
caste. Varnas were a broad division of all activity into four
professions. The four Varnas are Brahmin (thinker, researcher
and teacher), Kshatrya (defender, ruler, administrator,
professional), Vaishya (entrepreneur), and Sudra (without the
qualities of the other three). Varnas were determined by
qualities for each. All were indispensable and so egalitarian through
selflessness. Varnas were a concept in the Shrutis or
the Vedas. Today's caste is a much later Smriti concept. It is
unrelated to qualities. It is hierarchical and also creates obnoxious
practices. It is dispensable. Another
example of a fall in society is the lowering of the position of women.
The fall is especially in the treatment of widows and the obnoxious
practice of forced sati. The third example was the importance of
temples with costly icons and their custodianship with the upper caste.
Many other obnoxious customs developed. The fall in society was centred
on our selfishness to grab as much as possible from our outside. It
showed its distance from our direct relationship with the power of our
divinity through our intangible beliefs inside us. Against this fall,
the beliefs resting on selflessness were the core of Sanaatana Dharma
and the only cause for the prosperity of the subcontinent. Our strength
lay in living in the intangible beliefs of Sanaatana Dharma and not in
all the visible practices that we thought were in pursuit of those
beliefs. This fall in the leadership of society and yielding of
Sanaatana beliefs to differentiation, customs and rituals to give
importance to bejewelled icons in rich temples, that was creeping in
for a long time, made the rulers weak. Invaders defeated rulers. The
people remained strong to resist the sporadic coercive conversion by
some misguided Muslim rulers for more than a thousand years. 6. A very recent example
of the power that an individual receives unknowingly by living in Advaitic
Sanaatana Dharma was Mahatma Gandhi. Unknowingly he was demonstrating
the truth of the greatest discovery of oneness of the reality of man
with that of God. He concentrated on control of the self or of the mind
and selflessness for fasts unto death. His every-day and act started
and ended with universal prayer and unshakable faith in God as a
reality for intimate relationship to seek guidance from and to rely
upon for security. Mahatma Gandhi lived in Bhangi colonies of
the untouchables in his pursuit of oneness of all. He lived in
non-violence that is the first quality of love for all as one with us.
He started every day and every noble task by invoking God. He was free
from systems, organizations and institutions and even customs of modern
times. He insisted on his Advaitic oneness with the poorest.
His clothed himself as the poor did even to meet the King of England.
He stuck to extreme economy of the poor, for example, using pencil
stubs and the inside of envelopes he received in post, for writing
replies on every Monday of his fast of silence even when he met
Mountbatten, the Viceroy of India. He lived among the people who saw
the identity of his thought, speech and conduct. His life reflected the
intangible and universal of Sanaatana Dharma. Sanaatana Dharma
protected him till he achieved independence for his country peacefully.
When we study Mahatma Gandhi’s daily routine, his unusual perspective
of situations around him, his intuitive and strange solutions for
problems, his unconventional approaches, his priority to human life and
human beings over every other consideration, we see the effect of
living in Sanaatana principles on him. There is no other explanation
for the limitless power he received except living in Sanaatana Dharma.
His death was just the end of his term on the earth. Its cause was
immaterial. Many countries achieved independence but most of them
through a bloodshed. This source
of limitless power of Mahatma Gandhi will not be obvious to many of the
educated who do not know Vedanta and the concept of Advaita or
who have no faith in the truth of Advaita. So. neither the bulk
of English educated leaders ignorant of our heritage and Mahatma
Gandhi’s contemporaries could know this source of his powers nor their
successors in positions of power till today. 7. Without Mahatma Gandhi
trying to do so, his life shows that the core of Sanaatana Dharma
survives in the masses of Today's
apparent all round religious bigotry of the Indian subcontinent is
caused by the ignorance of the core of all religions among most of the
educated of all religions. Particularly absent is the knowledge of
Sanaatana heritage in which Mahatma Gandhi lived to strengthen unity in
followers of eight religions. This ignorance is in the alien mind-set
that has misused secularism since Independence of India. Pandit Jawahar
Lal Nehru and most others had this alien mind ignorant of the perennial
value of Indian heritage. Today liberal leaders of any religion are
threatened with death by bigots. This alien mind has made democracy and
religion the instrument to dehumanize a community of human beings into
a vote bank statistic in the name of secularism for political purposes.
These leaders have created a backlash of bigotry in people who never
could even think of bigotry possible in the ancient ethos. These
leaders do not see and therefore do not insist that not knowledge of
religions but their ignorance in leaders together with poverty in
the masses is the problem of the Indian subcontinent for the last
century. The masses of the subcontinent of all religions are not bigots
but human. Through elections they work for and await spiritually
selfless and enlightened leadership. (See Appendix 2) 8. Mahatma Gandhi could
invoke the inner power that the masses developed by living in the Advaitic
oneness in the core of eight religions in their followers in 9. We see from Mahatma
Gandhi's life and times, that the core of Sanaatana Dharma survived in
the Indian masses a millennium of Muslim association with 10. Subject to research
to the contrary, it is unlikely that all Muslim rulers forced all the
Hindu professionals, dispensers of knowledge or the trend-setters and
role models to learn Persian or Arabic for their livelihood and to give
up completely Sanskrit and their beliefs and traditions. This enabled
ancient thought and values to be discussed between communities from
their earliest contact. Sufism in Islam was strengthened by this
contact with Indian thought and beliefs. This cultural contact led to
submergence of the violent element of Islam in many of the Muslims in By the
education the British forced upon the Indian educated of all
communities, by subtle change in their mind-set, by sophisticated
methods of economic exploitation of the country and by other not so
visible means to wean the educated from old values, in just about 100
years, impoverished and weakened 11. It is not surprising
if an educated Indian wonders today if there is something worthwhile in
our past. Can we avail of it for our present? Led by Mahatma Gandhi,
the political leaders of eight religions in 12. A prehistoric but
perfect personification of Sanaatana Dharma and its philosophy of
oneness in practice on the earth was Shree Raama. This is because he
was an incarnation of God. He was a King of Avadha and lived in
Ayodhyaa, its capital, in north Historical
Background 14. It was a myth created
by the Europeans to establish their racial superiority that peoples
from around the ‘ The fact is
that Sanaatana Dharma emerged in the minds of the inhabitants of 15. Western scholars
created another similar misconception. It was that the Greek invaders
gave the people of 16. From the eighth
century, some Muslim invaders and later rulers carried out massacres at
places in The reason
for coercion and not persuasion for conversion of an Indian is simple.
Unlike many people in other lands, for the aliens reaching A balanced
view demands a look into the biographies of Muslim rulers in A balanced
view demands that we should separate the conversion of Hindus to Islam
or Christianity from oppressive measures. These were the destruction of
temples, the forced removal of the sacred thread from Hindus, the
Muslim tax called Jazia (a tax on non-Muslims), or other
hardships caused by some misguided Muslim rulers. The greatest
conversion was done by the British rulers in one century by their
system of education that destroyed our spiritual heritage of oneness in
the minds of the educated of all communities and left an alien mind-set
that continues ruining our country obstinately till today. Unless
wisdom dawns that knowledge of religions surfaces single spirituality
in all by questioning. This single spirituality creates amity.
Ignorance brings antagonism and hatred. This ignorant alien mind-set
nourished by the State under the Constitution will continue
ruination of our country. 17. Over time, masses of
Muslims and local Indians developed a rich common peaceful Indian
culture, which is struggling for survival today. 18. The core of surviving
Sanaatana Dharma is in 19. The Hindu part of a
family of converts continued its relationship with its Muslim part.
Each part respected the other's exclusive customs happily. This created
a new set of customs. For example, one wife became customary. Muslims
in 20. The fall in some
aspects of the Indian society was occurring since before Buddhism. Its
sudden and steep fall immediately followed the Muslim invasions. Many
Indian thinkers searched for remedial measures to stem this fall. They
found resistance in the inner strength and power of the self within.
This divine power when harnessed by man could overcome the adverse
situations around him. It was this power, which enabled Indians and
their material prosperity and culture to survive over time. This time
included the period of Muslim dominance in parts of
Origins of Sanaatana Dharma 22. For an understanding
of ancient Indian traditions, this Selection treats as a religion a set
of beliefs in which God, man and the Creation and their
interrelationship are central and love is an attitude that comprises
benevolence of at least compassion and care for and non-violence
towards all. With any of the three missing, the Selection treats it as
a way of life. The followers of this way of life call it a religion for
it serves them the same purpose as a religion to others. Buddhism is a
religion for its followers. This is because it is a truism that what I
believe in is my religion. If a follower of a religion treats the
message of the founder of his religion as religion then for such a
follower all religions are not a religion but mere beliefs that have no
sanctity of a religion. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary,
sixth edition does not include Hinduism and Judaism in the meaning of
the word religion. It includes only Christianity, Islam and Buddhism in
the meaning of the word. Religion is the beliefs of a follower of a
religion that he calls a religion. Sanaatana Dharma is the only
religion that calls all beliefs as defined in this paragraph as
religions and respects them as good for their followers. The origins
of Sanaatana Dharma are in man's wonder at and mystery about things
around him. For the rationalist, the origin of the concept of God in
some religions may have arisen from the thought of dominance, inherent
even in animals. Religion in its modern concept is still a mystery to
many Indians whose minds are unsullied with alien thought. For them dharma
is all they know, which has no equivalent in the English language.
Hinduism as a religion as followed by some of the 900 million Indians
is only part of specific beliefs of Sanaatana Dharma. The two are
distinct and not congruent. 23. Sathya Sai Baba
summed up the reason for the continuance of Sanaatana Dharma. 'Dharma
is not a matter of time and space, to be modified and adjusted to the
needs and pressures of the moment. It means a number of fundamental
principles that should guide Mankind in its progress towards inner
harmony and outer peace... ’These principles are called Sanaatana
(eternal), because their origins are not dated; their... 'author is not
identifiable; they are the revelations made in the clarified intellects
of impartial sages. They are basic and eternal. They do not represent
temporary vagaries. India stood unshaken and undaunted against the
onslaught of attitudes that were bred in other lands to suit the needs
of limited societies, because she stuck to the Dharma that was
laid down for all times, for all men... 'Satya (Truth), Dharma
(duty in accord with man's inalienable divine nature), Shaanti
(peace) and Prayma (love and compassion in our conduct for all
as one with us in God) are the four pillars of Sanaatana Dharma, the
four faces of the ancient (Indian) teaching... 'Man's forgetfulness of
his divine nature (comprising this dharma of four petals)
develops his artificial nature, which is hate, falsehood, war, grief
and greed.' (BS 3 1, 116-17) (Parentheses Author's) Sanaatana
Dharma is for man as such and is not the monopoly of or exclusive for
any people or region.
Ancient Thinkers – The Problem and the Solution 25. Ancient sages studied
the objective world. They made discoveries in astronomy, mathematics,
numerals, the decimal system, grammar, philosophy, logic, chess,
medicine, and scientific principles of gravitation, kinetic energy,
metallurgy, and circulatory system in plants and in other fields. These
are found in Kanaada's Vaishayshika philosophy and are
scattered in the Vedic literature. These discoveries laid the
foundation for modern science. This study did not produce the solution
to man's problems of misery and fear. 26. The sages discovered
that frustration of desires was the cause of all misery. Desires
increase and become pressing because we forget that our reality is one
with God. So, we identify our reality with our body and brain. The
overwhelming power of our senses and six passions increase demands of
the body and so its desires. The passions are six, namely, desire,
including lust, anger, greed, the feeling of mine or attachment, pride
and envy. The sages concentrated on senses and passions and discovered
methods for control over them. The Shree Raamacharita Maanasa gives us
the methods. 27. The sages'
experimented to test discoveries. If textbooks are mutilated,
experiments cannot bring about the recorded results. Similarly, faith
begot experience and experience begot faith. To tie down faith or
religion to the written word which was capable of mutilation was a
limitation. The sages prescribed disciplines for experience to overcome
the mutilation of beliefs and to ensure their restoration. The
experience by a mind in harmony with the heart helps us to understand
many spiritual tenets and beliefs. Such a mind also sees the role of
gods in Sanaatana Dharma. A mind resting on pure reason or science
cannot gain this experience or knowledge. 28. In the field of the
spirit, sages experienced their own divinity. It revealed to them
immense power and energy inside man. This power could make him free
from misery. It could make him the master of his happiness and of his
universe through selflessness. This discovery made the sages give
secondary place to objective sciences. 29. Nascent Indian
thought and religion are contained in the Vedas or Shrutis.
They have in them rituals, rites, religious practices, and methods of
worship, philosophy and religion. To solve the problem of misery and to
reach God, man tried them successfully from time to time. The Shrutis
were revelations by sounds directly heard by sages. The revelations
were experienced for their truth and also handed down by chant and
recitation. Some of the surviving one hundred thousand or so couplets
of the Shrutis or the Vedas were 'transmitted in their original
purity from antiquity by Brahmins by observing the particular order in
which words occur...rules for the combination of sounds...and for the
relation of letters, and by proving in certain mathematical ways the
accuracy of the memorized text.' (Y 87) Purity of pronunciation of
mantras is extremely important in Vedic literature. 30. A tradition of strict
discipline between guru and disciple for the transmission of knowledge
through the ears and its verification by the experience of living by
them saved some Vedic revelations and scriptures from being tampered
with over countless generations. The repetition of lessons from varying
experiences of generations made the lesson into a law. Some beliefs of
Sanaatana Dharma and scientific discoveries, especially in medicine,
are based on such perennial laws. The whole process rested on trust of
another's experience to experience for us. That also explains why
Mahatma Gandhi could call his autobiography ‘My Experiment with
Truth.’ Repeated experiences by living in beliefs restored the
purity of truths in the earliest scriptures. Man and his thought in All virtues
are a matter of experience. Reason and science cannot prove tangibly
the value of any virtue. In the West the Church teaches virtues and
morals. Their value is based on the only and firm foundation of faith
in God. He protects the virtuous. No state does it. It merely punishes
the offender without any relief to its victim. In
Ancient Indian Scriptures The second
division of scriptures comprises Sanhitaas. They are a
collection of lyrical hymns, prayers and religious sacrifices from the
Vedas. The third
division comprises Braahmanas, which are also called the
science of sacrifice for priests. Principal Braahmanas attached
to each Veda are Aitaraya and Kausheetakee to the Rigveda,
Panchavansha and Jaimineeya to the Saamaveda, Kattha,
Tait-tireeya and Shatapatha to the Yajurveda and Gopatha
to the Atharvaveda. The fourth
division is the Aranya and the Upanishads. They contain
concepts about man, the creation and God and their interrelationship.
They are generally continuations of Sanhitaas and Braahmanas.
About two hundred texts of Upanishads have come down to us. The twelve
main Upanishads chronologically are Aitaraya, Brihadaaranyaka,
Chhaandogya, Tait-tireeya, Kausheetakee, Kayna, Kattha,
Shvaytaashvatara, Eesha, Maanddookya, Prashna and Maitraayani.
The Sanhitaas existed about two thousand and four hundred years
and the other scriptures about fourteen hundred years before Jesus
Christ. The dates of all scriptures are, however, unimportant and
irrelevant if we make practical use of the worthwhile in their message.
33. In addition to the
above literature, there are four main Upavedas or the
Shastras. They contain practical sciences for day-to-day living. These
are the Aayurveda (body and medicine), the Dhanurveda
(weaponry), the Gandharvashastra (dance, music and arts) and
the Arthashastra (statecraft and economics). The Upavedas
are followed by six main Vedaangas or sciences in sutra
style (aphorism). They are auxiliary to the Vedas. They are Shikshaa
(phonetics), Vyaakarana (grammar), Nirukta (Vedic
etymology and grammar), Chhandas (metrics), Kalpa
(ritual) and Jyotisha or mathematics, astronomy, astrophysics
and astrology. Many scriptures are lost and may be rediscovered. 34. Besides Shrutis
and the above scriptures, there are texts called the Smritis or
Yugashastras or Dharmashastras. These contain
mostly knowledge, which is remembered tradition as distinct from
revelations or the Shrutis. Among other things, the Smritis
contain injunctions for a man's conduct for an orderly society. The Smritis
contain social and religious practices for the time. The practices are
generally in conformity with, but all are not in themselves necessarily
Sanaatana Dharma. Some elements in the Smritis are not as in
the Vedas. It is therefore incorrect to call Smritis Vedic
literature because it makes erroneously everything they contain as the
nascent or original Sanaatana Dharma. Some precepts, for example the
status of women and the caste system in some Smritis, indicate
a fall in values of society from the Vedic age. As in the Geetaa, a Smriti
text, all Smritis contain some precepts of Sanaatana Dharma in
accord with the Vedas. There are eighteen Smritis given by
various lawgivers. Famous among them are by Manu, Shankha, Paraashara,
and Yaajnavalkya. The Hindu law in 35. An example of a
perennial precept in the Shrutis of nascent Sanaatana
Dharma, and injunctions for changing times in Smritis are 36. The Raamaayana
by Sage Vaalmeeki and the Mahaabhaarata by Vyaasa, fall in the
category of sacred books called Puranas (the old) and Itihaasa
(history). They are records of an ancient oral tradition. Puranas are
eighteen or more. Vyaasa compiled the Puranas. These treatises discuss
principally creation, destruction and renovation, genealogy of gods,
reigns of Manus and the history of solar and lunar races. Manus were
fourteen sons of Brahmaa. To sustain religious tradition, they contain
stories of gods to explain some of the contents of the Vedas. All
scriptures are interspersed with Sanaatana Dharma, philosophy and
sciences. While the recording of Puranas was much later, the events of Raamaayana
and Mahaabhaarata occurred millenniums before the age of
recorded history. It is incorrect to think, as some western historians
did, that Raamaayana depicted a society later than that in the Mahaabhaarata.
Mahaabhaarata ended on the night between 17 and 37. The Shrutis
also contain a record of experience and of philosophy over an unknown
period of time. The two are for making practical use of our divinity.
This use made practical philosophy an Indian's second nature. It is
glimpsed in the day-to-day unconscious and, sometimes, conscious
conduct of his life. A philosophy is a science of life. It becomes pure
theory or a mere opinion if it ceases to be practical for everyone's
daily use. 38. When Karl Marx
criticized philosophy, as mere interpretation of the world while the
real task was to change it, he was referring to western philosophy.
'Believing that the world as cognized during waking, that the waking
stage is real and that the highest goal is the attainment of happiness
in that world, man accumulates the instruments and symbols of that
happiness; he fashions after his own taste and inclination according to
the dictates of his own reason, the laws, ideals, institutions and
principles that would bolster that happiness. This attempt leads to a
philosophy, which can be named "Western." ‘ (SS 72 vii) Marx did not
understand that philosophy also meant principles for conduct of life.
These principles could be advanced and be made the means for experience
of spirituality and living in our divinity by all. These means are the
essence of a universal religion that is love for all as one with us in
God. Love is at least compassion and care for and non-violence towards
all. Philosophy answers the cause of what is observed and the why of
what is believed. Spirituality is our transformation from the animal in
us to the human and then to the divine by applying that philosophy in
our daily thought, speech and conduct. Spirituality and this philosophy
are close and follow each other. The Shree Raamacharita Maanasa helps
us with tips to live in them and to transform each member. Members
change society and through it change the world. 39. In the last chapter
of the last Indian scripture in Sanskrit, the Geetaa, Shree Krishna
informs Arjuna that he has given the secret of all secrets to Arjuna.
Now it is for Arjuna to think about it and do as he thinks best. For
answers to all questions that might arise, Shree Krishna did not
restrict Arjuna to search for them from within what Shree Krishna told
him as God's word or in the Geetaa. Arjuna was free to go beyond Shree
Krishna. Thus in Sanaatana Dharma, there is no scripture that is final
or the only one, including the Vedas. Man's mind purified and beyond
the power of senses and passions is one with his jeevaatmaa or
God and can see and experience beyond any scripture or the Vedas.
Sanaatana Dharma frees us from any holy book or even a word of God as
Shree Krishna's was in the Geetaa. We can give up the use of our mind
for observation, understanding, inquiry and experiment or experience.
We can treat God as limited to our imagination or to what we believe to
be final. Then we can treat any book as the ultimate truth. Sanaatana
Dharma insists upon the use of our mind beyond any limitation for
understanding and experience beyond understanding to reach the truth by
the evidence of our individual experience. Hence, the openness and
vibrant vitality of this tradition are for progress in thought, matter
and spirit. In Sanaatana Dharma the exercise of the right to question
constructively and purposefully the base of the basics and insistence
upon an answer or an experience satisfactory to our mind makes bigotry
and fundamentalism impossible in its followers. (See Geetaa 18:63) 40. In spite of all the
guru disciple discipline, ancient scriptural texts might have been
mutilated. Mutilation of text was corrected by the rejection of
all that could not stand the test of Satchidananda and Praymaswaroopa.
Any text that was not motivated by love and did not bestow bliss on all
was to be ignored. The eternal verities can however be restored by
experience of living in them. Spiritually advanced men to demonstrate
these verities are rare today. Some chaff appears to some in extant
scriptures. This is because of the inability of the worldly mind to
grasp all of the text and allusions. Gurus of divine vision are rare
who can demonstrate for experience what cannot be explained in words.
An example of chaff is sin. Sin is not man's inalienable nature, which
is divine and perfect. A sin is an error committed in ignorance because
we can never know the totality of intangible elements in a situation.
It is also an error in forgetfulness of our reality in divinity. This
error also arises by forgetting the correct role of our body and mind
for realizing our oneness with reality. All references to man's nature
as sin or man born in sin are chaff.
Guru 42.
A guru is not the arbiter of religion but only an exemplary guide by
living in it. By experiments even upon himself a guru shows us the way
to our inmost Self and its pitfalls. The power of his selfless mind
brings about a physical phenomenon for demonstration. His role is to
impart knowledge to free us from misery and fear. The guru cannot
change an apple seed into an acorn. But as a gardener, he tends our
mind to its full capacity in its own mould. The guru cannot take us
further than where he reached. Our strong faith sometimes can take us
further. ‘The guru can repeat, remind, inspire, instruct, persuade, and
plead: the disciple must himself initiate. He must jump over the stile
himself. No one can hoist him over it.’ (H 98)
Systems of Philosophy The
Reach of the Mind 45. It is the mind in
control of senses and passions, which discovered that God was the only
ever-unchanging Ultimate Reality. The creation with multiplicity of
forms came out of that Reality or His being because there was nothing
that was real and outside Him. Man, as also the creation, was one in
his reality with the substance, nature, capacity and power of God. God
could create the strangest of beings as also animals and birds, which
could talk and argue with human beings. God could make them extinct.
There was nothing impossible for Him, for example, to create the
universe with all its variety, complexity and simplicity of forms and
of forces beyond laws known to or imaginable by man. Lastly, man was
the highest in His creation, with the maximum capacity to tap God's
power within him to secure freedom from misery and fear for society.
Thus, the reach of man's mind was one with God's or limitless. In
short, God's omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience was not limited
by human imagination or revelations to man. The omni prefix is literal
inasmuch as nothing in its reality exists outside God or there is no
such thing as outside or separate from God. (RK 395-396) 46. The sages discovered
that man achieved the highest through securing his oneness with the
reality of God. He did it by purifying his mind by his control over his
senses and passions. His pure mind made it one with his jeevaatmaa
or God within. This is a spiritual process. Methods for objective
knowledge cannot take us beyond physical knowledge. The spiritual
process needed a selfless mind. To make a mind selfless we have to
follow disciplines. These methods and disciplines cannot carry
conviction to a mind, which believes that only the tangible is real.
Gurus to convince beyond the power of words by demonstration, are rare.
Without a guru, however, we can experiment with faith in the law of
karma. This law says that the one who hurts us or helps us is merely
God's instrument to give us our deserts. So, we should hate none. We
earned our total situation by our past. For receiving relief from God
we should forget our past and live by all our karma based on love for
all. For this we should motivate every action by 'hurt none and help
all.' This self-discipline purifies our mind. Persistence in it starts
showing the power of our pure mind in the repetition of congenial
situations. These situations signify God's help to us on His path to
strengthen our perseverance. 47. The ancient Indian
mind is not wholly mystical. It developed a science of happy and
fulfilling life through selflessness and compassion. It recognized the
value of faith in harmony with a purified intellect as the most potent
power. The range of this science begins from the concept of our own
being and its reality as divinity that is one with God in His nature,
substance and power. The science includes the purpose of life and our
relationship with the universe and with God. The range extends to the
discovery of the zero, the numerals to the laws of science,
mathematics, and medicine and of language. Beauty in literature, fine
arts, dance, drama and music for our joy is a part of that science of
life. The range of this science, thought and experience of the ages in The
Shree Raamacharita Maanasa – A ‘How to’ Guide Book 49. Charles Robert
Richest, Noble Laureate in physiology says, ‘Those who have railed at
metaphysics as an occult science will be as ashamed of themselves as
those who railed at chemistry on the ground that pursuit of the
philosophers' stone was illusory.’ (Y 139) It is the divine in thought
and common sense that binds men in peace. Its absence makes each man
for himself and for the law of the jungle. Therefore common sense as
the harmony of the intellect with the heart is a good guide. History is
often not. History is also called man's quest for liberty. The study of
events and their causes or history does not prevent their painful
recurrence nor brings lasting peace. Yet history keeps many spellbound
while losing sight of the quest for the Self. 50. Tulaseedaasa
integrated inward spirituality with outward experience to show us that
there was no one way or the superior way to secure continual happiness
and reach God. "There are some who talk of unifying religion, but
religion is the mode of the mind and there are as many religions as
there are minds. If you can unify minds, you can unify religions, but
it is an impossible task." (BS 4 289) God has Himself created the
variety of forms and means for happiness. One meal, one dress, one
profession, one view and one pattern of thinking and the dull monotony
of it, is alien to man. Each man's concept of himself, the universe and
God and his relationship with both, is his religion and so different
for each. Practically the whole of a man's religion comprises his
concept of God and of what he expects from Him. The concept of God for
each individually is so important that we find innumerable hymns and
prayers in all religions, each resting on a particular concept. It is
essential for us to be clear in our mind of our concept of God before
we think or talk of any religion or practice our religion or of the
essence of all religions in spirituality. Each concept is a separate
religion. Often we reject the old as old but make no effort to advance
ourselves. We drift and stagnate. To save us, the liberalism of
Sanaatana Dharma, with its emphasis on thinking for ourselves even
beyond the holiest book, offers us avenues to experiment with our mind.
Tulaseedaasa puts across this liberalism in the Shree Raamacharita
Maanasa.
Society - A Mirror of Religion 52. The dichotomy between
our beliefs and conduct arises from our superimposed nature formed by
our past acts. This nature can be removed by reminding us of the core
of our religion. For example, more than a thousand years of invasions
and the greed of rulers made the army symbolize plunder and terror to
develop hate for and fear of it in Indians as their superimposed nature
till 1947. After independence of India, by persuading the army to serve
the people in earthquakes, floods and other calamities, Nehru, the
first Prime Minister of India, replaced the superimposed fear and hate
by love and respect for the army in India. So, a leopard cannot change
its apparent nature of cruelty but man can change his observable nature
most of which is acquired. 53. More than ever
earlier, from the eighth century onwards the Indian subcontinent faced
invasions repeatedly. What follows is a mysterious coincidence. The
Indians originally lived in their divinity or in Sanaatana Dharma. It
was by selflessness, compassion and forbearance as their service of
God. They worshipped His reality in symbols of sand and stone and icons
of unbaked clay. They lived in awareness of the unreality and ephemeral
nature of the material world. As long as this living in spirituality
continued, the mighty civilizations of the Mesopotamians, the
Babylonians, the Assyrians known as the scourge of Without the
essence of Sanaatana Dharma in their beliefs and conduct, the kings as
leaders became weak and were beaten by invaders. The people who lived
in Sanaatana Dharma remained strong to resist the coercive
proselytizing by some Muslim rulers for a thousand years. All along
masses lived in harmony with all. Muslims also from outside 54. 55. Sanaatana Dharma
survived oppression and exploitation of the people for more than a
thousand years. Throughout, gurus, though rare, appeared to scatter
songs with spiritual lessons and proverbs in local dialects with
spiritual wisdom for the masses. Both secured relief from misery,
sharpening of intellect and expansion of compassion by the practice of
that wisdom. Thus, the thin thread of Sanaatana Dharma survived to
protect rural 56. An Indian is the
product of Sanaatana Dharma. He naturally tries to live in it. If those
in power deprive him of his bread, dharma takes a back seat.
For example, even at the cost of unbearable agony, Indians by and large
eschewed hate and violence against its invaders, rulers and their
progeny. At least fifty million of emigrants as refugees in the
Partition of the country in 1947 cannot be distinguished from others in
57. From reforming gurus
such as Tulaseedaasa, we have to recollect what we were forced to
forget by the British and the distortion in beliefs of Sanaatana Dharma
by minions of religion. The distortion led to revolts of Buddhism and
Jainism and other sects till modern times. The rebels from Buddhism
onwards emphasized some aspects, such as equality, self-control and
selfless service of Sanaatana Dharma without contributing anything to
concepts not in the Vedas. The rebels helped to revive Sanaatana
Dharma. The need is pressing today for understanding the instant
material benefits of living in Sanaatana Dharma for individuals and
society. This understanding will revive ancient and perennial values
for harmony in society. It will eliminate ignorance that breeds bigotry
and poverty. It will bring prosperity to 58. We have to re-learn
to accept all to let them live in their own way in a cosmopolitan
society. Revenge is history. Forgetting the past grudge, grievance and
malice and living in the present correctly, that is, in oneness by
selfless compassion, is Sanaatana Dharma. Persecution and proselytizing
by bribery or coercion are alien to it. When the same God pervades all,
how can there be anyone different in one's Ultimate Reality to convert
and to what? When all are reaching God by His will, who are we to force
anybody by saying, 'not that but this way?' If someone asks, we
exemplify our way of acceptance of all and let him think for himself. 59. Sanaatana Dharma is
different from the way of life of many of its followers who call
themselves Hindus today. Sanaatana Dharma as a religion extends from
the worship of the spirit of a tree to a belief in the
imperceptible Godhead Brahman. This religion produces a
society with British Knights, Nobel laureates and excellence in myriad
fields. As its followers, we have to forget our past because we cannot
undo it. We have no right to punish the progeny today of the offenders
who caused sufferings to our ancestors. Shree Krishna did not advise
Paanddavas to hurt the progenitor or the progeny of the offender
Duryodhana, We get relief under the law of karma by living in love with
all in the present, which is Sanaatana heritage of Indian culture.
Under the law of karma, alien and erroneous traditions of living on
past grievances, grudge, hatred, anger and revenge lead to incorrect
conduct that invites misery and not relief from our past for us. 60. ‘The special feature
of Indian culture is that here the dress and demeanour, the language
and literature, the manner and the mode of living, the ideals and
institutions, all are attuned to the spiritual progress of man
emphasiz-ing as they do the superiority of the spirit over the
body, the subtle over the gross… The Indian culture turns your eye to
the basis – not what is built upon it.’ (BS 3 187)
Religion, State and Secularism The Shree
Raamacharita Maanasa prescribes the duty of the ruler to protect,
nourish and encourage those who lived in dharma, which was the religion
of man as man within himself. The king did not define or favour any
particular belief or religion. As an exception, Ashoka propagated
Buddhism. So, it survived a few centuries in 62. After the eighth
century, the alien rulers insisted on conformity to their religious
beliefs as 'the only way' and did not accept differences. They
discouraged questioning of basics contrary to the old Indian tradition.
This was the opposite of the plural ethos or the Indian Sanaatana
tradition. The alien rulers could not reach almost ninety nine per cent
of the country in villages nor the women folk who sustained Sanaatana
Dharma and its culture. 63. The millenniums old
harmony of the state and the people implied in Sanaatana principles
made its roots go so deep in the subcontinent that the very soil from
ancient Dissimilar
to Indian pluralism, secularism in the West was revolt against the
power of the Catholic Church over the state. The only way of the
Church, conformity to its interpretation of beliefs and denial of the
right to question the basics, created Protestants. 64. Faith in God and his
beliefs about God or his religion for a man of Indian heritage of all
communities is almost as water is for fish. Sanaatana Dharma survived
because the kings provided religious education to the people and
debates were held on beliefs under royal patronage. Akbar took up this
ancient Indian tradition of debates. Unlike elsewhere, apostasy,
heresy, blasphemy or denigration of any beliefs never invited death
penalty in ancient In ancient The meaning
of the word secular in the Oxford English Dictionary is 'sceptical of
religious truths or opposed to religious education, etc.' Limited by
western education, totally bereft of ancient Indian insistence on
knowledge of the availability in all religions of intimate relationship
with the Creator as our succour that is our spirituality, these weak
minded framers of the Constitution treated O.E.D. meaning of secularism
as the most valuable truth for a healthy society that could be
imagined. Their ignorant alien minds made the Constitution anti God or
anti spiritual, in short anti everything on which the greatness of ‘Article
28. Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious
worship in certain educational institutions.- (1) No
religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution
wholly maintained out of State funds. (3) No
person attending any educational institution recognized by the State or
receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any
religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to
attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution
or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such
person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto.’ This
provision enforced as the State policy the obligatory prevention of the
knowledge of our spiritual heritage from reaching the people. It
secured the expansion on a national scale of the British policy for
over a hundred years to make the educated continue to forget the secret
of Against
article 28(1) that prevents knowledge of religions, article
51A makes it the obligatory duty of all citizens ‘(e) to promote
harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of
India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional
diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;
and (f) to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite
culture.’ So, it is
the citizens’ constitutional duty to preserve Indian heritage, that was
knowledge of all religions. Against this, it is the constitutional duty
of the The
constitution makers could not see that secularism of article 28 as a
concept was in the background of Western religion and its history. It
was alien to our Dharma that is man's nature from ever to ever. This
Dharma is not congruent with religion. It is not a truth bound by the
word of only one messenger in a Holy Book as a religion is. That is the
meaning of the word religion in the O.E.D. which cites Christianity,
Islam and Buddhism as religions. It excludes Hinduism and Judaism.
Therefore, secularism as a concept has no relevance to Articles 28
(1) and (3) have to be replaced by the following as soon as possible to
replace by knowledge the ignorance enforced by the British to regain
our old amity for our rapid progress. ‘The State
will make all students knowledgeable citizens by ensuring instruction
in beliefs and principles of eight religions, on a compulsory basis
from the primary to the post graduate level in all institutions even
partly financed by the State. Scholars elected by the community of each
religion shall write one text book for each grade and answers to
questions raised by a student of any religion about any religion. The
language of all books will be local for schools and also English for
colleges for the language teacher. Every student shall have to qualify
each year in the course with emphasis on his religion.’ This change
in the role of the State will spread knowledge of that essence of all
religions in which their followers live in amity the world over when
not misdirected by their leaders for their selfish purposes. It will
restore our heritage of amity through knowledge of the basis of our
neighbours’ beliefs from which his thinking, culture and conduct arise.
It will bring about a union of minds for purposes which will invariably
be common and benevolent. It will start the learning of the science of
receiving from God a mind empowered to its limitlessness for practice
by all through their own religions. This mind will make The
scholars of each religion will be forced to present the basic, the best
and the minimum aspects of their religions for practice by all. This
course of comparative study will provide for informed exchange
of thought and discussion. It will provide for honest and transparent
conversion of some followers by their conviction that some religions
claim as their duty. This vital education missing now for nearing two
hundred years in 65. Not the Muslims but
the British imposed a foreign language as practically the only means of
a livelihood for the literate. The Indian heritage of the spirit and
beliefs of all religions was never a compulsory subject for study in
any educational institution for more than a century. It made many
educated Indians of both communities ignorant and lose faith even in
the value of faith. Examples of this ignorance that struck the Author
among others are these. In the twenty years in the The English
language today, however, is an asset for 66. The Book mentions the
dharma of both the ruler and of the people as selflessness
for their welfare. The Book does not show the ruler's duty to inculcate
any particular religion among his people except to exemplify love of
God through love of his people as the ruler's ideal religion. Upon the
ruler the Book enjoins to protect those who follow dharma. The
Book however does not define that dharma as a particular path,
or form of worship, or obligatory practices for the ruler to protect,
spread, or insist upon on pain of punishment. The ruler has to protect
all on their peaceful path to God in their own ways. Any man of any
religion can live in Sanaatana beliefs, that is, his living in accord
with his innate divinity inside him, without any change in his outward
way of life or avowed religious practices. The ease of this inner
transformation into Sanaatana beliefs disturbs some narrow alien minds
in the world. In 67. Pursuing the Advaitic
religious belief that all are one in God as the tradition of
acceptance, the Indian state has to nourish followers of eight
religions with equal facilities for food, water, clothes, shelter,
health, peace and security. It cannot permit any infringing of civic
rights of any follower of any religion. Nor can it permit any practice
or rite of any religion to harm or hurt any sensitivities of a member
of a religion or of the other. The state cannot permit neglect of
children, women and old parents on any religious grounds. Secularism in
Secularism
for 68. It is our
self-betrayal if the 69. The need for
Secularism in the Indian Constitution without article 28 was and is
mainly to extinguish by evenhanded administration the British legacy of
violent communal clashes in the urban lanes and by-lanes of 70. We have to remember
the difference in the understanding of the word secularism in This
unsullied mind calls what he believes as his relationship with God and
man as his Dharma and does not know religion. Thanks to a century old
indoctrination of ignorance and denial of our heritage by purely
Western education and continuing till today, many modern Indian leaders
do not understand that dharma includes some of the beliefs of
religion but both are totally different in the practice of each. The
practice of dharma is invisible. It necessarily comprises
benevolence and non-violence in thought, word, manners, etiquette and
conduct of care and compassion. Almost the whole of the practice of any
religion is visible. It comprises facial marks, dress, observable
practices as congregational obligatory prayers, Church, Sabbath,
Ramadan, pilgrimages, caste, untouchability and many social practices
attributed to religion. The invisible necessary practices of dharma
are optional for a follower of a religion. So, dharma is not congruent
with religion. Religion is by choice and dharma is by our
innate nature common to humanity from which no one can alienate
oneself. Religion is belief; its philosophy is the reason why I believe
what I believe as my religion. Thus dharma, religion and the
philosophy of both are three separate and distinct entities. The fourth
is the follower. He is ordinarily not what his religion is. A true
follower of any religion is a rarity. The fifth is the way of life of
the follower that is distinct for each religion. The way of life
differs from person to person among the followers of the same religion
though some of their religious practices may be common. The sixth is
Sanaatana Dharma, which is the articulation of dharma for our
awareness of and conviction in dharma for our practical use for the
service of society. Moderns do
not separate these six entities that form the foundation of our
culture. They confuse the practices and followers with their religion
and create differences by treating Hinduism not a religion but as
either a philosophy or a way of life or an expansive undefined ethos. The bulk of
the practices of Hinduism today makes it what can be called Smritic
Hinduism relying on Smritis. Hinduism unsullied by what is
attributed in it to Smritis is nascent or Sanaatana
Dharma. Sanaatana Dharma arises from Shrutis or the Vedas
through Upanishads. Sanaatana Dharma is a religion for man as man and
cannot be claimed as the monopoly of a people or of a region. Its
necessary practice is only love summed up as compassion and care for
and non-violence towards all in our thought, word and deed. To call
Sanaatana Dharma as commonly called Hinduism as a non religion just
because it is for humanity as such, shows insufficient thought to the
matter. This is because central to Vedanta or the surviving Sanaatana
Dharma as to any religion is God, the creation and man. Without any of
the three, the set of beliefs is a religion only for its followers.
There is a deliberate ignorance in the alien mind-set for mean selfish
political purposes about the subtle distinction between Sanaatana
Dharma that is nascent Hinduism and the visible Smritic
Hinduism. The other deliberate ignorance is the distinction between a
religion and its followers. These two kinds of ignorance after
independence of Without
conscious effort, Mahatma Gandhi showed us a great use of Sanaatana
Dharma. Before independence, among the leaders only Mahatma Gandhi
lived by Sanaatana Dharma as his religion, which brought about unity.
Living in Sanaatana Dharma, makes one totally desreless and selfless or
a karmayogi. Such is the power of selflessness based on faith
in the reality of God exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi in which the bulk
of the people lived that it secured independence of 71. Incidentally, a man
can live in a faith or religion, which has no concept of God in the
manner that many religions have. The practices in pursuit of those
beliefs are not central to religion. History shows that resting on
beliefs of one religion, its practices in its followers can vary in
person, place and times and may be a part of the way of life of the
follower. Only beliefs comprise a religion, its practices are
extraneous to it. That is why it is common to observe the dichotomy
between the beliefs of a religion and its follower in all religions.
Therefore, we should never confuse followers with their religion and
try to defend the indefensible conduct of some of the followers
irrespective of their apparent achievements. In spirituality the means
for any achievement must be noble. Defending the wrongs done by
followers in pursuit of achievements in the name of religion is loyalty
to false followers and treachery to our true religion. 72. Living throughout in
active politics, Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated the Indian secularism or
elimination of scepticism inherent as pluralism in Advaitic
Sanaatana heritage. He saw For the
alien mind of the educated, therefore, in the name of secularism in
article 28 of the Indian Constitution, it is wrong to demand that the
State in This
insistence on the present article 28 is forcing the State to sponsor
ignorance that prevents each citizen from knowing his neighbour's
beliefs to understand his conduct better for national harmony. If
science and humanities are necessary for a livelihood, the knowledge of
the base of the neighbours’ beliefs is necessary for a harmonious
society for making enjoyable use of that livelihood for living in it.
This insistence can be viewed as treachery. This treachery does not
invite condemnation because its cause is the ignorance of the alien
mind-set of the British educational system. It is treachery because it
will ensure that It is a
historical fact that some scholars and leaders create myths for
nefarious purposes such as the Aryan invasion of
Sanaatana Dharma and Religion 74. The word dharma
in Sanaatana Dharma as believed as Hindu religion, has vast meanings
including Divine Law or Law of God. Dharma means the nature of
every entity in the creation from which it can never be alienated and
which is its role in accord with it. The dharma of water is to
flow downwards and make everyone wet, good or bad. Having come out of
God, man's dharma is divinity. Dharma also means our
role of living in this innate nature. This living manifests itself in
our conduct of truth, righteousness, justice and compassion to secure
our happiness by our faith in the reality of God as our security
against want, disease and fear of all kinds. We all show some time or
the other from our birth all these signs of our divinity. Whether
anyone is aware of or believes in it or not, one's dharma is
one's divinity. Man's reality is divinity. Another
meaning of dharma is duty. We all have our duties towards
others and ourselves. We have no rights to lay a claim for them upon
others, society, state or even upon God. The duty of each in society
brings results for others to receive. Social problems arise when we
claim what we receive as our right. With love as the underlying force
for human existence, duties motivated by love become a pleasure. It is
a mother’s duty to nourish her children. The children have no rights to
be nourished by the mother. It is grown-up children’s duty to nourish
and care for their spouses, children and old parents and so society. A
society resting on duties provides for all that its members need
because its motivating force, love which translates into selflessness,
spots what needs to be attended to for all around. A society
emphasizing any right heads for disaster because all rights arise from
selfish desires. Desires are endless for fulfilment. No society can,
however, exist without its members accepting a minimum of duties for
the sustenance of society itself. No state lays down these duties in
its constitution because they are universal or dharma. No
religion can exist to sustain its followers without these minimum
duties or dharma. So, in practice every follower of every
religion lives in these minimum livable part of his religion. This
livable religion cannot hurt any follower of any other religion because
it is common in all. This makes dharma or livable part of every
religion, a cement for unity, harmonious society and amity. This is
what 75. The O.E.D. recognizes
a religion as that that has a founder. Apparently for the West, a
religion needs today and is distinguished by its Holy Book, an arbiter,
obligatory religious injunctions such as Namaaz in a mosque on
every Friday, Sabbath on Sunday or Saturday and maybe facial
requirements such as a beard, dress such as a headgear and certain
practices relating to food such as halaal or kosher.
Notice that all these are observable signs by which we recognize a
religion. Dharma has none of these observable signs. Dharma
has self-control for selflessness that is the highest form of love for
which we are responsible. We live in dharma because it answers
daily the question – Why should I think, speak or act in a particular
way? None of the practices that distinguish a religion can answer any
or all questions that we face daily. Dharma is not Hindu or
Christian or Muslim. It is everyone's innate inalienable nature.
Politics is a part of our life and cannot be separated from our dharma.
Yet politics should never be mixed up with any religion because some
beliefs and practices of religions divide and separate its followers
from others. 76. Indian sages
discovered that there is no reality outside God, the only one that
there can be and so there is. Therefore, both man and the creation have
come out of God and are in reality of the nature and substance of God.
The common nature of beings and of God is Satchida-ananda as
the minimum. Satchidaananda means sat-ta or reality, chit-ta
or awareness and aananda or bliss. We show this triple nature
inasmuch as we know that we are real, are aware or knowledgeable and
desire continual bliss. To secure continual bliss, we should make daily
use of this divine nature. Bliss is experienced through exchange of
thought, speech and conduct, all based upon love. Therefore, love
becomes an inalienable element of this Satchidaananda nature.
The form of love is non-violence and benevolence. Living in love, we
realize our identity with our origin, God who is within us as our
reality. Man's effort to achieve continual innocuous bliss through love
is his inborn Satchidaananda or divine nature or Sanaatana
Dharma. Any tradition that is contrary to bliss in intent, practice or
result is not right and is not Sanaatana Dharma. By
observation, spread over generations, this discovery of the nature of
man and God as Satchidaananda and love provided the sages with
a universal immutable test for the correctness of any thought, belief,
speech, conduct, code, law or scripture. If any of these were not
motivated by love and bliss for all, it was incorrect. After this
logical test, the proof of correctness of our beliefs followed the
experience gained by living by that belief. This living required
unshakable faith. In this manner, the sages eliminated the need for a
holy book or for logical or tangible proof in matters of belief and
spirituality. Their conclusions were based upon observations. These
were proved by their repetitive experience by living by those
conclusions. These conclusions were eternal verities. It was even
otherwise obvious that reason and logic were no help when all premises
were not tangible and determinable in a matter of belief and of the
spirit. 77. The religious
practices among followers of Sanaatana Dharma vary from community to
community, at places sometimes within a hundred miles or so in 78. These beliefs need
self-control, truth, compassion, unselfish service, reverence and
affection. We practise these practical forms of love in our family from
our birth. Sanaatana Dharma treats this love as the dharma or
religion of God, which He teaches all of us to learn, experience, enjoy
and benefit from, and as the binding principle for life for all for a
healthy society. Love eliminates the need for the state or religious or
temporal organization, except for providing civic amenities and
research for physical comfort and health.
Who is a Man of Indian Tradition or Heritage? 80. ‘Of all the religions
of the entire world, it appears to us, that Indian religion, the
religion that has been at the back of the Indian mind, is the life
breath and is the stream that is flowing through all religions of this
world. The religions of other countries are certainly as sacred and
sanctified but only for a certain limited time. On the other hand, the
religion of this country ( 81. If a man's religion
comprises his beliefs, some elements of Sanaatana Dharma are a religion
for a group of believers. The extent to which the rationale of these
beliefs or religion can be explained for the removal of doubts and for
developing conviction in beliefs, is the philosophy of this religion.
In this sense, religion and philosophy are distinctive. Religion is a
matter of faith and of the heart. Philosophy is more a matter of the
intellect in harmony with the heart for experience of the truth that
words cannot convey. For example, words cannot prove the value of
humanness, of any virtue and of our divinity. That we should be
virtuous and through that be divine is proved by the law of karma and
is a matter of faith, belief, experience and religion. The minimum
beliefs which make up Sanaatana Dharma practised as a religion today by
all Hindus, are these. First, the reality of man and of the creation is
one with God in His nature, which is at least Satchidaananda (truth,
awareness and bliss) and Praymaswaroopa (personification of
love). Second, God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Third,
only God and our jeevaatmaa or human soul form one reality, and
the rest, which we see as the entire creation is only apparently real.
This apparently real phenomenon is called maya. 82. Some other beliefs in
the Sanaatana Dharma that almost all Hindus believe in as their
religion are these. First, the Almighty God is formless, without
attributes and imperceptible. Second, God has a form and attributes
and, in addition, takes a human form on the earth in an Incarnation
from time to time. His form makes devotion to it easy. His Incarnation
is to respond in person to human beings' yearning for Him. This is
because man is apparently the most beloved of His creation. He
also does it to restore the benign balance between good and evil in the
world. By His message and example He transforms man from the animal to
human and then to divine. Third, a human being cannot escape from doing
karma of which he reaps consequences. Consequences are always subject
to God's grace, which man can invoke to get relief from them. Fourth,
human beings take a rebirth on the earth. There is the fifth belief,
God is love and responds to any loving relationship with Him. The last
finds emphasis in the Shree Raamacharita Maanasa. All these
beliefs sum up Vedanta. Anyone who believes in all of these precepts is
a man of ancient Indian tradition. No Muslim, Christian and Jew
believes in all four of these beliefs. No visible practice or ritual is
necessary for living by these beliefs. The beliefs need understanding,
faith in the reality of God for our intimacy of relationship with Him
as our succour, and an attitude of the mind that translates in a
fearless conduct of righteousness, non-violence and compassion.
Sanaatana Dharma is therefore all inside a man and not visible as a
religion is visible in a follower of a religion. It is immaterial what
rituals a man follows in pursuit of Sanaatana Dharma but his practices
are not integral to his Dharma. To treat any practice or form of
worship as inalienable to Sanaatana Dharma is not understanding
Sanaatana Dharma. This is because Sanaatana Dharma is the inalienable
human nature of man, who invariably tries to live in it when he is free
from constraints of society and traditional beliefs. So any man
irrespective of his religion by birth can live by Sanaatana Dharma
without stepping out of the core of his avowed religion. However, the
whole gamut in India of the forms of worship, the rituals, the customs,
the temples, the places of pilgrimage, the Vedas and the Shastras, the
Geetaa, the Raamaayana and the Bhaagawata and all the
literature in all the fourteen or more major languages of India, in
fact almost the entire Indian culture, by and large, is somehow related
to the above beliefs. This is because when one tries to practise living
by some of these beliefs, he experiences the operation of all the
beliefs and sees their impact in all that the Indian mind produces in
any field and goes by the name of the ancient Indian culture and
heritage but not its temporary aberrations in fall of society at
times. 83. The mental detachment
from or loss of interest in worldly pleasures, the love of a personal
God and the realization of the identity of man's reality with God, the
only reality that there is, underlie the above beliefs or precepts.
'Sanaatana Dharma is the only religion, which declares that there is no
religion that can be labelled as "one and only." ‘ Teachers 'should not
try to shape the children into a predetermined mould. Sanaatana Dharma
has no set pattern. It admits of infinite variety based on past
achievement and present accomplishment.’ (BS 5 338, 341) Every humble
and liberal follower of every religion knows that God is omnipotent
enough to guide anyone on another path to reach Him. So there cannot be
the only path limited to a man's imagination or his beliefs. To sum up,
a man belongs to Hindu religion if he believes in God being
omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent and, as a minimum, of the nature
of Satchidaananda and Praymswaroopa and a reality for
intimate relationship of our choice with Him. He believes that God is
both formless and has a form and takes a form as an Incarnation. He
believes in the law of karma, and rebirths on the earth for those who
do not try to be free from it. He can believe in anything else of his
choice and practices that he thinks are in pursuit of his religion as
long that thing is non-violent and based on righteousness and love for
all. 84. It is inappropriate,
as even some educated Hindus state, that Sanaatana Dharma is not a
religion but more than a religion inasmuch as it is a philosophy or a
way of life. For the world, this statement lowers Sanaatana Dharma from
the sanctity of being respected as a religion to the mundane. This is
because for the large majority of firm believers, their belief in God
or religion is more sacred and above all philosophies and ways of life.
This statement arises from not understanding that central to any
religion is God in His aspect as believed by the faithful. God is not
central to all ways of life or all philosophies such as that of
atheists. Secondly, this statement identifies a religion not by its
content in substance, which is belief, but by what is extraneous or
external to it and by its visible outward practices and rituals.
Thirdly, it identifies a religion only as beliefs prescribed by a
historically known founder, a final holy book or an institution such as
the church. This means that a man's belief about God, the creation and
man, and his direct relationship with God through his belief, which
constitute a man's religion, is not a religion. They, however, become a
religion only if a founder expresses these beliefs or an institution
interprets or propagates them. Both, a founder and an interpreter are
extraneous or irrelevant to a man's direct relationship with God
through his beliefs. Beliefs are his religion. Fourthly, it makes a
religion deny every man to think for himself and seek God in his own
way. It treats God's gift of the mind as worth-less because it denies
its use to question any basics of any belief or institution. It also
denies God's capacity or will to guide His seeker Himself without need
for an intermediary such as a founder, a messenger or a church.
Fifthly, it shows total unawareness of the depth and capacity of the
human mind in harmony with the heart to experience beyond the reach of
any holy book or of a particular intellect or range of reason and
logic. Sixthly, it shows confusion in definitions of the terms Dharma,
religion and its philosophy. Dharma is my innate reality and nature
from which I can never alienate myself. My religion is what I believe
about my self, the creation and its Creator Whom I call God and their
inter-relationship. The philosophy of my religion is why I believe what
I believe about the three. The first is a matter of realization. The
second is a matter of the heart. The third is that of the intellect in
harmony with the heart. It is the
philosophy, which gives strength to beliefs to make our faith in our
religion unassailable. That explains the vast Indian literature to
satisfy myriad questions about and views about beliefs. The eternal
verities or beliefs of Sanaatana Dharma were validated by repetitive
experi-ence of generations of purified minds. In the result, basic
questions could be entertained about beliefs. Variety of experiences
made it easy to explain the reason for belief to the limit of verbal
expression. Since experience was often beyond the record in any
scripture, no scripture can be final. The finality of a scripture
denies the availability of experience by the limitless human mind as
also God's power to give such experience to a seeker. Lastly,
that Sanaatana Dharma was not a definable religion, but more than a
religion inasmuch as it was a philosophy or a way of life, was what the
British made the scholars propagate. There were toady Hindu scholars to
obey it for self-advancement. The British Christian missionaries then
could sincerely believe and point out to their Hindu targets that
Hindus had no religion and religion was what the missionaries had. So,
the Hindus should become religious through Christianity. The
missionaries, however, miserably failed except to convert the poor and
those who were treated by upper caste Hindus with disdain, by bribe in
its sophisticated forms. On the other hand, the educated were made
ignorant inasmuch as they lost faith in what was an indefinable
religion. They could not know the definition of their Hindu religion
that in its minimum for practice and maximum for its benefit could be
defined. This defined core was for use for receiving power of the mind
and of the will. Being a liberal philosophy, Sanaatana Dharma became a
matter for mere exchange of opinions, views and thought and not for
principled conduct and practices as other religions were. Being a
way of life for individuals, it ceased to be perennial and unchangeable
in its basics. In short, Sanaatana Dharma became something that was
inessential to life. The selfish toady or western educated Hindu
scholars never asserted that Vedic Sanaatana Dharma was a defined
religion unshakable by any other faith or the sharpest of native and
alien intellects for millenniums. Further, living by it made 85. A man's life may have
strange individual forms of worship, of practices, of thinking,
attitudes, principles, morals, customs, dress, food habits and
etiquette. All these generally arise from, but are not his religion. A
man's religion, as shown earlier, is his beliefs inside him. His way or
philosophy of life may or may not reflect his religion. On the other
hand, every follower's life normally follows his beliefs or religion.
So, we have the Christian way of life and Christianity as distinct
entities and so for a follower of Islam and of Sanaatana Dharma. A
follower whose way of life wholly reflects his true religion is a
rarity in all religions. 86. Islam prohibits
drawing a picture of a living being. It is proved by none being on any
Muslim building in
Some Beliefs in Sanaatana Dharma and Its
Philosophy
God – His Personal and Impersonal Aspects 89. The manifestation in
each being of its Satchidaananda divinity is like the
visibility of identical flames in a lamp with glass or steel walls or
of a light bulb with different wattage but identical electric current
in each. In some, manifest divinity appears active, in others, dormant
to vary their power to acquire or experience Knowledge. The dormant
awaits the man's turning to God in his own manner and time. The active
reflects in virtue and commands respect of love. The personal aspect of
God appeals to the man of the heart and appears for him when the heart
is purified. The impersonal God appeals to the man of intellect. This
man experiences God when his intellect is free of passions and filled
with benevolence and compassion. The joy of a vision or of experience
of God is incomparable and full to the brim for each. Shree
Raamacharita Maanasa emphasizes our reaching the impersonal through the
personal God as practical philosophy because both aspects are a reality
for our experience. 90. To believe in God is
common, to experience Him tangibly is a rarity but to know Him with all
His secrets is impossible. Those who believe in the tangible only as a
reality are like the Indian philosopher Chaarvaaka. He denied the
existence of God. He would accept only pratyaksha pramaana, that
is a proof perceptible by the senses. He rejected other means
of knowledge such as the inference of the Vedas. Tangible proof is a
most fascinating illusion of man. Our senses are minimal when compared
to the smells the bee notices and the vibrations perceptible to the
bat. Senses do not notice the two revolutions of the earth on its axis
and around the sun at breakneck speed. Based upon our perception for
sixty years, we treat a body as our father. On his death, the body is
intact. Our belief in the tangible father was ignorance. Without
tangible proof, we deal with men on the basis of their intangible
character and other qualities. We are inconsistent. We insist upon
tangible proof in matters of the heart, spirit and religion. We cannot
give a descriptive name for a thing, which does not exist. God has a
million names, innumerable concepts about Him and exists as a reality
for millions. Yet we want visible proof. No virtue or its value can be
proved tangibly. So, virtue is called godliness. As a man set on
tangible proof, I am a hypocrite if I adopt any virtue without a
tangible proof of the value of that virtue. To be consistent, I have to
be an atheist and non-virtuous. Pure reason and proof in tangibility
deprive us from experimenting with and experiencing the joy that
millions derive through trust and faith in the reality of the
intangible and in others' experiences to experiment with the noble
lessons of their experiences. The insistence upon proof has destroyed
faith in all values to make selfishness by and large the ruler of the
leaders of man. The 91. In a way, God proves
His reality and our divinity. The entire creation has come into being
out of something because something cannot come out of nothing. That
something to originate the creation has to be in existence before the
creation. Ancient Indian sages called it the ever-unchanging reality
underlying all. This reality is from ever to ever. There is not nor can
there be anything before, after or outside it. All that exists is one
in its reality with it. They called this reality Brahman. It is called
God and by many other names. God was therefore discovered and not
created by man.
Another idea refuses to become extinct. It is that there is some power
beyond reach and definition, which controls the universe. This idea has
innumerable forms. It was in the cave man and is in the Nobel Laureate.
The age of reason could not extinguish it. Men in all places and times
experienced the impact of belief in this idea. By sustaining this idea,
God proves His existence. This idea is named Brahman, Allah and so on.
Similarly the concept of virtues is immortal because virtue is
godliness and a worldly expression of Divinity. Every one of us has all
of the virtues. They are all expressions of our love that we show from
time to time. We cannot prove the value to us of love and so also of
any virtue tangibly or by reason. Hurt none and help all, as one of the
highest virtues is a matter of faith in the law of karma. Neither
reason can prove the value of any virtue nor can tangible evidence
prove it. 92. For Sanaatana Dharma,
the scientist, even if he is an atheist, is as necessary for man's
comfort as the guru with divine vision for the happiness of society.
They have common motivation, which is the good of all. They have common
means, which is our mind, and common objectives. The objectives are the
desire for worthwhile knowledge, its experience, the elimination of
suffering and disease, provision of comfort and the attainment of
continual bliss. Physical comfort provided by science is practically
irrelevant when we are engrossed in any joyful activity, for example,
study, contemplation, research, music and so on. A baby's
self-absorption produces a smile and boundless energy and enthusiasm
without awareness of physical comfort short of pain. Continual bliss
needs more than mere physical comfort provided by science. 93. Thus wisdom demands
that not science and its achievements alone, which are confined to the
outside of man, but the spirit of complete scientific inquiry is
needed. This spirit comprises looking into both the outside and inside
of man by both reason and experience. We have to peep into the inside,
that is, spiritual and divine pheno-mena, by a purified mind and with
the intellect and the heart in harmony. We have to look at the outside,
that is, physical phenomena through science, by the intellect and
reason alone. It is this spirit of complete scientific inquiry that
prevents the misuse of science to exploit and destroy and instead
ensures its proper use to give bliss to all. This spirit also secures
us bliss from both the impersonal and personal aspect of God. This
spirit shows that physical sciences are for comfort. The science of
life or spirituality, which is beyond morality, gives the answer to our
daily question for us, why should I do this or that. Morality is care
for those in whom we are interested. Spirituality is care for all and
prayers even for our enemies for their transformation into the
virtuous. Physical science as such should not interfere in matters of
the spirit to deny experience of bliss in the manner of a man's choice.
Similarly, matters of the spirit should not interfere with science.
Interference by either is unscientific and retards progress in both
fields. Experience shows that the powerful that is not spiritual that
does not love all as it loves itself can always misuse achievements of
science for destructive purposes. 94. Wisdom lies in
accepting the scientist, humanist, and the faithful as also the
atheist, the bigot and the bad as God's creation, each doing His work
for mankind. This acceptance by us of oneness of all motivated by our
selflessness in attitude is our spirituality and its expression in
conduct is love for all in the creation. This spirituality is our
nearness to our reality in our divinity. It can receive an empowered
mind and comprehensive versatility. We need both to remain abreast of
the doubling of scientific knowledge in less than a decade. Acceptance
of the oneness of all that there is in the creation in their divinity,
of the undiscovered and discovered, of the illiterate, the literate and
the learned, of the undeveloped, under-developed and the developed, of
the objective of the mind and that of the heart, and so on, is the
expression of our love and is divine. In this wisdom of oneness of all
in God, a man realizes that toleration of that which is apparently
dissimilar or uncongenial is not acceptance. Toleration is by the
powerful and submission to toleration is by the weak. Toleration means
that you are wrong, but I let you live, as if I am God. Toleration is
hypocrisy of appearing to accept. Acceptance is by equals, is
honourable and shows mutual respect. Acceptance is of all with
compassion as being one with us in sincere humility before God, the
Creator of the differences. Acceptance is that all beliefs that any man
has in relation to and experience of God, whether his God is personal
or impersonal, should be respected. Acceptance alone gives all the
freedom to experiment, experience and advance. We must however be
careful. Mentally all are in reality one with us. In dealings, we
distance ourselves from the wicked but we do not hate him. We pray to
God that He may transform him into the virtuous. This is acceptance of
oneness in practice. |
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Dedication
Reviews
An Appeal
Author's
Note
Arrangement
of Book
Hindi
Spellings
Table of
Contents
Tribute to
Gandhi
Introduction
The Raama
Story
Philosophy
Baalakaandda
Ayodhyakaandda
Aranyakaandda
Kishkindhaakaandda
Sundarakaandda
Lankaakaandda
Uttarakaandda
Index
Glossary
Proper
Names
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Appendices
Ghazal