Lecture delivered at the Shri Ram Chandra
Mission Ashram at Hyderabad on 12-12-1967.
I have been, for long, vitally interested in
the study as to what is right and what is wrong.
I have been following this up with great
enthusiasm and conviction and faith.
The earliest stage of this conscience was the
science of inward values which was secret in the
heart of every human individual, to which he
could turn in moments of personal distress or
cosmic distress. It was the voice of God because
it came with an imperativeness and with a
necessity to obey it, at the cost of one's life
itself! For the value of the voice of God was
paramount over every practical, economic, or
karmic conception. So we have that ideal of a
conscience.
For a long time in the hearts of men this was
there, and the mystics spoke about it with great
conviction that was a personal realization, a
personal attunement with God; and that voice was
heard!
But later on it was found that some people
began to speak the language of the conscience,
but actually it was the language of their own
conceptions. Some people, by cogitating or
thinking over-much on an idea, or what they
deemed to be right, began to assert that it was
the voice of God that was speaking. So in this
particular sphere the voice of God became very
feeble and was substituted by the ideational
hallucinations of individual men, albeit pious
and religious. Later on it was found that this
belief in the voice of God, as conscience, is
sheer nonsense. Many people thought that the
voice of God was merely an excuse for
perpetrating some evil deeds. That is, they lost
the conception that the voice of God would
always speak the voice of truth, of chastity, of
nonviolence; All those virtues which we honour
as the greatest and highest qualities of a
spiritual man.
When power came to play its part, and when
the religious man felt that power was much more
important than virtue, the voice of conscience
was just eclipsed and substituted by the voice
of the wishes of a dictator or a tyrant or a
religious, exalted personage. Therefore they had
to have a series of conventions of dharma, or
law, which were intended to curb as much the
tyrant as the ordinary people. It was equality
in the eyes of the law that dharma inculcated,
to secure the freedom of every individual from
the oppression of every other individual,
however high or however low. So there was this
dharma-shastra, the birth of the dharma-shastra.
Conscience was expected to speak dharma, but if
it did not speak the language of dharma, it was
not conscience, it was not the voice of God!
That is how they began to regulate
conscience. As you know that famous passage
"conscience makes cowards of us all", which
Shakespeare has used in one of his plays.
Conscience was later on merely thought of as
some thing that prevents us from doing evil, not
doing the good. And so it seems evil doing is
good, according to the ideas of power-politics
people. Conscience was suppressed and everybody
who spoke about conscience was laughed at. So,
as recently as a few weeks ago, when a person
said "my conscience is very clear", on a
particular matter, some of us thought why not
place the conscience on the table for
vivisection, that is it has to oblige the law of
my rationality. It cannot be considered to be a
private matter which has absolutely no check,
and so it has to be proved that it is rational.
Conscience, then, must be rational. Reason,
then, became more important than an inward
voice. So reason, specially as we have learnt to
know about it in the recent philosophic age as
the age of reason, we find that reason is
anything that can be proved by means of our
perceptions that are our ordinary experience,
and not that which transcends them.
Unfortunately our whole conduct and our loss of
virtue are matters not for reason to select out
of our experiences, or experiences of conduct.
As you all know that the age of reason claimed
that conscience must be the language of reason,
and this reason must be something that produces
social harmony, and makes a savage society into
a civilized or cultured society.
John Locke, and afterwards Rousseau, tried to
show that the terms of the social contract,
which he said makes for political society, are
based on reason, not upon revelation. So
revelation went out of the picture and
conscience also went out of the picture. And as
Hegel later on proved to our conviction, the
institutions of mankind are mere objectified
reason to which we can refer, rather than
subjective reason which reasons towards certain
conclusions. So to obey the society and the
state, even if it be a police state, that is
correct. Obedience is rational, disobedience is
irrational. And the rational is the real, rather
than the real is rational! These are basic
concepts, which he gave to us, which reduce
conscience to a farce. That is, conscience was
thoroughly disintegrated.
All psychologists know we have a small, funny
adage in Woodworths Psychology at the beginning
which is studied elementarily, that psychology
firstly had a soul, it was considered to be the
science of the soul. It lost its soul and got a
mind, and psychology was called the science of
the mind. Then it lost its mind and has some
behaviour of a kind. We all study some
physiological behaviour and call it psychology.
Even so, conscience previously was the voice of
God; then it became the maxims of reason; and
finally it has become nothing but the Vox
Populi, the voice of the people is the voice of
God.
The denigration, if I may say so, of
conscience, is complete to day. And the voice of
the people, whether it is rational or
irrational, is the voice of God. That is the
later development, which we have got.
Parliamentary government is based upon that
which is rational, and emerges out of the
contradictions of society and of debate. But
actually we find that it is not rationality
which is now prevalent but a clash of
irrationalities trying to get into a compromise
which is called a medley of conduct. Therefore
we are undecided as to what is the measure, what
is the point of reference by which we can act in
this world. Is there any fulcrum on which you
can base your whole behaviour? We are a
disintegrated people; disintegrated in the soul,
disintegrated in the mind, disintegrated in the
body. And if now you see no firm conduct, and
religions merely pamper to these dilations of
what I call reason, and instinct, and popular
will, one can hardly do justice to the
individual character of the human being whose
sorrows are never attended to by anybody. In
trying to bring happiness, we produce
unhappiness. In producing more and more, we
produce scarcity more and more, scarcity which
ought not to be there logically, mathematically,
unfortunately is there. Everybody knows it.
We know the words of God, but unfortunately
God does not speak to us. We know the laws, but
the laws do not speak to our heart. What has
happened to us? Please ask! Why is it our
problem, because it is our normal problem. I
have seen that it was my problem; and what is my
problem is your problem as well. Taken
individually it is the individual that is in
difficulties today. Has he something to live by?
Some voice, some truth, some rationality, that
is not the rationality of the objective society
and the social society, but of yourself. Is
there a voice which asks you for your Higher
evolution, and gives you guidance for your own
growth in the dimensions of a vertical being,
rather than in the dimensions of a horizontal
being. We are all becoming corpulent with the
additional tissues of the world and of society.
Everybody is corpulent. Who is straight,
shooting like a rocket to the heavens of the
divine? Well, anyway, who can get into one's
self? So this was my problem, and, I believe, in
a subtle sense, of every one of you. That is why
the eclipse of conscience today is complete.
Nobody wants to refer to it. It has gone out of
fashion. And so when Mahatma Gandhi spoke about
an inner voice to which he hearkened during his
fasts, everybody laughed at him, these
rationalists, these liberalists, and so many
people who are politicians and statesmen, all
laughed at him. Philosophers too! And I believe
even religious people said that, because
religious people have felt that all that the
conscience has spoken is already in the srutis
and scriptures written down for everybody to
read - the revelations of other people. But has
anybody seen that it solves any problem within
me, or within you? I do not want to say they
spoke falsehood. They spoke what they knew to be
right, and it may be right for us also. But has
it also the sanction of your own inner being,
your acceptance, your conviction? So that is
where I found we have to rehabilitate
conscience. How to hear the voice again? Gandhi
asked that. How many have been devout disciples
of Gandhi, and have been able to hear that voice
except in snatches, and perhaps not with that
universality, with that dimension, with which he
did? So we are asked to read his books instead!
When can you grow? When you have seen the inner
light awakened, to see, to hear and to follow.
Now that is where I found if there is some trick
or technique by which that inner awakening can
be made, and the conscience can once again come
into its own as an inner voice in each one of
you, that will be your formulation of your
ethical life on the basis of your own
experience. Not denying the experience of
others, but by gathering the higher rationality
and a higher illumination and power which can be
helping us to have a more harmonious society
than we have been having.
Conscience has been hailed to be a discordant
note in a political society. Conscience is the
only note that can bring us together in a
spiritual society. That is why if even politics
is to be purified, this conscience has to come
into its own. That is a truth which Gandhiji
fully realized and affirmed. Nobody emphasized
it so greatly as he in his own political life,
and in his own religious one.
But the danger has been, as we know, the
preoccupation with politics too early. Before it
has become illumined in the hearts of every
being, people were gathered and carried away by
what is called the glamour of a conscience of
one man rather than the conscience of every man
clamouring for its own, harmonious formulation
in the whole.
Now you ask me whether I do believe that
these consciences will not collide with each
other and cast shadows on each other. No! If
they are taken up to the highest point to which
our own srutis have gone, it is possible to have
it. So how to hear the sruti is the problem. How
each one of us is to become a mantra-drishta,
how to see the mantra which each one of those
people saw? What is a mantra? The technical
meaning of the word mantra, is, that by thought
to cross over. It is that process by which you
cross over all the limitations of an
individuality, and separatism, and disharmony by
getting at that thought which makes for
liberation of your Self. If the Veda has been
considered to be a doctrine of liberation and
not merely a doctrine of rites and rituals, it
is there that we get these things. And any
scripture that has gone up to that point, when
it has been capable, by means of the highest
thought, to liberate us and take us beyond it,
that would be a scripture and a revelation.
On the contrary everybody is given mantras
but the mantras belong to a lower order. So what
is that mantra which we can, and which we are,
to get? As this system of Sri Ramchandra's Raja
Yoga fully puts it, the original manas or
thought which is first born of the first mind of
God is that which is capable of being the force
by which a transcendence of being is possible.
And that force which is qualified by this
rhythm, or by its vibration, can not only
control your entire being but reorganize you and
prepare you to hear that higher voice of the
divine. Therefore this thought, the supreme
first mind of God, or manas, is now being
introduced into the abhyasi as the force by
which he can be regulated and taken higher and
higher to a point of a direct audition of the
divine. He becomes, then, an embodiment and
personality of the divine in so far as he only
listens to that voice as the voice that is
within him, and yet transcendentally capable of
applying to everybody; and which he can also
make clear to everyone as a liberating influence
in human life.
So, this is the value of the mantra. It is
something, which is heard. And you know, of
course, many people will find that what is heard
is what is heard from the teacher! And how? Of
course by means of bhashyas and all that! That
is why we are called again. Sruti has come to be
a question of a mere repetition and recitation
of scriptures. Or, rather, learning the
scripture orally from the master, and in
repeating it again, and transmitting it that
way. We are grateful to these people who
preserved the scripture, transmitted in that
manner, heard from the master, learnt by the
pupil, and once again taught not by books, but
by recitation. Well they have done that. It has
been how we have preserved not only our
literature but every other literature as well.
May be that these people did not know how to
print books, or may be they had no writing
material or something like that, and that is why
they did all that but we don't believe so. We
believe that the highest spiritual truths must
be got in a personal way from the Master who
knows not merely the word-meaning of it but also
the force by which it can begin to transform
your life.
When we have so many scriptures in this
world, what is our problem? Our problem is, how
we can, directly, without the aid of language,
go to thought itself. Because language is merely
a vehicle of that thought. And languages can be
many, but the thought is one. And this thought,
given by the supreme Master, by God himself, to
us, can produce that possibility of an entire
revelation of a sruti in your conscience. And
your conscience therefore becomes awakened to a
new dimension of being which is beyond all that
we know about society or politics, race or
colour, or any other thing. It is truly
universal in that sense, and truly liberating.
The literal meaning of the word Mantra, really
shows us the genesis of the idea of a
super-conscious mind filling in the supreme
thought into you and working your
transformation.
This is the system, without all those things
which take several years just to learn even the
text of it, and where the only earnestness is to
learn the letter and the sound of it but not the
force by which it comes to transform and lead
you to liberation. Shri Ram Chandraji, my
beloved Master, has shown that this process of a
higher vibration, which may be accompanied
sometimes by sound though not always - it comes
as a vibration and it is translated into sound
very much like, I think, your receivers
converting the vibrations into sound - if that
possibility occurs, then a man becomes a
super-auditional man, a vedic seer, a Rishi. Or
he may become one who merely sees-a mantra
drishta, he may not hear, he may see the mantra.
That is another possibility. He sees the
darshan, I mean this higher truth, and it comes
to him in that form. So some cases we have, I
think due to suggestion and other things. Some
people have created imageries of this vision and
given them forms. But really if you go backward
you can dissolve them into their original
components of waves and vibrations. It is a more
primary fact in higher reality. So if you look
into this aspect of the mantra-drishti and
mantra-sruti, you find that the consciousness
grows into these dimensions under the guidance
of the Master of this system. It is very easy,
for the obvious reason that what is introduced
into you is a living breath, which the Upanishad
puts very neatly
"Keneshitam patati preshitam manaha
Kena prana prathama praiti yuktaha.
Keneshitam vachamimam vadanti
Chakshu, srotram, ka u devo yunakti"
What is that force by which I see, I hear, I
speak, I mind?
Srotrasya srotram manaso manoyad
Vacho ha vacham sa u Pranasya Pranaha,
Chakshusaschakshur atimuchya dheerah
Pretya asmallokad amrita bhavanti.
That is how the Kena upanishad puts it. That
is why what is designated as the Pranasya
Pranaha, the breath of breath, is also chakshu
of chakshuhu is also the srotra of the srotra,
and the vak of vak. So it is that force which we
call the Pranasya Pranaha, the supreme force
which we call the Manas which later on became
degraded into reason and all that. This is the
original concept of it, and it is, by the great
Lalaji, mentioned as component At-man,
Brah-man-'Man' is used there as designating the
supreme first mind of God. He has written it in
his studies on Vedic knowledge which was
published in the "Sahaj Marg" in Hindi and Urdu,
I believe. Now that is the position. If you take
that point you will find that this concept of
mind being capable of being seen at that level,
heard at that level, lived by at that level,
that is actively, dynamically participated in;
that is lived, and spoken of at that level,
indescribable though to us. It is at that level
described in a different way as amenable to that
consciousness, and in tune with THAT
consciousness, with its own vocabulary or
dictionary, if I may so put it, which they call
the nirguna of the higher order, or the nirukta;
and all vyakarana, the grammar of experience,
everything is there at that level.
But since we are today looking for what is
called postvedic grammar and dictions and all
that, we do not know anything about this sruti.
There is a distortion. If you can once again
recover that consciousness, that Conscience as I
may put it, which is verified within by each one
of the mantra-drishtas and the great mantrikas,
we have the recovery of conscience practically
made by every one of us. The recovery of
conscience, then, in this sense of a word of the
voice of God within us, of the Ultimate within
us, is an absolute necessity. And it is not
beyond our reach, nor should we think it is a
desperate point that we can never get at that
kind of consciousness, that we cannot become
rishis, that we cannot become 'kavis'. One man
asked me 'If those people have failed, what can
I do?' Where they have failed, these have been
stepping stones for us to go beyond. Their
failures are our successes, or preparations for
our successes.
That is why our past is merely something on
which we build our future! Don't think it is
something to be destroyed by us! Even if they
are rubble, you can yet build on that. By what?
By the discovery of the inner consciousness
which is a living force, a creative and dynamic
force.
This same mantra was, at one stage, called
the tantra. There is no mantra without a tantra.
Here, again, if I want to go back to the
meaning, what is that Tam which I have to
realize as the Ultimate? That is That! Tat
tvamasi - what is THAT? Realize That and take it
back, and by that you cross over. Here again my
Master has given the meaning of the Ultimate as
Tam. The name of it is Tam - THAT. You cannot
express it in any other languages. You cannot
call it aham, you cannot call it tvam. It is
THAT. That-if you cannot get THAT, and that is
the Pranasya Prana which he offers in his
Pranahuti, into every one of you, then that
little flame, that little light, that little
word, gets projected into you and speaks from
within you. Then this God is reborn in the souls
of men and conscience has a real light which
will be enduring, which will be unfailing. Then
you have a fearlessness, which is beyond all
compare.
It is one of the great attributes of man that
he is always in fear. It is the great attribute
of a God that he is fearless. The Divine gives
fearlessness as Rama in the Ramayana said,
"Abhayam sarvabhutebhyo dadami, etat vratam mama"
I can say that abhaya is something which I
give - fearlessness - not merely security from
suffering. I give you fearlessness from every
element - sarvabhutebhyo-from every element, and
from every creature in the universe, gods and
men, plants and vipers. If one can give you
that, he who can give you that must be a God, is
it not? That is how we designated Rama. 'Abhayam
sarvabhutebhyo dadami etat vratam mama', now he
who can give that, as Plato said, walk with him
unto death, unto eternity. Such a one is amongst
us today. I humbly submit that here is a
Personality who can give that living force into
you to awaken the mantra in you, and the tantra
in you. And all that you are needed to do is to
surrender to that force by which your whole life
may be not merely re-illuminated, but also
guided in the most highly ethical sense of the
term.
When Frank Buchnan, in his Moral Rearmament
movement, tried to say that our society and the
universal society can only be brought into a
moral position by involving the divine or God
every day, (by which alone you can live) he was
uttering a truth of very great significance for
most people, who had forgotten how to rely on
God. They had relied on the scriptures and on
this and that. He quietly said, sit in prayer
every morning and ask of God what I shall do,
note it down and do it without any question.
That was an appeal to conscience, if I may put
it to you. That was an inkling but how far does
it go? If morality is merely social amelioration
and acts of kindness, I have nothing to say
against it. It is very good. We can do MORE than
that when we awaken the conscience a little
more, not merely by habit of practising in the
morning, but by a living transcendence over the
conditions in which we live; by bringing in the
highest force possible, the same revelationary
force by which a Mohammed saw, a Moses saw, and
our Vedic seers saw, the great Zarathustra saw,
or a Confucious saw, all that we go beyond.
Because there is one common factor, unless you
yield yourself to the divine, the divine does
not mould itself into your pattern. So is this
consciousness, if you can only submit yourself
to this great experiment in divine living.
Conscience can once again come to its pristine,
real meaning and not be what it is today, a
laughing stock of everybody.
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