And why didn't Jesus just not let the crucifixion happen?

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

My undestood is: Only two saint Jesus and Basava sacrifice life (and help us

because get social aspect of Karma which we always only accumulate).

 

I send you this chapter from book "Unto the First" H.H. Mahatapasvi Shri

Kumarswamiji!

My God bless You

Mahapratibhawan

 

H. H. SHRI KUMARSWAMIJI

 

PREFACE

 

The Book contains ten articles which appear to be different in form but they are

one in Substance. The substance is the spiritual nisus which heralds the

spiri­tual revolution and the spiritual revolution is bound to happen. Sri

Aurobindo remarks, "The changes we see in the world today are intellectual,

moral, physical in their ideal and intention: the spiritual revolution waits for

its hour and throws up meanwhile it waves here and there. Until it comes, the

sense of the others can­not be understood and till then all interpretations of

present happening and forecast of man's future are vain things, for its nature,

power, event are that which will determine the next

cycle of our humanity."

 

Instead of giving a list of books to which the author has referred in the form

of index, he simply admits his indebtedness to the authors from whose books he

has drawn quotations.

 

H.H. Shri Kumarswamiji

 

Tapovan,

 

DHARWAD - 3

 

KARNATAKA - INDIA

 

1-Jan-1993.

 

CONTENTS

 

 

 

1. YOGA AND SCIENCE 1

 

2. SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY 6

 

3. A METAPHYSICS OF ART 14

 

4. PHILOSOPHY OF YOGA 29

 

5. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 40

 

6. EDUCATION 47

 

7. VALUES OF LIFE 59

 

8. TIDES OF LIFE 69

 

9. AGAMAS 77

 

10. SACRIFICE (YAJNA) AND CROSS 86

 

 

SACRIFICE (YAJNA) AND CROSS

 

 

The wheel of life is characterised by competition, co-operation and

self-dedication. These are the three ways in which beings make life a

fulfilment. The lowest order of life subsists by sheer competition. In this

stage, the struggle for existence is an endless warfare. The physically strong

and the fittest survive while the weak and the feeble are either left in the

background or exterminated. This law of the survival of the fittest prevails in

life at the physical level; plants, birds and beasts bear testimony to it.

 

In the life at the mental level, competition gets minimised and co-operation

gains ground. Corporate life is more conducive to growth and progress than the

competitive one. The civilisation of man is mainly based on his gregarious

instinct. Man is a social being and his sociability is attested by the fact

that, for his very existence he depends upon the contribution of oth­ers. All

knowledge, culture and civilisation are built by co-operative efforts. Mutual

give and take, mutual sym­pathy and helpfulness, mutual love and toleration

characterise the social life. Man as a member of society is

already enjoying many privileges and benefits. He must pay for them in the form

of doing his duty for which he is fit in the best possible way. But there is a

ten­dency afoot to demand as much as possible and to do as little as possible.

It is needless to say that this tendency is very inimical for human society. Man

really hastens the advent of peace by becoming more and more conscious and

careful of his duties and more and more forgetful of his rights, for he has

already enough of them. If every one but did his duty, human society would be

much happier than it is today.

 

Self-dedication is the highest law of life. It pre­vails at the ethical and

spiritual planes. The act of of­fering the best and the most useful in one for

the wel­fare of the others is self-dedication. Both the giver and the receiver

stand to gain through this sacred act. It is like draining the water away from a

well into a fertile field. This act goes by the name of Yajna which liter­ally

means sacrifice. As fresh water wells out from an emptied well, the man who

performs Yajna becomes more enlightened. By imparting one's learning to others

the capacity to teach increases. By sharing one's wealth with all those who have

been responsible for its growth, security and further expansion are ensured. The

personal weal is

ever contained in the public weal; to give effect to this law of nature is the

practice of Ya­jna.

 

Dedicating oneself to spiritual life amounts to the performance of Yajna. Waging

a righteous warfare to wipe out wickedness from the world is an act of Yajna.

Increasing the wealth of the country not for self-ag­grandizement but for

people's welfare is Yajna. Humble labourers such as hewers of wood, drawers of

water, tillers of soil and carriers of load are also performing Yajna when they

assume the attitude that with the sweat of their brow they are serving the Lord.

It is the atti­tude of self-dedication that transforms the soul entan­gling in

Karma into the soul-emancipating Yajna.

 

Yajna is called Kamadhenu. It is a mythological milch cow, having a woman's

head, a cow's body and a bird's wings. The usefulness of the human, the beast

and the bird are all combined in it. The owner of this divine cow is believed to

have all his wants immedi­ately supplied. The doer of Yajna is never in wants;

he is always in affluence. His mind is the real Kamad­henu because work

performed with the right frame of mind gets converted into Yajna. The effect of

that work assumes a subtle force which is known as apurva. The Sun converts the

sea water into the invisible vapour which is

equivalent to apurva. In its turn the vapour becomes rain. The rubbish confined

to fire changes it­self into the invisible carbon dioxide. It is again apur­va;

it then forms food to the plants. Similarly man's self-dedication of Yajna

changes into mental force which is apurva. The purer the man and his motive, the

stronger is the mental force.

 

A day passed bereft of the performance of Yajna is a day gone to waste. An ideal

man is he who en­gages himself daily in the five great Yajnas. First among them

is Deva Yajna - the worship of God. The day should begin with this and has to be

gone through devoutly. God is invisible but he manifests himself through nature,

and we must be grateful to him for the invaluable gifts of air, water, earth,

light and so many other things. All these are the kind gifts of God. In lieu of

these things we have to make some offerings in the form of prayer and piety as

tokens of our grati­tude.

 

The second is Rishi Yajna - the adoration of the enlightened. Those who have had

God-realization do not allow their experiences to go into oblivion. They pass

them on to posterity in the form of scriptures and sa­cred books. A devout study

and practice of the princi­ples contained in them and expounding the holy

scrip­tures, with a devotional attitude to the ardent students, constitute

Yajna. Rishi Yajna is wide enough to include the teachers, discoverers and

inventors who have brought our civilisation to this stage and to whom we owe our

knowledge. We have to pay off this debt by writing books and by imparting

knowledge to others.

 

The third is Pitru Yajna. The living parents have to be revered and

devotedly served every day. He who pleases not his parents cannot please

anybody. The debt is paid off by contributing to the well - being of the family

and the society.

 

The fourth is Nara Yajna - the devoted service rendered to mankind.

Individuals are the limbs of the community. At all levels and in all fields, the

interest of the limb should be subordinated to that of the main body. Any

position reverse to this is definitely harmful. That man who places the public

good above the per­sonal good and acts accordingly is doing Nara Yajna.

Maintenance and rearing of the dependants, charity and service to the blind,

invalid and poor, entertaining guests and helping social welfare works - all

these are known as Nara - Yajna.

 

Bhuta Yajna is a recurrent feeling towards living beings. The domestic animals

and birds require to be tended with due regard. Generally Yajna means debt or

runa.

 

The Vedas are the earliest available records of Indian literature, and

subsequent Indian thought is greatly influenced by the Vedas. Some of the

philosophical schools accepted Vedic authority while others opposed it. The

Mimamsa and the Vedanta may be regarded as the direct continuation of the Vedic

culture. The Vedic tradition had two sides, ritualistic and speculative. The

Mimamsa emphasised the ritualistic aspect and raised a philosophy to justify the

sacrificial rites and rituals. The concept of the sacrifice reached its

culmination in the Brahmanas. It is a pity that much intellect has been wasted

on the formulation of the details of the various

sacrificial rites. The spirit of the Upanishads, on the other hand, barring a

few exceptions, is antagonistic to the sacrificial doctrine of the Brahmanas.

Even at the time of the Chhandogya, a very early Upanishad, the efficacy of the

inner sacrifice had come to be definitely recognised. "Our real sacrifice

consists in making oblations to the Prana within us. One who does not know this

inner sacrifice, even if he were to go in for a formal sacri­fice, throws

oblations merely on the ashes. On the other hand, he who knows this inner

sacrifice is re­lieved of his sins as surely as wool is

burnt in a flame of fire." The Brahmanical idea of sacrifice was transformed

into the mental one which came to be modulated in the days of the Upanishads.

The physical sacrifice was helpful to the process of the acquisition of

spiritual knowledge.

 

The Gita follows the trend of the Upanishads. It elaborates the concept of

mental sacrifice giving it a wider connotation. In the Brahmanas Yajna is taken

to mean ceremonial sacrifice which is the means of gain­ing children, wealth and

enjoyment. By ceremonial sac­rifice rain is brought down from heaven and the

conti­nuity of the race is assured. Life is thought a contin­ual transaction

between the Gods and men in which man offers ceremonial gifts to the Gods and in

turn the life of man is enriched, protected and fostered. Hence all human works

have to be accompanied and turned into a sacrament by ceremonial sacrifice and

ritualistic worship.

 

The Gita is not satisfied with this meaning of Yajna offered by the

Brahmanas. For the Gita Yajna is self-dedication attended with all the wealth of

psycho­logical significance. The fire of sacrifice or Agni is no material flame

but it is the inward energy, it is the fire of self-control, it is the fire of

self-knowledge in which all the impurities are burnt. The Gita speaks of the

psychological sacrifice or self- control and self-dis­cipline which leads to the

higher self-possession and self-knowledge. "Some offer their senses into the

fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the fires of sense, and

others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force

into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge." The one thing

needful is to

subordinate the lower activities, to diminish the control of desire and replace

it by a su­perior energy, to abandon the egoistic enjoyment for that divine

delight which comes by self-dedication to a higher and greater aim.

 

Our physical life is a journey, a pilgrimage of the body and that cannot be

effected without action. Even if a man could leave his body unmaintained, he

could sit inert like a stone that immobility would not save him from the hands

of nature, would not liberate him from her workings. For it is not our physical

move­ments alone which are meant by works, by Karma; our mental activities also

count to a great extent. Why? Mental activity is greater and more important part

of the work, since it is the subjective cause and determi­nant of the physical.

We will gain nothing if we re­press the effect but retain the activity of the

subjective cause. The objects of sense are

only an occasion for our bondage, the mind's insistence on them is the means,

the instrumental cause. Since mind is the in­strumental cause, since inaction is

not possible except in samadhi, the right way then is a controlled action of the

subjective and objective organism. The mind must bring the senses under control

and the organs must be used for their proper function. What is the essence of

this self-control? It is non-attachment it is to do works without clinging with

the mind to the ob­jects of sense and the fruits of works. Not complete inaction

but action done without subjection to sense and passion. This is Karma Yoga.

 

Yajna is Karma and Karma is both individual and social. This world abounds in

facilities and ameni­ties that have come about as a result of the sacrifices of

several people. The new-born baby is nursed and brought up, that is sacrifice of

the parent. The youth receives education through institutions. The food that man

consumes, the house that he lives in, the clothing that he wears, the means of

transport that is available to him-all these are the outcome of sacrifices made

by other people. Whatever man does must be more bene­ficial to others than to

himself. His doings become Yajna in proportion to their public utility. When a

bal­ance is struck between

receipts and gifts, a righteous man is he who gives more than he receives.

Indebted is that man who appropriates more than he gives. A thief is he who

grabs everything and sacrifices nothing. This spirit of grabbing is the root of

suffering and the cumulative effect of greedy appropriation and egocentric

selfishness are sin. Sin has a social value which needs to be negated through

the unremitting suffering of the saints and sages, of the Masters and mystics.

The spiritual and moral idea that springs from the fact

of the pre-creative God entering into the pro-creative series, is that of

sacrifice. God sacrifices himself and sacrifice involves love and suffering,

hence suffering is a necessary element in the development of the highest

reverence.

 

The Gita looks at the law of Karma in a new light, according to which the fruit

of deeds is not an individual but a social burden and is modifiable by the

attitude and the conduct of one and all. The natural tendency of evil Karma is

cumulative and its drift is towards the absolute ruin of humanity. But by

entailing unmerited suffering, it provides love with an opportu­nity of supreme

self-expression, potent to reclaim the wrongdoer. In the Gospels

also we find the same trend of thought. Christ can be cited as an instance of

active love sharing undeservedly in the Karma of sin.

 

When we study the three parables, namely, the lost sheep, the lost coin and the

prodigal son, we find that Christ grouped all the possible varieties of sins

into three classes. Sins which men commit by the force of instinct are dealt

with in the parable of the lost sheep. Sins which men commit by the force of

eternal circum­stances are dealt with in the parable of the lost coin. Sins

which men deliberately commit out of their own free will, knowing that they are

doing sins, are dealt with in the parable of the prodigal son.

 

The selection of the sheep in the first parable is quite a happy and

appropriate one. Christ wished to talk about those per­sons who like the sheep,

would follow their instincts blindly and get entangled in the difficulties of

which they are entirely ignorant. The sheep is an animal that has only instinct

and it is led away by the allurements of nature, beyond the province of the

shepherd, as it loses the remembrance of the path through which it wanders. The

shepherd having found out that he missed one of his sheep, went in search of it

leaving all the rest in the wilderness, and when he found it he rejoiced on his

success. Men, who have fallen away

from the path of righteousness, who have been led astray by their instincts, are

compared to the lost sheep. Christ implies by this parable that he will go after

such men, seek them till he finds them and re­joices like the shepherd after

finding them. The idea of the shepherd's rejoicing shows the intensity of God's

will to save the lost ones.

 

Out of ten coins in the second parable one was accidently dropped from its

proper place and lay hid­den in the dust. The owner searched for it very

mi­nutely and having found it, rejoiced over it. Here also the selection of coin

is appropriate to explain the char­acteristic features of that class of sinners

who become lost neither by their instinct nor by their free will, but by the

action of external circumstances over which they have no control.

A person born in the scum of society, will be compelled to commit sins

incidental to his envi­ronments with or without knowledge. Men who commit sins

through the least control over the circumstances, are implied in the lost coin.

Such lost-coin will be sought by the owner who is none other than God.

 

The third parable speaks of a prodigal son who deliberately left his father in

order that he might enjoy the pleasures of the world without being hampered by

his father, and this folly of his, reduced him to a very low position where he

had to eat husk. When he re­turned home his father welcomed him to his house and

rejoiced on his coming. Christ tried to explain by this parable that there would

be a large number of persons who would become lost to God by their wilful

actions and that He will rejoice at their restitution. The par­able tells us

that the experiences through which this class of sinners will have to pass, will

be severer than those to which

the other two classes are to be sub­jected, before they turn to God.

 

In these parables are epitomised the different ways in which persons may become

lost to God. The sheep became lost because its instinct told it that there would

be enjoyment and pleasure outside the fold of the shepherd, and it was quite

ignorant of the pitfalls and other difficulties that there would be in the world

outside. The instinct being unchecked led the sheep astray. We may view sinners

of this type as persons who sinned through ignorance.

 

The next class of per­sons, who may become lost are those who like the coins

having been dropped from their proper places, lie in the dust and defilement.

These have become lost, not out of their ignorance but simply by the force of

ex­ternal circumstances. These may be viewed as the vic­tims of the

circumstances for which they are not re­sponsible, and that such persons differ

from those mentioned above, in so far as instinct and ignorance are not the

causes of sin committed by them.

 

The third class of sinners are those who like the prodigal son have spurned the

advantages given to them by their heavenly Father and have wilfully and

deliberately chosen to be classed among lost persons. These persons differ from

the first class in so far as they know that the world is full of allurements

which will lead to their spiritual ruin, and they differ from the second class,

because the outside circumstances have not played upon them. These will be

severely pun­ished by the law of Karma which is solely

intended to remind people of their becoming lost, before they will be owned by

God.

 

The law of Karma is the law of justice and jus­tice consists in the

equitable apportionment of rewards and punishments, according to the nature of

the Karma of each individual. Karma on the psychological level implies that

every action must have its effect in the form of impressions, good or bad,

according to the law of retributive justice. What a man sows he reaps and not

even the gods can alter the course of the moral law. In its ethical aspect, the

law of Karma af­firms the freedom of the individual. Freedom is a real

possibility and the individual can control his moral propensities embedded in

its psychological equipment; he can make or mar his fortune. But

on the religious level the law of Karma is not all-powerful, salvation would be

impossible if justice functioned through the mathematical rigour of the law of

Karma, hence ethical religion requires that the legal concept of Karma should be

transformed into the religious idea of re­demptive love; The grace of God

transfigures the rigor­ous law of Karma and Karma then becomes an attitude of

self-sur­render. This attitude of surrender sanctifies suffering. Cross is the

sign of suffering.

 

 

 

"Through all the depths of sin and loss

 

Drops the plummet of the cross

 

Never yet abyss was found

 

Deeper than the cross could sound."

 

 

 

Christ, who is crowned with many diadems of suf­fering and martyrdom, calls upon

those who are his followers to take up the cross. He invites them to the very

same services of the Cross, for which he gave his life in sacrifice. He asks

them to join the long succes­sion of the children of faith who in every age,

went forth as pilgrims seeking the city which hath founda­tions whose Builder

and Maker is God.