There is Absolute Truth, but are evil and good relative terms?

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

i hope that this lecture on the Yoga of Self-Knowledge will enrich you, as it

has myself. There are some really good points made in it. i especially liked

this part:

 

" The legalistic point of view gets in the way of our understanding on this

point. Reason, while it remains limited within the concrete world of time and

space and finite objects, alienates us from what we are discussing. But we will

not achieve this true self-realisation as long as we remain in the posture of a

judge or critic. As Swami Rama says: Rama urges no law or theories, but the

logic of events. Wherever you hear the statement 'the law allows it', remember

that the fellow is up to mischief. To live in love is to live true to yourself.

The real law is my Self. To dictate law to me is to sever it from me. "

 

i love the subtlety of the statement:

 

" to dictate law to me is to sever it from me. "

 

How many incarnations, prophets, saints and seers have had a 'scribe' or

'Pharisee' try and apply the letter of the law to their actions, when they were

fulfilling way beyond any letter of the law, to the Spirit of the Law itself?!

It is no wonder Christ labelled all these as 'hypocrites' and told them to take

out the beam from their own eye, before they could really 'judge' whether there

was even a 'sliver' in someone's else's eye. Self-realisation is really subtle

and connected to the infinite, not the finite.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

 

Evil and good are relative terms, not absolutes. There is nothing wholly good or

bad. It depends on the circumstances, and not only the outer circumstances but,

much more important, the inner circumstances and one's attitude towards events.

To the really wise man there is no adverse circumstance, because he is able to

turn all untoward events to good use. Wisdom transmutes experience, enabling us

to deal wisely and effectively with whatever betides us.

 

Swami Rama Tirtha says that what makes something good or bad is relative. It is

like the mathematical figure 1, which has a different significance depending on

which side of the decimal point it appears. What is good at one stage of our

spiritual development is bad at another.

 

If you read that great philosophical classic Ethical Studies by F.H. Bradley, in

which he considers all the possible meanings of the word 'good', you will find

that he finally comes to the conclusion that what is good is that which realises

the higher self of man, what Bradley calls the ideal self. Man realises himself

in his actions and aspirations, but not all are equally good and worth-while. He

also has lower urges and narrow selfish impulses. These too are an attempt at

self-realisation, but they are a relatively blind attempt to realise the lower

self, of which the Bhagavad Gita speaks. As Bradley says:

 

On the one hand, we find ourselves evil; the evil is as much a fact as the good,

and without our bad self we should hardly know ourselves. On the other hand, we

refuse to accept the bad self as our reality; and the thought, the old thought

which in different forms is common alike to art, philosophy and religion, is

here suggested once more, that all existence is not truth, that all facts are

not in the same sense real, or that what is real for one mode or stage of

consciousness is not therefore real for another and higher stage, still less so

for that which, present in all, is yet above all modes and stages.

 

There is something real and abiding in man's personality and there are also many

features of it which have only a temporary and ephemeral quality. The child may

be father to the man, in Wordsworth's phrase, but we are not the same in our

constitution, our attitudes, our experience, or our foolishness or wisdom, as we

were even a year go, let alone twenty years ago. As we grow, we change and our

physical constitution changes with it. What we could do when we were young, we

can no longer do as we grow older. Yet there are other things in which we become

more capable through experience and practice. What is true of the changes in the

physical body is much more true of the mind and personality with its quicksilver

changes, putting the chameleon to shame by the sudden vacillations in its moods

and opinions.

 

As the Gita teaches, man has two natures, a lower nature, which partakes of the

emphemeral quality of nature, with its ever-changing appearances, and a higher

nature, which has a reality and an abiding and unchanging quality. This

immutable element in the personality is in complete contrast to the dancing

atoms of the physical body, continually needing to be replenished by food and

drink, and to the momentary fluctuations of mood and passing fancies of the

mercurial mind, continually being influenced and augmented by sense experience.

Bradley's point is that the good, in its real and ultimate sense, turns out to

be the realisation of this higher Self, while the bad or evil self, which we all

recognise in our lower nature, is in some senses only an unreal appearance, only

phenomenally and temporarily existent as an aberration hiding our true Self from

us.

 

Yoga is about the need to achieve self-realisation of this spiritual element

within the personality. And this is the theme which underlies the teaching of

the great yogis like Swami Rama Tirtha. Towards the end of his life he wrote a

message for the Indian people and for the world, in the course of which he said:

 

Man in regard to his individual body lives in the consciousness of unity of

Self; despite the seeming differences in the functions of the different organs,

the same 'I' sees, hears, walks and so on. So in regard to the whole world the

free man lives in the consciousness of unity of the world-self, and the

differences take care of themselves, even as the assimilation of food, the

growth of hair, etc., take care of themselves in a single body. It is through

realising one's infinity, conquering all sense of difference, feeling our

oneness with all, realising the stars, landscapes, rivers and all as my own that

all temptations lose their power over us.

 

What Swami Rama Tirtha is talking about here is not simply an intellectual

understanding of the principle of unity, but a realisation of it through loving

identification and spiritual vision. It is not through the imposition of any law

that this realisation will come, and the feeling of identity with all is not a

question of imagining that nothing matters except oneself. As he says, it has to

be through what he calls 'love-owning', but he stresses that this is nothing

foreign or unnatural to us. 'True religion (he writes) means faith in good

rather than faith in God', and when we have the right attitude to things then

the problem of joy and sorrow solves itself. As he says: 'Night is just as good

as day. Storm is just as necessary as sunlight.'

 

The legalistic point of view gets in the way of our understanding on this point.

Reason, while it remains limited within the concrete world of time and space and

finite objects, alienates us from what we are discussing. But we will not

achieve this true self-realisation as long as we remain in the posture of a

judge or critic. As Swami Rama says:

 

Rama urges no law or theories, but the logic of events. Wherever you hear the

statement 'the law allows it', remember that the fellow is up to mischief. To

live in love is to live true to yourself. The real law is my Self. To dictate

law to me is to sever it from me.

 

Should any laws be laid down for the child, commanding him to breathe, to grow

or play or live? Is not his very life law? Like a free bird, a child is seen

singing, laughing and talking spontaneously. There comes up the officious

visitor soliciting him to sing, talk and laugh. Immediately the child stops. The

playful expressions which were so natural for him turn unnatural the moment the

consciousness of being alien to those expressions is brought home to him.

 

Whoever lives a free life, true to the Self, a life of divine recklessness, all

the laws of the world are true to him, being identical with him. He abhors

nothing. He curls up from nothing. He shrinks from nothing.

 

This passage is Swami Rama Tirtha speaking from the height and authority of his

own spiritual experience. And it is the ideal which Yoga aims to achieve for

each and every man.

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 46-49