Chapter Three: What Is Happening to Our Planet?
Few people, even among those most resistant to the thought of this being a new age, will deny that we live in a time of crisis. A person has only to listen to popular music to feel the pulse of the times.
It is revealing to trace the recent development of popular music: from the stately minuet of two centuries ago through the more exuberant rhythms of the waltz ("shockingly sensuous," people thought it when it first appeared), to the nervous excitement of the jazz age. Jazz-age nervousness was followed by hysteria, and the ponderous self-affirmation of the 'forties, with its era of the big bands. Then came, with increasing insistency, the violence, anguish, outrage, and brute passion of modern rock. This 200-year development demonstrates what sweeping changes public attitudes have undergone. Popular music says it better, perhaps, than any other medium: We live in a time of tension, of conflict inwardly and outwardly, of apocalyptic fear. Small wonder that fundamentalists look upon these as the "end times" predicted in the Bible, and find nothing to hope for from the new age.
It takes time for sweeping changes to occur. It takes time for them even to be noticed. Once they are noticed, they usually evoke a host of reactions, both positive and negative, that confuse the issues, and further delay the arrival of clear understanding. Change never comes easily.
Let us, then, step outside the present, and let us view the changes we're contemplating as historic events. We'll pretend, for a space, that we live in the future—in, let us say, the Twenty-Third Century A.D., or, to be thoroughly futuristic, in the year 493 Dwapara.
Kali Yuga (our historians tell us) was a time when human consciousness was limited by the belief that matter was fixed and absolute. Mankind was committed to that belief, and therefore could not easily understand things in fluid terms.
In religion, a truth was acceptable only if it could be clothed in an absolute definition—a dogma, as they quaintly called it then. The universe, even to the scientists of those times, was a giant mechanism. People visualized even the divine realms as being static, not dynamic—almost like crystal images, frozen in eternity.
In society, too, everything was assigned its proper place. People had their defined positions, and were, in turn, defined by those positions. A king was a king, not simply a human being living out a regal role. A peasant was a peasant, and if ever people thought of him in purely human terms (which they seldom did), then—to his social betters, at least—he definitely belonged to a lower order of humanity.
Challenges to the status quo were inconceivable, for the status quo was a mental state. People for the most part simply didn't inquire into such matters.
And then, gradually, the fogs of Kali Yuga began to lift. Old forms began to lose definition, like stars before the approaching dawn. Dwapara's influence began to filter into the world and into human consciousness.
Soon, a few precocious spirits began making startling discoveries. They learned that the earth is not flat as everyone had imagined, but round. Copernicus, in the early Sixteenth Century, proposed that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe, and was later backed in his theory by Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. Copernicus created a storm of protest, however, in more orthodox circles, where it was felt that the very foundations of religion were being shaken.
The Seventeenth Century saw the end of the night of Kali Yuga. Fixed notions regarding the natural order, based on the syllogisms of logic, lost their grip and were swept away on the incoming tides of modern scientific discovery. Dogmatic assertions gave way to experimentation as the sensible method for arriving at a truth. The ramparts of established assumptions were breached year after year by the steady cannonades of new findings.
High-walled habits of thought, however, though often breached, were not easily demolished. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries—during what Sri Yukteswar called the sandhya, or transition period, into Dwapara Yuga—there was a tendency to look upon new theories and discoveries with suspicion, even with hostility. What, indeed, could have been more natural? Resistance was present even in scientific circles. William Thompson Kelvin, the Nineteenth Century British mathematician and physicist, could never accept Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, for the reason, he said, that he couldn't make a mechanical model of it.
Kali Yuga was slow to relinquish its hold on people's minds. The new Dwapara Yuga energy was put to use in reinforcing lingering Kali Yuga attitudes. Men put their increase of energy to work in plundering our planet's riches, rather than working with Nature in reciprocal harmony.
Meanwhile, more sensitive spirits—the artists, poets, and composers of the Nineteenth Century, for example—decried the apparent triumph of materialism, and dreamed nostalgically of what they fondly supposed to have been simpler times. Hans Christian Andersen, reacting to the absurdity of this romantic dream, wrote a tale in which a Nineteenth Century man was transported in time back to the Middle Ages. Andersen described the poor fellow's thorough disillusionment with the ubiquitous mud, the dark streets, the poverty, the endless inconveniences. His story made a good point.
And yet poetic spirits dreamed on. They never realized that their very dreams were animated by the new rays of awareness that would, eventually, liberate the human spirit from bondage to matter, and from the very materialism they deplored.
Where popular consciousness was concerned, the new awareness inspired in people a new desire for self-expression. Never again would they live in bondage to hereditary positions for which they felt no inner resonance. Here too, however, change came haltingly. The lingering rays of Kali Yuga caused new trends in social awareness to take the form of mass movements. People thought in terms of quantity rather than of quality. Mass uprisings, revolutions, and new social philosophies that proposed "power to the people" (rather than the more enlightened concept, "power to the truth") were simply signs of the times.
The Nineteenth Century saw what was widely touted as the triumph of materialism. In fact, what really happened was that Dwapara energy, as it filtered into people's consciousness, energized for a time their old ways of thinking, including the hypnosis of materialism. Dwapara Yuga merely appeared to animate those concepts, before it shattered them altogether.
The fact that morality, too, seemed so rigid during the Victorian era was due simply to the fact that people's traditional, fixed notions of proper behavior were being animated—preparatory, again, to their being shattered from within by the new rays of energy. People gradually found themselves inspired to adopt more fluid and energetic—above all, more loving and compassionate—ways of relating to one another.
__________ Let us now, having taken a brief glimpse backward at these general trends, return to the Twentieth Century. Nowadays it is common for people to decry the general decline in morality. Others, like Jean-Paul Sartre, who made nihilism a very definition of enlightenment, declare gloatingly that life no longer has any purpose, any meaning. From every angle, the mood of the times must be described as a crisis of faith.
People have not yet come to realize that the seeds of a deeper faith have already been sown, and that they are even now thrusting green shoots up into the air toward the welcoming sun.
Inevitably, a conflict rages between Kali Yuga attitudes, which conventional people look upon as right and good, and Dwapara attitudes, which the freer spirits on our planet today embrace as liberating. Conventional minds turn to the old texts and the old authorities in their support. In most cases, however, the support they claim is simply a matter of interpretation. Jesus Christ himself, whose teachings they so often call upon to combat science, encouraged his followers to embrace the truth, and not to be dogmatic. "The truth," he said, "shall make you free."
The conflict between the dying rigidity and dogmatism of Kali Yuga and the newborn openness of Dwapara Yuga seems destined to flare into open conflict before long. We may indeed live to see another world war, far more devastating than the last. We may suffer other types of disaster: plagues, world-wide depression, even global cataclysm, ere human consciousness becomes enough softened to receive, without obstructing them, the rays of Dwapara Yuga.
Earth changes, if they occur, will be Nature's response to the disharmonious thoughts and energies of mankind. Those same thoughts and energies, were people to turn them towards harmony, would produce world-wide changes for the better.
Devastation, however, even if it occurs, will serve only to clear the ground, so to speak, for the next season's crops. Disaster, during this ascending age or yuga, will not be total. Ultimately it will prove beneficial.
Essentially, the difference between human consciousness during Kali Yuga and during Dwapara Yuga was epitomized by Zeno in his paradox of the arrow. Zeno, a philosopher of ancient Greece, argued (those Greeks loved a good philosophical tussle!) that it is a contradiction in terms to refer to an arrow in flight. At any given moment during its supposed flight, he said, the arrow is stationary at a particular point in space. Its journey is but a series of endless points along the way. In other words, the arrow, despite appearances, isn't really moving at all.
The man of Kali Yuga mentality scratches his head, knits his eyebrows, and finally declares, "Well, gee! I guess dat makes sense. But den, how does the arrow ever get where it's goin'?" Kali Yuga mentality can't resolve the paradox for the simple reason that, to it, fixed points are the natural frame of reference; the motion between them is insubstantial, and is therefore less real.
Dwapara Yuga mentality, on the other hand, says, "How can you be so absurd! The arrow's motion is the reality, not the points along its journey. Those points, in themselves, haven't any reality. They are illusory." In Dwapara Yuga, matter itself is seen to be only a wave, or vibration, of energy.
Kali Yuga sees progress in terms of its individual stages. Dwapara Yuga sees it as a flow.
Kali Yuga sees every reality as compartmentalized, each one separate from every other. Dwapara Yuga sees reality as an integral whole.
Kali Yuga analyzes; it differentiates. Dwapara Yuga looks beneath differences for an underlying unity.
Kali Yuga says, "either...or." Dwapara Yuga says, "both...and."
For Kali Yuga mentality, as it separates every reality from every other, problems often appear to be unsolvable. Kali Yuga sees no natural connection between problems and their solutions. It is, therefore, problem-oriented, since a problem, when it exists, is the immediate reality.
Dwapara Yuga, with its unitive view, realizes that everything in creation is balanced by its opposite. Since it views things integrally, Dwapara Yuga is more naturally solution-oriented. On beholding a problem, it automatically looks for a companion solution. Dwapara Yuga therefore finds solutions to problems that, to Kali Yuga mentality, remain insoluble.
Modern science, burdened increasingly with complexity as it is, longs to find a new simplicity even as a desert traveler yearns to find an oasis. Science's fixation on details is, in fact, merely a carry-over from old Kali Yuga habits of thinking. Even today, the cutting edge of science is taking man beyond form to those forces of energy out of which forms are produced.
The struggle between fading Kali Yuga consciousness and the dawning influence of Dwapara Yuga is inevitable, and temporary. It cannot but be resolved in time. Let us therefore look ahead now, toward the time—not so distant—when the issues have become clearer. And let us visualize what the future holds for us.
For future trends are already beginning to emerge all around us. In fact, they are already becoming obvious to those who, as Jesus Christ put it, "have eyes to see."
Chapter Four: Glimpse into the Future
What may we expect in the years and centuries to come? During Kali Yuga, matter was manipulated by lifting, carrying, or beating it somewhat clumsily into shape. Muscle ruled. Even with labor-saving devices, such as the lever, the sheer complexity of lifting or transporting things about was such that even minor results required a major effort. Popular heroes were men of brawn. Importance was judged by a person's worldly power. Greatness was reckoned by his martial victories.
Nowadays, greatness is more often attributed to those who can invent devices for saving us from manual labor. We no longer stand in awe of those who, like Hercules, can do extraordinarily heavy work themselves. I remember the 1930s, when it took a considerable number of men fifteen years working with shovels to complete the underpass at the railway terminal in Bucharest, Rumania. And when, in the late 1940s in Los Angeles, California, I helped with the construction of a building, I recall we had even then to mix the concrete for its large basement by hand. Young people today have no idea how recently big machinery for jobs like these has come into use.
In future, who knows what means will be found to move heavy matter? Big machinery is the application of Dwapara-discovered energy to Kali Yuga know-how—to the lever, for instance, which was invented by the ancient Greek, Archimedes. As Dwapara Yuga progresses, subtler methods for moving matter will almost surely be discovered.
Consider this possibility: Already matter is known to be but a vibration of energy. In time, perhaps sound will be used, or other forms of vibration, to move heavy objects. Indeed, a number of avant garde thinkers have already pondered mankind's past accomplishments, during those times when civilization is thought to have been primitive, but when, according to Sri Yukteswar, it was in an advanced age of the descending yuga cycle. These writers have suggested, for example, that sound vibrations would explain better than slave labor how the largest, most ancient pyramids were built. Fanciful? Perhaps. And again, perhaps not. And if fanciful, so was Jules Verne, the Nineteenth Century French author of science fiction, most of whose "impossible" predictions have long since been fulfilled.
In this final decade of the Twentieth Century we still live only at the beginning—with nineteen more centuries to go—of Dwapara Yuga proper. As the potentials of energy continue to unfold all around us, mankind will inevitably see wonders that today would seem incredible, if we could but imagine them—wonders that, a mere two hundred years ago, would have brought their inventors to the stake.
Like the director of the U.S. Patent Office, who proposed at the end of the last century that the office be closed since everything that could possibly be invented had been invented already, a number of scientists today have been saying that we are approaching the end of discovery. The universe, they claim, holds few surprises for us any longer.
What the Patent Office director referred to was mechanical gadgets. Probably he had no idea of the impact energy would have on mechanisms. And what those kindred spirits of his in science are referring to is, again, Kali Yuga-type knowledge. It may indeed be true that we are approaching the end of discovery—from a limited, Kali Yuga perspective. The age of energy, however, will open up boundless horizons in the centuries to come.
Uncovering matter's energy-secrets will bestow on humanity hitherto undreamed-of power and freedom. The knowledge that matter is energy will give mankind unprecedented power to transform and transport matter. Such developments cannot but have an enormous impact on our lives, and on the world around us.
It will also force upon us a measure of self-discipline, lest the consequences of irresponsible behavior bring us to disaster. But let us for now concentrate on the positive opportunities before us, not on their attendant dangers. And let us have faith that the rays of energy already enlightening the human mind, that have produced so many wonders, will bestow on mankind also the wisdom to handle them safely.
Indeed, the very fear that increased power might result in our destroying the planet is merely a sign of Kali Yuga thinking. It was that kind of thinking which inspired the head-shakers of the past to declare, "If God had wanted us to fly, He'd have given us wings."
In an ascending cycle, especially, the human instinct will surely be stronger for creation than for destruction.
What, then, will be the consequences of this new consciousness, this new sense of freedom? I see three probable trends, especially.
Trend Number One: Toward Simplicity
The first will be a reaction against complexity and a return to a new simplicity. At present there is still in every field, from the physical sciences to medicine, psychology, education, business, and the sheer "business" of living, an ever-increasing burden of details. Complexity is the inheritance that Kali Yuga bequeaths to Dwapara Yuga. It is not a necessity of knowledge. It is merely the reflection of a mind more concerned with the minutiae of knowledge than with the "arrow-flight" of wisdom.
The new simplicity will be no return to rustic ignorance. Rather, it will accompany an enlightened awareness, an understanding that comes when knowledge is absorbed into an energetic flow of consciousness. What I'm describing is the simplicity of intuitive wisdom. Increasingly, people will come to realize that, when the flow is right, the details have a way of taking care of themselves. This simple truth has an even simpler reason: Energy has its own intelligence.
In music, it is from such simplicity that good melodies are born. Haunting melodies are the product of aspiration, not of a sophisticated knowledge of musical notes. (Folk melodies, indeed, are often far lovelier than those painstakingly crafted by professional composers. That is why so many composers have felt constrained to borrow their melodies from folk traditions.)
In the arts, simplicity means intuitive flow, which transcends the intricacies of either intellectual or emotional creation.
In politics, simplicity means having the wisdom to understand that a carefully worked-out treaty is never a substitute for genuine good will.
In business, simplicity means recognizing that profits result from creative energy, and not from detailed sales analyses.
In medicine, simplicity means encouraging the flow of energy in the body. Only secondarily, in future, will doctors work to cure the specific body parts.
And in science, simplicity means the knowledge that great discoveries are the product of intuition rather than of encyclopedic knowledge.
Trend Number Two: Renewed Emphasis on the Individual
The second trend will be a renewed emphasis on the individual human being. There will be less effort devoted to studying man as a social statistic, and more time devoted to his inner life, his personal attunement to higher Truth. People will come to realize that human accomplishments, even the greatest of them, will never be greater than man himself, as their source. For great achievements, in their totality, can only hint at the human potential for greatness.
Thus, complementing the continued quest for outer knowledge and dominion will be a return to the simple wisdom inscribed at the Delphic oracle, an admonition recorded in pre-history (who knows?—perhaps during the last descending Dwapara Yuga), the admonition: "Know thyself."
Trend Number Three: Quality over Quantity
The third trend will be a growing demand for quality over quantity. "Bigger" will cease to be equated with "better."
The perception of matter as an absolute reality made kings during Kali Yuga imagine that, the more territory they possessed, the greater they themselves became. It made people think of humanity in the mass, rather than as individuals. It was what led Karl Marx as late as the last century to exalt the sweating laborer over the man of ideas. (What, indeed, is communism but a dying echo of Kali Yuga?)
E.F. Schumacher a few years ago wrote a trendy book titled, Small Is Beautiful. The title itself helped to sell the book. For, increasingly in human affairs, there is a trend toward miniaturization, and away from the bulldozer mentality which sets material power against material inertia in a struggle for conquest by brute force. The trend in future will be to adapt to reality, not to beat it into submission.
Great shifts in human awareness always begin with a few individuals, sensitive enough to have perceived the need for a change, and energetic enough to put their shoulders to the wheel. Changes in the general awareness follow gradually, usually only after one or more generations.
The more fundamental and far-reaching the change, the longer the time required for it to be accepted. Thus, some at least of the old habits of Kali Yuga persist well into Dwapara Yuga, and, given average human obtuseness, may well persist, if only vestigially, well into Satya Yuga. During Kali Yuga, after all, there were a few souls such as Jesus Christ and Buddha whose attainments were of the highest even when the majority of mankind were steeped in matter-consciousness. What determines an individual's level of awareness is not only the energy entering the earth, but also his own refinement, as the instrument receiving that energy.
Old habits are affirmed most aggressively when they are confronted by new alternatives. In Dwapara Yuga, this aggressiveness is animated by the very increase in the intensity of energy. Thus, even though quantitative thinking is on the wane, we have seen in this century an exaggerated emphasis on, and appeal to, mass consciousness in every field: in politics, in social philosophy, in merchandising, in entertainment, in advertising, and even in such fields as education and religion. Nevertheless, the change is inevitable.
The shift toward an emphasis on quality will be like the other side of the coin from the new concentration on the inner man, rather than on man as a social statistic. Even science today says, "The key to the universe is the electron." Modern man will come in time to say, "The key to understanding the universe is, ultimately, man."
Unity in Diversity
Simplicity is fast becoming a must in human affairs. The flood of information has reached a point where mankind feels less and less able to cope with the sheer volume and complexity it encounters in every field.
The discovery of energy as the underlying reality of matter will change our way of processing the flood of factual information. Computers will not, I believe, prove to be the last word in this evolutional process.
A multitude of phenomena will be seen to be only expressions of a unifying flow. In countless aspects of life, people will come to realize that an understanding of the flow makes it unnecessary for a person to be over-preoccupied with details. For it will become increasingly apparent that, inherent in energy itself, there exists a sort of guiding intelligence that remains untapped as long as a person's attention is absorbed in details, but that is released when his will is engaged in what may be described as the natural rhythms of activity.
The obstructions and problems that arise when dealing with inert matter are transformed into opportunities for success, once a person becomes conscious that he is dealing with the living reality behind that appearance of inertness.
Chapter Five: Religion in the New Age
If religion today no longer commands the high esteem it once did, the reason is not hard to find. Throughout the world, religion has identified itself with attitudes that are being abandoned, as mankind embraces a new, less form-bound and form-conscious age of energy.
Religion, traditionally, has defined itself by its beliefs, not by the dynamic inner experience of peace, of closeness to God that the great Scriptures have held out in loving promise to mankind. Religion has focused its attention on the outer forms of worship to the detriment of the inner spirit which those forms were designed to express.
In the West, religion, taking its bias from Roman rationalism and not from the teachings of Jesus Christ, has frozen that spirit in organizational forms also. But the spirit of religion has suffered everywhere. For even where the forms of organization are less developed, there has been an over-emphasis on religion as a social institution, and an under-emphasis on religion as a guideline to spiritual development.
Of all human institutions, religion has always been the most resistant to change. In conservatism lies its strength, but also its greatest weakness: its strength, because religious teachings express eternal values; its weakness, because those values are, in a sense, betrayed when they are limited to specific forms of expression. It is right not to interpret those values to reflect merely passing fads. At the same time, to define them at all is already to interpret them. No mere expression of eternal values can be absolute.
Human perceptions of truth change, moreover, while the truth itself remains unchanged. When changelessness, rather than adherence to Truth, is made the guiding principle, dogmas become dogmatism. Deeply rutted habit takes over, and Truth itself is forgotten. Justifications are found ultimately for institutionalizing revelation itself.
The weakness of religion is that, in the name of preserving Truth, it buries it. For it confuses even the most wholesome changes with dilution and heresy.
Religion, in its highest aspect, is God's gift to mankind. It is not merely some wise man's gift to humanity. It is especially important for mankind to be guided by God during times of great change. With such a mission it was that the great spiritual teachers came during other crucial times in human history. Their birth was opportune, but it was also ordained. Buddha, Krishna, and Shankaracharya in the East, Jesus Christ in the West—these men were no accident of history.
In the present, dawning age of Dwapara there is an overwhelming need for some new message from on high. If ever God spoke to mankind through prophets, it is surely time He spoke again. The need is as great as it has ever been. If the Lord truly is our Father, Mother, and Eternal Friend, and if we call to Him as His children, then He must respond to our urgent need. There are limits to how far human intelligence can take our understanding.
Common sense can show us the need to adapt to new realities. Reason can facilitate this adaptive process, by helping us to see how the new discoveries actually support spiritual truths, and in no way undermine them. Our sense of history, applied to the transition from matter-bondage to energy, can show us the probable directions that religion will take in the future, once it has adapted to the insights of the new age. Nevertheless, our faith demands some clear sign from above that our all-too-human understanding is being rightly guided. Without such a sign, and such guidance, the danger of arrogance in our reasoning is simply too great. And arrogance is the death of wisdom.
With or without such guidance, we must still use reason to the best of our ability. The Divine responds only when man does his best with whatever faculties he has, not when he suspends those faculties altogether in the name of a false humility. Wisdom is not for the stupid. Nor is it for those who draw their energy about them fearfully instead of expanding it.
With or without higher guidance, then, let us call on human reason to show us what it can of future trends, that we may do our best, for our part, to adapt to them.
The first point for religion, too, to recognize is that we live in an age of energy. Religion must accept that energy is no passing fad, but is a simple matter of fact. Short of the kind of cataclysm that would bomb us all back to the caves, energy must be classed as permanent human knowledge.
Driving the nail in deeper still, we must accept that energy is the reality; matter, the illusion. Energy is the wave, or vibration, of which matter is only a manifestation. Energy, in other words, is not the product of matter, but its cause.
What does all this mean for religion? The answer forces itself on us relentlessly. For religion's power of influence lies not in its outward forms—its ceremonies, its dogmas, its institutions. It lies in the inherent spirit of which those forms are but manifestations. Truth gave us religion. It was never that religion created Truth.
The holiness of a religious ceremony lies in the energy brought to it by the depth of sincerity in priest and participants. This holiness is not of a type measurable by physical instruments. It is a spiritual energy—not seen, but felt distinctly by anyone who enters deeply into the spirit of the ceremony.
I have seen people in churches praying, but letting their eyes roam restlessly about as they watched others coming and going. I observed a priest once, reciting the office for the dead while cleaning his fingernails. And I attended vedic fire ceremonies in India where the brahmin priests went through the outer motions, and repeated by rote the requisite mantras, while at the same time glancing around them for approval.
The setting sun, as it shines upon the western clouds, irradiates them with brilliant hues. Once the sun fully disappears, however, those same clouds look gray and lusterless. It is the spirit behind religious practices, similarly, and not the practices themselves, that determines their spiritual influence.
Religion in the West, and perhaps everywhere in the world, has concentrated more on the numbers of its adherents than on the quality of their worship. Where more encouragement has been given to personal spiritual development, as it has been in India, religion finds it easier to adapt to the growing demand of our age for experience over blind belief. Ultimately, religion everywhere must move toward emphasizing the universal, eternal truths.
The importance of spirit over form, and of experiment (or experience) over dogmatic assertions: These are what must now be emphasized in religion. Unless these principles are allowed to claim their rightful place, religion will become increasingly irrelevant. It isn't likely that it will be able to continue its resistance to these valid expectations much longer, however. For religion is an eternal need of the soul. Without religion of some kind, the human spirit would shrivel and die. Mankind cannot afford to allow that to happen.
When I visited Australia a few years ago, someone approached me after a lecture I'd given, and said, "I'm an atheist. How can you define God in such a way as to make Him meaningful to me?" I thought, then replied, "Why don't you think of Him as the highest potential you can imagine for yourself?" For a moment he looked quite taken aback; then he answered, "I can live with that definition!"
The human spirit would die if it lost every high aspiration. It would condemn itself to apathy and decay. As Voltaire put it, "If God did not exist, man would find it necessary to invent Him."
Since the human spirit cannot live without religion, mankind will have to find some means of living with it. And that entails not rejecting, but exploring and reconciling, the differences between old dogmatic assumptions and new scientific discoveries.
The basic directions of the future—simplicity, an emphasis on quality, and research into the inner man—cannot but become as important in the field of religion as in every other field of activity.
The deepest truths of religion are all of them quite simple. They have been obscured by the outer structures of religion, which have become so complex in religion's struggle against a multiplicity of challenges as to create confusion and divisiveness, not clarity. Of all the institutions of mankind, religion ought to be the most unitive. Yet people fight, persecute one another, and go to war over their religious differences—all these in the name of God who, so all of them claim, is a God of Love.
It is time again to explore man's inner relationship with his Creator. Jesus Christ said, "Behold, the kingdom of God is within you." He said also, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days." The Bible tells us he was referring not to the temple at Jerusalem, but to the temple of his own body. The inference is obvious. For worship is conducted inside a temple, not outside it. The true goal of pilgrimage, so the Indian Scriptures declare, is within. What matters in religion, then, is not the outer place of worship, nor the outer rituals, nor even the particular system of beliefs (which are, after all, only definitions formulated by human beings), but a person's own direct, actual, inner experience of God and Truth.
According to every saint who has experienced this sublime awakening, God is simple: Man is complex.
The demands of Truth are that religion become simple once again. Religion must return to the fundamental reality, divine love. It must return to man's need for direct, personal experience of that love.
Divine work is not converting others. It is living and expressing divine love.
A friend of mine in India once spent the summer at a hill station in the Himalayas. In the bungalow next to his lived a missionary lady, the headmistress of a local Christian school. My friend, by nature open-hearted, spoke to her pleasantly on those mornings when they met. She mistook his friendliness for a sign that she might be able to interest him in conversion. In return, therefore, she was all smiles. She invited him to visit her school, introduced him lovingly to her students, and explained to him at length the good work she was doing, and the beauty of the teachings of Jesus Christ. To all these attentions he responded appreciatively.
Gradually, it began to dawn on her that he had no interest in being converted. Her manner then cooled. The smile faded from her lips. At last the day came when she treated him as a stranger. He continued to greet her cordially as before. She, in return, preserved a dignified silence. As a potential convert he mattered to her. As a human being he lost that importance. She had never looked upon him as someone with spiritual needs of his own. Now—such, at least, was his impression—he simply represented for her a disappointing statistic of church membership.
The emphasis during Dwapara Yuga will shift from the quantitative approach to the qualitative. It will shift from the church's desire for more converts to the individual's need for satisfactory answers—even if the questions he asks are "inconvenient" or "difficult."
This shift toward simplicity, toward emphasizing the needs of the inner man over the demands of church and state, and, finally, toward qualitative over quantitative solutions, will create a growing demand that religion meet science with methods of its own for testing and experiencing truth.
Recent centuries have clearly demonstrated the inadequacy of mere belief. They have justified the scientific method of testing the validity of one's hypotheses. People have assumed that the scientific method won't work in religion, since religion deals with unmeasurable truths. If this be the case, however, science is rapidly disqualifying itself. For how does one measure energy? Measurement has been a useful tool, but when one deals with subjects too subtle for measurement, other standards must be sought.
If religion had nothing more to offer than unprovable beliefs, the only people it would attract would be dreamers. Would anyone go to a gambling casino that had a reputation for never paying its customers? or for fobbing them off with promises of payment after the sky collapses? Despite religion's promises of consolation in the hereafter, it also fulfills very present spiritual needs. If this were not true, people would have stopped turning to religion long ago, even as primitive tribesmen stopped going to their witch doctors once they realized that modern medical doctors did a better job.
Religion offers teachings that uplift and broaden the human mind. Even more than teachings, it offers experience. The inspiration felt in deep prayer and meditation is something living. Great works of art touch on that intensity of inspiration only to the degree that they echo the inspirations of the soul, but religion offers soul-inspiration directly.
An example of the immediacy of the teachings offered in all religions is the simple admonition to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Religion helps us to become sensitive to the truth that we all partake of a greater reality. "No man is an island." No man lives truly alone, except as he isolates himself from others in his own mind.
As the laboratory is the workshop of science, so the human mind is the workshop of religion. Religious ceremonies are only projections of man's longing for inner transformation. It is on his own thoughts, primarily, that he must work. It is his own feelings that he must purify.
Didn't Jesus tell us exactly that? "Blessed are the pure in heart," he said, "for they shall see God." He didn't say, "Blessed are my disciples," or even, "Blessed are those who believe what I say." He made it clear that our salvation depends not on outer affiliation, nor on mere mental acknowledgement of the truth, but on a person's purity before the Lord, whose kingdom is "within."
A great deal of what religion teaches can be tested and verified. Ultimately, it may turn out that all of its claims can be verified. To observe a microbe, what one needs is a microscope. To perceive Truth, what one needs is to calm the mind until it becomes crystal clear.
There are two distinct needs in religion today. One is to test the Scriptures, as the Bible tells us to do. The other is the need to develop practical methods for conducting our tests.
Obviously, test tubes can't be used in the "laboratory" of the mind. What is needed are methods for calming and concentrating the mind. Meditation is comparable in this sense to the science laboratory. It helps one to achieve that degree of mental clarity which is necessary for this type of research. Truth cannot be perceived so long as the mind is restless, and so long as its attention is directed outward to the senses.
In modern medicine, numerous cures have been adopted from other cultures, where they were known to work. In other fields, too, the discoveries of one culture have helped in the development of others. Throughout the world, in our time especially, the trend toward cultural cross-pollination has been increasing.
In religion, unfortunately, claims of exclusivity have caused people to gaze with open hostility on practices and beliefs even slightly different from their own.
Now, however, in Dwapara Yuga, mankind's search for spiritual understanding will take a new direction. Religion will cease to be dogmatic. Its emphasis will become increasingly experiential, as it concentrates on the spiritual development of the individual. Religion will come in time to include among its practices psycho-physical methods designed to help the individual achieve inner peace and clarity. Thus, yoga in all its branches will come into its own.
Inasmuch as yoga deals not only with mental and physical techniques of self-development, but with direct control of the inner energy (pranayama, or energy control), it will come to be recognized as an actual science of religion. It will, I am confident, become the human science par excellence for the new age. Yoga meditation practices will be used as a means of testing the claims of religion by putting people in touch with their superconscious, and by enabling them to guide their lives by soul-intuition.
The religion of the new age will, as I said, be directed inwardly more than outwardly. The purpose of this inner research will not be to strengthen the ego, but to trace individual self-awareness back to its source in Infinite Consciousness. Inasmuch as the ego's attention is normally directed outward to the body, and to the world around it, its self-definition is derived from these superficial identities. "I am a man (or woman). I am an American (or Frenchman, or Italian). I am...I am." The ego's grip on human consciousness can be lessened only by contact with a higher consciousness. If we hope ever to achieve clear understanding of who and what we are, we must go within and explore a deeper link with the world around us.
Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." He meant that our neighbor is, in a deeper, spiritual sense, our true self.
The reality of an island is only superficially the land mass that is visible to our eyes. Its greater mass lies out of sight, beneath the waves. Therein lies its connection to the earth, and to all the other islands in the sea.
The religion of the future will be a religion of Self-realization. It will consist in the realization that the infinite love and joy of God form our own deepest reality, and that God is our true Self. For just as matter is energy, so energy is but a manifestation of thought, thought but a manifestation of consciousness, and consciousness, in its ultimate refinement, but the Divine out of which all things, all beings, and our own selves were created.
Chapter Six: Religious Institutions in the New Age
The fact that matter is energy doesn't relegate matter to non-existence. It only means that there is more to matter than at first appears. Matter has been exalted, like the peasant boy of fable who turned out to have the talent of a great artist. It isn't the task of Dwapara Yuga to overthrow Kali Yuga realities, but only to raise them to higher levels of reality.
Religion, for example, will not be undermined by the discovery that the divine dramas enacted on earth by the great saviors of mankind are limited in scope. Nor will it be weakened by the realization that the Creator of a hundred billion galaxies cannot but be very different from the old man with a flowing white beard that Michelangelo depicted in the Sistine Chapel; that the Lord cannot, in fact, have a human gender at all. Religion, far from being silenced by the discoveries of modern science, will only be translated from an archaic language into one that is living.
People's grasp of morality, too, will undergo transformation. Morality is not dead, as many people imagine. In the first exuberance of people's realization that nothing is absolute, they were quick to conclude that it is perfectly all right to do whatever one likes. They erred in that conclusion, however. If morality is relative, its rules still apply universally to everyone living at specific stages of spiritual evolution. The relativity, in other words, is directional; it is not whimsical. If a lazy fellow were to declare energetically one day, "I'm going to work hard and become a millionaire!" he would be applauded by everyone. If a noble servitor of humanity, however, like Gandhi, were to announce the same intention, his decision would be universally decried as shameful.
With growing emphasis on the inner man, it will become increasingly clear that the principles of morality are rooted deep in the natural order. This subject is one that I've explained at length in my book, Crises in Modern Thought; I needn't go into it further here. The point is, our understanding of morality, too, is being broadened and deepened, even if in the process it undergoes a certain confusion. Morality is not out of date. In time it will be seen, instead, to form the basis of a truly effective and happy life.
The same is true for religious organizations. The realization that they are not an absolute good will pass beyond disillusionment to a more mature assessment of the good they can do.
The goal of religious practice is to lift man above dependence on any religious organization. As a saint in India once put it, "It is a blessing to be born into a religion, but a misfortune to die in one!" Nevertheless, religious organizations can—if they are expansive and self-giving, if they don't make contractive demands of their members, and if their goal is to serve others, not to control them—they can, I say, be a force for great good in the world.
In my previous papers I showed that the degree of expansiveness or contractiveness of an organization is what determines its state of health, whether good or bad.
Contractiveness in individuals, and just as much so in organizations, produces an exaggerated state of self-involvement. Self-involved people have no sense of proportion. This is true for organizations, too, since organizations are run by people who project onto them whatever attitudes they foster in themselves. A self-involved leader projects contractive attitudes downward through his organization to the point where the entire work force think less in terms of the good they might be doing in the world, and more in terms of the good they can do for themselves. Their general concern is to create safeguards, that both they and the organization function without serious threats to the status quo. In such an organization, there is a prevalent atmosphere of fear. Initiative is non-existent.
In religious organizations, rationalizations are generally devised to explain away this blatant appearance of selfishness. Thus, if creative innovations are discouraged, it is because "the teachings must be preserved in their pure form." If anyone feels a generous urge to help others, he is urged to curtail his impetuosity because "the organization must be strong so as the better to serve all mankind." (In fact, what is most wrong with him is that he makes others around him look bad.) And, lest the organization lose its precarious sense of balance, suggestions are not even listened to unless they happen to echo already-established policies.
What happens in such religious organizations, of course, is that spiritual vision is lost and forgotten in a bureaucratic fog.
The cure in every case will be found in a change of direction—from a contractive to an expansive flow of energy; from protective attitudes to healthy, sharing ones.
Two principles must be kept uppermost, if spiritual ends are to be served. The first of these principles is, People are more important than things. The second is, Where there is adherence to truth, there is victory.
I first saw this second principle expressed in India, as the motto of the royal family of Cooch Behar. In Bengali it had a special rhythm to it: "Jato dharma, tato jaya."
The first of these principles has been stated many times and in many ways. It was expressed by Jesus Christ when he said, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."
The second principle is more difficult for worldly minds to understand. People tend, foolishly, to see high principles as stumbling blocks to success. As the father of a friend of mine told him, no doubt wanting to share with him the garnered wisdom of a lifetime, "Son, no one ever grew rich by being too honest." Yet every time that same man had amassed wealth by trickery, he lost it again.
Practicality is essential, of course. Many people, however, oppose every expansive idea with the explanation, "I'm only being practical." Such people, if they find themselves at the head of an organization, condemn it to mediocrity.
