Now when a man has learnt Vairāgya, then comes the great period of Service. No longer does he work for anything for himself, but to carry out the Divine Will in Evolution. Has not Shrī Kṛṣhṇa said that He acts perpetually? Because, "if I do not act," He says, "all these worlds would perish." "I have nothing to gain," are His words. But they would perish, save for Him, and He goes on to say: "Let the wise man, acting with me, render all action attractive." Action is only a clog, is only a fetter, after man has gained all its fruit in experience, when it is not done for the sake of sacrifice. But when the action is consecrated to the Service of God and Man, that action becomes wings that uplift, and not fetters that clog, the advancing Spirit. And so, in the arrangement of castes that we have in India, there is one great lesson that comes out. The Shūḍra, the lowest caste, is the man who serves all. But the highest, above all castes, the Sannyāsī, what is he but the Servant of humanity, reproducing on a loftier plane the Service in which a Shūḍra is taking his first lesson down here? The Shūḍra learns service to others, and accumulates what he learns; the Vaishya learns to sacrifice material wealth in charity to others; the Kṣhaṭṭriya learns to renounce life itself in defence of others; the Brāhmaṇa learns to renounce all for knowledge, that he may teach others. Then caste has taught its lessons, and the highest of all services are the services done for the sake of sacrifice by the liberated Spirit, the Paramahamsa, the man who has gone beyond the illusion of the Separated Self. So wisely was planned the ancient order, full of true significance.
The only other point that you have to remember is that all this is done under inviolable Law. "As you sow, so shall you reap." There is a great verse in a Christian Scripture too often forgotten by Christians: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." No use for substitution; no putting on of an imputed righteousness; no safety by a Saviour; you must reap your own harvest, you must work out, earn, your own salvation for yourself. But this remember: that your only limitation in taking up the strength of God lies in you, and not in Him. That is where the doctrine of so-called Divine Grace comes in. As the Sun shines all around you, as the Sun shines upon your house, you may close all the shutters, and say: "I don't want light; I shut my windows and my doors against the incoming rays of the Sun." So may you say to the Supreme Sun, the Light and the Life of the Universe: "I shut against you the doors of my heart; I don't want you to penetrate within me. I close my doors; I close my windows; your light shall not illuminate my Soul." And the answer of the Divine is: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man open, I will come in." There lies what men call Divine Grace. The grace is ever there, shining upon your closed shutters. You may shut your door; there is no change in the effulgence of the Sun. And so there is the Divine Light ever around you. You turn your backs upon it, and you say that it is dark; you have refused to see the Light, and you dwell in the shadow that you yourselves have made. Well, stay there, as long as you will. Play with the toys, as long as it pleases you. But know, that the day will come when the breaking of the toys will leave you desolate, and then you will open your hearts to the Supreme Love, and say: "Light, come in, and fill my heart with Thyself, for Thou and I are one, we were never separate; and I, the child of Man, recognise my birthright, and I claim, in the Self-realisation of my Divinity, the fruition of my life as Man."
RIGHT AND WRONG
Friends:
The problem that we have to consider this morning is one of great complexity and of great difficulty. Confusion as to "What is Right," as to "What is Wrong," is unfortunately very general among all, even among educated people. The standard of Right, the canon of Right, that is a matter that ought to be placed on some definite principle, some intelligible axiom; and, if instead of such definite foundation, you do not realise on what the standard is based, the result is necessarily a confusion of conduct, a doubt as to how Right and Wrong are to be determined. And so, sometimes, almost in despair of a rationally intelligible law, you find people saying that Right is absolute, is always the same invariably for man at all stages of evolution. The result of that has been, both in the East and in the West, that a standard of conduct laid down for the Yogī, the Sannyāsī is held to be the standard to be held up before the comparatively undeveloped man. The Sermon on the Mount, among Christians; the teaching of the Bhagavaḍ-Gīṭā, of action without desire for fruit, among Hinḍūs; these are regarded as universally binding; and the result is a divorce between theory and practice, between the conduct which is actually followed and the theory which is intellectually accepted. You find a striking instance of that in the West, where the Sermon on the Mount, nominally regarded as binding on every one, is entirely put aside as regards the vast majority, and is held to have no bearing on National conduct, or the treatment of one Nation by another. You find, for instance, a Bishop of the Church of England who declared that if any Nation followed the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount it could not exist for a week. That is literally true. For if, when a man stole your coat, you gave him your cloak, the result would be that the thief would be doubly clothed, the honest man would go naked. If, when a man was struck on the one cheek, he turned to the striker the other cheek, then the oppressor and the tyrant would have free course, and the doctrine of non-resistance of evil would triumph over the resistance which means liberty and progress. And so, in the West, which has as a rule a fair amount of common-sense, and is not too much given to logic in practical matters, they resist evil, they resist the oppressor, they strike back when a blow is given, and they do not submissively bow to every tyrant and every injustice. Yet, unless you bring into accord theory and practice, you have no rule of conduct which in any way is an inspiration for life. Similarly in the East, where the doctrine is taught in the Gīṭā that action should be undertaken without desire for fruit. There you have a doctrine for the Yogī, like Arjuna, to whom the Song of the Lord was given; but if you say to the man of the world, if you say to the man who does not regard the Divine Will as the binding rule of conduct, "work without desire for fruit," you paralyse his activity, for there is no other motive sufficiently strong to move him to action. To work without desire for fruit means that your own will is so consciously in accord with the Will of God, that you work as earnestly for the benefit of the world as the ordinary man works for fame, for power, or for money. That is the highest rule of conduct; but if you teach the highest to the half-developed, you give them no ideal at all which is practical, by which they can guide their lives; and the result of that in India has been a paralysis of action, and a yielding unduly to oppression and injustice, as the Sannyāsī would yield. Now Hinḍūism, as taught by the Sages, was not of that type. Hinḍūism has always had a relative morality. The whole of that part of its teaching which divided society into castes according to evolution, the unfolding of the spiritual life, is a recognition that ḍharma, duty, depends on the stage of evolution reached by the man. The ḍharma of the Shūḍra is not the ḍharma of the Kṣhaṭṭriya or of the Brāhmaṇa. The Kṣhaṭṭriya is to keep order, he is to repress evil, he is to encourage good, he is to punish the wrong-doer; but the Brāhmaṇa, the ideal Brāhmaṇa, he ought to suffer any wrong done to him, for it is not his ḍharma to resist. And so, it is written, that a man by following his own ḍharma, he attaineth to perfection. That it is better to follow your own ḍharma though imperfect, than to follow the ḍharma of another, for the ḍharma of another is full of danger. That has been forgotten in India, though, nominally, the caste system has persisted. And so, with the teaching of the Āshramas; the duty of the student, the Brahmachārī, is not the duty of the Gṛhasṭha, the householder, and when that is forgotten and when the duties of the householder are put on the shoulders of the student, you have then a debilitated race of youth that is not allowed to grow to the stature of manhood which follows youthful celibacy. The duty of the householder is not the duty of the Vānaprasṭha; the duty of the Vānaprasṭha is not the duty of the Sannyāsī; for the Sages, the Ṛṣhis that built the foundation of Hinḍūism, they knew that morality was relative, and gave an evolving ethical teaching suited to the evolving children of Man. Let us then, with that preface, try to find some common principle to which we can refer Right and Wrong.
Realise, first of all, what morality means. I give it the definition that I have given elsewhere: "Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings." There is no morality for the mineral; there is no morality for the vegetable; there is no morality for the animal. Those are in the group under evolutionary law which compels them to go forward by the tremendous struggle for existence. By that struggle certain qualities are evolved—the qualities which are the bases of the humanity which is to be born into the world. There is a stage where there is no morality; where the creature is not immoral, but, is not-moral, is unmoral—without morality. He has not reached the stage where conscious obedience to law is possible for him; and so, as he is without the knowledge of good and evil, you cannot claim from him obedience to a law of Right and Wrong. Not only so, but taking that as our first point—that there is a stage where morality cannot exist because of the want of self-consciousness—the next point that you must realise, in establishing a Science of Morality, is a clear understanding of the meaning of the word "law". Now "law" may be a command made by a human legislature, or made arbitrarily by the ruler of a Nation, changeable, therefore, with an arbitrary penalty attached to its transgression. But the moral law, like all laws of Nature, is not a command either to do, or not to do. It is a declaration of conditions which produce certain definite results. Chemical law does not tell you, you must put hydrogen and oxygen together and produce water. You may produce water or not as you like; you are perfectly free to make it or not to make it; but the law is that if you put hydrogen and oxygen together at a certain temperature under a certain pressure, then you must produce water. It is a statement of conditions, followed by unchangeable result. A law of Nature, therefore, is not violable. You cannot change it. Nothing can prevent the formation of water, if only the conditions for its production are present. Nothing can ever produce water unless the conditions for its production are present. You cannot change it; that is a law. But, according to your knowledge of law is your freedom in a realm of law. The ignorant man goes about in Nature buffeted by her laws, crushed by some, helped by others; to him the happenings are matters of chance, for he knows not the laws amid which he lives. Cabined, crippled, rendered helpless, he stands before an inexorable Nature, and knows not how, or whither, he should move. But the man of knowledge, knowing the laws around him, walks with perfect freedom in a realm of law; he balances one law against another, he utilises laws that help, he neutralises laws that oppose him, and in proportion to his knowledge is his freedom; for, as it has well been said: "Nature is conquered by obedience." Obeying, he is free. Now the moral law is a natural law, not an artificial one. It is an expression, as are all the laws of Nature, of Īshvara, who is the life, the sustenance, of His Universe. The moral law cannot be broken; the moral law cannot be changed; it is the will of God in Evolution; and, by that alone may Right and Wrong be tested. That is Right which helps evolution forward; that is Wrong which opposes the Divine Will in Evolution. There is your standard, or canon, of Right and Wrong. Oh! you say, that is not a rough and ready definition, or standard. No; it requires knowledge. And so the Ṛṣhis, the great Teachers, have given certain commands—morals to be followed by the ignorant, based on the one supreme law of conformity to the Divine Will in Evolution. We are told by Vyāsa: "To do good to another is Right; to do evil to another is Wrong." We are told by the Christ: "Do unto others as ye would that they should do to you." But take those two moral commands, and see whether under all circumstances they should be obeyed. As a rough rule of conduct—yes; for the masses of people—yes; but can a King obey Christ's command, or a Judge "do unto others as" he "would that they should do unto" him? When he has a murderer before him in the dock, and he sits to administer the law of the land, may he say: "I must do to the murderer as I would that he should do to me, and I must not sentence him to punishment because I would not wish to be so sentenced"? All these general commands as to action are limited in their scope, are modified by surrounding conditions, depend on the position of the person. You and I have no right to lock up in a room another person because he has injured us; but the Judge has the duty of locking him up, if he has transgressed the law of the land and prison is the appointed punishment. Another precept was given by a very practical man, Confucius. He was asked: "How shall we behave? What word is there which defines our duty? shall we return good for evil, as the great Sage Lâo-tsze has declared?" And Confucius, being a practical statesman, answered: "Is not 'Reciprocity' such a word? If you return good for evil, with what will you recompense good? Recompense good with good, and evil with justice." Now there you have the law of the State. The law of forgiveness, the law of returning good for evil, is the law for the man aspiring to lead a spiritual life. It is a duty on the Path of Holiness; it is a duty of one aspiring to become a Saint or a Yogī. It is the law for the individual conduct which raises the man from the brute to the God; but for the State, that is not the law. For the Nation, the stage of evolution has not yet been reached which can return good for evil, and allow an enemy to overrun the country and to have his will upon the people.
And so, in dealing with morality, as in dealing with every Science, you must use your brains as well as your emotions, and you must judge the consequence of actions in order to guide your path.