THE CALL OF THE REAL : 3. SWAMI SIVANANDA

02/06/2019
3.

*The divine play of manifestation, through its scenes of appearing and disappearing in the variegated colours of life and death, drives home to mankind the lesson that this life is only an act in the stage of becoming, where many parts are played and no part in itself is complete enough to give the character of wholeness to the play. Every actor on the stage behaves in such a way that he does not portray himself as an unrelated independent personality, but endeavours to be an integral part of the entire play.

*This behaviour of the actor fitted to the wholeness of the play is his dramatic peculiarity or the Dharma which unites all actors to the whole, which is the ultimate purpose. The Dharma of man is his religion which binds him to the Whole, which shows that he is a part of the Whole, trying to abide by the Law of the Whole and aiming at fulfilling the purpose of the Whole. For, the Whole is the truth and the good of all is included in it as its constituents which can never exist independently of the Whole.

#Man can never live without Paramatma, for It is the Whole and man is only a part of Paramatma namely Jivatma.

#Man's religion is his Dharma and this Dharma can be in its real sense only one, for its goal is one. There is one Paramatma, the indubitable Self of all beings; there is one Law, the relentless law of cause and effect; there is one religion, the indispensable religion of Self-realisation.

#Everyone is only the One Self; how, then, can there be many laws and many religions?

As life has been made for the time being comfortable and comparatively effortless by modern inventions, the ease-loving man is prone to disregard the place of religion in his life and exalt the values of materialistic view of things. Events are slowly disclosing the unreliability of the purely objective views and methods of physical science, since it is the experience of man that he is not really happier, and the world is not in fact better, even after his daring attempts at extracting out of external nature the secrets of its resources in order to utilise the same for his own purposes.

#Where is satisfaction, where is happiness, and where is peace, then?

Is anyone who has deeply and correctly thought over his conditions and the world's vicissitudes capable of asserting that the struggle for advancement through the physical methods has ended in the solace of man? The purely physical outlook is not compatible with the inner truth of the real man, for, religious discipline, and not bodily pleasure, is the role to be followed in the course of right living.

Let it not be thought that religion is a dogmatic, other-worldly, pet tradition of blind believers or irrational emotionalists. Religion is the most rational science of man as he essentially is, not merely as he presumes himself to be. Religion is the way to the realisation of the highest perfection. If perfection is a possibility, religion is real, and it is the only method befitting the human ideal.

To be continued ..