THE CALL OF THE REAL : 4. SWAMI SIVANANDA

26/06/2019
4.
Real religion is not divorced from philosophical wisdom or alien to the spiritual science of the Self. If the self is an established fact, and the knowledge of it is true, the way to it also is true and established. This established way is religion. Many religions appear on the surface when they are not strictly based on the general reality of all. When religions are founded on non-essentials, i.e., classes, climes, sentiments, idiosyncrasies and the practical needs of a particular society or a limited part of humanity, they are bound to be cut off from each other. But, when it is known that man is not merely a body, that one's ultimate demands are not peculiar to one's personality alone, that the essential calls of the inner reality are similar to those in others too, it will be found that the views of life cannot finally diverge and that, if all aim at a common experience of reality and perfection, their conduct in life can only be a preparation for that Supreme Experience-Whole. This preparation is the religious life, though it may have many appellations and may pass through the many moulds of temperamental peculiarities.

Religion is the true life; it is living in consonance with Truth. Dharma or virtue is the character of Satya or Truth and Truth is the nature of Self-certainty. Virtue is inseparable from religious conduct, for virtue is a constituent of real religion. Religion is the form taken by the relation that is between man and God, the link between the lower and the higher natures in oneself. Your own Higher Nature is God; your essence is the Real; your existence is universal and immortal. Do not quarrel over the why, the how and the what of religion; these questions can be easily answered by your own self, if you realise the oneness of all religions on the basis of the one God. Oneness can account for and explain duality and multiplicity, but the latter cannot survive without the One that is behind all of them. Everyone in the beginning has a religion of his own, though it is limited to his private notions and aspirations, for everyone tries to grasp and reach something beyond himself; being dissatisfied with his present lot, he reaches out to a beyond or a higher being. But, this higher being is, at its highest reach, the same to all people. All have an innate wish springing from the core of their being, and this wish does not contradict another, because this is the wish to be supremely perfect. Therefore, religion is one, though it appears to have many forms, when it is confined to persons or social circles. Man is a citizen of the universe, and his religion cannot but be universal.

To be continued ..