An Outline of the Philosophical Foundations of the Religion of Man - 2.Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, January 01,  2023. 06:00.

(Spoken on November 11, 1980)

Post-2.

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Many times man is led to believe in a dichotomy between God and the world because the fact of evil could not be reconciled with the perfection of God, nor could one deny the fact of evil. It exists, and it is seen with our eyes. We cannot say that God created the evil, and we cannot say that it does not exist. So naturally it must have been created by Ahriman, an opposite to Ahura Mazda. This was a predicament into which religious theologians were sometimes led on account of the difficulty they felt in explaining the problem of evil that is recognisable in this world which is the creation of God.

But to me, at least, it appears that there is no such irreconcilability. The difficulty has arisen on account of a problem in thinking, a defect in human logic. It is not necessary that there should be a creator different from God for the existence of evil because a question may be presented before our own minds by us, at least academically just now, “What is the position of evil in the eyes of the one who has attained perfection in the Kingdom of God? When we attain to God, do we see evil,” or rather, to put it more pithily and poignantly, “Does God see evil? Does evil exist before the eye of God?” We should be frightened to answer this question. It is a terrifying question. Does God see evil? If He does not see evil, it should not exist, because God is omniscient. He sees everything and knows everything. One who knows everything should also know all things that exist. If evil exists, it should be capable of being known by the omniscience of God, and I don't think that any one of us can dare say that God sees evil. It is a blasphemy to define God in this way. If He does not see it, it cannot exist.

And so we have a solution here to a very important question before us as to the duty of man in this world. It is not shunning the world in the light of an ascetic renunciation that has been taught by certain schools of religious renunciation, but a recog­nition of the presence of divinity. How can we love our neighbour as our own self unless he has some divine affinity with ourselves? Ethics and morality will have no meaning unless they are rooted in a principle of perfection. We cannot expect a person to be good for nothing. You cannot teach ethics and morality to people for no reason. “Serve your neighbour –what for?” is a question which may not be put by a reli­gious man, but a logical mind puts this question. And man is somehow or other made in such a way that his intellect is logical. Logic is not a concoction of the human mind; it is an emanation from a deeper source in which man is rooted. It is the Spirit itself putting this question. Ultimately, logic is nothing but the intellectual expression of the nature of the Spirit in us. Reason, which is foible, of course, and cannot be regarded as perfect, is a faint tentacle projected by the perfection of the Spirit that is planted in us by the existence of God Himself.

All these little things that I have tried to place before you is a kind of loud thinking, which makes me feel that we are even now in the Kingdom of Heaven. We have only to open our eyes. We are not in hell; we are not in a world of evil. I cannot believe it is that. And God sees us and, perhaps, we also see God. I cannot say that I am in the midst of people, human beings, persons who have no vital relationship with divinity. You are holy fathers, leaders of religion, representatives of the Spirit, which means to say that you have in you a centre which has direct affiliation with this Supreme Perfection. Should we not say that we are just now in the Kingdom of Heaven itself? And, ‘all these things shall be added unto us'. We need not run after anything if we run after God, because God, the Perfection Supreme, includes all that He has created.

Therefore, the supreme duty of man is love of God, meditation on God, and an aspiration to unite himself with God, which includes his brotherly affection and servicefulness to mankind, because it follows that if the world is inseparable from God's existence, we are inseparable even in our social life.

Here is a little outline of the philosophical foundations of the religion of man. I call it the religion of man – not Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, etc. It is the religion of man who is aspirant for the one God.

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