Spiritual Knowledge Encourages Values

Our age has been called the Age of Progress and the Age of Science, but it has also been characterized as the Age of Tension, Anxiety, Depression, Violence, Crime and Fear. As we reflect on it, we find our evils stem essentially from ignorance about the spiritual dimensions of life. Secular knowledge does not give us Self-knowledge; it has given us miraculous control over Nature, but it has added practically nothing to our emotional life and social behavior. As a result, our life has been oriented to things . We have every sort of security except emotional and spiritual security. Spiritual knowledge encourages values that motivates improvement in human worth. Spiritual insight enriches our subjective life and brings harmony in our life and helps us to acquire some positive and enduring values in life.

Human Progress Based On Spiritual Growth

To most of us value is associated with pay, promotion, and pleasure; man and his integrity of character are not taken into account. In this atomic age, everything has changed except our values of life. But time has come for a more practical use of our moral and spiritual insight, and more enthusiasm to pursue the right conduct. We are to give up our old attitude of life and incorporate a new vision of human progress based on spiritual growth.

Albert-Szent-Gyorgi, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1937 for his discovery of Vitamin "C" said, "Snakes can grow only by bursting their skins. Molting has to be a painful process and should it fail, the snake would die. Mankind grows by bursting the outgrown skin of antiquated ideas, thinking, and institutions." Our deep skin of superficial thinking is what we have to slough off for our survival.

Foster Spiritual Outlook and Generate Ethical and Moral Culture

Our inner mind is shrinking due to lack of spiritual nourishment, while the outer life is being overfed and over pampered. The meaninglessness of our secular life-style--- its single-minded pursuit of materialism - comes from our ignorance about the spiritual dimensions of life. Progress does not mean only speed and comfort but also a sense of direction, a sense of purpose which culminates in finding fulfillment in life. Human progress, plainly, cannot be meaningful unless values enter into our every activity and thought. Life is significant because it has the capacity for striving towards the ideal; ideals are vital and valuable because they can make our life better, mind stronger and outlook nobler. Life begins with values that derive not from pleasure and immediate experience, but from wisdom. Knowledge must rise to the level of wisdom to bring forth transformation of the personality. "Unless men increase in wisdom as in knowledge, increase in knowledge will increase in sorrow" (Bertrand Russel, Impact of Science on Society, pp. 120-21).

Values emerge in actual life at all levels. The fundamental values of true community are those which keep the society together, bring harmony between practical and the spiritual, help cultivate the virtues of renunciation and service, and make people humane, cultured, and unselfish. The chief objective of the society then, is to foster a spiritual outlook and generate ethical and moral culture.

Civilization is material, and Culture spiritual; the former may be compared to the body and the latter to the Soul. One gives happiness and the other peace. True culture is the humanization factor in human life. Without spiritual outlook, there can be no high and enduring culture. Culture and self-control are synonymous terms. The realm of culture is the realm of values. The multitude of such cultured people paves the way to the human happiness.

The Price of Wrong Conception of Life

It is our idea of life that determines the views of life, and again it is our conception of life that sets the whole tone to our way of living. Conflicts between different versions of life, different world-pictures as well as different temperaments can be traced to the mental constitutions and cultural background of the people. We pay a heavy price for our wrong conception of life. All our troubles are due to this ignorance. The merits and weaknesses of each civilization are rooted in the ignorance. Arnold Toynbee, a great historian of our age, remarks, "The same Greek idea of man, which accounts for the Greek civilization's rise and culmination, is also the explanation for its strange and tragic fate. Hellenism is betrayed by what was false within it .... this weakness of the Greek idea of man, which was the ultimate cause of the breakdown of the Greek way of life in the fifth century B.C., was shown up when, later on, the Greek view encountered the Jewish view in Southwest Asia and the ancient Asian view in India" (Toynbee, The Ancient Mediterranean View of Man, pp. 3-4).

Human being is the focus of all values; deep study of man by the mystics of India has revealed an infinite vista of human possibilities. Man is the epitome of the Cosmos. "Man is the most representative being in the universe, the microcosm, a small universe in himself," says Swami Vivekananda (Complete Works, Vol. IV, p. 47).

Self-Knowledge, the Crowning Glory of Life

The central theme of Vedanta is monism -- non-difference of the individual and the Supreme Self in their essential nature. Man is divine. The Self of Vedanta is "Self-luminous," eternally pure and blissful. As the Self is not a created entity, it is immutable, eternal, immortal, and infinite. This Soul is the only source of all virtue, happiness, peace, wisdom, power, and knowledge. The crowning glory of life is Self-Knowledge, as all our bondage and suffering are due to ignorance, primarily of one's Self.

Spiritual Values Keep Us Stable

"In man, things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable"(Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown). Value-oriented culture must attach maximum importance to unfolding the Soul-force through the spiritual discipline of self-control and morality. Hence right understanding is necessary for right living. Any living---spiritual or secular---can never neglect moral virtues. The Gita (16:1) enumerates them. Truth, self-control, purity, renunciation, honesty, patience, and unselfishness are generally known as the fruits of the soul. These values will equip us to experience peace, harmony, and fulfillment. In times of trial and tribulation in life, these spiritual values keep us stable, inspire us to wage the battle of life, and give us fearlessness and self-confidence. Mere intellectual growth unaccompanied by these spiritual values, make us egoistic, aggressive, and victims of many human weaknesses.

"Unless above himself he erects himself
how poor a thing is man."          ---Wordsworth

Pragmatic Necessity of Having Spiritual Enlightenment

About the pragmatic necessity of having that spiritual enlightenment, Toynbee remarks, "In these circumstances, it might be forecast that, in the next chapter of the world's history, mankind would seek compensation for the loss of much of its political, economic and perhaps even domestic freedom by putting more of its treasure into spiritual freedom ...." ( A Historians' Approach to Religion, p. 244). He further states, "In a regimented world, the realm of the spirit may be freedom's citadel" (Ibid., p. 249). Toynbee exhorts us to have a spiritual reorientation of our atomic civilization: "The time has come for us, in our turn, to wrench ourselves out of the seventeenth-century mathematico-physical line of approach which we are still following, and to make a fresh start from the spiritual side. This is now, once again, the more promising approach of the two if we are right in expecting that, in the atomic age which opened in 1945, the spiritual field of activity, not the physical one, is going to be the domain of freedom" (Ibid., p. 286-87).

Healthy Values of Life Alone can Transform Character

The world desperately wants value-oriented education, work-culture, and life-style. The importance of the study of consciousness has been steadily growing among the scholars of the modern world in view of its fundamental importance in the solution of world problems. Without the transformation of human character, no enduring peace is possible in spite of the tremendous growth of technology and sciences. "Political action, social work, this--ism, that--ology are all incomplete, futile actions unless accompanied by a new and elevated mode of awareness. In other words, the true revolution is revelation" (John White, ed., The highest State of Consciousness, p. ix). Hence enduring happiness and peace will come to those who will be able to harness the dormant potentiality of the divinity embedded in each human life. Healthy values of life are those fruits of Soul which alone can bring transformation of our character. A really transmuted character is capable of enjoying the fruits of secular life.

Books by Swami Tathagatananda:

1. The Vedanta Society of New York -- A Brief History, 2000
2. Mahabharat--Katha (Bengali), 1998
3. Ramayan Anudhyan (Bengali), 1996
4. Healthy Values of Living, 1996
5. Meditation on Swami Vivekananda, 1994
6. Meditation on Shri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, 1993
7. Glimpses of Great Lives, 1989
8. Shubha Chinta (Bengali), 1988
9. Smaran--Manan (Bengali), 1987

You can order these books from The Vedanta Society of New York.

Other books on Vedanta can be purchased from any Vedanta Center.

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