God and Humanity - Swami Krishnananda

A question which is purely technical, which cannot be decided at once by the generality of mankind, arises in the mind of a serious seeker after Truth, viz., his relation to society and to its institutions. Judged dispassionately, the issue of the necessity or otherwise of such a seeker to concern himself either with society or institutions seems to arise due to a thoroughly misconceived notion of the nature of the Truth,—the existence of God. The need or the absence of need for relations of any kind, much less obligations or duties, towards society and institutions crops up only if God is an other-worldly being, as is the conclusion of the usual theological concepts in all religions, and his existence somehow falls outside the scope and operation of the world and society. There have been controversies and heated arguments over the extent of importance to be given either to meditation or service, for example, and several schools of thought have risen out of this dichotomy in position. This is, to put it prosaically, the controversy between the schools of Jnana and Karma,—knowledge and action,—a subject which has been discussed by many scholars ever since the Acharyas wrote commen-taries on the cardinal scriptures on which Indian culture is based.

All this is just mentioning in different ways the same old problem of man’s relation to God and to the world or society. Unfortunately, people get emotionally warmed up in themselves whenever this question is raised and it is rare that one finds time to consider the subject in a scientific spirit by objective observation as a research man in any field of learning would actually be expected to do. The factor of emotion immediately rushes in whenever there is a talk of humanity, ‘other people,’ ‘our brethren’ or the ‘sufferings of people,’ and the general mind would even regard it as heretical to raise the question of the need or otherwise of a person to concern himself with this complexity, which is almost equated with the duty of man.

© "The Divine Life " (December, 2001) published by The Divine Life Society, The Sivananda Publication League, Shivanandanagar 249 192, Tehri-Garhwal Dist. Website: www.divinelifesociety.org. Reprinted with permission.

<< Back