Gita 14.04 Social reform needs to be founded in spiritual reform

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
सर्वयोन्य शुकोंते या मुर्थया संभवन्तिया तासां ब्रह्ममात्योने आहं देखे प्रदाखिता। Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that all living beings are ultimately essentially spiritually equal, because they are all his parts, he is the seed giving parent for all of them. Now, if we consider the question of social justice, which is a pre-eminent concern for the postmodern mind, then one of the main things that comes out is the resonance of the Bhagavad Gita’s universal spirituality with this theme of social justice. All of us, we human beings, are by our nature progressive creatures, so we want to change, we want to make things better.
In the past, before science began in what was called as the period of enlightenment, before that people would primarily think of progress in terms of vertical towards God, and that even the social order was considered to be divine, and it was not expected to be changed. So if somebody was born as a serf, and say in the western world, serf is like the lowest social order, then it was understood that that’s where they would be throughout their life. And it was seen that this was ordained by the natural order of things, which was considered to be divine.
Because of this, whatever happened, people would not get into too much of a revolutionary move. So for them, the primary means of progress was vertical, where their idea was that if they lived the life that God has told them to live, then they can become elevated and attain a higher world, heaven, paradise, whatever it might be, the name of the higher destination, where it was promised there will be far greater happiness. Even if life in this world was remarkably stripped of all happiness.
Now over the years, over this decade, centuries, especially when the Renaissance came in, and thereafter what is called as enlightenment came up, then the focus shifted from the other world to this world, to nature. Because of this concern for social justice, which has emerged because in the postponement times, have cut ourselves off from God and the higher reality. So most people don’t think that God is a factor that matters in their lives.
They focus primarily on striving to connect themselves and improve things in this world. So from the Renaissance onwards, the vision had shifted from the other world to this world, to how to control and improve things here and now. And now, our nature has also been understood to be very complex.
Through science and technology, to some extent, there is an attempt to bring natural phenomena under control. But with all that phenomena, still there is an understanding that it’s not so easy to control nature. And also there is a great attempt to control living beings or to make things better at the level of the living beings.
So if you consider the Traya, Jiva, Jagat and Jagdish, there was an attempt to control the Jiva, control or to appease Jagdish, God and make things better. That was what was characteristic of the traditional times. Then Jagdish’s nature, the universe around us, to try to control that, to thereby make things better.
That was the second phase. And then at present, the emphasis is on controlling things at a level of Jiva to try to improve them. So, for example, there is a great awareness that one living being should not wrong other living beings.
So, for example, say the Pope, who is the highest religious authority of the, probably the most influential religion in terms of numbers in the world. And he apologised the many groups of people who had been wronged by the church at various times in its history. Now, moving on from there, in Australia, 200,000 people at one time marched in a way to apologise the native Australians for past wrong dealings.
Again, the idea is that there is great concern that anybody who had been disenfranchised earlier should be enfranchised, that whatever wrongs may have been done to anyone in the past, those wrongs need to be corrected. And the way to correct those wrongs is through solidarity, by expressing solidarity, trying to achieve equality and try to give equal rights to everyone. Thus it is that women or people of different sexual orientations, they all have the ethos to include them, to give them their space.
Now, there are, of course, exceptions and excesses both, which can happen. Exceptions in the sense that with the legalisation of abortion, there is a grave social injustice that is happening. And excesses in terms of, there is a persecution that happens to some extent of people who do not conform with the ethos of liberalism.
So, for example, whereas in the past, to be a homosexual was a problem, because people would criticise that homosexual orientation. Now, criticising homosexuality is a problem. And the point is not criticising, the point is that when there is aggressive glamorisation of certain things, there is too much obsession with trying to shift horizontally for improvement.
That means earlier the horizontal shift was more in terms of changing nature through technology to bring it under control. So, for example, discovering new lands, tapping water and forest and other resources for what was hoped to be the human good. And thereafter, the focus has been on again using technology, say, if one feels uncomfortable with one’s gender, then to try to change the gender.
So, the whole idea is we don’t accept that we are where we are and that we try to change as much as possible. In whatever direction we feel will help us to have a more satisfied, more just, more balanced existence. Now, whether a greater order of balanced justice has been achieved or not, this is a matter of discussion, debate, possibly even refutation.
But the important thing is to at least acknowledge that this attempt is being made. So, how is this attempt to be dealt with? Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to improve our own situation. There is a way to harmonize social justice with spiritual justice.
And that is by recognizing that as long as the soul is disconnected from God, as long as the soul is disharmonized from the whole of which it is a part, there is always going to be distress. Only when the soul is connected with Krishna through devotion is there absorption and satisfaction, which comes at the spiritual level of consciousness. So, now this spiritual level of consciousness can be pursued not just by striving to practice direct devotional activities.
It can be done through social activism. That means it can be done through the practice of bhakti steadily, determinately. Because bhakti helps us to see that this world is sacred, that it is an arena where God’s glory is manifested and is to be manifested.
So, ultimately God’s glory is to be manifested through us when we strive to purify ourselves, when we strive to elevate ourselves, when we strive to liberate ourselves. So, thus there can be all-round balance between the human and the divine attempts to work. So, when we put the effort to raise the consciousness to the spiritual level first by trying to harmonize our will with the divine will, then we get the guidance, the dhami buddhi yogam tapu.
We get the intelligence by which how much to adjust natural realities, how much to adjust social realities. All that becomes more and more clear to us. And thus we can move onwards towards Krishna and attain Him.
So, the key thing here is that the post-mortem concern for social justice, we appreciate that. But we understand also that unless it is rooted in spiritual reality, it is going to lead to enormous disruption. Some improvement, but it will also lead to some disruption because this is often made into an excess where people don’t understand that vertical improvement has its limitations, that horizontal improvement has its limitations and all people cannot be made artificially equal.
So, we need to acknowledge the diversity of different living beings and therein give them the facility to elevate themselves. So, equality doesn’t have to be necessarily at the material level, equal facility in every sense. It means equal facility according to individual propensity.
So, everybody needs to be given the opportunity to contribute, to grow, but not everybody is capable of contributing and growing in the same way. Not everybody has the same level of intellectual capacity, same level of the capacity for social interaction, same level of the capacity for inner introspection, whichever way we look at it, same level of emotional maturity. So, according to one’s level where they are at, if they are given the facility to contribute horizontally, socially and to elevate themselves vertically towards God, then that would be the perfection of the quest for social justice by giving it, by harmonizing it with spiritual reality.
Thank you.