Part 4

The problem that we have to consider this morning is one of great complexity and of great difficulty. Confusion as to "What is Right," as to "What is Wrong," is unfortunately very general among all, even among educated people. The standard of Right, the canon of Right, that is a matter that ought to be placed on some definite principle, some intelligible axiom; and, if instead of such definite foundation, you do not realise on what the standard is based, the result is necessarily a confusion of conduct, a doubt as to how Right and Wrong are to be determined. And so, sometimes, almost in despair of a rationally intelligible law, you find people saying that Right is absolute, is always the same invariably for man at all stages of evolution. The result of that has been, both in the East and in the West, that a standard of conduct laid down for the Yogī, the Sannyāsī is held to be the standard to be held up before the comparatively undeveloped man. The Sermon on the Mount, among Christians; the teaching of the _Bhagavaḍ-Gīṭā_, of action without desire for fruit, among Hinḍūs; these are regarded as universally binding; and the result is a divorce between theory and practice, between the conduct which is actually followed and the theory which is intellectually accepted. You find a striking instance of that in the West, where the Sermon on the Mount, nominally regarded as binding on every one, is entirely put aside as regards the vast majority, and is held to have no bearing on National conduct, or the treatment of one Nation by another. You find, for instance, a Bishop of the Church of England who declared that if any Nation followed the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount it could not exist for a week. That is literally true. For if, when a man stole your coat, you gave him your cloak, the result would be that the thief would be doubly clothed, the honest man would go naked. If, when a man was struck on the one cheek, he turned to the striker the other cheek, then the oppressor and the tyrant would have free course, and the doctrine of non-resistance of evil would triumph over the resistance which means liberty and progress. And so, in the West, which has as a rule a fair amount of common-sense, and is not too much given to logic in practical matters, they resist evil, they resist the oppressor, they strike back when a blow is given, and they do not submissively bow to every tyrant and every injustice. Yet, unless you bring into accord theory and practice, you have no rule of conduct which in any way is an inspiration for life. Similarly in the East, where the doctrine is taught in the _Gīṭā_ that action should be undertaken without desire for fruit. There you have a doctrine for the Yogī, like Arjuna, to whom the Song of the Lord was given; but if you say to the man of the world, if you say to the man who does not regard the Divine Will as the binding rule of conduct, "work without desire for fruit," you paralyse his activity, for there is no other motive sufficiently strong to move him to action. To work without desire for fruit means that your own will is so consciously in accord with the Will of God, that you work as earnestly for the benefit of the world as the ordinary man works for fame, for power, or for money. That is the highest rule of conduct; but if you teach the highest to the half-developed, you give them no ideal at all which is practical, by which they can guide their lives; and the result of that in India has been a paralysis of action, and a yielding unduly to oppression and injustice, as the Sannyāsī would yield. Now Hinḍūism, as taught by the Sages, was not of that type. Hinḍūism has always had a relative morality. The whole of that part of its teaching which divided society into castes according to evolution, the unfolding of the spiritual life, is a recognition that ḍharma, duty, depends on the stage of evolution reached by the man. The ḍharma of the Shūḍra is not the ḍharma of the Kṣhaṭṭriya or of the Brāhmaṇa. The Kṣhaṭṭriya is to keep order, he is to repress evil, he is to encourage good, he is to punish the wrong-doer; but the Brāhmaṇa, the ideal Brāhmaṇa, he ought to suffer any wrong done to him, for it is not his ḍharma to resist. And so, it is written, that a man by following his own ḍharma, he attaineth to perfection. That it is better to follow your own ḍharma though imperfect, than to follow the ḍharma of another, for the ḍharma of another is full of danger. That has been forgotten in India, though, nominally, the caste system has persisted. And so, with the teaching of the Āshramas; the duty of the student, the Brahmachārī, is not the duty of the Gṛhasṭha, the householder, and when that is forgotten and when the duties of the householder are put on the shoulders of the student, you have then a debilitated race of youth that is not allowed to grow to the stature of manhood which follows youthful celibacy. The duty of the householder is not the duty of the Vānaprasṭha; the duty of the Vānaprasṭha is not the duty of the Sannyāsī; for the Sages, the Ṛṣhis that built the foundation of Hinḍūism, they knew that morality was relative, and gave an evolving ethical teaching suited to the evolving children of Man. Let us then, with that preface, try to find some common principle to which we can refer Right and Wrong.

Realise, first of all, what morality means. I give it the definition that I have given elsewhere: "Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings." There is no morality for the mineral; there is no morality for the vegetable; there is no morality for the animal. Those are in the group under evolutionary law which compels them to go forward by the tremendous struggle for existence. By that struggle certain qualities are evolved--the qualities which are the bases of the humanity which is to be born into the world. There is a stage where there is no morality; where the creature is not immoral, but, is not-moral, is unmoral--without morality. He has not reached the stage where conscious obedience to law is possible for him; and so, as he is without the knowledge of good and evil, you cannot claim from him obedience to a law of Right and Wrong. Not only so, but taking that as our first point--that there is a stage where morality cannot exist because of the want of self-consciousness--the next point that you must realise, in establishing a Science of Morality, is a clear understanding of the meaning of the word "law". Now "law" may be a command made by a human legislature, or made arbitrarily by the ruler of a Nation, changeable, therefore, with an arbitrary penalty attached to its transgression. But the moral law, like all laws of Nature, is not a command either to do, or not to do. It is a declaration of conditions which produce certain definite results. Chemical law does not tell you, you _must_ put hydrogen and oxygen together and produce water. You may produce water or not as you like; you are perfectly free to make it or not to make it; but the law is that if you put hydrogen and oxygen together at a certain temperature under a certain pressure, then you must produce water. It is a statement of conditions, followed by unchangeable result. A law of Nature, therefore, is not violable. You cannot change it. Nothing can prevent the formation of water, if only the conditions for its production are present. Nothing can ever produce water unless the conditions for its production are present. You cannot change it; that is a law. But, according to your knowledge of law is your freedom in a realm of law. The ignorant man goes about in Nature buffeted by her laws, crushed by some, helped by others; to him the happenings are matters of chance, for he knows not the laws amid which he lives. Cabined, crippled, rendered helpless, he stands before an inexorable Nature, and knows not how, or whither, he should move. But the man of knowledge, knowing the laws around him, walks with perfect freedom in a realm of law; he balances one law against another, he utilises laws that help, he neutralises laws that oppose him, and in proportion to his knowledge is his freedom; for, as it has well been said: "Nature is conquered by obedience." Obeying, he is free. Now the moral law is a natural law, not an artificial one. It is an expression, as are all the laws of Nature, of Īshvara, who is the life, the sustenance, of His Universe. The moral law cannot be broken; the moral law cannot be changed; it is the will of God in Evolution; and, by that alone may Right and Wrong be tested. That is Right which helps evolution forward; that is Wrong which opposes the Divine Will in Evolution. There is your standard, or canon, of Right and Wrong. Oh! you say, that is not a rough and ready definition, or standard. No; it requires knowledge. And so the Ṛṣhis, the great Teachers, have given certain commands--morals to be followed by the ignorant, based on the one supreme law of conformity to the Divine Will in Evolution. We are told by Vyāsa: "To do good to another is Right; to do evil to another is Wrong." We are told by the Christ: "Do unto others as ye would that they should do to you." But take those two moral commands, and see whether under all circumstances they should be obeyed. As a rough rule of conduct--yes; for the masses of people--yes; but can a King obey Christ's command, or a Judge "do unto others as" he "would that they should do unto" him? When he has a murderer before him in the dock, and he sits to administer the law of the land, may he say: "I must do to the murderer as I would that he should do to me, and I must not sentence him to punishment because I would not wish to be so sentenced"? All these general commands as to action are limited in their scope, are modified by surrounding conditions, depend on the position of the person. You and I have no right to lock up in a room another person because he has injured us; but the Judge has the duty of locking him up, if he has transgressed the law of the land and prison is the appointed punishment. Another precept was given by a very practical man, Confucius. He was asked: "How shall we behave? What word is there which defines our duty? shall we return good for evil, as the great Sage Lâo-tsze has declared?" And Confucius, being a practical statesman, answered: "Is not 'Reciprocity' such a word? If you return good for evil, with what will you recompense good? Recompense good with good, and evil with justice." Now there you have the law of the State. The law of forgiveness, the law of returning good for evil, is the law for the man aspiring to lead a spiritual life. It is a duty on the Path of Holiness; it is a duty of one aspiring to become a Saint or a Yogī. It is the law for the individual conduct which raises the man from the brute to the God; but for the State, that is not the law. For the Nation, the stage of evolution has not yet been reached which can return good for evil, and allow an enemy to overrun the country and to have his will upon the people.

And so, in dealing with morality, as in dealing with every Science, you must use your brains as well as your emotions, and you must judge the consequence of actions in order to guide your path.

Looking then at it in this way, we must see what "evolution" means. It means that at first progress is secured by inviolable laws of Nature, that press upon a whole class. As I said, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, they cannot resist the law; they cannot evade it; they are compelled by an inner instinct to conform themselves to the law of their nature, imprinted upon them by the hand of Īshvara Himself, and so you have no mental struggle. The wild beast in the forest, he develops keenness, swiftness, shrewdness, cunning, because without them, he perishes. When you come to the savage, the law of evolution is very much the same. The savage is without the knowledge of good or of evil, and that is recognised everywhere. Most of you will know the Jewish legend, how God created a man and a woman and placed them in a garden, so that they might enjoy the fruit of every tree in the garden save the one tree that was forbidden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then comes in the curious point that God gives His creatures a command: "You shall not eat of that tree"; but, having no knowledge of good and evil, they could not know that disobedience was evil and that obedience was good; and, as the fruit was attractive and desirable, they ate and gained the knowledge, which they had been forbidden to acquire. And so you have the curious condition that the "fall of man" is brought about by his ignorance of Right and Wrong; he does the Wrong unconsciously, and so gains the knowledge of distinction between good and evil. Now while it would be a terrible injustice that their ignorance should be counted as a sin, for which any of us, their descendants, should perish everlastingly, yet if you look on the story as a symbolical representation of fact, it becomes most illuminative and helpful. For the first stage in the emergence of the human race from the innocence and the ignorance of the animal and the animal-man lies in the experience of good and of evil, which brings happiness in assonance with the law and unhappiness in discord with the law. The savage knows no Right or Wrong. You remember the most typical case of the Missionary, who wanted to point out to an Australian savage that he should not, when he was hungry, have eaten his wife. He was short of food, the poor man, and was very very hungry; his wife was the handiest form of food; he killed her and ate her. "Oh!" but said the Missionary: "That was very wrong," and as there was no word in the savage's language for "wrong," he said: "That was not good." "I assure you," said the innocent savage, "she was very good." There was no idea there of any "good" except physical gratification, and as the flesh of the wife stilled the hunger of the man, "she was very good," he answered. Now there was no Right or Wrong there. The man was unmoral; he only knew the gratification of his own desires; he followed them blindly; but that, as with Adam and Eve, was the road to progress. He would want his wife presently, and he would miss her. The gratification of hunger was a momentary pleasure, but the presence of the wife was a continual help and service. And so, presently, that man would think that it was a mistake to kill her: "I had better have been hungry for a few more hours, and have kept my wife." And the first idea dawns upon him that the gratification of a momentary want is not the path to a lasting happiness. Both are temporary, of course, but one is longer than the other. Now the first lessons of the savage come along that line. The white man gives the savage drink; the savage likes it; he gets drunk; but he finds in the morning that he has a very bad headache; if the attraction of the drink is greater than the fear of headache, he goes on drinking and drinking, until he dies perhaps in delirium tremens. And looking at it all, after death, the savages profit by that; and they say: "This drink makes us ill; this drink shortens our life; this drink brings unhappiness at last"; and they learn after very many such experiences that intoxication is Wrong; but they cannot learn this without the experience. They cannot gain knowledge without knowing the pair of opposites, one of which is good and the other evil; and all the first evolution of the savage depends on his gathering experience, which shows him that going with the law of health means happiness in the physical sense, going against it means unhappiness. Now the savage takes a very long time to learn this. But he is not left, as I pointed out to you yesterday, only to the gathering of experience. Some wise man, the Founder of a religion, or nowadays a Christian or Musalmān Missionary, says: "Don't touch drink; it will make you miserable." He breaks the command. How many Hinḍūs, how many Musalmāns to-day, forbidden by their religions to take strong drink, break the religious command and suffer thereby. How many Princes of Rājpuṭāna have died in middle age owing to excessive drinking; so that you find a number of young Princes succeeding to the gadi, their fathers having fallen victims to the curse of European drink. The old Princes in Rājpuṭāna, Musalmān and Hinḍū, are the men who have followed the law of their religion, and have abstained from strong drink. Is that not a lesson to the younger men who follow them? You can see the result of the lesson in the improved temperance of the younger generation of Indian Princes to-day. They have learnt the lesson by the experience of others, instead of by the bitter fruit of experience in themselves.

For the elders who have died, not only is there the command given by a religion, but there is the experience on the other side of death. Now of all the miseries which can follow a man into the world after death, of all the miseries, the results of drink are perhaps almost the most terrible. There is a constant craving, for not in the physical body but in the senses of the Sūkṣhma Sharīra, lie the craving, the desire, the longing for sensual gratification; and, if a man has been drunken, if he has been profligate in his life, he finds himself tortured on the other side of death by the drink he cannot enjoy, by the craving of the sex instinct which he cannot gratify. Torn by the agony of longing, frustrated by the impossibility of gratification, there is branded on that soul, as with a red-hot iron: "It is foolish to yield to gratification that brings about the misery that now I am suffering." He has to starve out the craving by non-satisfaction, and the agonies of starvation are his doom. And so is impressed on the lasting memory of the man the knowledge that suffering follows on the undue gratification of the passions of the body. That comes back in the next life--or after many lives--that comes back in an innate distaste for this form of sense-gratification. You say: "Would it not have been better that he should have been spared this long experience?" Nay, it would not have been better; for you are only finally rid of a craving, when you cease to desire that which gratifies it; and the teaching of pain kills the _desire_, whereas the enforced abstinence, not killing the desire, would ever leave you a prey to the possibility of temptation. That is why the striking of the transgressor by the disregarded law, is the veriest mercy in the long life of Man.

Most of you have been evolved without craving for drink; most of you, if you have touched it, have thrown it aside as distasteful. It has no power over you; it has no attraction for you; you turn away from it with disgust, as that which cannot tempt; and the only way of reaching that point is to have had experience of the evil, and to know that it is the womb of pain. Now out of this grows one great lesson for those of you who are more advanced. You know that sometimes, you who are fathers and mothers, you know that against all precept, against all training, against all prayer, your son goes wrong. You have told him: "My boy, to give way to passion is ruinous"; you have told him: "If you yield, you will suffer in your manhood." He disregards your prayer; he disregards your commands; the wild youth goes on; he will have his way. In that moment of parental agony, in that moment of despair, remember that doctrine of the Omnipresence of God that I spoke of in the first discourse: "If I go down into hell, behold, thou art there also," and realise that God--who loves your child more than you can love, more wisely as well as more intensely--has allowed that soul to go down into hell in order that He may meet him there in his degradation and his agony, and teach him by the lesson of pain, when he would not learn by the lesson of precept, that there is a law that none may disregard and live in happiness. For God is the Pain that comes to the transgressor from the disregarded law, as He is the Bliss that comes to the man who is in harmony with law.

Now if you realise these great truths, you will understand how morality must change with the upward evolution of the individual man. When you see wrong-doing in the undeveloped, when you see evil in the savage--whether the savage who is an anachronism in civilised society, or the savage who in his own native conditions--you will realise that that man is only beginning to learn the lessons of morality, and must learn them by dashing himself against the laws he knows not. And so, gradually, he grows out of the unmoral state into the beginning of the moral state, when he knows a little distinction between Right and Wrong, and often chooses the Wrong, because of the temporary pleasure that the yielding to the Wrong affords. And then he has the lesson I have just spoken of, until, within his innermost nature, he has branded the evil to be avoided. Now it is no merit to any one of us that we do not murder a man. We do not want to do so, because we have done it very often in the past, and have found that the fruit thereof was pain. We do not want to do it now, and the not wanting to do a particular wrong is the proof of moral growth. I know how often we are inclined to say: "Oh! How admirable is the man who struggles against evil." Yes. It is admirable for a man to struggle against temptation, to see him fighting against his lower nature. He is a hero in the struggle. But greater than the man who struggles is the man who has transcended the struggle, and who does the Right naturally, because he loves the Law and feels no inclination to turn towards wrong. That is not so often remembered. The man who has conquered in past lives, the man who has risen above the temptations that his younger brother struggles against, he is at a higher stage of evolution, for he chooses with full conviction the concord with the will of God. That means that the Divine Will in his own Spirit is emerging, and that quality, the Divine Will in the man, is the sign of approaching Liberation.