Morality and spirituality
Aspiration started from mineral life in a very insignificant manner. When we came to the animal life, there the vital originated, the aggressive vital, the vital that wants to destroy and not the vital that wants to do something good. Then destruction started. When we came to the human life during our first few incarnations as human beings we were still mainly animals. Individuals in their first or second human incarnation can pray to God for many nice things. But many times they also make undivine prayers. If the wife is pregnant, the husband will pray, “Let her have a stillborn child,” or if the wife has her own children, instead of praying, “Make my children divine,” she will make some kind of animal prayer.Even in the human incarnation it is all animal in the beginning. Then we become 70 percent animal and 30 percent human, then 50 percent animal and 50 percent human. But a time comes when the animal consciousness goes away and we come to be human and divine. We have 99 percent human consciousness and one percent divine consciousness. The divine consciousness is always there, but only to a very small degree. So from 99 percent human and one percent divine it comes to 70 percent human and 30 percent divine.
At this point morality starts. Morality is absolutely necessary because the animal consciousness has disappeared and through morality we are moving into a form of virtue: we won’t steal, we won’t tell lies, we won’t strike people, we will be trustworthy. Morality teaches us all these things. Before a person enters into the spiritual life, he goes through all moralities. He has to complete the moral circle; otherwise, he won’t be ready to enter into spirituality. By sincere aspiration he wants to make fast progress in spirituality. Then, after he has completed his moral circle, if he has a spiritual Master who says, “I am entering into you, I am becoming one with you, I am making you my own instrument, to do something for God,” he can become a divine instrument. But this will happen only if he has previously completed the moral circle.
Take the case of Krishna and Arjuna. Arjuna had played his role for morality. He was a jewel among his neighbours; he was the best person. Then Krishna came and asked Arjuna to kill his friends, his neighbours, his close relatives and cousins. How can a moral person kill? Arjuna couldn’t even kill animals; yet Krishna was asking his dearest disciple to kill members of his own family. But we must know that there was a spiritual purpose for this. Krishna knew it had to be done because at that time the undivine forces were destroying the earth consciousness. So Arjuna went one step beyond morality and just became an instrument. In the spiritual life, when one enters the infinite Consciousness, one is like the ocean. When a person is ready to know the Infinite, his consciousness goes beyond the domain of morality. Many things one does because it is the Infinite that commands it.
Some spiritual Masters feel that if they are relaxed, then their disciples will do all sorts of insincere things. So they have to be strict all the time with regard to morality. On the one hand, spiritual Masters try to be strict; on the other hand, they feel that some of their disciples are ready to fully surrender to God, so they tell them, “You are ready to go beyond morality.” Suppose the husband is a disciple and his wife is not, and they are fighting constantly. The Master will tell the husband that he must leave his wife. His morality will say, “O God, if I leave my wife, who will take care of her, who will take care of my children?” Morality binds, but a spiritual person knows that God created the world and God takes care of what He has created. If the spiritual Master feels that this particular man is ready and the wife is not ready, then he will say, “Leave her. You go towards the Light. If you leave your wife, you are doing her a great favour because she is still fast asleep in the inner world. Unconsciously you are becoming an instrument to awaken her soul, but her Hour has not yet struck. So it is only a torture, a punishment for her.
Look at the Buddha. The Buddha left his wife and child while they were fast asleep. Can you imagine? Will morality allow any father to leave his most beautiful wife and little boy? No! But the Buddha left because he got the inner command, and God told him that He would take care of the wife and child. All his friends said he was so immoral, so insincere. But then he realised God, the infinite Consciousness, and his wife wanted to become his disciple. The Buddha thought that his mission would fail if he allowed women to join his path, so he wouldn’t allow his wife to become a disciple. But the wife was very clever. She sent her son to the Buddha, and the Buddha gladly accepted him. But when he had accepted the one half, he had to accept the other half also; he had to accept his wife. When he accepted his wife he said, “Now I have taken women into the fold. If my mission was going to last so many years, it is going to last only half that amount now.” In those days women were not ready for the spiritual life, but now it is different. Women are making wonderful progress. The Buddha said what he had to say for that time. But at this time in history it is different.
Morality will say, “Always tell the truth.” We all want to tell the truth and we are crying for the truth. But suppose there are two persons fighting, and one takes out a knife and begins chasing the other one. The one who is being chased comes to a saint’s house for shelter. The saint is meditating and he says to the man, “Here you will be well protected.” When the one with the knife comes running up and asks the saint if he has seen anyone, the saint replies, “No, I haven’t.”
The saint is praying and meditating all day and morality will say that he is a liar. But what has he done? By telling this so-called falsehood, he has saved the precious life of one individual. He has also saved the one who wanted to kill this individual. If the one had killed the other, he would have dropped into a very low consciousness, into the darkest. So the saint has saved two people: the one who was going to be killed and the one who was going to kill. Morality will say, “He is a liar.” But spirituality will say, “No, he has done the right thing. He has saved two souls.”
When you enter into the spiritual life, your standards of right and wrong are determined only by God’s Will. In the Mahabharata it was God’s Will for Arjuna to kill, because there were undivine forces on the earth at that time. Again, God’s Will was in the saint, who wanted to avoid killing. If we apply morality in these cases, we will call Arjuna a destroyer and the saint a liar. But we do not know what God’s Will is. Only when we reach the height and can identify ourselves with God’s Consciousness will we see that whatever God wants is right. But from a limited consciousness we cannot expect to see right and wrong all the time.
