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READ ABOUT NARAYANA GURU THE
RELEVANCE OF NARAYANA GURU’S PHILOSOPHY ¨¨l´« oY¬-¡±Lpl¤«AY¢¨Ê -m¢k®d¢i¤«. THE
UNIQUE RELEVANCE OF SREE NARAYANA GURU FOR HERE AND NOW. NARAYANA
GURU AND RELIGIOUS CONVERSION. THE
RELEVANCE OF NARAYANA GURU’S PHILOSOPHY Narayana Guru was one of the outstanding visionaries India has produced since the death of Shankaracharya. Eminent politicians, saints, scholars, students and disciples have described Guru with various titles emphasizing his life, works and teachings. He is the “Great Swamy Narayana Guru of Malayalam“ (Tagore) “The Great Saint“ (Swamy Sivananda, “Guru an Avatar“ Acharya Vinoda Bhave), “The prophet of new order” swami Dharma Theerthan A Great religious teacher, (Jawharlal Nehru), A saint who revolutionized history (V.V.Giri), “Guru the Saint Reformer of Kerala” (R.Shrinivasan), “A modern prophet of social renaissance” (Bishop Theodosius), “Narayana Guru World citizen” (Fred Hass) . As we see the above tittles, the last two were given by western devotee disciples of Narayana Guru. Although Guru was a product of his time with Certain socio-cultural and geographical limitations; like any other great personality, his philosophy of “One in kind, One in religion, One God for human” is universally applicable where ever people are divided on the basis of class, color, creed and national origin. America is a microcosm of a world of diversity ; diversity in religion, philosophies, cultural values, color and class differences. Guru proclaimed his message of oneness at the turn of the century in India, in the state of Kerala, which according to Swami Vivakananda was the ’Lunatic asylum’. Guru’s message of ‘One in kind’ signifies that humanity is one and differences in appearance should not prejudice people. His concept of ‘One religion’ reminds people of the universal religion of love and service to humanity. His philosophy of ‘One God’ should remind people of the Ultimate Reality, (GOD) though people call and worship God in very different names. Many a time the second part of His popular maxim is not given due attention and importance. It reads, “what ever may be the religion; what matters is your humanness‘. It is crystal clear that the socio-religious and political conditions of India has been radically changed (reconditioned) by the life and teachings of Narayana Guru. Guru was from the lower ranks as foisted and cemented by the orthodox religious hierarchy in India. We can be proud of the display of his maxim “One in kind, One in religion, One in God is Human and the effects it had in the minds of the people in India. "Oru Jati, Oru Matham, Oru Daivam People who subscribe to Guru's philosophy can be organized around the maxim wherever they are. In the multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi- linguistic, and multi-religious society of America, the message of Sree Narayana Guru becomes all the more relevant and important. The Guru once said, "Get organized and be strong". I believe that this is the underlying principle which helped to organize the Sree Narayana Association of North America. This nation was founded by people of strong religious fervor and faith in a god who loves common humanity and desires unity among all groups and walks of people. As long as the people strives to live out the basic teachings of the Guru it will help build a better world. The members of the Association are standard bearers of his maxim. It must be translated and applied towards better understanding and appreciation of one another who may appear to be different but are ‘One in kind. Sree Narayana Guru was a pragmatist who would challenge the statuesque but would bring people together on common platforms to discuss various approaches in solving human problems. Fred Hass, an American disciple of Sree Narayana Guru, wrote that the ideas of world citizenship is not a new one. He cites Rosseau, Jesus, and Buddha as examples of world citizens. These Guru's regardless of their diverse backgrounds, have been telling mankind about it's essential oneness. Narayana Guru boldly restated and revalued the ancient wisdom and proclaimed himself as a citizen member of the humanity through his writings and life. His unitive outlook is like a bright beacon shining in a dark world. The late Jawaharlal Nehru during his visit to Shiva Giri Mutt said on April 25, 1958, "Sree Narayana Guru lived here and from here radiated his message of “One in kind, One in religion, One God for human” and he wanted to build up a classless society based on universal equality". The essence of those teachings are what essentially needed in these days all over the world. The Guru's approach was winning through the mind and heart and not by coercion. When there is no real change in the hearts and minds of people who pretend to follow his teachings, everything is likely to become ceremonial and superficial. May the Guru's message help us to have a universal social vision and spiritual unity to realize the human potentials as well all belong to the same family of the Supreme.. ¨¨l´«
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According to the ancient tradition of India, after comparing the Guru to the Indian pantheon of gods, Vishnu, Brahma, and Maheswara, the riches decided that the Guru par excellence can not be identified with any such symbolically caricatured idea. Hence they held that the true Guru is to be looked upon as the Absolute the incomparable one. This ancient way of transcending all limitations is favored by us. Hence we pay our homage to the historical person Of Narayana Guru, just as we revere Gautma Buddha, Vardhamana Mahaveera, Socrates, Jesus Christ or Prophet Mohmoud and other great heroes of the world. We also pay our obeisance to Narayana Guru in recognition of The noble example he set before us as a person who lived in our own century. In fact, we place upon him the highest encomium for excellence of his teaching which is on par with perennial truth seen highlighted in great books like Vedas, the Upanishads, the writings if Confucius and Lao Tsu, the Pentateuch, which is accepted also in the Old Testament, The Bhagavt Gita, Zend Avasta, The Holy Qur’an and songs of various bards sung all over the world. Narayana Guru a new example before us by exhorting the acceptance of Absolute knowledge. Instead of putting his emphasis on theologically conceived God or any particular religious aspect of the concept, he always gave his first reverence to knowledge. In which ever way knowledge reveals itself, or is reveled to us, he had no hesitation in accepting it as the light that should ever lead man in his path to perfection. Mathematical truths, whether of arithmetic, geometry, or algebra, are always honored by people universally, without deifying any particular mathematician. What people value is only the intrinsic worth of the truth revalued. Incidentally we may associate the names of great mathematicians who have made the world familiar with certain mathematical laws, but we have not defied Euclid or Copernicus, Pythagoras or Galileo. We have great respect for those pioneers in mathematical search. In the same way we should see the perennial validity of the teachings of Narayana Guru rather than treating him as the expounder of any dogma and we should not make a fetish or cliché of what he said in certain context of his personal life. Einstein made great contributions in theoretical physics. We have great respect for his genius, but that does not mean it is possible for everyone to have a full understanding of what he expounded as his general and special Theory of Relativity. It is common knowledge that one who has no basic education in mathematics and physics cannot successfully put his teeth into findings of Einstein. In the same manner one who cannot popularize some of the basic writings of Narayana Guru which are given in his subtly treatises such as Arivu, The Epistemology of Gnosis, and Darshanamala, The garland of Philosophic Visions. Even so the mystical works of Narayana Guru will remain some what closed books to many who have no mystical inclination, devotional discipline, or poetic vision. However we see a tendency now among the self-styled followers of Narayana Guru that every world he uttered be though even though those who volunteer to teach cannot themselves make head or tail of what the Guru meant by his cryptic writings. I cannot think of such sentiments as anything better than clannish and tribalastic enthusiasm which is not of much value if not to be discarded as only a snobbish or puerile tendency of cultist. Let us examine certain relevant questions which are again and again asked by people who take an interest in the life and teachings of Narayana Guru. WAS NARAYANA GURU A SOCIAL REFORMER? If we study social anthropology, and the history of the evolution of political and economic theories of the world, we can say that in all of us there is a tendency to converse a value which gives us comfort in our social set-up and also an instinctive tendency to challenge certain social patterns of conventional behavior which offer inconvenience, discomfort, and cruelty to us. Thus potentially every person is at once a conservative as well as a reformer calling for radical change. As Narayana Guru was a man of high sensibility , who had also a penetrating vision into the finest texture of the values of human excellence, he was naturally interested in changing all forms of crude interpersonal relationships handed over to us from our tribalistic days. It is true that Narayana Guru was in the forefront of a good number of pioneers in India who have advocated change. That shows not mean that without Narayana Guru India would not have changed. One can look at all the other countries that have undergone great changes such as China, Japan, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, the African Countries and Latin America. In all these countries also the changes came through the worlds, actions and innovations of leaders who were of the same caliber of Narayana Guru. In one part of India, the southern most, Kerala and partly Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Narayana Guru’s initiative made an impact on the younger generation of his time which raised the billowy waves of social transformation which are still continuously growing wider and wider in bringing more and more people to a conscientization that is helpful in bringing radical changes in people’s social outlook. Of course, Narayana Guru did play his part excellently, yet he is not to be confused with conventional social reformer. In fact the, the political significance in historical terms of changes brought about by Dayananda Saraswati, Ram Mohan Roy, Kesab Chandra Sen, the Gaekwad of Baroda, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, E.V.Ramaswamy Naikar and Mahatma Gandhi are remembered and accepted by the Indian people much more than what Narayana Guru could pose before the people of India. The change the Guru was bringing about was not of any spectacular kind. However the principle of change that the Guru initiated in the thought stream of humanity is more far-reaching even though it did not come with a bang of fury and tumult of insurrection. One distinctive mark of Narayana Guru’s way of transforming society lay in his impartial and neutral way of considering each man’s social, religious or moral stand from where he stood. He always respected the adherence of each man to his faith even though that faith was of little value to Narayana Guru. Let us take for example Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi – two great leaders of the world who advocated change with entirely different vistas and methodology. Karl Marx’s main submission was there are always two polemically polarized classes such as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, exploiters and the exploited, the suppressers and the suppressed, and he put weight on the side of the suppressed, exploited and the proletariat working class. Of course, that shows a genuinely humanistic interest which is basically rooted in compassion. His cause was to fight and establish the rights of the aggrieved. He is to be admired for his high sense of justice. Mahtma Gandhi saw the problem as a clash of interests between religious groups such as the Hindus, the Muslims and the Christians. Even among the Hindus he saw the clash precipitated in the form of social rivalry among classes called the varnas and occupational communities called jatis, and the growing rivalry between the untouchables and those who considered them selves to be privileged classes. Even when he advocated the same right for the Muslim and the Christian religions to exist, and the untouchables to be treated on par with any other person of the Hindu community, most people did not take him seriously because of his own partisan stand with the Hindus and with the caste Hindus within the Hindu religion. He was sincere to the core, but he unintentionally precipitated and perpetuated the inferior – superior class consciousness among the Hindus by calling one section Harijan. Thus these great reformers did not see that the seeds of change which they planted had already within them the germs of antithesis, which instead of fading out in synthesis would only proliferate to bring a cyclic recurrence of divisions. It is in this respect that Narayana Guru is to be understood as one who always offered holistic solution in which he never labeled one group of people against another. Thus he was social reformer with a difference — a difference that is yet to be understood and appreciated. I do not say Narayana Guru made no miscalculation when he gave his blessings to people of a particular community to rally around him in his own name. He did not see the danger of communalism entering through the back door which has now proved that the very ideals for which Guru lived are being drowned with ritualistic worship and euphonic of the so-called leaders whose vested interests have made his name highly commercialized. WAS NARAYANA GURU A HINDU REVIVALIST? The regional languages to which he was exposed were Sanskrit, Malayalam, and Tamil. He lived at a stage when Malayalam language was still forming out of the two major language matrixes of the Dravidian-Tamil and Aryan-Sanskrit languages. He had no partisan spirit he studied on the one hand the basics of Sanskrit and made himself quite at ease with Amarakosham and Pananiyam. Thus, he had mastery of Sanskrit vocabulary and the rules of Sanskrit grammar. He turned to darshanas and made himself through with a special recourse to Nyaya ethics and Tarka logic. The best example before him was Shankaracharya, who is said to have hailed from Kerala too. However, he did not take lopsided partisan spirit with Advaitha and gave due consideration to the arguments of Sri Ramanuja and Madhava. There were three major groups functioning in South India. Guru did not hesitate to expose himself to the literature of those three groups. Even when he had full recourse into the philosophical doctrines of these religious groups he held himself fast to his conviction in the advert philosophy. Fully appreciating people’s emotional adherence to the Vishnava deities the Shiva deities and to the several manifestations of the Devi, he wrote hymns on popular deities such as Shiva, Subrhamania, Vinayaka, Vasudeva, Bhadrakali, and Devi with view of revaluing the symbolic significance of the ideograms preserved in these concepts as man’s archetypal adherence to the concepts of the Fatherhood and the Motherhood of God. What prompted him to revalue South Indian Spirituality whether Shivite or Vaishnavite was his constant visits to most of the well known temples of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The major temples in the south were his hounding places specially in the Tirunalveli, Arcot, Madurai, Tanjavur, and Tiruchirapalli areas. Guru frequented the Karnataka area ranging from Mangalore to Goa. Thus he was exposed to Shivite Tamil literature of Shivapuranam, Tevaram and Tirukkural, and the sixty three stalwarts of Shaivisam. He did not show any hesitation in having a recourse to the works of the Alwars. The ionographic mysticism, both Devi and Ardhanariswara fired his imagination. Thus the problem of interlacing spiritual cultures become very natural to him and he brought into Malayalam the rich legacy of the Upanishads as well as the writings of the great Tamil mystics Appear, Sundaramurthi, Manikkavasakar and Tirujnanasambandar. Three other authors who inspired the Guru were Pattanathupillair, Tiruvalluvar and Taimanavar. When we study the collected works of Narayana Guru we can see two models before us. For all the Sanskrit allegiance he kept Shankaracharya as his model and in his Shaivite themes his model was Tirujnasambandar. As he was also a constant visitor of Southern Karnataka, he was familiar with the works of Basuvesvariah and his admiration for the dasa culture developed by Purandaradasa and other Vaisnava saints like Tulasidasa and Kabirdasa are understandable. In spite of his exposure to Shaivisam, including Virasaivisam, he did not make himself polemic to Vaisnavism. He considered all these sampradayas as naturally belonging to his cultural heritage and he embraced those cultures more as a connoisseur of poetics rather than a religious fanatic. In all these aspects of growing civilization there was an urgent need to prune superstitious overgrowths and to revalue the perennial wisdom sponsored by each branch of Indian spiritual wisdom. Thus we see that Narayana Guru was placed in a situation where people belonging to the Shivite, Vaishnavite, and Devi worship came to him for clarity and inspiration and it become the Guru’s natural office to function as a revaluator of any Indian school that was presented to him by the votaries of these schools of thought. As he was continuously meditating on the meaning of things before him and pouring out his thoughts in mystical songs and verse, and also was churning the cream of metaphysical insights, the Guru certainly gave a great impetus for the growth of Indian wisdom outlooks which can be identified with the heritage of Hindus. So if the Hindu loyalists see in Narayana Guru a great patron and benefactor of the Hindus one cannot deny the fact because of the substantial guidance he has given to his contemporaries. At the same time, he was not the least interested in claiming the interest of Hindu hegemony against the two main religious groups of his era – Islam and Christianity. Narayana Guru’s headquarters was in Varkala and two villages close by, Edava and Narayana, are both places interested in the conversion of Islamic culture. It was only natural that he was on intimate terms with the maulavis of these regions. There were many occasions when Muslims and Arabic pundits were astonished at Narayana Guru’s insight into the subtle bearings of certain passages of the Qur’an and many Muslim pundits were irresistibly drawn to him to hear his expositions of the Quranic adoration of the Absolute – Allah. Once some Christian missionaries came to Narayana Guru with the intention of converting him to Christianity. He received them with cordial friendship and welcomed the idea of their arranging with an evangelist to come and read the bible to him every day. The man deputed was Mr K.M. John of Ayroor, who became drown to the ideals of the Guru and offered him self to be in the services of the Guru by taking a teaching position in the English school founded by the Guru. Thus Narayana Guru loved all and hated none. In spite of his whole-hearted acceptance of the ideals of Islam and Christianity he never thought the rich heritage of the Hindus was wanting in anything to live a full and rich life freedom in the realization of the Upanishadic wisdom. He always gurdled the preservation of wisdom with great zeal without becoming a zealot and with absolute adherence without becoming a religious fanatic. It was this openness and egalitarian catholicity that made the Guru fascinating and even physically charming in the eyes of Rabindranath Tagore. Even when the Guru provoked Mahathma Gandhi it yielded good results in Gandhi becoming convinced that free India was possible only by safeguarding the rights and privileges of the vast masses of India’s working class who were considered the ‘fifth’ class (panchama) of people of India. One question which Narayana Guru put poignantly to Gandhi was the right of India to ask for freedom from British when the Hindus were not giving at least a semblance of freedom to the so-called untouchables. In the Round-Table Conference convened in London by Ramsay Macdonald, Mahatma Gandhi realized how crucial was the question raised by the Guru. Without wasting any time on his return to India, Gandhi changed the names of Navajivan and young India into Harijan and fully opted for the recognition of untouchables as equal citizens of India. Thus Narayana Guru stood firm in his natural placement regionally, culturally, and spiritually and yet he extended his arms to all to bestow his friendship in its fullest cordiality to all concerned. He made a symbolic gesture his common affiliation to the Aryan culture and Dravidian culture by translating into Malayalam the Isavasya Upanishad and Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar.
THE UNIQUE RELEVANCE OF SREE NARAYANA GURU FOR HERE AND
NOW. When we remember with gratitude and homage Narayana Guru: Teacher, Social worker, Reformer, Community Leader, Vedantin and Poet, It is worth while that we recognize his relevance to us here and now. Those of us who have profited from his teachings recognize that we in North America form a community placed very much like the community for which he specially worked during his life time; and some reflections will tell us that his message have a special relevance for us. Some people saw the Guru as a Vedantin, a realized person helping others on the path to truth, who by his simple but exact poems like Daiva Dashakam or his devotional hymns like 'Janani Navaratna Manjari' expounded in simple terms the great truths, with an idiom designed to appeal to the hart and the head at the same time. Through Nataraja Guru and others, this tradition has been handed down to the present time. His poetic genius has echoes in Guru Nityachaithanya Yati who is able to connect the Absolute and the everyday life. But to others he is seen as a social emancipator who unleashed the creative potential of a community and made them look inward for the solutions to social problems. He installed deities and yet he taught that the Self is the Absolute. Are these questions relevant today? It has been a great problem for many people of goodwill and seriousness to reconcile a formless absolute , call it Brahman or Nature with love and devotion. Closely related is a dichotomy between individual spiritual attainment and human compassion for the multitude. I shall borrow the phrase 'vertical' and 'horizontal' for those two views. Shall we follow an elitist vertical path or a compassionate horizontal path? To the extent I have understood, Narayana Guru make us realize that there is no dichotomy, both paths merge. The secret is that it is not the individualized ego with its aggrandizing temperament that pursues the vertical attainment but the self. And the Self finds no sharp division between the individual and the collective. When we enjoy a sunset we are transported by beauty and joy, yet we do not want to own the sunset. When you make a discovery in mathematics or science, the ego recedes and you feel a humbling soul at the sight of a sunset. It is only later that the ego comes to claim authorship of the discovery. So also in spiritual attainment. The insight is not of the ego but of the Self. This movement from the ego to the Self and back is like the advance to sun-centered Copernican system from the earth-centered Ptolemaic system and back again to the earth as the reference basis in every day life. If we can understand that both these are frames of reference and each is better suited to dealing with certain questions, we have no more dichotomy. The community which received most attention from Narayana Guru was poised in limbo: so are we the residents of North America, well-to-do without being either indigent or affluent. We are unsure of our social position and so are others about us. For the discomforts and ills we would like to blame others. But what the Guru taught us is this: Liberate yourself from your own shortcomings and self imposed shackles. If your house is in order, others will, in course of time, come to recognize your true worth. There are stories about Narayana Guru with parallels to the stories about Jesus Christ. When Jesus was traveling through Samaria, he asked a woman for water to drink. They get into conversation and she ask him: My people say that God is to be worshiped on yonder hill. But your people say, the worship must be in Jerusalem. Which is it. Jesus tells her: The time is come when God is to be worshipped in spirit and in your heart. When conservatives challenged his right to install a Shiva, he happily told them: This is our own Shiva, Not your! And he told people that you could install a strip of mirror and see the idol in it!! How simple and how profound are these teachings. There are the leaders who win concessions and justice for us from the state. There are those who achieve political or economical freedom. They are emancipators. But the Great Emancipators liberate us from our own prejudices, habits and character defects. Narayana Guru is a great Emancipator; and his teachings are still of real relevance to our life today, if only more so.
NARAYANA GURU AND On many occasions Narayana Guru has been misquoted and misunderstood on the subject of religious conversion. Knowingly or unknowingly a lot of people made statements on this with out doing a comprehensive study of all the words and deeds of Narayana Guru (made) on this subject. As in any other aspect of Narayana Guru’s messages and teachings, we must always explore and understand the circumstances under which GURU made each remarks and actions taken. Only then we can explicitly understand the essence of HIS articulate and well-calculated statements of limited words and actions on this subject. NARAYANA GURU, unlike any other spiritual guide, never imposed his vision upon any one. However, HIS commanding appearance, honorable and conclusive words were good enough for any one to accept his authority and guidance with out skepticism. His eyes, words, actions and postures were highly effectual and impressive. No one could ever act against his wishes and words. No one could ever oppose to his actions because they were so perfect and timely. The genuineness, truth and sincerity of his words and deeds always overcame any doubt any one may have had about him and his divinity, intentions and divine knowledge. On different occasions Guru has made clear remarks on religious
conversions. At certain occasions he converted and reconverted people from one religion to
another. Let us look at some of those statements and actions taken by Guru based on HIS
own convictions and spiritual conclusions. HE never believed that the religious conversions are in any way a
threat to the society. At the same time he very strongly believed that any such conversion
must be executed purely on the basis of a person’s belief. No conversion should be
made for any kind of materialistic or temporary benefits, convenience or as an escape
route from discrimination and religious persecution. Guru only professed and advocated
conversions and re-conversions based on these principles and theory. In Neyyatinkara, there were some families who converted to Christianity due to the discrimination and religious persecution existed at that time. But after witnessing the progress made due to the work of Narayana Guru and his disciples, these families wanted to convert back to Hinduism. But the community was not ready to accept them back. When approached, Guru very happily converted them back. In the village of Vazhappalli, near Changanashery a limited number of families of a community known as ‘Pichanaattu Kuruppanmar’ lived. They were small in number. This community was in a very difficult situation during Guru’s time. In some respect they were considered lower in the social spectrum. But at the same time they were allowed entry in to the temples and roads, where a lot of other communities were not allowed. However the communities at the higher spectrum of Hindu religion did not socially accept them. This coupled with the limited number of members in their own community, they had difficulty in functioning socially and they faced isolation. This isolation forced the leader of this group, Mr Krishnan Vidyar to convert to Christianity. This was a conversion of convenience. Mr Mooloor Padmanabha Panickar, a disciple of Narayana Guru informed Guru of this and requested that the ‘Pichanaattu Kuruppanmar’ be accepted into the community so the religious conversion of convenience could be avoided. Narayana Guru happily accepted the proposal of Mooloor. Guru personally accepted them in to the community. This was done at a public meeting in the presence of a large crowed which included leaders of other religious groups also. Gandhiji during his visit to Shivagiri, (to meet Nrayana Guru) asked a specific question to Narayana Guru on religious conversion. The question was ‘Is religious conversion necessary for spiritual salvation?’ Guru’s reply was specific and to the point. HE replied that religious conversion is not needed for spiritual salvation. He also asked Guru if Hindu religion is adequate for this purpose. To this, HIS reply was also perfectly clear. HE stated that Hindu religion is perfectly adequate for salvation. Guru on one occasion in his message to SNDP Yogam said:
“Religious renaissance should not be an effort of converting from one religion to
another. Our organization should be one that will unite all humans. Religion should permit
freedom of belief. Religion should be acceptable to the intellectual mind and it should
lead common people to do pure, good and noble deeds (Sanathana Dharma) in life. ‘One
in Kind, One in Faith, One in God is Human’ is such an opinion. We feel that all the
people who believe in this eternal truth should join together under this organization. The
idea of such an organization shall be a noble one. People who think that religious
conversion is the only way of eradicating discrimination and religious persecution can
consider this as a religious conversion and (at the same time) a declaration of
independence from the discrimination.” In Guru’s opinion religion has two aspects, internal and external. If the conversion is for the external aspect, that is not a conversion of religion. That is only a social change. As regards to the internal or the spiritual values concerned, it is always changing as the individual's ability to think and contemplate advances. That change can not be made with any external force. It has to come from within the people themselves, and that can only happen as the depth of spiritual knowledge increases. Narayana Guru categorically stated that any one who does not believe in a religion must not stay in that religion. Almost every religion is a collection of codes or teachings of more than one spiritual personality. Christianity is not only the teachings of Christ. It also includes the directives and principles of Moses and Saint Paul. This is much truer in Bharat. What is now known, as Hindu religion is actually a collection of religions. Thus, if we can call the codified teachings of few spiritual teachers as a religion, why can’t we add teachings of some more spiritual personalities to it and give it more of a universal representation? This can make it much more widely acceptable. Also remember that all the religions has the same purpose of making a better life for human. Let us take an example of the nature and try to understand this point. Look at the ocean and the rivers. Once the rivers merge in to the ocean, can any one point out the water of any particular river? No, it is impossible. Now let us go further and take water from different parts of the ocean and taste it. All tastes salty. It is very similar in the case of different religions also. They are same in essence, but superficially different. According to Guru the essence of all religions, when put together could be called as the one religion for human kind or the eternal religion. If any one thinks this as irrational or irresponsible almost all religions do make this mistake even now. If we analyze in a serious way, we can see that Thomas and Mathew do not believe in the same Christianity. It is true with any two people of any religion. However there are common factors in every religion, or you could say there are factors common to all religions. So all the human society could be called as a religion. Brotherhood is the main stay of Islam. Christianity gives importance to love. Buddhism is based on ‘ahimsa’. If any one argues that any of this is more valuable or important than the other, they do not understand the real value. The values here referred are inter-dependent and mutually complimenting. The eternal values such as love, brotherhood, charity, dedication, truth, undiscriminating, freedom are all equally important. One is not better than the other or inferior to another. According to the time and place, certain values get more importance. It does not mean that others are to be neglected or an ideology based on that is inferior. Now at this time what is the need of the society? That is what the intellectual and the spiritual community should deliver to the common people. The world is in a very dangerous stage now. There are conflicts all over the globe. Almost every one based on religion, either spiritual or materialistic. (In a sense both are religious.) What should be the remedy for this? We, the whole world must try to understand others opinion, on each and every matter with an open mind, mutual respect and mutual understanding. We should try to study each other’s religion, ideology, culture, and administrative systems of all kinds. This should be done not in a confrontational or aggressive or discriminatory way. It should be in a very friendly atmosphere and a cooperative effort. The objective should be to understand the others and to make others understand your side of the spectrum. Only then the whole picture can be understood. The problem is universal. Understanding the entire picture only can give you a vision of remedy. And for sure the remedy will materialize if all can understand their own and each other’s beliefs, customs, needs, programs and problems. Then people will understand that the requirement of the time is not religious or ideological conversion. The need of the time is understanding. That could be achieved by the education and understanding of Narayana Guru’s Philosophy. Once Guru said that the conflicts are not due to religion. It is due to the intoxication of the mind with the blind belief in the superficial differences between the religions. This is what should be removed. For that the society, now more than ever needs Narayana Guru’s spiritual guidance. |
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