Notes on Dharma

Social Dharma vs. Parahamahamsa Dharma

"Beyond Good and Evil."

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

Social Dharma--the religious and moral strictures that govern human civilization--often comes in clash with mystic experience--the inner demands of divine life. As my Guru Maharaja used to put it "Society Consciousness and God Consciousness are always coming into clash." What he meant by this was the idea that the structures put in place by governmental or ecclesiastical authorities to ensure the longevity of their institution often have no place in mystic experience. In fact, structures meant to protect the moral climate necessary for spiritual life to thrive may even have the opposite effect.

Mystic experience is elusive, ineffable. But it conveys its own authority. Our personal experience of the divine informs our spiritual life. My relation with my guru or spiritual mentor is personal and cannot be transferred by proxy to a hierarchy of priests. Even if those priests say they represent God and my guru.

Through a mystic sense of the divine we are able to free ourselves from the bonds of quotidian perception and the calcified thought of every day life in our search for universal truth and enlightenment. But this mystic sense often runs counter to the needs and demands of society and institutions. So Paramahamsa-dharma is problematic for the powers that be. As Jesus Christ found when he preached the Sermon on the Mount, truth-seeking is risky business. Christ was crucified for advocating God Consciousness above society consciousness, even as he told his followers to give Rome its due and render unto "Caesar that which is Caesars." His token lip-service to the regime was insufficient to protect him from the cross. His followers were crucified for their dissent, for they had proclaimed God as above Rome.

Rome understood the power of ideas. And so instituted censorship against the new Christian thinkers.

The purpose of censorship is to prevent dissent, to ensure conformity. Freedom of thought threatens the power structure, for power depends on obedience. Conformity is necessary to keep people in line, to feed the machine. Society consciousness often depends on a mafia of power determined to prevent free thought and free expression. Repression of free thought is one of the primary functions of the modern state. Strangely, it is also an important function of the Church, a Church that claims to exist only to help us and guide us in our spiritual life? But once dogma has been established and rituals sanctified, there is no room for mysticism. God consciousness must be repressed in order to further the interests of the Societal consciousness of the Church community, whether that community is Catholic, Islamic, or Christian.

The Hindu concept of dharma is quite distinct from its Western cousin, "religion." Unlike the West, the East has no monolithic Church heirarchy, but an important thread that runs through India’s ancient wisdom traditions is the concept of dharma. Dharma generally means something like “duty” or “religion” but has many layers of deeper meaning.

Still, Dharma has both an inner and an outer aspect, and includes both social dharma and spiritual dharma as mysticism. While "social" dharma predominates, both are revered. Sadhus and holy men are afforded great respect in India. Even so, the outer aspect of dharma, as for example the "caste system" or "the worship of thousands of gods" is what we see and includes a social component in terms of ritual, social events, weddings, funerals and so on. In its quotidian sense dharma means something like “religion” or “social duty,” and is external to mystic life. Of course, this external aspect is important. To dismiss society and its demands is to become anti-social, as many mystics have discovered over the course of time. In Matthew 10:35 Christ tells his followers to give up worldly affairs and follow the divine life, reminding them: "For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." To sacrifice one's life for a divine purpose is to turn one's back on society--and face the consequences. As Christ himself discovered, involvement in society consciousness may be criticized or dismissed only at one’s peril, even when considering the internal mystical aspect of dharma called paramahaṁsa-dharma.

Maintaining order in society is an important aspect of religion or dharma, not to be taken lightly. The Torah focus on the Law. The Old Testament of the Bible is concerned with law. The Book of Leviticus emphasizes rituals, laws and the ethical and moral standards for proper social living. When Christ begins teaching, he is criticized for destroying the law of Moses. He assures the people of Jerusalem, "Don't misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose." Of course, the purpose of all religious law is to develop our divine life in harmony with God. This cannot be realized without deep mystic experience. When a mystic like Saint Francis challenged the pope to give up his wealthy robes and golden throne and follow vows of poverty, the mystic appears to be acting against the norms of society with his bizarre behavior, but he is truly reaffirming their purpose.

So it was for Vyāsa. As scripture defining ethics and the laws of man, Vyasa’s Mahābhārata, and indeed most of the dharma-shastras, explore the outer, ethical and moral aspect of spiritual life: society consciousness. How should we act? And the ancient wisdom traditions of India have certainly given us quite a flexible view of dharma and ethics as they play out in the social world.

In the Hindu dharma-shastras, from the Laws of Manu to the Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali one’s social position, education, and upbringing is always considered as a factor before the sin or piety of a given act is determined, since one's moral compass is determined by one's station in life. India's wisdom text recognize that law must be applied according to a given social milieu. The law for the tiger is different than the law for the lamb. What is sinful for one man may be piety for another, given his varna or place in the caste system. There must be different rules and laws for different social classes. These rules extend into spiritual practice as well. So the rules of social duty or dharma may vary according to one’s qualification.

For example, hard work and loyalty are working class values, where study and insight are values for the intellectual class. As the poet William Blake once wrote: “one law for the lion & the ox is oppression.” The law for the lion is to eat the ox, where law for the ox is vegetarianism. Extreme equality before the law is oppression. The wisdom of India’s view of dharma is seen in its flexibility. This flexibility also makes Hindu ethics a bit of a conundrum for the uninitiated. The stories of the Mahābhārata proved a context through which this conundrum may be unpacked.

Since the outer aspect of dharma governs our quotidian lives, it is often seen as being more important than its inner or more “spiritual” aspect. Unfortunately, this may lead to a neglect of the inner life. In our day to day life we set priorities. In doing our duty to husband, wife, family, and children, we may neglect our duty to community and nation. Or by giving our life to country and society we may neglect the family. A deeper understanding of dharma helps us to balance these. But what of our true self-interest? What of our duty to self and spiritual reality?

By dedicating ourselves to the inner life, to the search for Shri Krishna, Reality the Beautiful, we may neglect not only country and society, but even family and children? How is this dharma?

Having finished his masterwork, The Mahābhārata, its author Vyāsa is disgusted. He is not at all happy with the work, since its focus on social dharma neglects this all-important point. He has failed to draw attention to the need for spiritual life, concentrating instead on all the twists and turns of karma and dharma. And so he sets out on his own spiritual quest, one which will take him to his guru Nārada. Inspired by Narada, Vyasa decides to write another work, one which will surpass even the Mahabharata. This is the Bhagavat Purana, known to its acolytes as the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

In his preamble to the work, Vyāsa sets out his purpose.

dharmaḥ projjhita-kaitavo 'tra paramo nirmatsarāṇāṁ satāṁ

vedyaṁ vāstavam atra vastu śivadaṁ tāpa-trayonmūlanam

śrīmad-bhāgavate mahā-muni-kṛte kiṁ vā parair īśvaraḥ

sadyo hṛdy avarudhyate 'tra kṛtibhiḥ śuśrūṣubhis tat-kṣaṇāt

धर्मः प्रोज्झित-कैतवो ऽत्र परमो निर्मत्सराणां सतां वेद्यं वास्तवम् अत्र वस्तु शिवदं ताप-त्रयोन्मूलनम्

श्रीमद्-भागवते महा-मुनि-कृते किं वा परैर् ईश्वरः सद्यो हृद्य् अवरुध्यते ऽत्र कृतिभिः शुश्रूषुभिस् तत्-क्षणात्
The Bhagavatam teaches a higher understanding of dharma. Ordinary dharma is good, because it keeps us from animal life and barbarism. Animals have no understanding of dharma. So the general idea of dharma is that duty and religiosity lead to prosperity, family, and salvation: dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa. These are the common and universal ideas about duty and religion.

But since our concentration on materialistic duty and prosperity drives out our sense of the divine, we lose ourselves in the mundane struggle for existence that we consecrate with the idea of “duty.” This is not really “religion,” if the purpose of religion is to bring us closer to God.

Vyasa points out that by using the idea of “religion” or "dharma” to provide a veneer of respectability to our lives of karmic exploitation we cheat ourselves out of our true self-interest. Dharma as duty to family and society, Artha as the struggle for wealth, Kāma as our endless engagement in the erotic sexual principle, and Mokṣa as salvation from material life are external: in fact they are not really religion, but a form of cheating ourselves out of self-realization.

In his preamble, Vyāsa expresses his disgust with all these cheating forms of religion. He calls this kaitava-dharma and teaches us that this has no place in the Bhagavata-Purana. This new treatise, written to surpass and transcend the Mahābhārata rejects the cheating type of religion which does not teach people spiritual realization through surrender to Krishna and dedication to God. that is cheating.

Vyāsa introduces here the idea of a higher form of spiritual self-realization called Paramahaṁsa dharma. Cheating dharma is for men who are like crows who life on refuse and garbage. Vyāsa advises us to become swans, paramahaṁsa. This understanding is not for ordinary men or even kings. It is for swan-like humans. Paramo nirmatsarāṇām (SB 1.1.2).

Vyāsa tells us that only the graceful swan-like souls who are uninterested in materialism can truly understand the message of the Bhagavat. Not those who are after dharma artha kāma mokṣa. With these words, Vyāsa summarizes the focus of the Bhāgavat here. The Bhāgavata Purana does not promote the worship of Ganesh for mundane prosperity, the worship of Shiva for impersonal liberation, astrology, or the sexual arts of the Kama Sutra. The Bhagavata asks us to see the world as it was seen by Shukadeva Goswami and aspire to his understanding of divinity as Krishna, Reality the Beautiful.

Vyāsa opens his thesis with dharmaḥ projjhita-kaitavo 'tra: all institutional religion is thrown away. He does not recognize any organizations or institutions. He is preaching the essence. This is revolutionary. The original commentator on the Bhagavatama, Śrīdhara Swami, writing centuries ago explains that the word kaitavaḥ, refers to so-called religions that teach so-called economic development, so-called sense gratification, so-called impersonal liberation. Vyāsa says "These cheating types of religion are kicked out."

Vyasadeva banishes all these cheating type of religion from the pages of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. What was allowed quite generously in the Mahābhārata is exiled from the Bhagavata Pūrana that there be no confusion about his thesis.

This is particulary revolutionary, since what is normally considered as “good”--loyalty to family and country, hard work for the dollar, and even piety and sanctimony--is dismissed as “cheating.”

Vyāsa’s proclamation of Paramahaṁsa-dharma is a declaration of war against mundane religion. For this reason the message of Vyāsadev has faced great opposition since it was first proclaimed. Vyāsa is exalting the mystic experience of realized souls like Nārada and Brahma, of prophets and devotees like Shukadeva Goswami and Prahlāda Mahārāja over loyalty to king and country, the church and state. Again, it is dangerous to reject the societal norms. When Arjuna wants to renounce his duty as a warrior, Krishna Himself reminds us that it is dangerous to reject one’s ordinary dharma. Paramahaṁsa-dharma is not for amateurs.

श्रेयान् स्व-धर्मो विगुनः पर-धर्मात् स्वनुष्ठितात्स्व -धर्मे निधनं श्रेयह् पर-धर्मो भयावहः

śreyān sva-dharmo vigunaḥ para-dharmāt svanuṣṭhitāt

sva-dharme nidhanaṁ śreyah para-dharmo bhayāvahaḥ

“It is far better to discharge one’s prescribed duties, even though faultily, than another’s duties perfectly. Destruction in the course of performing one’s own duty is better than engaging in another’s duties, for to follow another’s path is dangerous.” Transcendental or Paramahaṁsa-dharma advises us to answer the beat of a different drummer, to go deeper. Vyāsa’s Bhāgavatam is more specific on this point in the Seventh Canto, where he defines the different kinds of chala-dharma or cheating religions (SB 7.15.12):

विधर्मः पर-धर्मश् च आभास उपमा छलः

अधर्म-शाखाः पञ्चेमा धर्म-ज्ञो ’धर्मवत् त्यजेत्

vidharmaḥ para-dharmaś ca ābhāsa upamā chalaḥ

adharma-śākhāḥ pañcemā dharma-jño ’dharmavat tyajet

There are five branches of irreligion, appropriately known as irreligion [vidharma], religious principles for which one is unfit [para-dharma], pretentious religion [abhasa], analogical religion [upadharma] and cheating religion [chala-dharma]. One who is aware of real religious life must abandon these five as irreligious.

But, leaving aside "societal norms" how does one become “aware” of what real religion is? There is a certain dichotomy between personal religious experience or mysticism the formal organizations we know as churches. It seems that when organizations institutionalize religion, the resulting churches become nothing more than the receptacles of social dharma. Mysticism is real, genuine, personal religious experience. It is the realization of extraordinary subjective experiences and thoughts in the search for universal enlightenment that results in spiritual epiphany, what the Yogis call samādhi. But when mysticism dies and spiritual experience is delegated to a priesthood, spirituality becomes religion and hardens into a petrified state. This dead, “official” religion is only a shadow of Vyāsa’s paramahaṁsa-dharma.

When paramahaṁsa-dharma meets the sanctioned religion of appointed priests there is an inevitable clash. The best historical example is probably the meeting between Pope Innocent III and Saint Francis where the Pope began by chastising the heresy of Francis and ended when the Pope himself was humiliated by the poverty and kindness of the young saint.

Perhaps the best literary exploration of the dynamic between petrified state religion and personal mystic experience is found in Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” where Torquemada meets Jesus Christ and warns him against preaching spiritual life as Christ stands in silence and ends the interview by kissing the torturer who represents the Church. It may be said that Krishna’s conversation with Arjuna ends where the Bhagavatam begins, since his admonition to give up all dharma and surrender to God is really the basis of the Bhagavatam.