Sri Sri Thakur’s Supreme Concept

of
Religion
By
Dr. Damodar Thakur
(Professor and Chairman, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Sana’a University)
Republic of Yemen

;nk ;nk fg /eZL; XykfuHkZofr HkkjrA

vH;qRFkkue/ZeL; rnkRekua l`tkE;ge~AA7AA

yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānirbhavati bhārata

abhyuthānamadharmasya tadātmānam srijāmyaham

I appear on this earth, whenever there is decay of religion and exultation of a

perverse form of religion.
Lord Krishna in the Gita (4:7)

If we consider the history of ideas, the history of ideas during the last few centuries in particular, we will
find that religion has very often been misunderstood and even condemned not only by mediocre people in
the street but also by many leading thinkers. As a spokesman of certain sections of 16th century Britain, a
character in Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, for example, described religion as “a childish toy”:

I count religion but a childish toy,

And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

In his Prometheus Unbound, Shelley, a Romantic poet, described it as “the dust of creeds outworn” and
Jiddu Krishnamurti described it as “the frozen thought of men out of which they build temples”1. Karl
Marx said that religion was “the opium of the people”.2 Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the Italian
dictator, equated it with fascism:

Fascism is a religion; the twentieth century will be known

in history as the century of fascism.3

Sigmund Freud, the famous psychologist, described religion as an illusion:

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in
with our instinctual desires.
1
The Observer 22 April 1928

2
A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

3
Listed in Bloomsbury Dictionary of Quotations, p.270.
 William Blake went to the extent of relating religion to brothels:

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.4

Sir Thomas Browne was of the view that religion is that sphere of endeavour in which people
characteristically lose their reason.

Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein
stones and clouts make martyrs.5

Jonathan Swift condemned religion as a source of hatred and animosity and said:

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to love one
another.6

Dennis Potter condemned religion in equally strong terms and said:

Religion to me has always been the wound, not the bandage.7

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche thought of a religious person as someone who was physically not clean and
said:

After coming in contact with a religious man, I always feel that I must wash
my hands.8

Harvey Allen understood religion not as eternal principles of being and becoming but as something that
keeps changing every now and then.

Religions change: beer and wine remain.9

4
William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blooms p.66

5
Listed in The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations p.344

6
Jonathan Swift Thoughts on Various Subjects Listed as a quote in The Little Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations. p 346.

7
Listed in The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. p. 346.

8
The Antichrist

9
Anthony Adverse Pt 1, Ch.3, Sect, xx. The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations p.3.
 Robert Green Ingersoll, a well-known US lawyer and agnostic, denounced religion as something funny
and ridiculous and said:

Many people think they have religion when they are troubled with
dyspepsia.10

C.F. Forbes (1817-1911), a British writer, belittled religion by saying that it is incapable of creating and
sustaining a feeling of inward tranquility, even that superficial shade of tranquility which a day-today
event like being well-dressed can produce:

The sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which

religion is powerless to bestow.11

Virtues like kindness, compassion, charity and doing good to others are some of the characteristic features
of a truly religious person. But religion can never be equated with any one of these virtues. This, however,
is the mistake that many leading intellectuals have in the past made when conceptualizing religion; they
have defined it in terms of one or more of its (peripheral) concomitants or offshoots. For example, John
Keats, one of the well-known Romantic poets, equated religion with love, which for him was presumably
physical love. He said:

Love is my religion – I could die for that.12

Thomas Paine held a similar view:

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.13

Matthew Arnold described religion as morality touched by emotion:

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality
touched by emotion.14

The number of thinkers who have condemned religion or have equated religion with one of its
characteristic qualities is practically endless. Examples like the ones listed here can never be exhaustive;

10
Robert Green Ingersoll Liberty of Man, Woman and Child. Section 3 Bloom p.195
11
Listed in Bloomsbury Dictionary of Quotations. p.149.

12
Letter to Fanny Browne. 13 October 1819. Bloomsbury Dictionary of Quotations. p.213.
13

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) The Rights of Man Oxford p.346

14
Literature and Dogma. Listed in Collins Gem of Quotations. p.333
 they can only be illustrative. The importance of such examples lies in the fact that they can help us, by
providing a contrast, to understand and appreciate the way Sri Sri Thakur wants us to understand
religion.15

The four key concepts in Sri Sri Thakur’s view of religion are being, becoming, ideal and
environment. The word being as used by him is a synonym or a near-synonym of the word existence. It
underscores the fact that we exist and that our existence is not an illusion but a reality. It emphasizes that
our existence is not a metaphysical fiction but a pragmatic fact. Becoming is the act of going upward and
forward in life. The urge for becoming, for going ahead in life is “the cry of existence”16; it is the very
essence of being. To quote Sri Sri Thakur, ‘the principal hankerings of being are animation, extension
and augmentation’17 Religion is what fulfils these hankerings of our being. It upholds our being and saves
it from its possible dissipation. It keeps our being firm and compact and makes it move steadily towards
becoming. It needs to be clearly understood here that religion as explained and elaborated by Sri Sri
Thakur has a two-fold function. It nourishes and nurtures our being and thereby stops it from a downward
movement and it also energizes and activates the urge for becoming, for a constant onward and upward
journey. It would be relevant here to quote what the Gita has to say about movement or otherwise in life.

Sattvikas move onward and upward, rajasi people stay where they are and
the tamasik people move backward and downward.

What the Gita seems to emphasize here is the fact that staying where we are is not enough. We have to go
ahead and elevate ourselves. The Brihdaranyak Upanishad says the following:
vlrksek ln~xxe;
relksek T;ksfrxZe;
e`R;ksekZ ve`rexe;

asatomā sadgamaya
tamasomā jyotirgamaya
mrityormā amritam gamaya (Brihadranyaka Upanishad )

15
Broadly speaking, the word religion and the word dharma have more or less the same meaning and in religious discourses
the two words have, therefore, been freely used as synonyms, and in translations of religious texts the two words have been
freely used as semantic equivalents. But as any modern linguist would tell us, no two synonymous words or phrases in any
language have exactly the same meaning: each synonym has its own specific connotations, its own special shade of meaning.
What applies to synonyms in general applies to the two synonymous words religion and dharma as well, particularly as Sri Sri
Thakur would like us to understand these two terms. As the etymology of the word suggests, religion, as explained by Sri Sri
Thakur, is “nothing but to be ligared with the Master” (Mess. 2.51), “to bind one self unrepellingly with the Love-
Lord, the seer of life and growth”(Mess. 2.44), “to instal life and becoming of existence”(II.49). It is in other words,
“the union of the soul, the existence, with the Lord or the Ideal” (Mess. 2.46). Dharma, on the other hand, is “to
uphold the life and growth of self as of others”(Mess.2.44), to uphold “our being with a run towards
becoming”(Mess.II.17). One can say, therefore, that these two words, religion and dharma, refer to the two closely
inter-related aspects of basically the same twin concepts of being and becoming, life and growth. F or the sake of
simplicity, the word religion will in this book be used, therefore, as a broad-based term to include the idea of dharma as well.
16
Message, 2.25.
17
Message, 1.214.
 Lead us from falsehood to truth, from darkness to light and from death to
immortality.

The journey from falsehood to truth and to a still higher truth, and, similarly, the journey from the
darkness of ignorance to an ever-increasing level of knowledge and wisdom is the journey of our being
towards becoming. This upward and onward journey is not always very easy. It is easy to fall. You have
only to allow yourself to go down. To stay where one is, is not always that easy. One has to be active and
alert to ensure that one stays where one is and does not slide backward and downward. But it requires a
great deal of will power, effort and attention to go speedily and steadily from being to becoming. Our
fixities, obsessions, and complexes, our negative and destructive actions and emotions inhibit and weaken
our instinctual urge for becoming. Commenting on this journey from being to becoming, the Upanishad
says the following:

mfÙr"ër Tkkx³z³r
çkI; Okjku fucks/r
{kqjL; /kjk fufLkrk nqjR;;k
nqxZeiFk% rr~ dOk;ks OknfUr

uttisthata jāgrata
prāpya varān nibodhata
kshurasya dhāra nisitā duratyaya
durgam pathah tat kavayo vadanti (Kathopanishad I.iii.14)

Arise, awake. Approach the venerable teachers and get to know the truth.
The wise say that it is as difficult to go on the upward journey of life as it is
to tread on the sharp edge of a razor.

It seems that in the long spiritual tradition of India, monks, hermits and seers tried all kinds of devices to
ensure a smooth and speedy journey of being to becoming and then they realized that the best, the easiest,
the surest and the safest way of having a speedy journey on the road to becoming was to get actively
attached to a living Ideal. In Sri Sri Thakur’s utterances, we find a very forceful exposition of that ancient
wisdom. He said:

Surrender to thy Ideal,

Continue to move on,
Smashing and managing
the sufferings
that come forth as obstacles,-
and be crowned
with success!

Message, 1.31.

The augmentation and exaltation of being and becoming is maximally facilitated and enhanced
when an individual is actively attached to a living Ideal. Sri Sri Thakur said that the “lucidity of
attachment” to a great living Ideal “makes the will keen and unlocked”18 and energizes his spirit so much
that a person can “roll on like a flood over the sorrows, sufferings and calamities of the world with love,
sympathy and service and with the message of Beloved the Lord, with a knowledge and activity that
illuminates the way of the dull, and deteriorating depressed”.19 He who does not have the good fortune of
being concentric on a great Ideal runs the risk of being pushed back to a world of complexes. His
complexes, his negative, debilitating and destructive impulses and emotions threaten to rend his being into
bits and induce him to “recede towards the ebb of life. . .”20 Thousands of years ago, the Gita said in very
emphatic words that he who is not concentric on an Ideal tends to have an unfortunate life.

ukfLr cqf¼j;qÙkQL; u pk;qÙkQL; HkkoukA

u pkHkko;r% 'kkfUrj'kkUrL; oqQr% lq[ke~AA (2.66)

nāsti buddhi ayuktasya na chā yuktasya bhāvanā

na chā bhāvayatah shāntih ashāntasya kutah sukham (2.66)

A person who is not attached to an Ideal is devoid of real

wisdom and lacks a positive outlook in life. As such a person
does not have a positive outlook, he is not at peace with himself;
and as he is not at peace with himself, how can he ever be
happy?

This is what Sri Sri Thakur said, though in a different idiom, and observed that “He who is devoid of an
Ideal roams with dull and dusky eyes, . . .lacking in worldly common sense”.

But in Sri Sri Thakur’s utterances, the word Ideal does not mean an idea or a set of ideas. However
inspiring, lofty or sublime an idea or a set of ideas may be, it is not an Ideal as conceptualized by Sri Sri
Thakur and spelt with an initial capital letter. An Ideal in this sense is a Krishna, a Christ, a Buddha or the
like who embodies the wisdom of all past prophets. He is a person who inspires the hope, strengthens the
perseverance, energizes the will-power and invigorates the inner strength of millions of people around
him and creates and develops in them a positive and proactive outlook towards life. In Sri Sri Thakur’s
vision of life an Ideal ought to be understood as someone “who infuses the thrill of animation, extension
and augmentation” and proves to be “the Way of sufferers to life and light”21. Thus, religion for Sri Sri
Thakur is nothing but “the act of binding oneself with the Ideal, in love, worship and admiration and to
live on accordingly in an acceleration of one’s being and becoming”.22

A person is much more than the statements that he may make and, similarly, a living Ideal, a seer,
a prophet, a purushottam satguru is in this sense much more than all the lofty ideas expressed by great
18
Message, 1.44.
.
19
Message, 1.15.
20

Message, 1.170.
21
Message. 1.201.
22

Message, 1.124.
personalities in the past. No idea can ever prove equal to the loving and inspiring human touch of a living
Ideal who integrates and enlivens all the wisdom of the past and expresses it in the idiom readily
acceptable to the ethos of his age. In this connection Sri Sri Thakur had to say the following:

The degeneration of humanity began at that moment when the unseen God
was made infinite and, ignoring the seers, the worship of their sayings
began.23

Robert Allen, a multimillionaire of America, and a source of inspiration for numerous people around him,
once said:

Study anyone who’s great, and you’ll find that they apprenticed to a master. . . Therefore,
if you want to achieve greatness, renown, and superlative success, you must apprentice to a
master.24

If we apprentice to a billionaire, we can hope to be a billionaire; if we apprentice to a hermit, we can hope

to be hermit. But if we want to develop in such a balanced manner that we can have the best of both the
material and spiritual worlds, if we want to organize our inner and outer resources maximally creatively, if
we want to “live tremendously with an uphill exuberance of life and light”25 we have to actively adhere to
a purushottam satguru, to an overlord of all the secrets of success.

Sri Sri Thakur’s concept of becoming may seem to be the same thing as Darwin’s concept of biological
evolution, particularly in view of the fact that Thomas Huxley, a great supporter of Darwin’s theory of
evolution, has, in statements like the following, used the word becoming by way of elucidating Darwin’s
theory:

The different branches of science combine to demonstrate that the universe

in its entirety can be regarded as one gigantic process, a process of
becoming, of attaining new levels of existence and organization, which can
properly be called a genesis or an evolution.26

It needs to be emphasized here, however, that Sri Sri Thakur’s concept of becoming is not the same thing
as Charles Darwin’s concept of biological evolution. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the
individuals in a species are competing with each other for the sake of their survival and so the relationship
between them is the relationship of rivalry and hostility. Just as the individuals in a species are competing
with each other like enemies, different species of a genus are also competing with each other in a similar
manner and with a similar attitude of hostility, trying to have survival advantages over each other.
23
Satyanusaran, p.1.

Jack Canfield, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. New
24

Delhi: Harper Collins, 2005, p. 299.

25

Message, 1.202.
26
www.darwin-literature.com/l_quotes.html
Organisms having survival advantages genetically transmit those advantages to their offspring. The result
of this competition and rivalry is that certain individuals in a species, like certain species in a genus,
survive whereas all others perish in the struggle for existence.

Sri Sri Thakur’s message, however, is not the message of hostility and rivalry but of harmony and a
dynamic togetherness with the environment. His message of a harmonious togetherness with the
environment can be understood in two parts: (i) his vision of nature, i.e., the earth with all its rivers, seas,
mountains, forests, and animals, and (ii) his vision of the human environment in which an individual lives
and works. The view held in this book is that if we want to understand Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of nature in
its true perspective, we should consider it in the context of some of the leading attitudes to nature in
human history.

The typical attitude of the West during the last few centuries has been the attitude of conquering nature.
Bacon, a great supporter of the exploitation of nature for human welfare, said, for example, that Nature
had to be “hounded in her wanderings”, “bound into service”, “put in constraint”, and made a “slave”. He
said that the job of a scientist was to “torture nature’s secrets from her”.27 Francis Bacon, however, was
not the only person who held this opinion. William Lawrence, a Massachusetts Episcopal bishop said that
“Man, when he is strong, conquers nature,”28 and similarly, William Pope Harrison, an editor for the
Methodist Church, said that “Dominion over the earth is the condition of man’s residence upon the
globe.”29 This attitude that nature had to be conquered became amply evident when the media almost all
over Britain and the United States announced Edmund Hillary’s success in climbing over Mount Everest
as “man’s conquest of Mount Everest”. The underlying assumption behind all these statements was that
this earth with all its resources was only meant for man’s enjoyment and that he had, therefore, the
authority to use it, abuse it or over-exploit it the way he wanted. To put in White’s words, “nature has no
reason for existence save to serve [humans]”.30 One of the very important factors behind this exploitative
attitude was the psychic victory in the West of anthropomorphism over paganism and animism. Pagans
believed in the existence of a divine spirit in rivers, trees, mountains, and every other phenomenon of
nature, and likewise, animism believed in the existence of a soul even in plants and animals. With the
advent of the Industrial revolution in the West, pagans and animists were laughed at and ridiculed as
ignorant, superstitious and primitive-minded people. The mind-set that resulted from this anti-pagan, anti-
animist attitude took the "spirits" out of the trees, mountains, and seas. Once the spirit was taken out of the
trees, mountains, rivers and the like, inhibitions to the exploitation of nature vanished altogether. The
ghost-busting theology that came into existence made it justifiable for man to exploit nature in a mood of
indifference to the feelings of natural objects. It reduced nature to the status of man's monopoly. It would
be naïve to over-generalize, however, and to say that everyone in the West always favoured this attitude
of over-exploiting nature. There were very strong dissenting voices at times. During the first half of the
thirteenth century, St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), for example, advocated a life of harmony with
nature. For him everything in nature was “alive and inter-related”. It is said that “like a child he regarded
the birds as his little sisters, the wind and the sun as his brothers, and the earth as the living mother of

27
s
28
www.atribute to Hinduism.com

Ibid.
29

In 1967, a brief but influential article by UCLA History Professor Lynn White, Jr. appeared in the magazine, Science.
30

Entitled, "The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis.” Quoted in

 them all”.31 But by and large it was believed that man was God’s best and most favoured creation and, as
everything in nature was meant for him, he had the right to exploit it for his own comfort.
That indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources has started polluting the rivers and the seas, glaciers
have started melting, the ozone layer in the atmosphere is being depleted and the world has started
experiencing a global warming that signals danger for man’s life on this earth. Environmentalists all over
the world have started realizing that man’s future lies in his living in harmony with nature and that his
hostile confrontation with and his indiscriminate exploitation of nature will result in his own ruin.. Arne
Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, evolved the concept of “deep ecology” which is often known as
ecophilosophy or ecosophy and in the name of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth, ecologists started a
theory called the Gaia theory advocating the protection and preservation of nature. Conventional wisdom
saw the earth as a dead planet made of inanimate rocks, oceans, and atmosphere, and merely inhabited by
life with human being as the unquestionable master of the animals, plants and inanimate nature around
him, whereas the Gaia theory saw man, animals, plants and inanimate nature as mutually supporting
organs of a self-regulating system.
Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of religion is just the opposite of the exploitative attitude of the reckless
profiteering industrialists of today. For Sri Sri Thakur both man and nature are integral parts of existence,
the relationship between them being the relationship of interconnectedness, interdependence and
interwovenness. Realizing that man and nature are and ought to be mutually supportive is in Sri Sri
Thakur’s view an integral part of the spiritual culture of becoming.

He who sees everything

in Him, the Self
and He in everything
in sense and essence,
is a sage.

Magna Dicta, p.106.

Nature for him has, among other things, a curative value for the sick and the suffering. He wanted his
followers, housewives in particular, to so train themselves that they can make a creative and curative use
of the medicinal properties of plants.32
A very different set of attitudes, very different from the typical exploitative attitude towards nature
emerged in the writings of some of the leading Romantic poets in Britain during the nineteenth century.
These attitudes are important not only for students of British literature but also for a historical
understanding of how the human history has been unfolding itself in different currents and cross currents
of ideas and attitudes from time to time. We can find Byron’s attitude to nature in the following lines:
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
31
173 Henry Thomas& Dana Lee Thomas, Living Biographies of Great Religious Leaders. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
1988. p.109.
32
Naree Neeti
 As is evident from these lines, Byron valued nature more than man, solitude more than society, and
experience and emotion more than intellect and thought. For Sri Sri Thakur, it is not a question of loving
nature more than man or a matter of loving man more than nature. The job of religion is to “uphold our
being with a run towards becoming” and, therefore, man has to make such a wise use of nature that it can
prove to be an enduring elixir for his being and can facilitate his becoming.
Wordsworth, the then poet laureate of Britain, is another internationally known personality, very well-
known for his attitude towards nature. His attitude towards nature changed slightly from time to time. His
attitude at an important stage of his career can, however, be seen in the following lines:
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love
That had no need of civilizing thought.
Phrases like “haunted me like a passion” and “that had no need of civilizing thought” make it clear that
Wordsworth’s love for nature, as expressed in these lines was a haunting passion and not a source of
serenity or equanimity of mind, not a source of a blessed peace that transcends all understanding. Nothing
that becomes a passion and manifests itself as an obsessive “appetite” did ever have a place in Sri Sri
Thakur’s vision of religion.
Keats was another great lover and admirer of nature during that period. He loved the beautiful sights and
sounds of nature for their own sake and his love of nature had its roots deep in his sensuous apprehension
of life. Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of nature is part of his vision of harmony, a harmony that manifests itself
not only in the inner harmony of thoughts and emotions but also in the harmony with the environment
outside.
The best way of understanding Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of nature will be to understand it as a creative
assimilation and a highly energetic expression of the main current of saints, hermits, and seers in the long
spiritual tradition of India. The present prophet, Sri Sri Thakur said, is only an “enlivening emblem of
the past and fulfillment thereof” 33 and so one’s love for the present had to be interlinked with an
admiration for the past. A brief survey of the long spiritual tradition regarding the attitude to nature that he
embodies will therefore be relevant here. The underlying philosophy of what is now known as deep
ecology has been part of the Indian ethos since time immemorial. In a metaphorical language charged
with poetic vigour, the Rig Veda (1.6.3), for example, says:

By the first touch of His hand rivers throb and ripple. When He smiles, the
sun shines, the moon glimmers, the stars twinkle, the flowers bloom. By the
first rays of the rising sun, the universe is stirred; the shining gold is
sprinkled on the smiling buds of roses; the fragrant air is filled with sweet
melodies of singing birds, the dawn is the dream of God's creative fancy.

33
Message, 2.118.
 This attitude of nature worship in India manifested itself in three forms: (i) in its love for inanimate
objects like mountains, rivers, and seas, (ii) its love for plants, and (iii) its love for animals. A brief
mention of each one of these three will be in order here.

In Mundaka Upanisad, the primordial power of the universe has been described in terms of inanimate
objects and it has been said that fire is his head, his eyes are the moon and the sun; the regions of space
are his ears, the wind is his breath, his heart is the entire universe and the earth is his footstool. Parvati,
Lord Shiva’s wife, was the daughter of the Himalayas and Sita, Rama’s consort, came out of the earth
when her father was ploughing the land. In the Gita, Krishna identifies himself with the inanimate objects
in the world and says that, of the waters he is the ocean; of the rivers, he is the Ganges; and of the
mountains, he is the Himalaya. Love for mountains, rivers, and seas has been such an integral part of the
eternal Indian psyche that even an internationally renowned botanist like Jagadish Chandra Bose, (1858-
1937) in his sagely philosophical essay Bhagirathir Utsha Sandhane, expressed his desire to explore how
the Ganges flows down from the "matted locks of Shiva", and even Jawaharlal Nehru, who was known for
his modernism, expressed the desire that after his death his ashes should be cast into the Ganges at
Allahabad.

The Indian spiritual tradition is also known for its love for and its association with inanimate nature.
Buddha, for example, was born in a sacred grove full of sal trees and he found enlightenment under the
shade of a peepal tree, botanically known as ficus religiosa. Aegle marmelos, the bilva tree, is considered
sacred for Hindus and its leaves and fruits are considered sacred offerings to Lord Shiva. The tulsi plant
is regarded as the abode of Krishna, a Hindu household is considered incomplete if it doesn't have a tulsi
plant in the courtyard, and no offering to any god in the system of Hindu worship is considered all right
until it is sanctified by tulsi leaves. The paste of sandal wood is used for making a mark on the forehead of
devotees as indicative of purity and sublimity. In the Gita, Krishna says that, of the trees all over the
world, he is the peepal tree. The offering of a leaf, a flower or a fruit, if it is done with devotion, is as
acceptable to him, he says, as any other valuable offering. Mango leaves are used as festoons during
religious ceremonies and auspicious events. The lotus is a sacred flower and was imagined in ancient
India to be the favourite seat of Saraswati, the goddess of learning, and the banana plant and leaves are
used for ornamentation on sacred occasions. The Varah Purana says, "One who plants one peepal tree, one
neem tree, ten flowering plants or creepers, two pomegranates, two oranges and five mangoes, never goes
to hell." In the Charak Sanhita, destruction of forests is taken as destruction of the state, and reforestation
an act of rebuilding the state and advancing its welfare.

For a typical person in the West, the cow is nothing better than a walking heap of burgers; in India, the
cow is believed to be like a mother. Lord Krishna was a cowherd, and the bull is depicted as the vehicle of
Lord Shiva. Snakes are a symbol of healing and primal energy. Lord Vishnu reclines on the serpent
Ananta eternally and Shiva has serpents coiled around his neck. In Indian mythology, Ganesha is believed
to be using the bandiquet, Goddess Durga, the lion and Vishnu, a garuda, a bird as his means of transport.
Lord Krishna always wore a peacock feather in his crown. Ganesha, the son of Shiva, is a combination of
elephant and man. Yudhishthira is said to have refused to enter heaven without his dog. In the Gita,
Krishna identifies himself with various forms of animal life. In 10.28, he says, for example, that of the
serpents, he is Vasuki and in 10.30 he says that, of the birds, he is the Garuda. He says (19.30) that, of
wild animals, he is the lion; of the horses, he is the legendary horse called Uchchaishravas; of the
elephants, he is the legendary elephant called Airavat; and, of the cows, he is the legendary cow called
Kamdhenu, which granted all the wishes of its supplicants. In the Yoga system of exercises meant for
 rejuvenating the body, the mind and the spirit, there is a clear tendency towards imitating animals. The
exercise in which one is advised to adopt the typical posture of a peacock, the exercise in which one is
advised to adopt the posture of a serpent, and, similarly, the exercise in which one is advised to produce a
resonance produced by the bee are some of the examples of the tendency to go closer to nature and to
emulate the typical postures of some of the animals.

Sri Sri Thakur’s love for inanimate nature can be seen in his love for the river Padma during the
early stages of his life in Pabna, now in Bangla Desh, and the long hours he spent on its bank watching the
river flowing with its characteristic melody and the rhythmic movement of its waves. When he decided to
leave Pabna before India’s partition, he decided to move to Deoghar, a place known for its beautiful hills
and forests all around. One of his desires during his stay in Deoghar was that the river Ganges should
somehow be brought to Deoghar by connecting it with the local small river Darba. His love for plants is
evident from the compassion that he felt for the bel tree that was overturned by a storm. When he saw that
bel tree uprooted and overturned by the storm, he felt pained and was visibly moved by the scene and
said, “Many sentiments are associated with this bel tree. . . . It was planted by my great grandmother”.34
His love for plants is also evident from the long hours he spent under the shade of the jamun (blackberry)
tree in Deoghar. Buddha got enlightenment under the peepal tree in South Bihar and hundreds and
hundreds of Sr Sri Thakur’s followers felt inspired, exalted and elevated by the wisdom that came out of
this Buddha in Deoghar, a place not far away from Gautam Buddha’s place of enlightenment. He had an
extraordinary sense of affinity, a sense of spiritual identity with the world of plants. Only a prophetic
personality of his stature could have had the experience conveyed in the following lines:

Many a time even now I have a feeling that it is myself that has become a
certain tree.35

Those who are familiar with his biography know that once when the driver of a horse-carriage whipped
the horses in that carriage, he (Sri Sri Thakur) became restless with pain and on examination it was found
that though the actual victims of the whipping were the horses, marks of the whip had appeared on his
back.

In Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of life, we find a living synthesis of this long Indian tradition of a loving
sympathy with nature. Nature for Sri Sri Thakur is part of man’s environment which he should
nurture and nourish and also derive healthy nourishment from. For Sri Sri Thakur, nature can be a
source of elevation and exaltation to man if man “abides” by her. The relationship between man
and nature should be, not a relationship of hostility and confrontation, but a loving relationship of
togetherness and mutual support.

Do abide by nature
with every nurture
that exalts your life and growth -

34
Discourses (Questions and answers) Vol.1 compiled by Prafulla Kumar Das. p. 83.
35
Ibid. p.29.
 she too will nurture you
with affection and cares;
know thou Providence
as master of nature
and seek Him
in her bosom.

Message, 5.5.
Buddha was of the view that we should utilize nature in the same way as a bee collects pollen from the
flower, neither polluting its beauty nor depleting its fragrance. Just as the bee manufactures honey out of
pollen, so man should be able to find happiness and fulfillment in life without harming the natural world
in which he lives. Like Buddha, Sri Sri Thakur said that a healthy spiritual culture needed not an attitude
of hostility and confrontation but an attitude of mutual support and fulfillment. The Buddhist tradition of
ethics denounces a wasteful use of nature and says:

A man shakes the branch of a wood-apple tree and all the fruits, ripe as well
as unripe, fall. The man would collect only what he wants and walk away
leaving the rest to rot. Such a wasteful attitude is certainly deplored in
Buddhism as not only anti-social but criminal.36

Like Pythagoras, Leonardo Da Vinci, Tolstoy, and Einstein, Sri Sri Thakur was a staunch supporter of
vegetarianism, his vegetarianism being an inevitable manifestation of his benevolent and compassionate
attitude towards nature.

Take not others’ flesh,

as you desire not others
to devour your own.

Message,. 8.305.

In Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of life, vegetarianism is not only a matter of compassion, a matter of
sentimentality or a matter of metaphysics but also a pragmatic matter of man’s own life and growth.
Vegetarian food causes no damage to man’s natural habitat and is also good for his health.

Vegetable diet
makes up existential glow,
whereas animal diet
goads towards decreasing
the assets of life.
36
The Buddhist Attitude Towards Nature by Lily de Silva. Access to Insight edition © 2005
 Message, 9.319
Expressing his reverence for those hermits, seers and prophetic personalities of India who considered
nature to be something sacred, Mahatma Gandhi once said the following:
I bow my head in reverence to our ancestors for their sense of the beautiful
in nature and for their foresight in investing beautiful manifestations
of Nature with a religious significance.37
Little did Mahatma Gandhi realize that this attitude of reverence towards nature was not only a matter of
ancient Indian heritage but also an essential part of the philosophy of life of a great contemporary of his,
to whom he had gone for guidance at the time when divisive forces towards the end of the British rule in
India started demanding the partition of the country on religious grounds.

The Darwinian concept of hostility and rivalry mentioned earlier in this chapter has been
manifesting itself in history not only in the form of an over-exploitation of nature by man but also in the
form of rivalry and hostility between different countries, races and tribes. Political interpreters of the
Darwinian theory might say that it was perhaps this deep-seated urge for rivalry and hostility, this
tendency to survive and flourish at the cost of others that made kings and war lords with stronger weapons
in the past to defeat other communities in battles, rob them of their wealth, burn their houses, capture their
women and rule over them, exploiting all their valuable resources. One of the things that India can
legitimately feel proud of is that from the earliest known beginnings of its history, the main stream of
Indian culture has been propagating the message of universal brotherhood as opposed to the world view
which says that we must flourish and enjoy life by defeating and killing others. This message of India
remained unheard like a voice in the wilderness and India itself was, for centuries, made a victim of the
tendency it had always denounced. Those who attacked and ruled over India robbed her of her gold,
diamonds, her natural resources, her raw materials for industry, and many of her other very valuable
possessions, but they did not succeed in robbing her of her conviction that the future of humanity was in
cordial togetherness and mutual support and not in unhealthy rivalry leading to one community
suppressing and exploiting the other. The Rig Veda, for example, said:

lekuh o vkd~fr% lekuh ân;kfu o A

lekueLrq oks euk~s ;Fkk o lqlgklfr AA

samānī va ākūtih samānī hridyāni va

samānamastu vo mano yathā va susahāsati

(Rig Veda. 10.191.4)

May you plan your target together, may your hearts be together and may
your minds be together so that you can achieve what can be achieved by a
dynamic togetherness.

The Atharva Veda (3.30.6) used the metaphor of the wheel of a chariot, arānābhimivā bhitah
(vjkukfHkfeokfHkr%) and exhorted people to help and support each other as the spokes of the wheel of a
37
Glimpses of Indian Culture - By Dr. Giriraj Shah. p. 106.
 chariot support and reinforce each other. This message of a cordial togetherness has always been an
essential part of the main stream of Indian culture. It found its expression in the writings and speeches of
Indian stalwarts like Nanak, Chaitanya Deva, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo and Vivekanand and has been
very forcefully and explicitly expressed in the utterances of Sri Sri Thakur. Sri Sri Thakur’s message of
becoming is the message of harmony, the message of a loving and mutually supportive relationship
between the individual and his environment.

Endure
and endeavour
to make one great,
and thus be great
in the making!

Message,1.113.

In Sri Sri Thakur’s philosophy of life, the other individuals in our society and the other species in our
habitat are not necessarily our hostile competitors; they are and can be a source of support to us and so in
our own interest we should strengthen this source of support and enrichment.

Environment is the only source

of life and nourishment;
so service is inevitable
to sustain oneself,-
therefore be serviceable
to make it healthy,
wealthy
and vigorous in life!

Message, I. 117.

As Lord Krishna did in the Gita, Sri Sri Thakur used the device of repetition to emphasize certain aspects
of his message though each utterance made use of a different metaphor and therefore looked all new and
original. The following utterance, for example, says the same thing, though in a different idiom.

To become prosperous,
or to be in position,-
whip yourself
to make others exalted
in life and riches.
Message,1.58.

Making others exalted and elevated, Sri Sri Thakur said, is a natural and inevitable part of the culture of
healthy becoming, and helping others was a pre-requisite for one’s proper growth and extension. Attaining
great heights of spirituality was impossible unless one nurtured and nourished the environment with a
feeling of genuine love and sympathy.
 The last fragment
of your worship
is to seek and search the difficulties
of your environment
and to fulfil:
Verily, I say unto you,
until and unless you finish that
with love and sympathy,
your worship is deaf,
dull and dumb.
Message, 1.250.

In an emotionally charged language, Sri Sri Thakur said that the person “that sobs with sympathy and
fellow-feeling at the miseries, sorrows and difficulties” of the people in the environment and “elates
[them] with hope and service, raising them with a loving embrace and responsibility towards endurance,
and leads them to their welfare and success” does something heroic.

. . . Such a heart dwells in the Hero:

He it is who is Nature’s rescue
to the call
of Sufferers!
Message, 1. 239-40

Thus, Darwin’s concept of biological evolution is very different from Sri Sri Thakur’s concept of
becoming. Darwin’s concept of evolution is based on rivalry, hostility and cut-throat competition of the
individual with the other individuals of the species whereas a loving and inspiring service to the
environment is an inevitable ingredient of Sri Sri Thakur’s concept of becoming.

The desire for the good of others is the mother of one’s own good.38

Nor is Sri Sri Thakur’s concept of becoming identical with certain other semi-scientific notions based on
Darwin’s notion of biological evolution. If we consider the history of ideas during the second half of the
nineteenth century, we will find that Darwin’s theory of evolution was subjected to certain modifications
and oversimplifications and even distortions by one of his contemporaries. Herbert Spencer, a
contemporary of Charles Darwin, presented this theory of biological evolution differently from the way
Darwin theorized it. He coined the phrase, survival of the fittest, and said that in the struggle for existence
those who were the fittest survived and the others were wiped off. He applied this concept of the survival
of the fittest to political, economic and sociological spheres of life and a quasi-philosophical, quasi-
religious, and quasi-sociological theory known as Social Darwinism came into existence. This theory
holds that we should allow the weak and unfit to fail and die, and that this is not only a good pragmatic
policy but also morally right. The supporters of this theory held the view that “those who can make lots of
38
Satyanusaran. Sixth edition. 1974. P.53.
 money--were chosen to dominate” and that “just as nature weeds out the unfit, an enlightened society
ought to weed out its unfit and permit them to die off so as not to weaken the racial stock”. Sri Sri
Thakur’s philosophy is just the opposite of social Darwinism. He would like his devotees not to let the
poor, the sick and the handicapped die out of neglect but to “roll on like a flood over the sorrows,
sufferings and calamities of the World, with love, sympathy and service and with the message of Beloved
the Lord”39. A champion of the poor, the weak, the underprivileged and the downtrodden, Sri Sri Thakur
warned the rich, the strong and the powerful that if they exploited the weak instead of serving and
uplifting them, the agony of those poor and unprivileged ipeople might devour their very existence.

When the powerful

fulfil their cravings
by sucking the weak
instead of nourishing them,
weakness stands
extending her jaws
to the mighty
with the thrilling power
to devour!

Message. 1.197.

Saadi, the famous Sufi poet, also gave a warning to those who do no not extend a helping hand to the poor
and the downtrodden and said:

Let him who neglects to raise the fallen, fear; lest, when he falls, no one will
stretch out his hand to lift him up40.

Sri Sri Thakur’s warning was much stronger than Saadi’s, however. In terms of a metaphorical expression
much stronger than Saadi’s, Sri Sri Thakur warned the arrogant haves that their neglect of the have-nots
might altogether “devour” their very existence. Sri Sri Thakur repeated his warning a number of times,
each of his warnings being metaphorically as powerful as the other. The following is one more example of
a forceful metaphor denouncing the tendency not to rescue the downtrodden.

Go and ransom the fallen

with your service,
soothing them
with a hopeful message
of elevation,
and carry them with the embrace
that elates,
39
Message, 1.15.
40
Quoted in The World’s Greatest Quotations. Compiled by Tryon Edwards. New Delhi: Crest Publishing House 2005. p. 71.
 infusing the psalm of life and love—
because unfortunate sighs
spread contagion
that deteriorates the fortunate.

Message, 1.242

Thus, we can say that as far as the attitude towards the environment is concerned, Sri Sri Thakur’s concept
of becoming is not only different from, but just the opposite of, social Darwinism. Social Darwinism
wants the weak and the downtrodden to be completely wiped out but Sri Sri Thakur considers service to
the environment to be an inevitable part of spiritual culture.

It needs to be pointed out here that Sri Sri Thakur’s message of service to the environment is
different from the traditional concept of charity as conceptualized by certain leading intellectuals. The
uniqueness of Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of service to the environment lies in the following:

(i) It has often been thought that charity should have no limits. Francis Bacon, for example, said that “in
charity there is no excess”. Sri Sri Thakur suggested, however, that charity should be practised not as an
act of obsession in the form of an excess, but with a healthy sense of balance and proportion.

Be careful –don’t try to make anyone happy at the cost of your ‘self’41.

Any act which endangers and impoverishes one’s capability and makes him essentially handicapped, any
act which goes against the uphold of one’s existence, any act that weakens one’s urge for an upward and
onward march, be it excessive charity or something else, has to be abandoned in the interest of one’s
being and becoming. Sri Sri Thakur therefore repeatedly used expressions like the following:

If possible,
and your circumstances allow,
give him who is needy . . .42

Look with compassion at him

who suffers from want;
give something
as your ability allows; . . . 43

(ii) In the cultural tradition all over the world, charity has repeatedly been praised as a noble act. A
German proverb, for example says that charity gives itself rich; covetousness hoards itself poor.44 Henry

41
Satyanusaran. Sixth edition. 1974. P.29.
42
Message, 3.208.
43
Message. 3.228.

Quoted in The World’s Greatest Quotations. Compiled by Tryon Edwards. New Delhi: Crest Publishing
44

House 2005. p. 69.

 Ward Beecher, for example, felt that “Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven”.45 James
Stephens made the following observation:

Let him who gives without a care

Gather rubies from the air.46

Sri Sri Thakur did approve of charity as an act of service to the environment.

Help the needy

with active hope and charity
in the time of need
before they shrink.
Message, 3.204.

But he never supported the idea of service to the environment as an absolute end in itself. Charity as an
end in itself creates vanity and arrogance but service to the environment rendered as an act of oblation to a
living and inspiring Ideal softens the heart. This is evident from his expressions like the following:

. . . serve thy Beloved the Great;

and that service
will bestow on thee
the tendency to serve the people
for their existential uplift
with heavy sympathy. 47

Do serve everybody
in the name of thy Lord . . . 48

Perform any humanitarian service

with solemn regard
to the Love-Lord; . . . 49

(iii) Another significant aspect of Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of service to the society is that it need not be in
the traditional form of charity in terms of money and material. In the Gita Lord Krishna says that a

45
Orient Book of Quotations. p. 43.
46
Orient Book of Quotations. p. 44
47
Message, 3.215.
48
Message, 3.207.
49
Message, 3.198.
 devotee’s most humble offering, an offering in the form of a leaf or a flower, for example, was as readily
acceptable to him as any other offering more valuable in a worldly sense. In a similar vein, Prophet
Mohammed said that charity to the poor and the needy could be in any humble form.

Your smiling in your brother’s face is charity; an exhortation of your fellow

men to virtuous deeds is equal to alms giving; your putting a wanderer in
the right road is charity; your assisting the blind is charity; your removing
stones, thorns and other obstructions from the road is charity; your giving
water to the thirsty is charity.50

In a similar manner, Sri Sri Thakur said that service to the environment could be in numerous forms, each
form being equally valuable in its own right.

Encourage, console, and sympathize with him to whom you give. . .

Money, sympathy, encouragement, consolation, or sweet words; give any you
can.51

(iv) As is well known, service to the environment can be of two kinds, remedial and preventive. Remedial
service provides a temporary solution by giving away money and material to the poor and the needy.
Preventive service strikes at the very root of poverty and creates and develops in the poor and the
downtrodden the ability to help themselves. Sri Sri Thakur emphasized that though remedial service was
important, we should give proper attention to service of a preventive nature.

Service is service
when it elevates Being
and Becoming, . . .

Message, 1.268.

Just as space has, from time immemorial, been conceptualized in terms of four main directions,
north, south, east and west; just as the havana kunda, the sacred pit of fire for offering oblations, has to be
in the form of a square having four corners; just as the swastika symbolizing peace and prosperity52
consists of four right angles; and just as Lord Vishnu supposed to be the preserver and sustainer of
existence appears in Indian mythology as a divine figure with four arms, Sri Sri Thakur’s vision of

50
Quoted in The World’s Greatest Quotations compiled by Tryon Edwards. New Delhi: Crest Publishing House 2005. p. 70.
51
Satyanusaran, p. 53.
52
It may be pointed out here that Hitler used the symbol of swastika as the national symbol for the Nazis. But
in the Indian tradition of spiritual pursuits, as in many other cultures at different times in the history of the
world, it has been a sacred symbol of peace, prosperity, and sublimity. Chinese use it as a letter in their
ideographic alphabet and there also it denotes abundance, prosperity and long life
religion unfolds itself in terms of four basic concepts: being, becoming, Ideal, and environment. But as the
concept of the individual subsumes, in a sense, the concept of both being and becoming, his vision of
religion may well be understood in terms of a perfect harmony between three broad entities: the
individual, the Ideal, and the environment.

When Ideal, individual

and environment
fulfil one another
in a concord
with an uplift of exuberance
that moves the life
onward
with an easy
intelligent flow.
Perfection resides
There indeed!
Message. 1.230.
Dr. Damodar Thakur
Professor and Chairman
Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Sana’a University
Republic of Yemen
Tel +00-967-1-464559 (Home)
Cell +00-967-7326455