Analysis

Morality: Have we understood it correctly?

There used to live a very old sage in India famous all over the world for his wisdom. The sage had a big number of followers spanning the whole world and also a very large number of disciples trying to get the pearls of wisdom from him. Each and every word spoken by the matser was a truth in itself.

One day, by some mistake, the master told one wrong definition to his pupils. As it was always assumed that master was always right, all the students learned the definition well. After a while, when class was dispersed, while sitting in his room master came to know that what he had told was wrong and he had committed a very serious mistake. He decided that he will let his disciples come to know about this mistake of him next day. Unfortunately, the master died on the same night. Next day all the disciples gathered and they decided how they should distribute themselves in the whole world so as to spread the message of the master.
                                                                       
As per the decision, the disciples reached all over the world. They preached each and everything right except the one definition.

We have done something like this with the word morality. Some wrong definition propagating for years and years. If  it is given a thought that what we think morality is or if we consider our day to day life, morality is considered to be as something 'ancient'. Which is running in same form over thousands and hundreds of years. Those values which we are following blindly for generations without giving a single thought to what actually concept of morality means.

Here I remember a famous statement made by famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche says that humanity is not a destination but rather a bridge. I understand it as humanity or we can say whole life is a journey of consciousness. Which has its own evolution as Darwin says that there is a physical and psychological evolution. Man being a social animal, must have some channel to regulate his life at a particular level of human conscious as he has a society, a system which should run smoothly without affecting others. This channel is what I call morality.
                        
This definition sounds much simpler but one revolutionary conclusion can be drawn from this definition - That it is the purpose of morality to raise itself when human consciousness tries to go up and not to go down when some social elements try to bring it down. Now if we look at what morality is doing for ages, it serves the second condition of not going down if some one tries to bring it down. Now, if we look that if morality fulfills the very first condition or not, then what we get as answer is a no. It has been always seen that the people who tried to raise the human consciousness were always condemned, tortured by the society, by the so called moral people. To start with, Socrates is a good example. What Socrates said before 25 centuries was much above the level of human consciousness at that time. Charges such as destroying morality, corrupting the youth were put against him. Today, after 25 centuries when we look at the situation, we say that Socrates said nothing wrong. This 25 centuries is the time that humanity needed to digest the consciousness of Socrates. To give another example, I remember here a muslim Mystic named Mansoor Al Hillaj. His head was knocked off his shoulders 25 centuries ago and today he is considered as one of the greatest saints of all the times.
                                                 
So, I think somewhere we need to change the way we look at morality. If someone tries to raise the human consciousness, he should be allowed to conduct his experiments, to bring his imaginations in actuality. If someone is going down, rather than punishing him he should be allowed to raise his consciousness with the help of various Sufi, Zen, Buddhist, Hindu meditations available.
                                                                                      
Which supports the growth of human consciousness, is the real morality. 

19-Sep-2010

More by :  Mandar Karanjkar

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