Ethics and the Cosmic Self

One wants to know, surely, in these modern days, if we can do good without any of these cosmological beliefs? We can use our reason [can’t we?]. Russell consistently, and through a very long life in which he changed his mind on a great many subjects, held the view of ethics that it should be what you should do, what will lead to the benefit of the human race. Now, in the debate that he had in 1948 – the radio debate with Copleston – a very important event against the Jesuit, the Jesuit posed him this question: he said, “The tortures that were inflicted at Buchenwald, for instance, now, could you ever approve of that?”

The torturers weren’t all brutal men. Some of them might say, well, we are conducting scientific experiments and Russell’s reply was: “I cannot imagine any circumstances in which those sort of things, those sort of tortures, would be of benefit to the human race and I think people who imagine that they could be, are deceiving themselves”, and then he went on, it’s printed in the book of the Third Programme [a BBC radio channel] where the debate took place. Now, his words are important, he’s a professional philosopher: “I can’t imagine circumstances in which such appalling behaviour would do good, would have beneficial effect, but, if there were circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect, then I might be obliged, however reluctantly, to say ‘I do not like these things, but I will acquiesce in them, just as I acquiesce in the criminal law, though I profoundly distrust punishment’.”  What Russell is saying is that those tortures – they were under the form of scientific experiments at Buchenwald – if it could be shown, he couldn’t imagine circumstances in which it could be so, but if it could be shown to be beneficial, then he would acquiesce in them.

As a matter of fact, some of them were. If somebody is gradually starved to death the tissues change in a particular way, in certain ways, in a certain order, and it is very revealing for medical students to see the sequence. But, of course you cannot obtain the sequence, because if you find someone who is almost starving you don’t go on starving them in the laboratory, you feed them! So, all you can get is different photographs of different people in different stages of starvation, but what was done in Buchenwald was that a young person was taken and starved to death, given water, starved to death and photographed, so that the gradual degeneration of the tissues stands out clearly. Now, this is of enormous benefit in medical teaching, medical instruction and, as a matter of fact, although there was a sort of tacit agreement that these results should not be used, that series of photographs, were so valuable that they have been used in great centres of learning, including one in this country, and they have been beneficial to the human race.

You notice Russell doesn’t say, “beneficial to the human race, a benefit that could be obtained in no other way”. He just says, “if it could be shown that they were to the benefit of the human race, I would have to acquiesce in them.”

I only give this example because it illustrates what the ancient philosophers said, that if you try, by using what you call your analytical powers and your reason to come to a code of ethics, you will land up in this sort of thing. It’s a mistake to think that one can be calmly, coolly, scientifically, sceptical.

This may come as a little surprise to you. This was written by a very famous sceptic, and philosopher of science: “I think I’ve always felt that there were two levels, one, that of science and common sense, and another terrifying, subterranean and periodic, which in some sense held more truth than the everyday view. You might describe it as a satanic mysticism. I have never been completely convinced of its truth but it is capable of justification by the purest intellectual arguments such as Eddington’s view that the laws of nature only seem to be true because of the things which we choose to notice. I’ve never been completely convinced of its truth, but at times of intense emotion it overcomes me”.

Now, that was Bertrand Russell, the famous sceptic, [saying] that he had this terrible visitation of what he himself called ‘satanic mysticism’, which means that for him, and you can find it in others too who pride themselves on their scepticism and their balanced rationality, there is something else there.  So the Yogic view is – I only give this as an example, they give different examples – but by mere use of the human reason and the facts as commonly admitted, we can’t arrive at any satisfactory view of ethics or of an explanation of the world. You can say, “Well, has anything better been done, ever?”

There is a record, probably at least 600BC and it is probably shortly before that, of a king, Ashwapati Kekeya, who was an Aryan king, quite a well-known one, his existence is attested in the records and he was in the north-west of India, a kingdom there. Some learned Brahmins heard that there was a king  who had realised the cosmic Self, God, and they came to learn it from him, if he would teach them. When they arrived he treated them very well as great scholars. He didn’t know why they had come but they refused his hospitality because they hoped to be pupils. Then the king thought that they were rejecting his kingdom so he said, “Please don’t reject my kingdom. We have tried our best here”. Now he made this statement. He said, “In my kingdom there is no thief, there is no miser”. The word has been translated so, but it means there’s no one who, having wealth, does not give in charity. “There is no thief. There is no (quote) miser. There is no (quote) drunkard”. The Brahmins were not allowed to drink at all and it was disapproved of in the other classes but, nevertheless, some of them did.  There was no actual punishment for it in their case and “no drunkard” meant no-one who was supposed to drink, under the holy texts, was not allowed to drink. He said, “My kingdom, there is no thief, no miser, no drunkard, no sceptic and there is none who is uneducated and there is no adulterer”.

You could say, ‘Anyone could say that. How does one know whether these things can be true or not?’ We have an account by a foreigner, not of this king but of a king about 300 years later, a much greater king in India: Chandragupta, the one who repulsed Alexander’s little attempt at invasion.  After Alexander was murdered by his generals a Greek ambassador went to the court of Chandragupta. He was there for about eight years and he wrote a book on all things Indian. The book itself has disappeared but Megasthenes’ book was quoted very widely among other authors of the Greek and the Latin academic world and somebody has patiently put together all these fragments.  So from them – of course there is a lot of repetition because they all went for the plums, so to speak – from these fragments, we can put together an impression of what Megasthenes saw in his eight years as Greek ambassador in India.

Now, I quoted Ashwapati as saying, “In my kingdom there is no thief”. One of the things that Megasthenes, a Greek with no motive for praising up the Indians, said was that he never came across a case of theft or heard of one in the India of his time.  Then he adds, in another place, that people kept their word. If they said they would do a thing they did it, a bit like the early Romans – they had this idea if you say, ‘I do’ then you will do it. But in the India described by Megasthenes there were no contracts. People simply made a promise and if that promise was not fulfilled then there was no remedy in the court of law. The man who had been disappointed simply blamed himself; he was a bad judge of character.  Megasthenes says, in general, their word was kept so that these boasts, as one might think, by the King Ashwapati – in two of the cases we know of a very much wider area than his kingdom, were in fact true from what the Greek ambassador saw and it means then that you can have higher peaks than we have today.

We would like to be able to say that there is no thief in this kingdom. We would like it if when anybody said, “I would do it” that they could be trusted absolutely to do it to the limit of their ability. The king, Ashwapati who made the statement, and we have reason to believe it was true, was one who knew the cosmic essence, the cosmic Self, the cosmic purpose and this example is given. It can be shown that it depends what we think life is for. They didn’t think it was for increasing comfort or power over nature and they had a definite clear idea they wanted to realise immortality.

© Trevor Leggett

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Yoga, Zen and Peace

Part 2: Ethics and the Cosmic Self

Part 3: Desires beyond our needs are ghosts

Part 4: Gifts, sacrifice and austerity

Part 5: Becoming free

Part 6: The job of the King

Part 7: Seeking for realisation in Yoga and Zen

Part 8: The way of praying the cosmic current

Part 9: Melting Ice

Part 10: No distinction