Why go into the larger issue of all living beings, we may limit ourselves to human beings only for the time being, and even limiting our considerations to the life of humans, do we not see that there are varieties of humans? People are not the same, the quality of a person being the manner in which the person thinks and reacts psychologically to outer conditions and aspires for a higher condition.

In some rudimentary types of human life the aspiration of anything higher is so deeply buried that it may not be visible at all. It may be like a stone existing with no consciousness of a beyond, because even in plant life, in the vegetable kingdom, we see some sort of an asking, a reaching out beyond itself, though not as perspicaciously as in the human level. Plants try to reach beyond themselves and struggle to survive in the best possible manner even by exploitation of other kindred existences. The desire to survive in a manner surpassing the present condition is to be seen even in such incipient life forms as vegetable existence, plant life.

We find in the different levels of human nature a kind of vision which appears to be valid from its own point of view. The kind of vision that a person entertains or a set of people manifest in themselves would seem to be adequate to itself, and this adequacy prevents it from communicating with others in a harmonious or cooperative manner, because each one is adequate to one’s own self. The necessity to cooperate arises due to a sense of inadequacy felt in one’s own self. If we are wholly adequate, where comes the need for any consideration outside? If a particular concept of life is self-sufficient, and is so crude as to regard itself as a whole by itself, needing no connection with anything else, it becomes fanatic in its vision. The conflicts that we see in life and which we abhor so much appear to be practically unavoidable in some way, if we accept that there are levels in the evolutionary process and so a uniform vision of things would not be possible. This is because one level of evolution which is far removed from another level can, with difficulty, be able to coordinate itself with the others. The nearer we are to a different view, the greater is the possibility of our assimilating that view into our own lives and our being able to coordinate ourselves with that view so that we shall have a peaceful social life. But if we stick to our guns and if ‘my vision is far, far away from yours’ due to the lodgment of my view or your view in different sets of locations altogether, we would be like the north pole and the south pole that cannot meet each other. Social conflicts, or frictions of any kind in life, arise on account of a clash in the visions of life and the inability on the part of a particular concept or notion of things to get accommodated with another, merely because it feels that it is self-sufficient. Such a view is encased within its own cocoon and it can, with hardship, break that shell in which it is contained.

The lower we are in the level of evolution, the grosser is the vision of things, the more does it appear self-sufficient and enclose within itself a narrow philosophy of life. Human nature, by way of a gradual evolution of its own inner potentialities, reveals capabilities, within itself, of entertaining larger visions of life that include not only all the ingredients of an earlier stage of evolution but also manifest openly possibilities of a higher view with which it can easily accommodate itself by means of a faculty we call higher reason.

Reason is a peculiar instrument in us which not only feels competent to transmute all the lower elements of nature which it has transcended in evolution but also by the fact of logical inference is enabled to accommodate into its purview, or vision of things, even that area of life which it has not reached, which is presently outside itself but which it can know as a necessary part of its own area of action by inference, deduction, by drawing conclusions from given premises.

This conducting of a logical process, that is, inferring consequences from existing premises, is a prerogative of only a particular stage in evolution and is not available in all levels. We are told that such a systematic capacity to deduce consequences by way of inference from existing conditions is not available in subhuman species. There is some sort of logic we should accept even in plants and animals. They have a way of understanding things around them which generally goes by the name of an instinctive action; nevertheless it is also a kind of logic. But the word ‘logic’ is a term that we use to designate a particular type of awareness, understanding and capacity to infer which we associate only with evolved human beings.

A true human being is not merely a biped; we cannot say that a person is entirely human merely because one has all the biological features of a specimen we call human personality. To be human is not to be merely anatomically human but to be capable of manifesting in oneself those qualities which we generally consider as human qualities. We have some idea of what a human quality is, apart from it being necessary for a true human being to regard other human beings also as human beings and to treat other human beings as one would treat one’s own self, because others are also human beings like one’s own self. In other words, apart from the fact of being able to give equal consideration to others as one gives to one’s own self, which is the least that one can expect from a true human being, there is something more in human beings in itself, apart from the social cooperation and consideration; that is, the logicality of approach. This is the higher human nature, which is the great blessing that human nature has received from providence in the process of gradual evolution.

We have in us a peculiar potentiality to accommodate ourselves to anything and everything, if only we would be able to exercise that blessing of faculty which we call higher reason in ourselves. Mostly we bury this higher reason in the mire of the clamour of instinctive demands which are prenatal, subhuman, animalistic, even vegetable in their nature. If we concede that life has evolved from lower levels to the higher state of human life, that there has been a rise of this tree of life from the seed of something that has been very incipient and crude, we should also accept that qualities of the seed can be seen in some measure in this grown-up pattern of the tree that is arisen from it, though we cannot see, of course, the seed in the tree. We see only the tree, the branches and the widespread manifestation of this tremendous thing that we call the grown-up tree, but the seed, which cannot be seen in the tree, makes itself felt in every fibre of the tree, which we have to accept by pure analysis.

In a similar manner our present state of life, which is human, cannot be said to be entirely free from the conditions that prevailed in the earlier stages from which it has evolved, and so our vision of things which is today of course human, expected to be human, can also be coloured many a time by the visions that are earlier, which appear to be self-sufficient, fanatic, crude and rudely animalistic. The presence of these incipient remnants of earlier levels from which we have risen into the human state today makes us sometimes behave in a manner which cannot be regarded as human. If remnants of the earlier states still persist in human life, that particular person in whom those remnants seem to be persisting cannot be regarded as wholly human—there is still something remaining of the earlier level. It is like a subtle illness persisting even in an apparent healthy condition of the body. “I am perfectly well,” someone says, but one may not be really well, as in a recess of the person there may be a little potentiality for the manifestation of an illness that was there earlier.

A true human being, therefore, is not that particular personality which carries within itself certain remnants of the previous levels which it has passed or transcended, because we cannot be always human, though sometimes we can be human. If the non-human elements which were in the subhuman stages persist in our present human condition, who is a true human being, then, who has a correct vision of things? A human being who is truly humane cannot have those characteristics which we usually associate with the earlier stages.

Fanaticism of any kind is totally alien to human nature, whether it is philosophical fanaticism, religious fanaticism, social fanaticism, family fanaticism, or communal fanaticism. Whatever be the nature of this instinct of adhering to one’s own position irrespective of the position that others may occupy—whatever be the nature of this assertion—it is still unwarranted in a human being.

As I mentioned, this peculiar instrument we call higher reason is a liaison, as it were, between our present human vision of things and the possibility of a different vision that it can envisage by an act of inference from the present prevailing condition. We cannot aspire for anything that is higher if this logical deduction is impossible for us, because aspiration is nothing but an asking for that which we do not have just now but we can have in the future. The possibility of achieving something in the future which we do not have at present can be accounted for only by the justifiability of the deductions that we make by way of inference from conditions prevailing now. This is the work of the higher reason, but the lower reason—there is something called a lower reason also, as you must have heard of—this peculiar thing we call the lower reason is just a faculty which rationalises the instinctive process. In psychoanalytical language we have a word called ‘rationalisation’, which is just the process by which we argue out in a so-called logical manner the conditions which are impressed upon us by instincts that are characteristic of a lower nature, that are subhuman.

But the higher reason is of a different type altogether. It aspires—it does not merely justify. It reaches out beyond itself into the possibilities of the achievement of things which are above, but which are only vaguely visualised by way of inference, logically but not practically. If any one of us is sure that any one of us is really human, then we would also know to what extent we have the capacity to argue out the possibilities of a future higher achievement from the premises prevailing today, just now, in our practical, human way of living.

The philosophical vision, the spiritual vision or the darshana view of life as we may put it, is the act of a higher reason. It is up to any one of us to look into our own self and ascertain the extent to which we are entirely human in our life. This is a purely private matter, which I know and you know and everyone knows. Because, as it was pointed out, it is not possible to be entirely human throughout the day if there is a possibility of the manifestation of that which we have already crossed and got over as an undesirable remnant of an irrational nature. The higher reason stands midway between the lower world and the higher world, we may say, between the world of sensory experience and the world of pure intuition. Higher reason, the pure reason, which is the faculty of correct judgment in human beings, is at the centre between the world which is visualised by the sense organs and the world which is directly contacted by non-sensory apprehension, which we call intuition.

We are supposed to be spiritual seekers, devotees of God, disciples of Gurus, followers of the great master Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj and saints and sages of that kind. Which means to say, we accept that we are truly human beings, because to consider oneself as a spiritual seeker is, at the same time, to accept that one is wholly human, since a person who is partially human cannot expect to be divine. There is no double promotion in the process of human evolution; there is always a graduated rise from the earlier stage to the next higher, but not a leap to three or four steps above.

As spiritual seekers that we consider ourselves to be, we should feel confident that the higher reason is operating in us. We are aware of the presence of something that is above this world. We have a vision which is not of this world. If this vision were not to be there, we would not be here in this ashram, coming from long distances, from different corners of the earth. Each one would have been totally satisfied with one’s little family, little house, shop, office, etc. None of us was wholly satisfied, that means to say the higher reason in every one of us has started working, and is telling us that we are more than what we appear to be.

The world is not exactly as it is presented to our sense organs; our vision is capable of and subject to a transcendence of itself. Our organ of knowledge, which is reason, visualises simultaneously, in its body of visioning, the lower which it has crossed and the higher that it has to achieve further. The reason mentioned is something like a body with two legs—it has one leg in the level that it has overcome, crossed, transcended, and it has another leg in a realm which it has not reached but it previsions, and which it envisages as a possibility of experience.

So human life is supposed to be a midway affair between the lower and the higher. Sometimes, sarcastically or poetically, whatever it be, we are told that we are both God and devil crossed at the same point. The devil in us is due to the presence of elements that are low, and the God in us is due to the prevision of that which is above us. But we are not devils, each one of us may be sure, because, as I felt and put before you just now, if we had a little of the element of devil in us, we would not have come to an ashram like this, and we would not have been aspiring for that which is above us. There is an element of divinity and godliness in every one of us, and we have taken the first step in the act of reaching out beyond ourselves through the pointing of the higher reason. We are heading along the lines of the journey towards the intuitional grasp of a vision that is totally integral, a world which is beyond the world.