By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: December 26, 2019

As we relate with others and ourselves, certain guidelines support living in a civil society. It isn’t just how we treat others that matters; our relationship with ourselves is an important measure of our integrity, which then becomes a source of ethics and morals in how we treat other people.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar addresses all of these topics in a brief talk in answer to a question about all 3 elements of a healthy, spiritual, and civilized life. The very specific question was, “Gurudev, what is the role of ethics, morality, and integrity in life?”

Ethics

Gurudev began with ethics and then went on to discuss morality and integrity. “Ethics is: what you don’t want others to do to you, you don’t do it to others. Simple as that, one line! You don’t want your vendors to cheat you, so you shouldn’t cheat your customers! Full stop!

If you’re a businessman, you don’t grow everything. You have to buy something from somebody, right? So you have vendors, and then you have customers to whom you sell. How would you like it if your vendor was cheating you? Would you like that? No? Then you shouldn’t cheat your customer. Period, that’s it!

If you’re an employer, you don’t want your customers to cheat you. So you shouldn’t cheat your employees. Similarly if you’re an employee, you don’t want your employer to cheat you so you don’t cheat them! That is your ethic.

So, in every role that we play in life, there are ethics. And the baseline for ethical life is not to do things which you don’t want others to do to you. You don’t want anyone to steal your things, so you’d better not put your hand on others’ stuff.”

Morality 

He continued, “Morality is following social norms, accepting social laws. For example, here in India, driving on the left side of the road is the law. If you say, ‘No, I will drive on the right side,’ this is immoral, because here it is forbidden to drive on the other side.

And if you go to America and say, ‘No, I’m going to keep left,’ you’ll face accidents. So, following the accepted norms of society is morality. 

See, among some tribes, they have different codes of conduct. A lady can have multiple men or a man can have multiple women as partners. And they don’t consider it immoral. If you see the breeding of cows, there’s one bull that’s breeding many cows. It’s not considered immoral. But, in the accepted norm of a society, if you have a partner, then if you flirt around with somebody else, it’s immoral. 

When you break accepted social norms, then you have to face the consequences of it from society. Now, what is moral here in one part of society isn’t considered moral somewhere else. Because we’ve accepted a certain code of conduct in society, we have to go by that. We have made some laws, and we have to follow those laws.

But there could be some universal moral code of conduct. The world is evolving toward such a thing. 

When horses were the only mode of transportation, there was no going to the right or left side. You would go left or right, wherever the horse goes. But now that we have cars, we have certain norms. You have to drive on the left side or on the right side, according to the places where we live, and we have to follow those laws. 

Integrity

“Now, integrity is the nature of your consciousness,” he asserted. “It’s the state of your consciousness. When your consciousness is powerful, when your mind is powerful, you feel very solid, focused, and the quality of such consciousness, which is focused and isn’t scattered, has clarity and sincerity. That’s integrity.

Lack of integrity is a confused mindset where you think objects are more important than you. When you’re more important than your desire, that indicates your integrity. But when your desires become more important than you, when desires dictate your life, you’ll lose your integrity. Do you see what I’m saying? 

Suppose, let’s take an example. You have a desire for money. When you know you’re bigger than money, you can get it anytime, that’s integrity. But if money is bigger than you, then you lose your integrity. Money becomes bigger and what does it do? It brings misery to you. Whenever desires overpower you, it brings misery. When you’re in control of your desires, when you’re more important than those desires, then that’s integrity. Then that brings happiness in life. 

Why do sex crimes happen in the world? What’s the cause of rape and other sex crimes? Just that desire becomes so powerful, it overshadows the individual, the person, the personality, the self, the consciousness that one is. Then they lose it. What do they lose? They lose themselves to the desire. And that one minute of their actions carries consequences for the rest of their lives. This is lack of integrity. 

Know that we all have a certain degree of integrity. Everybody has a certain degree of integrity and with spiritual practices, it only increases. The more you’re centered, the quality of your consciousness that shines through you becomes total integrity. When there’s clarity, when you’re above all desires, when you’re bigger than your wants, when you know what you’re doing, that’s integrity. 

You can call it sincerity, clarity of mind, purity of being, or you can add any number of adjectives to this state of consciousness. Only this state of consciousness feels powerful. Where there’s no integrity, there’s fear and weakness.”

How to grow in the three values

In this discussion, each concept has a slightly different definition. But all of them contribute to a healthy spiritual state of mind. Without ethics, people in business would cheat each other all the time, not considering how they would like others to treat them. Without morality and integrity, a chaotic society would ensue, and lawlessness would prevail. Desires would be more important than our relationships to ourselves. 

Through meditation as taught in Art of Living, centeredness and integrity improve, and ethics and morality also become more prominent in individuals as a result. Find a Happiness Program or Sahaj Samadhi course near you, and you’ll discover a whole new relationship with yourself and others.

Elizabeth Herman writes, offers writing support to clients, teaches, and volunteers for a better world. She has a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition and Literature. Find her on Facebook or Twitter.