“Conscience” is a misused and misunderstood word. “Have you no conscience?,” ask people of a person who does something which seems to them to be so obviously wrong. Each person has a dual conscience and, occasionally, these two sides do engage in a duel.
The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology defines conscience as “a reasonably coherent set of internalized moral principals that provides evaluations of right and wrong with regard to acts either performed or contemplated. Historically, theistic views aligned conscience with the voice of God and hence regarded it as innate. The contemporary view is that the prohibitions and obligations of conscience are learned...” Individual moral development is based on both. Morality applies to personal conduct; ethical to idealized standards.
At one time, conscience had been considered to be identical with “consciousness” (in both French and Spanish, that is still true). In English, it usually means personal consciousness of the difference between right and wrong. Is our own understanding of right and wrong innate, learned or both? The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion lists some interesting historical observations on the word.
Socrates said that conscience was the inner warning voice of God. Among Stoics it was a divine spark in man. Throughout the Middle Ages, conscience, synderesis in Greek, was universally binding rules of conduct. Religious interpretations later changed in psychiatry.
Sigmund Freud had coined a new term for conscience; he called it “superego.” This was self-imposed standards of behavior we learned from parents and our community, rather than from a divine source. People who transgressed those rules felt guilt. Carl Jung, Freud’s famous contemporary, said that conscience was an archetype of a “collective unconscious”; content from society is learned later. Most religions still view conscience as the foundation of morality.
Sri Aurobindo said “...true original Conscience in us [is] deeper than constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us.” Perhaps conscience can be viewed as a double-pane window, with the self in between. On one side, it looks toward ego and free will to obey community’s laws. On the other side, it is toward the soul and divine will to follow universal law. They often converge to dictate the same, or a similar, course of conduct...and sometimes not.
The moral dilemma is when these two views conflict. Disobey the laws of society and you might be ostracized and/or go to prison. Disobeying divine law is a sin in most Western religions and causes bad karma, negative consequences, in Eastern faiths. Divine law, or dharma in Sanskrit - logos in Greek - is fundamental within both Hinduism and Buddhism. It has many definitions and applications.*
“Hinduism” was first used by British scholars for the religions of the people of the Indus valley. Many people in India refer to their faith as sanatana dharma, the absolute and eternal law. Siddharta Gautama, called the Buddha for Awakened or Enlightened Being, founded “Buddhism,” correctly named Buddha-dharma, Buddha’s teaching of the eternal Truth, or Buddha-sasana, practice of those teachings. Universal law supersedes all worldly laws.
Science only considers natural law, which it then tries to codify in theories or principles. A sign may ask you to “keep off the grass,” but while on it the law of gravity keeps you there. Although society tells you to reset the time, standard vs. daylight saving, you cannot change the