Moral teachings keeps one away from awakening

Taoist philosophy argues that strict moral standards can actually create immorality. When society defines what is "good," it automatically creates its opposite, "bad." By focusing on rules, people lose their natural authenticity.

"Good" and "bad" always exist together. They are interdependent forces that sustain each other.

1st step – Separation from the Tao –

When one wants to be good, it is an indication that he considers something within himself as "bad" and is using his will to stop acting on that "bad" desire.

A person who has never smoked and has no intention to smoke need not have a moral rule or remind himself daily that he will not smoke, because he has no desire to smoke. Even the thought of actively practicing "not smoking" would not cross his mind.

But when a person has a desire to smoke and his intellect has labeled it bad, only then does a person need a moral to stop himself from smoking.

We do not remind ourselves daily that we should not steal. We simply do not steal.

2nd step – Projections

Now, when a person uses the leashes of morals to control himself, he suppresses a part of himself. In other words, he uses violence to suppress his desires. This creates a shadow—parts of himself that he is not willing to accept.

Slowly, he becomes judgmental. What he refuses to see in himself, he sees in others. If somebody lives freely, he considers it arrogance. If somebody is rich, he considers him an exploiter.

3rd step – Violent man

Completely oblivious to the tricks his mind is playing on him, and considering his viewpoints final and correct, he moralizes his own violent tendencies. Once a person identifies completely with a moral framework, their own impulses no longer appear as impulses—they appear as virtue.

Desire to harm somebody becomes justice.
Desire to punish becomes righteousness.
Desire to control becomes responsibility.
Desire to dominate becomes leadership.
Desire to interfere becomes duty.
Desire to condemn becomes discernment.
Desire to shame becomes moral correction.
Desire to silence becomes protecting society.
Desire to exclude becomes preserving standards.
Desire to hate becomes defending truth.
Desire to destroy becomes purification.
Desire to censor becomes protecting virtue.
Desire to retaliate becomes karma or deserved consequences.
Desire to humiliate becomes teaching a lesson.

Because now the person sees no faults in himself, the question of introspection and changing the course of his life does not arise. Such a person spends his life sleeping and seeing ghosts of his suppressed self in the dream constructed by his mind.

In this passage from the poem Savitri by Sri aurobindo , he describes a society being ruled by morals. In this portion of the epic, King Aswapathy (the traveller of the worlds) descends into the lower planes of consciousness where spiritual light has not yet reached-

A frame of ethics knobbed with scriptural rules
Or a theory passionately believed and praised
A table seemed of high Heaven’s sacred code.

A formal practice mailed and iron-shod
Gave to a rude and ruthless warrior kind
Drawn from the savage bowels of the earth
A proud stern poise of harsh nobility,
A civic posture rigid and formidable.

But all their private acts belied the pose:
Power and utility were their Truth and Right,
An eagle rapacity clawed its coveted good,
Beaks pecked and talons tore all weaker prey.

In their sweet secrecy of pleasant sins
Nature they obeyed and not a moralist God.

Inconscient traders in bundles of contraries,
They did what in others they would persecute;
When their eyes looked upon their fellow’s vice,
An indignation flamed, a virtuous wrath;
Oblivious of their own deep-hid offence,
Moblike they stoned a neighbour caught in sin.-

A pragmatist judge within passed false decrees,
Posed worst iniquities on equity’s base,
Reasoned ill actions just, sanctioned the scale
Of the merchant ego’s interest and desire.

Thus was a balance kept, the world could live.