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ARTICLE : Sri Aurobindo on Hinduism
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To: soc-religion-hindu@uunet.uu.net
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Subject: ARTICLE : Sri Aurobindo on Hinduism
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From: Srinivasa Chakravarthy <srini@monod.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu>
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Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 10:48:30 -0600
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Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu, soc.culture.indian, soc.culture.indian.kerala, soc.culture.indian.karnataka, soc.culture.indian.marathi, soc.culture.indian.gujarati, soc.culture.indian.delhi, soc.culture.indian.jammu-kashmir, soc.culture.tamil, soc.culture.bengali
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Organization: Baylor College of Medicine
"Now just here is the first baffling difficulty over which the
European mind stumbles; for it finds itself unable to make out what
Hinduism is...How can there be a religion which has no fixed dogmas
demanding
belief on pain of eternal damnation, no theological postulates, even no
fixed theology, no credo, distinguishing it from antagonistic or rival
religions? How can there be a religion which has no papal head, no
governing
ecclesiastic body, no church, chapel or congregational system, no
binding
religious form of any kind obligatory to all its adherents, no one
administration and discipline? For the Hindu priests are mere ceremonial
officiants without any ecclesiastic authority or disciplinary
powers and the Pundits are mere interpreters of the Shastra, not the
law-givers
of the religion or its rulers. How again can Hinduism be called a
religion
when it admits all beliefs, allowing even a kind of high reaching
atheism
and agnosticism and permits all possible spiritual experiences, all
kinds
of religious adventures? The only thing fixed, rigid, positive, clear
is the social law, and even that varies in different castes, regions,
communities. The caste rules and not the church; but even the caste
cannot
punish a man for his beliefs, ban heterodoxy or prevent his following a
new
revolutionary doctrine or a new spiritual leader... It has been
asserted in consequence that there is no such thing as a Hindu religion,
but only a Hindu social system with a bundle of the most disparate
religious beliefs and institutions. The precious dictum that
Hinduism is a mass of folk-lore with an ineffective coat of metaphysical
daubing is perhaps the final judgement of the superficial occidental
mind on this matter."
"This misunderstanding springs from the total difference of
outlook
on religion that divides Indian mind and the normal western
intelligence.
The difference is so great that it could only be bridged by a supple
philosophical training or a wide spiritual culture... To the Indian mind
the least important part of religion is its dogma; the religious spirit
matters, not the theological credo. On the contrary to the western mind
a fixed intellectual belief is the most important part of a cult; it is
its
core of meaning, it is the thing that distinguishes it from
others...This
notion, however foolish and shallow, is a necessary consequence of the
western idea which falsely supposes that intellectual truth is the
highest
verity and, even, that there is no other. The Indian religious thinker
knows that all the highest eternal verities are the truths of the
spirit.
The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical
reasoning
nor the affirmations of credal statement, but fruits of the soul's
inner experience. Intellectual truth is only one of the doors to the
outer
precincts of the temple. And since intellectual truth turned towards
the Infinite must be in its very nature many-sided and not narrowly one,
the most varying intellectual beliefs can be equally true because they
mirror different facets of the Infinite. However separated by
intellectual
distance, they still form so many side-entrances which admit the mind
to some faint ray from a supreme Light. There are no true and false
religions,
but all religions are true in their own way and degree. Each is one of
the
thausand paths to the One
Eternal."
Sri Aurobindo
From "Foundations of Indian Culture"
