Christianity : “Christ came into the world to purify, not to fulfil. He himself foreknew the failure of his mission & the necessity of his return with the sword of God into a world that had rejected him.”― “When all is said, Love & Force together can save the world eventually, but not Love only or Force only. Therefore…Mahomed’s religion, where it is not stagnant, looks forward through the Imams to a Mahdi.” [SABCL 17:99-100] ― “The Messenger suffered on the cross, & what happened to the truth that was his message? The Christ himself foresaw, it has never been understood even by its professors. For a hundred years it was a glorious mirage for which thousands of men & women willingly underwent imprisonment, torture & death in order that Chris’s kingdom might come on earth & felicity possess the nations. But the kingdom that came was not Christ’s; it was Constantine’s, it was Hildebrand’s, it was Alexander Borgia’s. For another thirteen centuries the message was – what? Has it not been the chief support of fanaticism, falsehood, cruelty & hypocrisy, the purveyor of selfish power, the key-stone of a society that was everything Christ had denounced? … Now in its last state, after such a lamentable career, Christ’s truth stands finally rejected by the world’s recent enlightenment (see European Enlightenment) as a hallucination or a superstition which sometimes helpfully, sometimes harmfully, amused the infancy of the human intellect.” [SABCL 17:163; s/a SABCL 13:41] ― All fanaticism is false because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God & of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal & universal & infinite & cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, – those that happened to be in a line from the Bible & to have Jewish or Arabian prophets as their founders. Hindus & Confucians & Taoists & all others have as much right to enter into relation with God & find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time & finally decline & perish…. God & Truth outlast these religions & manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. [SABCL 26:483-84] The Mother: “In all religions we find invariably a certain number of people who possess a great emotional capacity & are full of a real & ardent aspiration, but have a very simple mind & do not feel the need of approaching the Divine through knowledge. For such natures religion has a use & it is even necessary for them; for, through external forms… it offers a kind of support & help to their inner spiritual aspiration…. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion. Put anywhere else, born into any other cult, they would have found there & lived there the same spiritual life. It is their own capacity, it is some power of their inner being & not the religion they profess that has made them what they are. [CWM 3:76-81]
... spiritual master plus a profound philosopher "depends on how one understands his relation to Christianity"? And the relation you determine by saying that he, like the Mother, "had never made a deep study of Christianity" and that rather than going beyond Christianity "he was at least unconsciously influenced by Christianity" in his "conception of the descent of the Supermind, the penetration of matter and the... to being no more than a brilliant modern Indian gloss on the ne-plus-ultra disclosures of Christianity two thousand years ago. But the very fact that you could not see Christianity anew except through the eyes of Sri Aurobindo should give pause. And now that you admit that your interpretation of Christianity as the ultimate spiritual apocalypse is "not the way in which Sri Aurobindo would have understood... that entered Christianity and aligns it to the Indian Shakti-vision rather than to the near-Eastern goddess-cultism but I cannot help seeing it - from all the available evidence not only in Paul but also in the common bulk of the four Gospels - as far from being "congruous" with the original Christianity. How the foreign Mother-mysticism grew into the corpus of original Christianity is still not ...
... the objective emergence of the ultra- human (releasing a neo-humanism, and automati- cally entailing a neo-Christianity)." Most significantly, Cuenot 11 footnotes the word "neo-Christianity" thus: "By neo-Christianity should be understood a transcending of Christianity." Clearly, Cuenot's explanation is inspired by Teilhard's own phrase after writing the word in question which terminates... writings, the terms: "trans-Christie", "Trans-Christ", "trans-Christian", "trans-Christianised Christianity". On the very face of them they cannot but get linked with the "transcending of Christianity" which, as we saw in the preceding article, Cuenot reads, for a good reason, in Teilhard's "neo-Christianity". We shall quote in chronological order the passages where the terms occur. They all belong to... more so: and it is that only a trans- (or ultra-) Christianised Christianity is henceforth capable of satisfying our increased powers and demands of adoration!" Once more we have an unmistakable stress laid on changing Christianity to meet the exigences of an evolutionary view of the world. Teilhard makes no bones about Christianity in its present form being a complete failure, though not lacking ...
... 27.Ibid., p. 650. 28.Ibid, p. 307. Page 154 Christianity, but Christianity comes in only to intensify and enrich the world-mysticism that in various ways fills his entire consciousness. We get an emphatic picture of his position - world-mysticism in the full foreground, with Christianity a reinforcing touch from the background - in a letter of April 16,1948, which... Teilhard de Chardin and our Time II What is Basic Teilhardism? What Place has his Christianity in it? (1) In Rideau's book we have found from his Teilhard-quota-tions that Teilhard's Christianity has no vital concern for any traditional dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church but concentrates solely on preserving "Christ... recognition of God and of Christianity. Both on the objective and the personal level, the order of nature and that of the supernatural are connected by a dialectic of analogy and discontinuity. The passage from one order to the other is achieved by a gratuitous initiative on the part of God, which resumes and transcends nature, and subjectively by an act of 11.Christianity and Evolution, pp. 99 ...
... self-contradiction - unless Teilhard means by "Christianity" something that cannot be identified with any historical version of it. Christianity, to Teilhard, must stand for a religion that undergoes a complete metamorphosis so that it differs toto coelo from all past manifestations of Christian dogma, and yet is qualified to be called Christianity. Christianity must be a certain "truth" connected with... reached we are impoverishing it by our modern Christianity. This modern Christianity cannot, however, be the whole of Christianity.... What makes Christians sterile is that they do not love the world" (Le neo-humanisme moderne, lecture, 1948). 5 We are led to ask: "What is the rest of the Christian religion that is left out by modern Christianity?" All readers of Teilhard know how much store... recognized as identical with, and subordinate to, a Christianity that has been extended, in a spirit of faith, to its extreme limit" (Le Christianisme et le monde, 1933). Then he 3 introduces a tribute by Teilhard to Christianity. Rideau begins: "'Everything that justly vindicates the sense of man can find a home' in Christianity" - and ends with Teilhard's words: "The new religion ...
... culture must be based on that fact. Historically, Christian missionaries took Christianity and the message of the Gospels to the barbaric tribes of Europe. With the spread of Christianity throughout barbaric Europe, came the forms of Roman law and Greek culture that eventually civilized these tribes. Christianity, along with its own message, was the primary source and carrier of classical civilization... become Christian it often did so en masse. Thus, Christianity must have made the rapid advances it did because it was able to serve not only as an educative force, but as a socially cohesive one as well. To the invaders from the north, Christianity then became a major stimulus in stirring them to produce a more advanced civilization. Thus, Christianity may have won quick acceptance because it served... all the Gospel texts, and completely foreign to Paul. That is an idea which comes about only later in the history of Early Christianity. Therefore, to say that he was a Jew should be obvious. But, of course, it should not need to be said because as is well-known, Christianity becomes something other than Judaism by the 2nd century CE, and as a _____________ * pogrom: an organized attack, often ...
... Church. What they forget is his ineradicable conviction that Teilhardism was the real essence of Christianity and that the Church, not he, needed to be "converted" or "transformed". On March 21, 1941 he 2 wrote from Peking to Lucille Swan: "According to my own principles I cannot fight against Christianity; I can only work inside it, by trying to transform and 'convert' it...I know that the tide is rising... and a stage in the progressive history of a universal Soul of Evolution. And Teilhard, when he aligns his "ultra-physics" with his Christianity, speaks up for that religion on the strength of its close correspondence with his scientific vision. "What gives Christianity its peculiar effectiveness and sets it in a particular key," he 5 informs us, "is the fundamental idea that the Page 28 ... Library, Theology and Philosophy, London, 1972), p. 155. 3. Ibid., 4. The Design of Teilhard de Chardin: 5. Christianity and Evolution 6. Letters to Two Friends, 7. Ibid., 8. Science and Christ 9. Letters to Leontine Zanta 10. Christianity and Evolution, 11.See de Lubac's Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning 12. Letters to Two Friends, ...
... lly "a child of the Earth" should lead us to anticipate in his essay a drive towards drawing Christians to World-faith rather than unbelievers to 3. Christianity and Evolution, pp. 96-97. Page 23 Christianity. Also, the deliberate distinction between "probably" for increase of belief in God and "certainly" for augmentation of belief in the World betrays the trend of the... in making any author you please say the opposite of what he has written." Of course, Teilhard does not say he has actually lost his faith in Christianity, nor is it that, relying simply on the World, he will not obtain all that Christianity stands for. He merely says: "If...I were to lose..." But the attitude of the "If" is not, as Leys and de Lubac would designate it, "unreal": it posits... divest himself of his confidence in the World. And such is the case not because he takes the World to be pregnant, as Leys and de Lubac make him out to do, with the truths of Christianity but because, even without Christianity, the World is felt by him in the dim depths of his consciousness as secretly a Being, perfect in Itself, who will somehow or other evolve and manifest man's perfection, man's ...
... said he was blinded); on his recovery he announced his conversion to the faith he had opposed. He took the name of Paul and began preaching Christianity in the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and eventually in Rome itself. It was Paul who made Christianity attractive to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the Roman world. He persuaded early Christian leaders that many Jewish ritual practices could be... an innovation in the ancient world and helped establish the supremacy of Christianity over the many other religions of the Empire. No similar system existed for the pagan or mystery cults; the priests of Jupiter in one city, for example, were entirely independent of those in other cities. During the third century Christianity began to attract members from all classes. Earlier the educated classes... (Bombay; St Paul Publications, 1975) pp. 21-30 Page 131 The Baptism of the Neophytes, (detail) fresco by the Italian painter Masaccio(1401-1428)Neophytes were new converts to Christianity. Page 132 The Hebrews : Brief History The importance to the world of the Hebrews is not primarily political. It comes from the fact that from 1200 to 400 BC, the Hebrews ...
... words put Christianity prior to faith in the World?" Let us examine them carefully- What Teilhard is concerned with is nothing else than Christianity and Omega Point. The proper question is: "Do they base the concept of Omega on Christianity?" Here faith in the World is not involved at all. But, as that concept crowns this faith, it is important to ascertain whether Christianity really plays... Christly". We may also answer the question we asked: "Did Christianity really play a crucial mediating role between his faith in the World and his concept of Omega?" Our answer is: "It did not. World-faith led to physics. Physics led to the Omega-concept. And the Omega-concept was the crucial mediator between World-faith and Christianity." Even further we may go and say: "Faith in a World... doctrine of the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ in the far future to collect his adherents and their universe into his mystical Body. But the actual working out of the concept took no help from Christianity. It was based entirely on Teilhard's scientific observation and insight. In the very chapter on the Christian Phenomenon he 3 tells us about the need of Omega if reflective life is to continue ...
... the scale of world religions. An ingenious remedy is proposed. Christianity destroyed Paganism in Europe; therefore, since any immediate or very rapid triumph of sceptical free-thought would be too happily abrupt a transition to be quite feasible, we unenlightened, polluted, impure Hindus are advised to take up for a time with Christianity, poor irrational thing that it is, dark and deformed though it... it looks in the ample light of the positivist reason, because Christianity and especially Protestant Christianity will be at least a good preparatory step towards the noble freedom and stainless purities of atheism and agnosticism. But if even this little cannot be hoped for in spite of numerous famine conversions, at any rate Hinduism must somehow or other get itself filtered, and until that hygienic... ted extraneous matter gathered into this giant body. The inner principle of Hinduism, the most tolerant and receptive of religious systems, is not sharply exclusive like the religious spirit of Christianity or Islam; as far as that could be without loss of its own powerful idiosyncrasy and law of being, it has been synthetic, acquisitive, inclusive. Always it has taken in from every side and trusted ...
... individual moral liberty of Christianity with the civic liberty of Greece; in equality, the democratic spiritual equality of Christianity applied to society; fraternity, the aspiration to universal brotherhood, which is the peculiar and distinguishing idea of Christianity; in humanity, the Buddhistic spirit of mercy, pity, love, of which Europe knew nothing till Christianity breathed it forth over the... even upon the common possession of goods, for always the mine & thine , the greed, the hate, will return again if not between this man & that man, yet between this community and that community. Christianity hopes Page 140 to make men live together like brothers—a happy family, loving and helping each other; perhaps it still hopes, though there is little in the state of the modern world... deepest pleasure is necessarily vital and sensational; it is only valid for the men who make the statement, they being the intellectual self with an ethical training that has survived from a dead Christianity. In order for it to be true of the sensational man, he must cease to be sensational, he must undergo a process of spiritual regeneration to which utilitarian philosophy cannot give him either the ...
... philosophy and science which he saw continuing from a completely anti-Christian past. He felt Christianity to have a deeply modifying bearing upon it and thus saving his own natural proclivities from outright heresy. He 27 tells us: "Far from contradicting my own profound tendencies towards pantheism, Christianity, rightly understood, has unceasingly, precisely because it is the saviour of personality... imbued though it may be with personalism. And, if Teilhard's system has an unavoidably pantheistic element, it cannot be assimilated into current Christianity. However, there are other elements - several strong links with Roman Catholic Christianity on the one hand and on the other with what we have designated the "evolutionary garb" in which Christianity's bugbear, pantheism, appears in Teilhard's... us the Christianity which Teilhard, often at cross-purposes with himself, was striving to set forth. The essential attitude on his part in this respect is caught in many of his statements. But it wore various faces. At its most conservatively revolutionary, if we may so put the matter, it found expression thus: 47 "According to my own principles, I cannot fight against Christianity; I can ...
... of pantheism... If Christianity is to keep its place at the head of mankind, it must make itself explicitly recognisable as a sort of 'pan-Christism'..." The implication of such statements is clear: something contained in pantheism has to be added to Christianity while something else in it is to be left out. The result is bound to be both pantheism Christianised and Christianity pantheised. ... reference to human society) to Christ the King." Our passages show how far beyond traditional Christianity the Christ of Teilhard goes and hence how mistaken would be the attempt, just because this Christianity has always talked of Christ's mystical Body, to read in the above definition merely this Christianity expanded along its own line. Surely, the mystical Body of tradition, be it ever so expanded... something of indispensable value which is distorted in the former, and when freed from the distortion it yields a truth lacking in Christianity as Roman Catholicism has understood it but sorely needed by every religion and actually waiting in the heart of Christianity. That is why he 1 says: "The trails of false pantheism bear witness to our immense need for some revealing word to come from the mouth ...
... democracy has travelled from the East to the West in the shape of Christianity, and after a long struggle with the feudal instincts of the Germanic races has returned to Asia transformed and in a new body. But when Asia takes back democracy into herself she will first transmute it in her own temperament and make it once more Asiatic. Christianity was an assertion of human equality in the spirit, a great assertion... enlightened. The German nations were wedded to a military civilisation which was wholly inconsistent with the ideals of Christianity, and the new religion in their hands became a thing quite unrecognizable to the Asiatic mind which had engendered it. When Mahomedanism appeared, Christianity vanished out of Asia, because it had lost its meaning. Mahomed tried to re-establish the Asiatic gospel of human equality... Europe by the rise of the middle class, the ideals of Christianity began to emerge once more to light, but by this time the Christian Church had itself become feudalized, and the curious spectacle presents itself of Christian ideals struggling to establish themselves by the destruction of the very institution which had been created to preserve Christianity. When the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity ...
... unearthed in the heart of London! This shows how far and wide was the establish-ment of Fire-worship at the time when Christianity was struggling for a hold on the minds of men. Mithraism ran neck and neck with the new creed and, if some of the Roman Emperors had not been converted to Christianity and stamped out all other cults, what had remained undone by Darius and Xerxes would still have come to pass.... At least with regard to theology and the ethical code, Dr. Spiegelberg does not think so. He believes that much of Judaeo-Christianity itself is Zarathustrian in origin. Some points of important affinity are quite clear between the ancient religion of Iran and the Christianity that flourished later. The former, like the latter, believed in a loving Father-God who is omniscient and concerned with His... differently and Greece had fallen to the Per-sians, the rest of south-eastern Europe would have been at their mercy. Then, according to scholars like Max Muller, Zarathus-trianism rather than Judaeo-Christianity would have been pro-gressively the prevailing religion of Europe and finally also America. Fire-temples would have sprung up where now Churches abound. Even after the setback to the military ...
... open up Christianity (because it's closed in on itself, turned towards the past, and therefore immutable, unprogressive: there is the seed of its own death and decomposition), the only thing would be for it to admit a force from the FUTURE....' Satprem, do you remember these words? You conveyed them from Mother to me on 26 November '68, the day I sent you that article on the crisis of Christianity. I went... of November 2, 1968 , in which Mother spoke about the future of Christianity. See Agenda IX under that date.) November 26, 1968 ...Thank you for the photos and the interesting article on the "crisis of the Church." In this connection, Mother told me that the Page 104 only thing that could open up Christianity (because it is closed in on itself, turned towards the past, and therefore... with the Monsignors and Cardinals. And there, PL. came flat out with it all! Bah!... ( Mother laughs ) Because some five or six months ago, I wrote to him a few reflections of yours about Christianity. I wrote him that, developing it (it really came to me). 1 And then he came out with it all! What! Bah-bah! Here's his letter: "I can finally write to you with the calm and tenderness ...
... Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3) 32 As to Christianity and your antipathy to it in general, I would advise you not to subject Jesus to any mud-slinging. You may criticise the historical religion which takes his name, and criticise its pretensions, persecutions and political manoeuvres. But you are mistaken in thinking that it started with a backing... converted. Till then the Christians were at the wrong end of the stick, though the Roman persecution has been considerably exaggerated. This persecution was not on the ground of any doctrine special to Christianity. There was quite a clutch of religio-philosophical sects in the Roman empire, including the Jews who lived side by side with the followers of Jesus at Rome. The Christians were in bad odour because... down the ages quite a number of spiritual aspirants as well as truth-seeking minds. In the midst of all the superstitions and fanaticisms that have come in his wake, two lights have shone out from Christianity: the discernment of God's love and grace on the one hand and on the other the necessity of brotherly love and service. There have been many cloudings of these lights, but here is the essence of ...
... make that immensity itself the glorious manifestation of his own universality. We are called beyond the God-Man to a God-World. An enormously enlarged Christianity is offered to us. And Teilhard's summing up 9 runs: "The great mystery of Christianity is not exactly the appearance, but the transparence of God in the universe. Yes, Lord, not only the ray that strikes the surface, but the ray that penetrates... But, if Teilhard is right here, St. Paul would run quite counter to Christianity as hitherto interpreted: he would have a genuine streak of pantheism a la Teilhard. And then both St. Paul and Teilhard would be seen as endowing their Christ with a cosmicity foreign to the 11. Ibid., pp. 55-56. 12. Christianity and Evolution, translated by Rene Hague (Collins, London, 1971), p... Milieu, p. 104. 3. Ibid., pp. 94-5. Page 15 question is whether there is or not a mystical and universal Presence which goes beyond the traditional omnipresent God of Christianity and, if there is, whether it has to be named "Christ" and nothing else. The very first sentence provides the answer, and the answer contradicts the assertion of the last three. Teilhard has actually ...
... Problems of Early Christianity "Born of a Woman" As the Letters of Paul constitute the earliest Christian witness, an important question in regard to the earliest Christianity and hence by implication Christianity as originally promulgated is: Does Paul know the doctrine of Mary's virginal conception of Jesus? Here the most discussed passage... the context of the full NT situation would we be left in doubt about its negative bearing in the problem whether the doctrine of the virginal conception had a place in the earliest and original Christianity. A comparative ambiguity in the last resort, accompanying Page 25 a keen analysis of surface meanings and a rejection of pro-virginity readings, is the result in... nothing of note in the birth of Jesus and they carry the suggestion of the birth being quite ordinary, a product of two human parents. Again, the inference could be that in Paul's time - the time of Christianity at its earliest and in its original form - the virginal-conception doctrine was non-existent. Evidently, to arrive at the correct conclusion in the controversy we must explore the exact ...
... Mother's Chronicles - Book Six 18 Christianity Poor Christ. A nice enough gentleman from most accounts. Yet those who swear by him keep him hanging on the cross. Poor, poor Christ. He who could not tolerate sham in the name of religion. Remember his going to a Jewish temple—he was a Jew—with a broom and determinedly sweeping... "Christians ... exacted an implicit submission to their doctrines without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning." 1 As a religion Christianity is rather irrational. To take but one point. It says that those who do not believe in Christ will perpetually roast in hell. It stands to reason then that all those who were born before Christ,... who dominated the intellectual world of the eighteenth century, was also endowed with a lion's heart. He took on the might of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout his life he waged a war to cut Christianity to size. His discerning intellect saw through the deliberate falsehoods spread by the missionaries, not to mention the cupidity of the Europeans sustained by Christian doctrine. "The Europeans," ...
... will be established here on Earth. (b) Christian : Christianity insists that Jesus is the anointed* descendant of King David. Through this and other signs from prophets of the Old Testament, Christianity declares Jesus to be the Messiah. In Greek, the word 'messiah' is 'christ' or the anointed one, so according to the faith of Christianity, Jesus becomes Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus refers... Resurrection of Jesus. So-called Good Friday is the day of the Crucifixion, while Easter Sunday immediately follows and celebrates the Resurrection. In very early Christianity, this holiday coincided with the Jewish Passover, but Christianity soon disassociated itself from the Jewish calendar. Presently, the date of Easter is determined by a lunar calculation, which makes it occur in late March or early... less and less. By the fourth century CE, the church service of the Last Supper (the Eucharist) was held on Sunday mornings and Jewish Sabbath observances disappeared from Christianity. — Salvation In Christianity, the basic meaning is that the human soul is reconciled with God through the death of Jesus Christ. The human is saved from sins committed during a lifetime, as well as from ...
... the note she wrote on Christianity and commented on July 29 ) "Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation." You know, it came to me as a discovery.... The whole religion, instead of being seen like this ( gesture from below ), was seen like that ( gesture from above ).... Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use... against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity.... There was already before it a fairly long earth history—we shouldn't forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the... place and their raison d'être." Then, one day I said to myself, "Well, it is true! Seen in that way, it's obvious: Christianity is like a rehabilitation of suffering as a means of development of the consciousness." And so Sri Aurobindo's sentence assumes its full value.... Christianity came because men were rebelling against pain and trying to escape from the world in order to escape from pain... ...
... more human being” (Peter Härtling); Europe is “the land of the human … the country of origin of the individual” (Denis de Rougemont). 12 Christianity Another essential element that contributed to the building of European culture was Christianity. “Greece with its rational bent and its insufficient religious sense was unable to save its religion; it tended towards that sharp division between... unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism filtered through the Semitic temperament entered Europe in the form of Christianity . Christianity came within an ace of spiritualising and even asceticising the mind of Europe; it was baffled by its own theological deformation in the minds of the Greek fathers of the Church and by the... different things. Christianity was much more the creation of St. Paul and the Church Fathers than of Christ himself, although the shining core of Christ’s mission has remained present on the Earth for a long time to contact with the soul and follow its true spiritual path, called bhakti by the Indians, devotional love. “To humanise Europe”, as Sri Aurobindo put it, Christianity and the then still ...
... gone on the path of exclusivism, and that Christianity has often fought under exclusivistic banners such as under no name but that of Christ can we be saved, and outside the Church of Christ there is no salvation. But at this stage, he advances a fresh argument and points out that anyone who subscribes to the authentic moral precepts inherent in Christianity can hardly support that a surpassingly benevolent... preference. Those who accept this solution argue that all religions share a number of core ethical values, and as long as these core values are practiced, it does not matter whether one belongs to Christianity or to Judaism or to Hinduism or to Buddhism. This solution tends to regard pluralism of religions to be comparable to the pluralism of the methods of cooking or to the pluralism of the forms of... personal at all, and it even negates any appellation of oneness or plurality by which the Nihil is experienced as a resting place of the state of liberation. He also points out that according to Christianity, the ultimate reality is triune. Cottingham thus acknowledges that the differing and conflicting claims of religion pose a serious problem to the indifferentist approach to the phenomenon of pluralism ...
... for that matter. Q : Do you think that Christianity has over-exaggerated suffering so that it has become a distortion of what Christ Himself tried to... A : Not only that; you must leave aside Christianity as an organized religion. I am only asserting that Christ's personal suffering stood for a consciousness and a realization. Christianity, after the 13th, or 14th century, gave this up... up almost completely—the goal of realising man's unity with his Creator or the Supreme. That was the basis of Christ's expe- Page 126 rience, and that, Christianity never seriously attempted. They gave themselves up to social good service, piety, devotion, charity—which was and is very good. It did a lot of good work, but it was far away from the original intention of Christ. And in... create this hope—probably Christ consciousness was behind it,—but that is only a way of explaining it to ourselves. It is not possible to put the whole responsibility on Christ; so the turn that Christianity took is not the turn probably intended by the founder. Q : Isn't it the tendency of the human mind with its dogmatism... A : Not only dogmatism. When religion becomes a social function ...
... present day is older than Christianity. His gods are older than any higher religion”, wrote Spengler. 492 Hitler too considered Christianity no more than a thin layer of veneer on a massive substance of old traditions and beliefs. Romanticism had directed the attention back to nature and to the powers the Germans had venerated for many centuries before being burdened with Christianity. Now the “new romanticism”... Hitler he was not sent to a concentration camp or simply murdered is a riddle for which we may suggest a solution later on. He died in 1948, seventy-two years of age. A revived Christianity, a pseudo-German Christianity or a genuine German religion: it was all the same quatsch , the same nonsense to Hitler, who had something totally different in mind but who kept such thoughts to himself for the... will do so too. Why not? It will not prevent me from extirpating Christianity in Germany root and branch … The Old Testament or the New, or only the words of Jesus, as Houston Stewart Chamberlain prefers: all that is nothing but the same Jewish swindle. It is all the same and it does not set us free. A German Church, a German Christianity is rubbish. One is either Christian or German. One cannot be both ...
... of the Avatar-phenomenon is to be found in Christianity. (In Essays on the Gita , Sri Aurobindo repeatedly names as Avatars Krishna, Buddha and Christ.) In Christianity its founder is seen – mostly unawares – as an Avatar, for Christ is at the same time the Son of God and the Son of Man. The fundamental difference with Hinduism is that in Christianity Christ is held to be the only Avatar, the one... but in the social and outward life and ideals of the race.” 46 (Even the mission of Christ, the “Prince of Peace”, has led to a superabundance of internal and quite physical struggles in Christianity, and to the Crusades and the Wars of Religion. Christ’s own words as quoted in the gospel of Matthew should not be forgotten: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did... Sri Aurobindo: The Human Cycle , pp. 661-662. × In persons knowledgeable about Christianity, this image will bring to mind the figure of the Messiah in the biblical book of Revelation, written by John of Patmos. The Mother herself pointed out the similarity: “Saint John has said that there ...
... understand, a deluge. ( Soon afterwards, concerning a sympathizer of the Ashram, Mrs. Z, who cannot get out of her Christianity. 2 ) Now then, did you see this lady? I feel there's a possibility to do something.... What's your impression? This morning, Christianity too was there among all the other things. ( silence ) You understand, behind this whole earth evolution, there is... Whole. × By a rather striking "coincidence," since Mother's vision of July 29 ("Christianity deifies suffering"), Christianity was going to crowd in on Mother in succession: monks, bishops etc., including the present lady who will figure in the Agenda on several occasions. Which goes to show that Mother's... was the Nirvanic solution. And instinctively—instinctively—mankind felt death to be the negation of the Divine. But like all negation, it had the capacity to lead and open the way. The solution of Christianity wasn't completely new, it was the adaptation of an Page 260 ancient solution: a life in other worlds—which was expressed by that quite childish conception of paradise. But that was a ...
... Problems of Early Christianity Did the Evangelist Luke Write Acts of the Apostles? In Biblical scholarship it is a commonplace that "Luke", the reputed author of the third Gospel, penned also the book known as Acts of the Apostles and that both the compositions date to the 80s A.D. as two parts of a single work. Is this currently accepted position... as if for the maladroit manufacture of a colossal inconsistency at the very opening of a book declaring itself Lucan. They direct us away from Luke, even though the story begun is the progress of Christianity from where Luke leaves off. But here a quirk in the minds of the pro-Lucans must be indicated. They are prepared to grant a new hand in the introduction. Why are they reluctant to extend... thus that there was no Virgin Birth to be known: he also contradicts his own narrative and demonstrates its contents to be a new-fangled thing, a pure fiction, with no foundation in the original Christianity. Luke totally against himself and nullifying his most Lucan Evangelism: this is what we confront on considering Acts to be his. Here we can go a step further in detail. The Roman Catholic ...
... Problems of Early Christianity Notes on Some Comments on "Born of a Woman" I have to attend to the opinions of two scholars. One of them was the Professor of the Classics Department, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1985, who unfortunately met soon after with a terrible accident to his head depriving him of normal discourse... of what he is moved to call my "fine paper". At the very outset Somerville infers from scriptural evidence that there is no sign of the doctrine of virginal conception in the earliest Christianity: "I do think if Paul knew anything about the virginal conception, he would have adverted to it somewhere somehow... And perhaps the early Christians who held the virginal conception did so because... be the best witness to all the things early Christians believed, say in Egypt or Mesopotamia which he never visited - or even in Palestine, which he only visited briefly." True, early Christianity was not single-strained. From Paul's own Letters we know of differences among the early teachers. But can we surmise that Paul never heard of the virginal conception in spite of the doctrine having ...
... under that very name. No wonder, then, that some scholar should imagine this sect to be Christian before the age allotted commonly to Christianity and look upon the followers of Christ as a continuation from the past. But here is a mistake and, although Christianity may have and does have affinities with religious beliefs and practices which are pre-Christian, particularly with the Dead-Sea denomination... Problems of Early Christianity The Historicity of Christ A Letter of January 6,1981 Today is Epiphany Day on which, according to the New-Testament legend, the Magi, the Wise Men of the East - perhaps "Parsis" like me, since "Magi" originally meant Persian highpriests - brought gifts to the infant Jesus. The occasion is appropriate for me to reply... a's dream during his voyage back from America to India is not determinative. Ac- Page 11 cording to you, a man appeared to him one night mentioning Crete as the land where Christianity had begun and going on to say: "I am one of the Therapeutae who used to live here. The truths and ideals preached by us have been given out by the Christians as having been taught by Jesus; but ...
... intuitions Page 445 and insights, amplified by the Aurobindonian revelations and affirmations, should pave the way for what he calls a "Vedantic Christianity". Teilhard's "Cosmic Christ" must lead "to an Indianised Christianity giving prominence to Pantheos but holding the transcendent Divine as its prime concept"; and Christ would be one among the great avatars, and for Christians the... transfiguration will be achieved through a supreme efflorescence of Love or Love charged with knowledge, power and beauty (satyam, śivam, sundaram). Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard: Vedanta and Christianity - these are four intersecting circles of spiritual experience and thought with a substantial common ground between them. Eva Olsson has made a fair-minded attempt to compare Sri Aurobindo's thought... them. "Sin" has no place in Sri Aurobindo's system, and the role of Evil is muted; Christ was certainly an avatar, but not the only one, the unique incarnation. As against these differences, both Christianity and Sri Aurobindo firmly believe that "Man is only a step in the development of creation to be superseded, transformed, perfected"; and not Man only, but all creation is to be transformed as well ...
... not emerge because it could have no fitness in current Christianity. The Christianity which can grow out of Teilhardism will thus have to be considerably different from the religion to which he tried to conform his intuitions. Understood in the true light, the Cosmic Christ who is central to his thought must lead to an Indianised Christianity giving prominence to Pantheos but holding the transcendent... from without inward with the Roman Catholic Church now and again in view, the real religion of Teilhard de Chardin would be this Indianised Christianity as modified and modernised by his brilliant many-faceted reading of biological fact. Such a Christianity would perhaps be opened by that reading to see, in the unknown face of the future, greater possibilities than all past ones of embodied epiphany... the Avatar, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of ...
... wavered in my general admiration for Bede Griffiths ever since I came across a pamphlet of his on Hinduism and Christianity. Recently I went through his Return to the Centre, marking several passages of keen insight which go beyond the conventional and traditional in common Christianity and make a living contact with the basic truths of all mystical experience. Orthodox Roman Catholicism might get... transfigured..." (pp. 137-8) I can understand Griffiths's seeing a general analogue of Aurobindonianism in Christianity, but what he says here applies to every via mystica, especially the Sufi kind, which is a blend of Vedanta and Vaishnavism. The comparison can bear uniquely on Christianity if Griffiths's next paragraph can hold true. He continues: "For a Christian this has already taken place... reference to religious history in general and to Christianity in particular, give the New Year Message of 1957: "It is not the crucified body but the glorified body that will save the Page 13 world." As a later talk (September 13, 1967) clarifies, if Christ had a glorified body it belonged not to the world but to heaven. Christianity, Reincarnation and Krishna In Griffiths's ...
... 136 Time after time something comes down from above, hut again you find humanity the same as ever. Look at Christianity, all the millions in Europe who profess it. Do you think they believe in Christianity? Not even ten percent try to live out Christianity. That is the difficulty with humanity. Something comes down from Above. In order to make it available to the whole community... movement of descent. When they find that they can't resist then they accept the new element and, in accepting, turn it into something else than what it was intended to be! For example, you find that Christianity was at first opposed, and when it was afterwards accepted it became an oppressive religion. Why ? Because, it was the lower forces of nature that came in with the acceptance. It means there must... believe many of the Christian martyrs did not suffer in the genuine Christian spirit. Most of them were full of the spirit of revenge. So, in the beginning there was passive resistance but when Christianity came to power it turned oppressive. Thus, by accepting Christianity the lower forces occupied the place of genuine spiritual force of Christ. They had thought, "Let us establish a new religion ...
... schemes of morality? Wilson —No doubt, but some are more excellent than others. Keshav —And do you cherish the opinion that your own Page 13 peculiar creed—I believe it to be Christianity without Christ—is indubitably the most excellent of all religions? Wilson —By far the most excellent. Keshav —And your own ethical scheme, again the Christian without the emotional element... Vedic Scriptures, a Christian, if his life is a long self-denial. Wilson —That I admit. Keshav —Then the ethical scheme of Islam is as much thievery law of God, as the ethical scheme of Christianity, and the morals of Hinduism are not less divine than the morals of Islam. Wilson —I hardly understand how you arrive at that conclusion. Keshav —Did you not say, Broome, that religion is... another basis than Bentham supplies. Keshav —Yours is a curious position, Broome. You are one of those who would expunge the part of Hamlet from the play that bears his name. Your religion is Christianity without Christ, your morality Benthamism without Bentham. Nevertheless my guns are so pointed that they will breach any wall you choose to set up. For this is common to all utilitarians that they ...
... Geneva to unite with the Protestants—which wouldn't have been so good. That's not the thing needed, because it would have strengthened Christianity—division takes away some of its power. It's the unification of ALL religions that's needed, not the unification of Christianity—they haven't reached that point. So after looking a good deal, I saw it was, on the contrary, a divine grace that it didn't work out... out. If you have the opportunity, you can tell him that. I don't know if he himself is still Christian.... All that gives strength to Christianity isn't good. Christianity hoped to dominate the earth, and it's this division that prevented its domination. In other words, I don't think uniting with the Protestants would help the general work of unification. And for the time being, they can't ...
... impression that Christianity is the most important thing. Yes, but he can't do any more for Christianity, that's the thing. Ah, certainly not! Yes, but deep down he keeps that desire of doing something for Christianity—of bringing the light in there. Page 328 Then he must stay on! It's obvious: if he still has that idea of "doing something for Christianity," he must stay on—what ...
... shakes his fires in the burden'd air... 213 Bateson's comment 214 on the whole "Argument" runs: "The contrast is between primitive Christianity, when the just man could be meek, and the eighteenth century, when (owing to the corruption of Christianity) humility has become the mark of the 210.Keynes, ed. cit., p. 240 (Europe, pl. 8, 11.1-2, 8). 211. Op. cit., p. 118. 212... following in order to reach and realize the former. And this is precisely the implication of Blake himself when in the same passage he says just before the phrase on Imagination: "I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination..." 42 He speaks too of "Mental Studies & Performances" 43 and exhorts us "to Labour in... Satan, as leading to the latter's banishment from Eternity. Indeed, such a belief should be inevitable to Boehme as it would be to anyone who amalgamates the Hermetic or any other tradition and Christianity. Raine contends that in Boehme the wrath-fire operates only in Hell and what is wrath there is nothing save love in Heaven: according to her reading, Boehme cannot have a Christ-Tyger blazing wrathfully ...
... wrote nine odes to Indian gods and goddesses, the first example of the use of the English language for purely Indian themes. Jones's enthusiasm for things Indian was not qualified or arrested by his Christianity. In one of his letters (to Earl Spencer) he wrote, "I am no Hindu; but I hold the doctrine of the Hindus Page 363 concerning a future state to be incomparably more rational,... know that, and I feel for it. But 'to follow Poetry' (says A. Pope) 'one must leave father and mother'" (Chaudhuri 95). He dreamed of making his mark as an English poet. He left home, converted to Christianity, and went to England. His father disowned him and had it not been for Vidyasagar's charity, he and his family may actually have starved to death in cold and distant Europe. On his return to India... Vivekananda holds Indians responsible for their own downfall. Like Gandhi later in Hind Swaraj , Vivekananda is unwilling to blame others for our downfall: Materialism, or Mohammedanism, or Christianity, or any other ism in the world could never have succeeded but that you allowed them.... But yet there is time to change our ways. Give up all those old discussions, old fights about things which ...
... “Without Christianity no anti-Semitism” The popular anti-Semitic mentality, in the rest of Europe as well as in Germany, was the result of a historic process which went back all the way to the life and death of Jesus Christ, and which was closely connected with Christianity. The attitude of Europe, where Christianity became the chief element of the culture, rested... the four canonical Gospels – Mark, Luke, Matthew and John – gradually grew more inimical towards the Jews. In this they followed the footsteps of Paul of Tarsus, himself a Jew who had converted to Christianity, and who would transform the Judaic sect of the followers of Christ into a potentially universal (“catholic”) religion no longer bound to a particular people and its religious beliefs and customs ...
... and Luke penetrated a Jerusalem in ruins and practically desolate of Christianity after the First Revolt. The case for John's Gospel of the 90s falling into Christian hands in Jerusalem for verification is still more forlorn. Page 214 As time went on, the Roman grip squeezing out both Judaism and Christianity grew ever tighter. Albright 242 refers to excavations "at Bittir, the... Problems of Early Christianity 1 The Significance of the Earliest Evidence The Protestant theologian Bernhard W. Anderson 1 writes: "The earliest literary witness of the Resurrection is given to us by Paul, especially in 1 Corinthians 15. The historical value of this chapter is great, for though 1 Corinthians was written... vitiates to a considerable extent the very narrative of the most crucial incident in Paul's life, to which we have just adverted. Readers of the NT, in their picture of Paul the one-time persecutor of Christianity becoming suddenly its most energetic preacher, go almost invariably by Acts' sensational tale of Jesus' appearance to him on the road to Damascus. While we have no reason to doubt the substance ...
... Problems of Early Christianity Part One EARLY CHRISTIANITY Augustus Caesar and the Birth of Christ Some Reflections on their Contemporaneity December 25, year 0 or else 1 (authorities differ on the point): this has been observed for centuries as the date of the birth of Jesus. The historical situation of... supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again this work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe." (29.7.1937) The appearance of Augustus in the very period when Christianity had its origination seems to have answered a need of the future Europe standing on the threshold of an era in which a new powerful spirit had broken in upon old Judaism and a Graecised Near East... Augustus served also to render possible, instead of negating, the development of the Christian euangelion as a component of the future. For, despite occasional persecution, Roman rule fostered Christianity through the Pax Romana which Augustus had established. This Roman Peace by its maintenance of political stability, easy communications and flourishing trade, ensured not only the survival and ...
... under Caesar Augustus's successors Tiberius and Nero whose reigns covered Paul's ministry. No matter how much to the Page 94 non-jews Christianity or, as Mr. Vedanthan would have it, Paulinism masquerading as Christianity was preached in the immediate wake of Jesus' lifetime, none of the Apostles can be thought of as having had an eye on a country as distant as India. ... Problems of Early Christianity St. Thomas and India A Letter to the Madras Daily, The Hindu I have been following the lively debate over St. Thomas and his visit to India. Mr. T. R. Vedanthan strikes me as the most knowledgeable among the various controversialists. But even he has slipped up over the words "all the world" in Mark 16:15. ... two arguments, there is very little to base ourselves upon with any assurance. Two conflicting legends, dating no earlier than the third century A.D., face us. One holds that St. Thomas preached Christianity in the dominions of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophernes, dated between 20 and 48 A.D., and was there martyred. The other alleges that he was martyred at Mailapur (Mylapore) near Madras. As the historian ...
... and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo, p. 39. Page 217 component of the ensemble, (of the different traditions brought together by the Churches), bringing into the new religion (Christianity) the vision of God, the Mother, in a deeper fashion finer and closer approach to the Indian insight of the Adya Shakti, the Para Prakriti, whom Sri Aurobindo addresses in Savitri, O W... Where birth was a pang and death an agony, Lest all too soon should change again to bliss. 40 Sri Aurobindo comments on the lines as follows: This has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with the symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace eternal bliss. It is not Christ but the world-soul which... course, has not been presented by any Scripture including the Veda and the Gita. What the Bible does is to anticipate, however distantly, something of the experience. In his Problems of Early Christianity, Amal Kiran quotes from St. Paul and shows how there is such an anticipation. To the extent there is, it becomes relevant to our brief study of the relationship between the Bible and Savitri ...
... wholly like God. Christianity is the religion of grace and not of law. Man can and must by the moral effort of will and the spiritual intensity of prayer draw the gracious forces to himself, but it does not depend upon him in what measure they will flow to him, nor what their effect may be... .In revealing to man the ideal of absolute perfection for which he must strive, Christianity calls forth the... be ahaitukī actuated by no ostensible reason; and its action is irresistible and infallible. Ramanuja, Vallabhacharya, Chaitanya and Ramakrishna lay a preponderant stress on the divine Grace. Christianity can be called a religion of Grace, so much in its essence, it hinges upon it. "No man can come to Me unless the Father draw him" is remarkably identical in spirit with the Upanishadic saying quoted... givenness...." S. L. Frank, a famous Russian philosopher-mystic, clearly brings out the essential Christian attitude to Grace when he writes in his book, "God with us" : "All ethical religions except Christianity, are religions of Law... religions, that is, whose moral content is limited to definite moral rules and ways of living. In principle, i.e. leaving aside the question of human sinfulness, it is ...
... overseas expansion. Arab maritime powers were greatly curbed, and the Europeans had only themselves to contend with. The Europeans had also embraced a strange religion. Christianity. As happens with 'religions' Christianity too was divided into many sects. One of these was called the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish soldier. The Spaniards... 1 'Uncovering Patagonia's Lost World' (National Geographic, December 1997). 2 National Geographic (February 1998). 3 Quoted in Dead Sea Scrolls and the Crisis of Christianity by N. S. Rajaram (Minerva Press, London). My account is based mainly on this book, with additional facts and figures taken from the National Geographic. Page 131 picture. "And... in their brutal depravity. Killing and destroying such a countless number of humans. All in the name of 'true religion.' In a few deft sentences, Sri Aurobindo draws a telling picture of Christianity. "The mentality of the West," he wrote in The Foundations of Indian Culture, "has long cherished the aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal ...
... officials or policemen as a class, is sedition. Christianity is the religion of the Government established by law; to criticise Christianity is to bring Christians into contempt; the Government are Christians; therefore to criticise Christianity is to bring the Government established by law into contempt. That is sedition. Therefore to criticise Christianity is sedition. To say that repression fosters... sedition. At Patiala it is contended that to read the Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Punjabee is sedition. We are not quite sure that at Patiala the prosecuting counsel did not hint that to bring Christianity or Mahomedanism into contempt or hatred is sedition. And we have these remarkable cases in the Punjab, where to translate Seeley's Expansion of England or Mr. Bryan's opinion of British rule in ...
... between religion on the one side and atheism and anti-theism on the other was and is taking place almost exclusively in the West, within the culture dominated by Christianity and having its roots in Europe. Modern culture, carrier of Christianity, the Enlightenment values and science, has spread over the globe from Europe, which deemed itself superior to all the peoples and cultures it discovered, conquered... without justification, for the Bible has provided, in the West, the religious and moral inspiration for centuries. Another easily accessible provision of anti-religious ammunition is the history of Christianity. As soon as Catholicism was recognized as the official church of the Roman Empire, around the year 400, hordes of ‘monks’ went on the rampage, murdering ‘heathens’ and destroying the buildings of... important writings were put on Rome’s “Index of Forbidden Books.” All this because of the Christian mullahs, madrasas, communal congregations, and fatwas. The three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – are highly esteemed by theologians because they are supposed to be the only monotheisms. This is a gross misconception. “The earliest Greek natural theology was certainly monotheistic ...
... transfigured..." (pp. 137-8) I can understand Griffiths's seeing a general analogue of Aurobindonianism in Christianity, but what he says here applies to every via mystica, especially the Sufi kind, which is a blend of Vedanta and Vaishnavism. The comparison can bear uniquely on Christianity if Griffiths's next paragraph can hold true. He continues: "For a Christian this had already taken place... reference to religious history in general and to Christianity in particular, give the New Year Message of 1957: "It is not the crucified body but the glorified body that will save the world." As a later talk (September 13,1967) clarifies, if Christ Page 53 had a glorified body it belongs not to the world but to heaven. Christianity, Reincarnation and Krishna In G... came across a pamphlet of his on Hinduism. Recently I went through his Return to the Centre, marking several passages of keen insight which go beyond the conventional and traditipnal in common Christianity and make living contact with the basic truths of all mystical experience. Orthodox Catholicism might get shocked on finding grounds to suspect what may be called "panpsy-chism" or even "pantheism" ...
... So Zen is very good, Christianity is very good, the liquor store is very good – provided we know how to open our eyes and use what is in front of us to learn the lesson we are supposed to learn. So nothing should be judged; nothing should be seen as high or low. Everything is a staff to help us walk on the road. The mistake is to say: "Zen, and that's it," or Christianity. (As a matter of fact... It becomes God (with a capital G). Towarnicki: And it's the beginning of death. Exactly! The moment you start "defining" something, it dies. It's dead. So I have nothing against any Christianity, Hinduism or Marxism – I have nothing against anyone or anything. But I... have something against – and strongly AGAINST – anything that imprisons people. We've-got-the-truth syndrome, you... ... Yes, the rishis were... warriors, primarily. They lived about seven thousand years ago, as far as we can tell. It was well before Buddhism. Buddhism dates back five hundred years before Christianity. It was well before the Upanishads, which are already a rather distorted form of the Vedas – they are already the beginning of the intellectual cycle. The Vedas have the secret. They stammer ...
... Problems of Early Christianity 1 The Nature of the Appearances and Some Clues from Sri Aurobindo At the very outset we must say that, judged from Paul's list of appearances, the so-called Resurrection was not a universal historical fact: the "risen" Jesus did not go about, open to the sight of all men. Although to have appeared... reanimate it with his life-giving Spirit, and restore man to the God-relationship which is the source of his life." Page 259 We are expected to understand that because early Christianity, like the Judaic tradition, had no concept of a genuine supraphysical entity automatically surviving physical dissolution, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 insists on Jesus having corporeally risen and... religion of faith in Jesus, will have their bodies again just as Jesus himself had his. The stress is on having or not having "hope" of recovering the bodily existence which mattered so much to Judaeo-Christianity as distinguished from Graeco-Roman belief. Whether or not a supraphysical entity present in man survives in its own right is an irrelevant issue here. Still we should note that elsewhere 1 Thessalonians ...
... (f) 'Without the least violation of its own character it [Hinduism] can take the essence of the religion of Buddha to its bosom, even as it can take that of Christianity or Mohammedanism.... But neither Buddhism nor Christianity nor Mohammedanism can take Hinduism into itself. They are intent on converting all souls to one type and to confine the illimitable and protean Spirit to a single formula... How can plurality disabuse itself of the all-important question of priority v. parity? Have multiple religions in Britain or Malaysia, for example, been treated equally at the official level? No. Christianity and Islam are emphatically the priority religions in plural contexts in the respective countries. The clear principle for them has been: 'plurality yes, parity no.' Therefore, the correct philosophical... of 'human rights', when others exercise their right at will to exploit or convert or strike, Hindus alone have no right to defend themselves! Splendid! That Hinduism, unlike Buddhism or Christianity or Mohammedanism, has respectfully given rightful place to all of them is concretely proved if one visits a Sri Ramakrishna Temple. The main prayer hall always displays pictures of Christ, Buddha ...
... fraternity the translation into the social and political sphere of the spiritual truths of Christianity, the latter especially being effected by men who aggressively rejected the Christian religion and spiritual discipline and by an age which in its intellectual effort of emancipation tried to get rid of Christianity as a creed. On the other hand the life of Rama and Krishna belongs to the prehistoric past... the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth. It is indeed curious to note that the Page 170 permanent, vital, universal effect of Buddhism and Christianity has been the force of their ethical, social and practical ideals and their influence even on the men and the ages which have rejected their religious and spiritual beliefs, forms and disciplines;... condition and determine the work of the Avatar. In the Buddhistic formula the disciple takes refuge from all that opposes his liberation in three powers, the dharma , the saṅgha , the Buddha. So in Christianity we have the law of Christian living, the Church and the Christ. These three are always the necessary elements of the work of the Avatar. He gives a dharma, a law of self-discipline by which to grow ...
... Chapter X Christianity and Theosophy Christianity The gospel of suffering, the obsessing sense of sin and the dramatic vital turn which goes with these things are certainly the most prominent defects of the Christian attitude, and they keep the religion even in its esoteric movements too much tied to a half-spiritualised vital movement. Christianity seems to me to have never... difficult to say anything about X 's Christ and Krishna. The attraction which she says people feel for Christ has never touched me, partly because I got disgusted with the dryness and deadness of Christianity in England and partly because the Christ of the gospels (apart from a few pregnant episodes) is luminous no doubt, but somewhat shadowy and imperfectly constructed in his luminosity; there is more ...
... religion and philosophy. In that way every one has established idol-worship. He has criticized the Arya Samaj but why not criticize Mahomedan-ism ? His statement is adulatory of the Koran and of Christianity which is idolatry of the Bible, Christ and the Cross. Man is hardly able to do without externals and only a few will go to the kernel. August 17, 1924 (A few months earlier, Gandhi... Yes. When the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians (some even say that he is "Christ of the modern times") they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity, and though the garb is Indian the essential spirit is Christian. He may not be Christ, but at any Page 175 rate he comes in continuation of the same impulsion. He is largely ... Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man. Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. But what he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering, etc---- The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. They have got a passion in their intellect, say, a passionate intellect. They have a distracted ...
... a Master, and especially the Master of my own civilization) I find that I am after all very Western in the sense in which David Jones (our Page 71 great Catholic artist) called Christianity a very 'incarna-tional' religion, stemming of course from the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus in human form. We have indeed wonderful sculptures (Chartres Cathedral and hundreds of others) and the... in print . May J - like you - make a few general reflections before attending to your self-defence and counter-attack? It is a bit of a surprise to me that you should bring in Jesus and Christianity, even if you don't belong to any Church proper, to support David Jones's notion of the "incarnational". I don't think he knew much of Indian religion and spirituality, but you do sufficiently not... said by any Christian thinker to be a spark of God: it also is made out of nothing at the time of conception or else of birth. There is always a gulf between the Divine and the human. No doubt, in Christianity God is immanent no less than transcendent but he is immanent only by his power and never by being secretly one substance with the world and the soul. Neither the Old Testament nor the New has any ...
... personal faith, this essay treats the Bible as if it were the truth. Page 10 There are times when the beliefs and dogmas of Christianity need to be explained. Although the basic theology of all of Christianity is based on the Nicene Creed, each sect of Christianity interprets the Bible somewhat differently. The present essay does its best to avoid any interpretation and discusses only the actual... many points as possible. However, it is the Bible which has been the foundation of Judaic-Christian belief for over 3,000 years in the case of the Judaism, and for 2,000 years in the case of the Christianity. So, this essay gives some attention to the development of the New Testament. There is no mistaking the fact that the Bible has been considered to be the absolute truth, the Word of God, for much ...
... gone on the path of exclusivism, and that Christianity has often fought under exclusivistic banners such as under no name but that of Christ can we be saved, and outside the Church of Christ there is no salvation. But at this stage, he advances a fresh argument and points out that anyone who subscribes to the authentic moral precepts inherent in Christianity can hardly support that a surpassingly benevolent... preference. Those who accept this solution argue that all religions share a number of core ethical values, and as long as these core values are practiced, it does not matter whether one belongs to Christianity or to Judaism or to Hinduism or to Buddhism. This solution tends to regard Pluralism of religions to be comparable to the pluralism of the methods of cooking or to the pluralism of the forms of... personal at all, and it even negates any appellation of oneness or plurality by which the Nihil is experienced as a resting place of the state of liberation. He also points out that according to Christianity, the ultimate reality is triune. Cottingham thus acknowledges that the differing and conflicting claims of religion pose a serious problem to the indifferentist approach to the phenomenon of pluralism ...
... Through all these ages Asia has been seeking for a light within, and when- ever she has been blessed with a glimpse of what she seeks, a great religion has been born, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Mahomedanism, with all their countless sects. But the grand workshop of spiritual experiment, the Page 262 labo ratory of the soul has been India, where thousands of great... out on the world,... because they wished to communicate their own ecstasy of realisation to others who were fit to receive it either by previous tapasya or by the purity of their desires. What Christianity failed to do, what Mahomedanism strove to accomplish for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the life of Sri Ramakrishna has to attempt for all the world... but it is to equality. Our religion, our philosophy set equality forward as the essential condition of emancipation. All religions send us this message in a different form but it is one message. Christianity says we are all brothers, children of one God. Mohammedanism says we are the subjects and servants of one Allah, we are all equal in the sight of God. Hinduism says there is One without a second ...
... really resulted in a sort of eclecticism); but his preponderant bias for Christianity led him into a pot-pourri of diverse religious strains. Keshav's nature was genuinely religious and emotional, and was immensely widened and enlightened by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna; but his approach to Hinduism was through Christianity, and so, his preaching, in spite of its resounding success at the moment... one of the makers of modern Bengal. He started life as a social and religious reformer. In him it was not merely the spirit of Hinduism that rose up in arms against the onslaught of European Christianity, but the whole spirit of Indian culture and manhood stood up to defend and assert itself against every form of undue influence and alien domination. While Keshub 9 was seeking to reconstruct... responsible for some socio-religious and educational reforms, and for 85. Ram Mohan was a master of Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, and deeply read in the canonical books of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. He also knew Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Page 76 weaning many a soul from the influence of Christian missionaries. At this time, in another part of India, arose another ...
... fairer its uses. Page 128 Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted... here or hope beyond, and nothing like the sad and shrinking attitude before death and the dissolution of the body which pervades Western literature. The note of ascetic pessimism often found in Christianity is a distinctly Western note; for it is absent in Christ's teachings. The mediaeval religion with its cross, its salvation by suffering, its devil-ridden and flesh- Page 142 ridden... exaggerations which are the opposite defect of Western culture. 73 May, 1919 [Hinduism] is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process. 74 * This world of our battle and labour is a fierce dangerous destructive devouring world in which life exists precariously and the soul ...
... Pananthropos, a Divine Humanity secretly perfect and waiting to be realised in an inner vision which embraces all outer things and holds them in an eternity of Jesus: such is Blake's Christianity and this Christianity is essentially at little variance with Wordsworth. A certain Gnostic element in Blake lacks in the unfettered Nature-love which is intrinsic to Wordsworthian spirituality, yet there are... great Romantics, though differing in particulars, stand together in their mysticism and, with whatever roots in the past, shoot beyond the religious consciousness of the Middle Ages and orthodox Christianity. Indeed, remarks Sri Aurobindo, 37 the drift of the modern mind in the spiritual direction "is too large in its aim and varied in its approach to be satisfied by any definite or any fixed symbolic ...
... unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism filtered through the Semitic temperament entered Europe in the form of Christianity. Christianity came within an ace of spiritualising and even of asceticising the mind of Europe; it was baffled by its own theological deformation in the minds of the Greek fathers of the Church and by... Asiatic culture using the European method of material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful invasion by ideas—may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting with Graecised Christianity was the reawakening of the European mind in feudal and Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science. The fourth and last attempt which is as yet only in its slow initial ...
... pure philosophy and reason and the void which was filled up by Christianity; for man cannot live by reason alone. When it was too late, some attempt was made to re-spiritualise the Page 247 old religion, and there was the remarkable effort of Julian and Libanius to set up a regenerated Paganism against triumphant Christianity; but the attempt was too unsubstantial, too purely philosophic... thought sought after God, tried to seize the ideal, had its hope of a perfect human society. We know how the Neo-platonists developed his ideas under the influence of the East and how they affected Christianity. The Stoics, still more directly the intellectual descendants of Heraclitus, arrived at very remarkable and fruitful ideas of human possibility and a powerful psychological discipline,—as we should ...
... unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism, filtered through the Semitic temperament, entered Europe in the form of Christianity. Christianity came within an ace of spiritualising and even of asceticising the mind of Europe; it was baffled by its own theological deformation in the minds of the Greek fathers of the Church and by... Asiatic culture using the European method of material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful invasion by ideas — may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting with Graecised Christianity was the awakening of the European mind in feudal and Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science,’ 27 which would lead up to the Renaissance. The fourth attempt ...
... knowledge of the ancients, but also with previously discarded occult practices and wisdom traditions. The stuff of ancient Hebrew tribes and of the alleged reminiscences about Christ and primitive Christianity was now put to the test of reason and found for the most part to be invention, superstition, fabulation, and sometimes outright errors or lies. Intellectuals invested themselves with the right of... supported its dogmatic affirmations with a literature from bygone times, outmoded despite being declared the eternal Word of God. It seems rather paradoxical that the Bible throughout the history of Christianity remained intertwined with the “heathen” literature and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Renaissance brought these classical treasures to the fore again, and the Enlightenment would... and although their vantage point was that of scientific materialism, they were capable of expanding their horizon sufficiently to encompass the big questions within it, even those beyond Judeo-Christianity. The great theoretical physicists of the following generation – Dirac, Feynman, Weinberg, Hawking – were very differently focused (at least most of them). To them the big questions led to nothing ...
... and an end when evil will be conquered and Earth become an eternal Paradise. The following words from Revelation , written by the visionary John of Patmos, have had an enormous influence in Christianity: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God... things take place.” (13:30) “Truly I tell you, you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.” (14:62) Moreover, the gnostic Paul of Tarsus, considered by many the second founder of Christianity, was of the same conviction and wrote in his first letter to the Thessalonians: “We who are alive, we who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with [the resurrected] to meet the Lord... recent decades in the history of humanity must of course be seen in the perspective of “a cycle of progression” which started in ancient Greece and the cultures around the eastern Mediterranean. Christianity played an important role in this cycle, as did the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Then – “war being the father of all things” according to Heraclitus – the great War ...
... under other names, it is also alive in the West as a designation of Jesus Christ. While in Hinduism there is a succession of Avatars throughout the evolution, in Christianity Christ is supposed to be the one and only Avatar. In this, Christianity has been very “Eurocentric” and circumscribed in its outlook. The excuse is that Christian theology was embedded within a historical horizon beyond which it could... blow to the image man had of himself as the king of creation. Nietzsche, “the eloquent and menacing prophet of an impending catastrophe”, proclaimed the end of the Western civilisation based on Christianity; Freud showed that the psychology of the human being is much more complex than either the Greeks or the Christians had thought or dared to think. “The crisis of reason is most obvious in psychology ...
... West of what is common air and water to the Indian spiritual aspirant. Further, Indian spirituality is assimilative and progressive - it can take into itself all the finest and deepest of Christianity -but Christianity knows itself only by opposing itself to Indian spirituality, by which it mostly understands a Western-type pantheism or Shankarite Illusionism (without appreciating Shahkara's lifelong... realised as wonderfully balanced as Wordsworth perceives. The universe in the orthodox Christian view is a creation by a supra-cosmic deity "out of nothing" and substantially different from Himself. Christianity has a horror of pantheism - because it believes that pantheism would exclude Divine Transcendence and annul all moral values. European pantheism does tend to restrict the Divine to the universe ...
... aspirations for the transformation of the human race and the establishment of the Divine on earth?" Not only science but also all past spiritual tradition has considered the world to have an end. In Christianity the Second Coming of Jesus is taken as the mark of the world's end, accompanied by a resurrection of the dead and an uplifting of the resurrected bodies of the faithful into heaven after a Last... king Cyrus (559-530 B.C.), who helped them rebuild their temple at Jerusalem and whom the Book of Isaiah hails as "Messiah", Zoroastrian doctrines entered Judaism and through Judaism infiltrated Christianity. Zoroastrianism believes in heaven and hell, the soul's survival and the resurrection of bodily life at the end of time when a saviour, mystically continuous with Zoroaster's "seed", is expected... Living for Me, by Me, in Me they shall live. Page 88 An appreciation of the two sides of Eckhart and an attempt to reconcile them would be a great step forward in bringing Christianity closer to Oriental and especially Indian mysticism. By the way, my derogatory reference to the Schoolman-mind was somewhat overdone. It was not incapable of piercing beyond obvious divisions ...
... course, the operative ones. Rajan would hardly deny unorthodox traces. Milton, being what he was, would certainly not violate his own integrity by quite submerging his differences from universal Christianity; but, according to Rajan, he would never let them obtrude in a work which was intended to be a moral and religious poem, not a systematic theological treatise in verse, and whose appeal should be... among other things - the punishment God metes out to him. But when we consider the content of the punishment we are brought up once more against a Milton wildly at loggerheads with conventional Christianity. For, the problem of "the other life" is the burning topic here. And the right answer would be the one with the best logic, considering what God's punishment is generally taken to be and that it... 24 Observe the three stages in man's existence mentioned here: (1) the present life, a term for refinement and preparation for the future; (2) the state of death which continues till what Christianity knows as the last trump, a state from which that trump will wake him and so a state resembling sleep; (3) the new or "second life" that will be ushered in by a double event, man's resurrection and ...
... of every observing Jew around the world, which includes the holding of the Seder, or the feast of the Passover. It is this Seder at which Jesus gathered his disciples that became to be known in Christianity as the Last Supper (see Note). Page 104 The Covenant between God and the Israelites But let us continue the story of Moses. The Hebrew slaves achieved freedom not as an end... creation of the New Testament (see Note). The Golden Rule Most Christians, and many Jews, believe that the Golden Rule was first formulated by Jesus, not realizing that when the founder of Christianity preached, "Love your neighbour ," he was simply quoting the revelation to Moses... the Torah. "Love your neighbour as yourself. I am the lord". (Leviticus 19:18) The last words... as the Messiah, most Jews would not surrender their faith in God who gave them the Torah, nor break the covenants made between them and God by Abraham and Moses. Thus, by 400 CE a new religion, Christianity, formed and the religion from which it was formed, Judaism, was cast off almost completely. Page 112 ...
... India offers a seeker, did not subscribe to everything there, far from it; not that there was anything to reject; there is nothing to reject anywhere, not in so-called Hinduism any more than in Christianity or in any other aspiration of man; but there is everything to widen, to widen endlessly. What we take for a final truth is most often only a partial experience of the Truth, and certainly the total... behind, and move on. This is something men do very reluctantly; once they get hold of something that helps them, they cling to it; they won't let go of it. Those who have made some progress with Christianity do not want to give it up, and carry it on their backs; those who have made some progress with Buddhism do not want to leave it, and carry it on their backs. This weighs you down and slows you terribly... × 251 This ancient tradition, known also to the Hebrews, seems to have been revived, quite literally, by Christianity and the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. × 252 The material Inconscient. ...
... pressure on itself, gets strong and then finds vent in some other direction. The same thing happened to the Puritans in England. Cromwell and his men came to power and became the worst oppressors. In Christianity the principle of non violence is there but it is meant to be practised for religious and spiritual development. It may be partial but it can certainly develop certain types of spiritual temperaments... again there may be another Chauri Chora ! Disciple : He also spoke at Bombay on the Anniversary of Gautama Buddha and said Buddhism was not given sufficient trial. Sri Aurobindo : Christianity and Buddhism, I am afraid, will ever remain without being given a trial. They make such a demand on human nature that it cannot be fulfilled so long as man is what he is. Disciple : I get... religion and philosophy. In that way every one has established idol-worship. He has criticised the Arya Samaj but why not criticise Madanism ? His statement is adulatory of the Koran and of Christianity which is idolatry of the Bible, Christ and the Gross. Man is hardly able to do without externals and only a few will go to the kernel. About conversion also you "do not merely change compartments" ...
... A Centenary Tribute Revolutionising Ancient History: The Case of Israel and Christianity BECOMING a poet, a political commentator, a literary critic while editing a monthly journal of culture without stirring out of an ashram in South India may not be a matter provoking comment let alone arousing wonder. But to revolutionise the very chronology... era - could not but astonish. It becomes all the more amazing when the subject is not just the prehistory of one's own country but so distant a subject as the beginnings of history for Israel and Christianity. The short compass of this paper does not permit examination of both; so, we shall restrict ourselves to the "foreign" sphere of scholar-extraordinaire K.D. Sethna's research. Taking his... face of orthodox historical opinion to prove that the Rig Veda preceded the Indus Valley Civilisation and that the Gupta Empire has to be pushed back in time by 600 years. 3 In Problems of Early Christianity (Integral Life Foundation, 1998) and The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition (-do-2001) he deals with the hypersensitive issues of immaculate conception, the question of Jesus' ...
... be rectified through external social action. This led me to search further for the truth. I knew there must be another way, one of which I was not yet aware. Though I was still interested in Christianity, after having gone through a period of agnosticism, and contemplated entering a Christian seminary and monastery, I was slowly drawn to Zen Buddhism through the person of Suzuki Roshi, a Zen master... on that were not helpful to inner progress. Summing it up, this whole life has been an exposure to different religious orientations and spiritual paths. I was born into Buddhism, baptized into Christianity, initiated in Hindu Tantra, instructed in Sufism, and guided through all these experiences by the Supreme Shakti we call the Mother. What I have learned from all these paths is that each approach... solid basis for Sri Aurobindo’s yoga of transformation. In short, all these spiritual paths have helped me to understand Sri Aurobindo’s yoga in greater depth. Buddhism leads to the silent mind, Christianity to devotion, Islamic Sufism to the science of the heart and Hindu Tantra to the effective manifestation of the Divine’s Will upon the earth, i.e. the Shakti. In a symbolic manner, these disciplines ...
... Problems of Early Christianity The Friends of Paul - Luke and Mark Did They Author any Books in the New Testament? Popular Christian belief, especially Roman Catholic, and even a fair part of Biblical scholarship take the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as the double work of the Luke who figures three times in the... this momentous reprimand." Perhaps the most dramatic instance of the inconsistency of Acts with Paul's own Epistles is in the famous "conversion" of Paul from persecutor to preacher of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible 8 annotating Acts 9:3-9 says: "Crucial event in the Church's history. Luke gives three accounts whose discrepancies of detail are explained by their differing... h: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1975), p. 17. 5. H. J. Cadbury, Harvard Theological Studies VI, "The Style and Literary Method of Luke"; cf. The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. Foakes Jackson and Lake, II, pp. 349-55. 6. Enc. Brit., Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 957, cols: 1 & 2. 7. The Young Church in Action: The Acts of the Apostles in Modern English ...
... are subtleties without value, but up there you seem to be almost touching the heart of things, that is, the essence—the deeper essence of events. So then, it came quite simply, like this: "Christianity DEIFIES suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation." It's hard to explain because it's the state of consciousness that is different.... Now it's a memory, but at that moment... Page 236 And seen from above, what was the story like? You see, Sri Aurobindo says, "Man loves suffering, therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem," then I said, Christianity (I mean the universal, or anyway terrestrial, origin of what expressed itself on earth as the Christian religion), the action of this religion on earth has been to "deify suffering" because it was... one thing after another: seeing everything at once, a totality in space and in time. And seeing every detail with total precision, which makes it possible to write a thing like this ( the note on Christianity ). To be clear, I should tell the whole thing. Yesterday I had an opportunity to speak to someone about this constant presence of Sri Aurobindo, here, who sees, says, does, all the time. Then ...
... than in others? PURANI: If the Brahman is at all present, it is samam brahma, Equal Brahman. SRI AUROBINDO: Anilbaran is right. Vivekananda brought in the idea of service of humanity from Christianity—and also from Buddhism. Both Vivekananda and Gandhi derive it from them. But I don't understand why they speak of serving humanity only! Buddhism, as well as Jainism, includes animals also in its... type of monks are those who study religion and philosophy; only a very few are dedicated to spiritual practice. The Carmelite Order has given and is still giving many saints to Roman Catholic Christianity. The latest is St. Theresa of Lisieux. SATYENDRA: There are two Saint Theresas. One is the great and famous saint, she was Spanish. The recent Theresa is French. The Spanish Theresa's life... Thomas Beckett was murdered. St. Duncan was a minister to a king but was in fact the real ruler. The Irish or Celtic saints and preachers converted the greatest part of the European continent to Christianity. They have also given the greatest Christian philosopher. They were like the Vedantins. They followed a discipline very similar to the Indian. They were first suppressed by the Roman emperors who ...
... convert the Ghose children to Christianity, in order to save their souls. But Mr. Drewett never consented to her wish. Once, when he asked Dr. Ghose about the religious life of the children, his reply was to wait till the boys attained the age of discretion, when they could choose their own religion. A rumour was once current that Aurobindo was converted to Christianity. This was probably due to his... especially on Europeans living there. " He was also, I think, suffering from a sort of religious or spiritual nausea, due apparently to long continued overdoses of a narrow type of Christianity inflicted on him, doubtless with excellent intentions, by some probably devout old ladies, into whose care, I believe, he had been committed when a young boy at school in London. The effect ...
... Napoleon only built a halfway house in which the ideas of 1789 might rest until the world was fit to understand them better and really The ideas themselves were not new; they existed in Christianity and before Christianity they existed in Buddhism; but in 1789 they came out for the first time from the Church and the Book and sought to remodel government and society. It was an unsuccessful attempt, but ...
... human progress, is a proof of their low & savage origin—any more than the peculiarly crude ideas of Christianity that exist in uneducated negro minds [and] would survive in a still more degraded form if they were long isolated from civilised life, would be a proof to future research that Christianity originated from a cannibal tribe on the African continent. The idea is essentially a civilised conception ...
... of its life-giving waters. Buddhism, the teacher of one third of humanity, drank from its inspiration. Christianity, the offspring of Buddhism, derived its ethics and esoteric teaching at second-hand from the same source. Through Persia Vedanta put its stamp on Judaism, through Judaism, Christianity and Sufism on Islam, through Buddha on Confucianism, through Christ and mediaeval mysticism and Catholic ...
... accepting the truth of our Yoga of Transformation would not be as large as those who accepted Buddhism, Vedanta or Christianity." Here is Sri Aurobindo's answer. Notice his humour. I draw your attention to his humour. "Nothing depends on the number. The numbers of Buddhism or Christianity were so great because the majority professed it as a creed without its making the least difference to their external ...
... Chatterji, Bankim Chandra, 9, 21 , 155 China, 88 , 137, 202, 220 Communist China, 252 and India, 252, 253 and Tibet, 252, 253 Chokha Mela, 29 Christ, 77, 137, 142, 144, 170, 175,205, 213 Christianity, 59, 129, 142-143,170, 175-176, 184,217 Christians, 63, 68, 171, 183 civilization, 96, 99 , 100, 126-227, 142 ancient, 96, 100, 117 present, 127 , 134,235,236,241,251 see also Indian, Western... degeneration failure o f, 80, 169, 182,196 divorced from life , 51 , 68, 139 European conception of, 50, 68, 139 , 145-146 Indian conception of, 69, 182 notion of single religion, 147 see also Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, sa Liana dharma, spirituality renunciation (of life), 106 -107, 240 republic (in ancient India ), 137 , 178, 248 revolution, 37, 38 , 110 era of, 140 -141 spiritual, 129 ...
... and deny him the possibility of a divine origin and a divine destiny. When Europe left Christianity to the monk and the ascetic and forgot the teachings of the Galilean, she exposed herself to a terrible fate which will yet overtake her. God in man is the whole revelation and the whole of religion. What Christianity taught dimly, Hinduism made plain to the intellect in Vedanta. When India remembers the ...
... Plotinus and the European mystics who derived from him were identical, as has been shown recently, with the approach and experiences of one type of Indian Yoga. Especially, since the introduction of Christianity Europeans have followed its mystic disciplines which were one in essence with those of Asia, however much they may have differed in forms, names and symbols. Page 36 If the question... friend X 's objection to these scholastic (?) distinctions) that Hindu spiritual thought and life acknowledged or followed after only the Transcendent and neglected the Immanent Divinity while Christianity gave due place to both Aspects; but, in matter of fact, Indian spirituality, even if it laid the final stress on the Highest beyond form and name, yet gave ample recognition and place to the Divine ...
... single instance in the whole of earth's history, a uniqueness which you yourself consider "indeed absurd" (as I am sure Tagore also, though not Blake, did). This rather incoherent blend of Christianity and non-Christianity, which is further complicated by a mixture Page 125 with it of the Hermetic-Alchemical-Cabbalistic tradition of "As above, so below", you somewhat cockily pit against ...
... least violation of its own character it can take the essence of the religion of Buddha to its bosom, even as it can take that of Christianity or Mohammedanism. Each of them can be a note in the complex harmony of its heavenward cry. But neither Buddhism nor Christianity nor Mohammedanism can take Hinduism into itself. They are intent on converting all souls to one type and to confine the illimitable ...
... mankind. Through all these ages Asia has been seeking for a light within, and whenever she has been blessed with a glimpse of what she seeks a great religion has been born, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Mahomedanism with all their countless sects. But the grand workshop of spiritual experiment, the laboratory of the soul has been India, where thousands of great spirits have been born in every... the world. A new era dates from his birth, an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality become the dominant note of human life. What Christianity failed to do, what Mahomedanism strove to accomplish in times as yet unripe, what Buddhism half-accomplished for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the life ...
... but it is to equality. Our religion, our philosophy set equality forward as the essential condition of emancipation. All religions send us this message in a different form but it is one message. Christianity says we are all brothers, children of one God. Mohammedanism says we are the subjects and servants of one Allah, we are all equal in the sight of God. Hinduism says there is one without a second... life, but mankind yearns for peace and love. This is the reason why the gospels which preach brotherhood spread quickly and excite passionate attachment. This was the reason of the rapid spread of Christianity. This was the reason of Buddhism's rapid spread in this country and throughout Asia. This is the essence of humanitarianism, the modern gospel of love for mankind. None of us have achieved our ideals ...
... must go to the intellectual history of the European continent. There have been, properly speaking, two critical periods in this history, the Graeco-Roman era of philosophic illumination previous to Christianity and the era of modern scientific illumination which is still unexhausted. In the first we see the revolt of Philosophy (with Science concealed in her protective embrace) against the usurpation of... half-intellectual, capturing even the intellectual—vague figures of Theosophy, Spiritualism, Mental Science, Psychical Research, Neo-Hinduism, Neo-Buddhism, Page 81 Neo-Mahomedanism, Neo-Christianity. The priests of Isis, the adepts & illuminati of Gnosticism, denied their triumph by the intervention of St Paul & the Pope, reborn into this latter age, claim now their satisfaction. Already some ...
... concept has been stigmatized as heresy by Christian orthodoxy and Western thought is permeated by Christianity. Not many know that the young Christian movement, like its twin Gnosticism, accepted reincarnation. Joe Fisher writes in The Case for Reincarnation: ‘The fact remains that before Christianity became a vehicle for the imperial ambitions of Roman emperors, rebirth was widely accepted among ...
... This dominion they want to keep, and as their nature is sheer ego, their methods and actions are ruthless. Compared with the great hostiles, Asuras for instance, the popular idea of the devil in Christianity is but a grotesque caricature. Hostile beings influence our lives constantly, unseen and unawares, and are the cause of all evil, corruption and perversion, for that is what they revel in. They... divine.” 30 The concept of the Avatar is actually very well known in the West, for it defines the being and mission of Christ. 31 The difference with the Hindu concept lies in the fact that Christianity acknowledges only one Avatar, while in the Hindu view there is a succession of Avatars which furthers the earthly evolution. So extraordinary, so “unhuman” is the divine embodiment to the human ...
... “the Prophet of Schwabing”, who wanted to clean up and reform the Church, and found a new theocracy in which he himself would hold the highest office. He wanted to reactivate a militant and heroic Christianity and to revive the original Christian values in a degraded world. His Christian elite troops, living under the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, would follow the example of the Sufi order... renaissance of paganism. Their common points, however much they may have differed on others, were again the rejection of industrial modernity, liberal rationalism, parliamentarian democracy and orthodox Christianity. They had an inclination toward mysticism and occultism. They wanted to gain access to higher states of consciousness by penetrating into the hidden, dark parts of the human personality, following ...
... all that, her father, ‘Rishi’ Rajnarain Bose (1826-99), was one of the foremost Bengalis of his time. Exposure to Western rationalism caused him to lose faith in Hinduism, and he sought in Islam, Christianity and European philosophy a new synthetic framework for his beliefs. Like many other members of his generation, he discarded the ethical as well as the intellectual standards of his native culture... Christian Westerners, Roy and his contemporaries wanted to discard its superfluous and superstitious excrescences and to return to the fundamentals. Fundamental was the One God ( Brahman ), as in Christianity and Islam; not considered to be fundamental were the Vedas, avatarhood, karma and reincarnation. The excrescences were the thousands of idols, pujas, sacrifices – animal sacrifices were still the ...
... sacraments or the rites, because, he told me, "If I leave them I leave their society, I am excluded and have no more means of action." He wants to do something? Yes, his idea is to broaden his Christianity, to find a truth and then take it there. Oh! He even told me something I found quite Christian; he said, "Deep down, I have a desire for total consecration, total self-giving, to be like... new truth...." He thirsts to be a martyr—the martyr of the Church. Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the "new Christ"), he told them, "Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!" ( silence ) Oho! So he has ambition.... Yes, obviously it's a kind of ambition. But it ...
... concretization of the movement begun in 1967 with Mother's note, "Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation" ( July 29, 1967 ), then the visits of Mrs. Z, who claimed to want to bring about a rapprochement between the Church and the Ashram, and again of the monk who wanted to broaden his Christianity with the new Truth ( Agenda 8 ). ...
... bringing what we may term a world-cry into so many of the poet's articulations. Still, Mediaeval Christianity, however universalised, is magisterial in the Divine Comedy - and with it there opens a gulf between Dante and Sri Aurobindo. No doubt, Mediaeval Christianity, no less than Graeco-Roman Classicism and Modern Europe, are included in Sri Aurobindo's vast cultural consciousness ...
... 16.Mandukya Upanishad: English Version, Notes and Commentary 17.On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri 18.Our Light and Delight: Recollections of Life with the Mother 19.Problems of Early Christianity 20.Science, Materialism, Mysticism 21.Sri Aurobindo and Greece 22.Teilhard De Chardin and our Time 23.The Beginning of History for Israel 24.The Development of Sri Aurobindo's... Present, Future Page 380 27.The Obscure and the Mysterious: A Research in Mallarme's Symbolist Poetry 28.The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo 29.The Problems of Early Christianity 30.The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems 31.The Sun and the Rainbow : Approaches to Life through Sri Aurobindo's Light 32.The Thinking Corner: Causeries on Life and Literature ...
... being crypto- Christian, most probably without intention or even aware- ness at the outset. Perhaps, in this business of looking down on matter, we should not single out Christianity: Bergson was crypto-Christian simply because Christianity is the religion of Europe, but all religion in general has depreciated Page 317 matter and turned man's eyes to a Heaven or a Nirvana Sat-chit-ananda ...
... Problems of Early Christianity The Time of Christ's Second Coming I Biblical scholars have been at variance as to the time which the New Testament visualises for the return of Jesus Christ from heaven in glory to mark the end of the earth and establish the Kingdom of God. Among the representatives of one view the most prominent figure is Albert... Everything is going on as usual. The cause of the crisis of faith is that the Second Corning which had been promised as an early event has failed to materialise. To think of original Christianity as viewing the arrival of the world's End at any other time than in the immediate wake of Christ's life in the first century A.D. is to fly in the teeth of the New Testament's evidence. ...
... Problems of Early Christianity The Shroud of Turin and the Biblical Evidence As the result of several years of strict scientific examination of the famous Shroud which is now kept at Turin (Italy) by the Roman Catholic Church and which shows the figure, front and back, of a crucified man as if on a photographic negative, we are at last certain that the Shroud... Synoptics are great enough to permit the question whether it can be classified in the same literary form of "Gospel". And it is by its differences that it provides much of the parallelism popular Christianity puts forth. Thus it is the only Gospel which mentions nails as having been used in the crucifixion. As the Roman Catholic authority John L. McKenzie says in his Dictionary of the Bible, 1 the ...
... Paradise Lost 4. Inspiration and Effort: Studies in Literary Expression 5. The Beginning of History for Israel Unpublished Books: 1. Problems of Early Christianity 2. Problems of Ancient India 3. The Greco-Aramaic Inscription of Kandhar: Its Call for a Revolution in Historical Ideas. 4. "Raised from the Dead": An Approach to the Problem... Spiritual Thought and the Mother's Contribution to it 15. The Basic Teilhard de Chardin and the Modern Religious Intuition 16. The Real Religion of Teilhard de Chardin: His Version of Christianity and Sri Aurobindo's Exposé of the Ancient Vedanta 17. Mandukya Upanishad: English Version and Commentary Edited Books: Glimpses of the Mother's Life: Compiled by ...
... Teilhard de Chardin and our Time Teilhard's Christianity and the Ancient Vedanta Our task of comparison will be all the more interesting because one of the cross-purposes in Teilhard's life was just that he found himself simultaneously attracted by and at variance with old Indian thought. As he has explained in his essay, How 1 Believe, 1 ... religions. Buddhism and Illusionism, which held life to be an imperma-nence or ignorance that must be transcended and cast away, yet did not lose sight of the truth that man must develop 1.christianity and Evolution (Collins, London, 1971), p. 122. 2.Ibid., p. 130. 3.Ibid., p. 4.The Foundations of Indian Culture (The Sri Aurobindo Library Inc., New York, 1953), pp ...
... to say anything about Raihana's Christ and Krishna. The attraction which she says people feel for Christ has never touched me, partly because I got disgusted with the dryness and deadness of Christianity in England and partly Page 16 because the Christ of the gospels (apart from a few poignant episodes) is luminous no doubt, but somewhat shadowy and imperfectly constructed in his... manifestations instead of there being only one as these missionaries would have it. But is it really because the historical Christ has been made too much the foundation-stone of the faith that Christianity is failing ? It may be something inadequate in the religion itself — perhaps in religion itself; for all religions are a little off-colour now. The need of a larger opening of the soul into ...
... structure and substance to my brain. And, you know, both Socrates and Plato believed in Soul and in God." "Yes, but the Western thought developed on new lines. Christianity brought in new ideas and new beliefs. And you know how Christianity collided with Science. To my mind, the triumph of Science has been the most remarkable phenomenon of our times." "Yes," I said and added, "but the balance- ...
... in the hot sun. That is, the excruciating torture before dying was the Roman's real instrument of punishment. It is this cross - the cross of the crucifixion that has become the symbol of Christianity. It symbolizes reconciliation with God through faith in Christ whose life, death, and Resurrection are proof of God's forgiveness of human sin. Even at such ceremonies as baptism (See... Obviously, evil acts such as murder, lying, stealing, etc. are sinful acts. Sinful acts are to be avoided. But considering human nature, can a human being live a truly sinless life? According to Christianity, the human cannot. Throughout life, the human will sin according to the demands of human nature. Therefore, God sacrificed Himself in the person of Jesus on the Cross to redeem" the sins pf the ...
... unto Caesar what is Caesar's, etc." By pointing to the path of self-restraint Christianity holds that it leads to the Kingdom of Christ and those who would remain chained down to their senses will remain in their low, unrefined state of nature. In Europe this conflict has led to two extremes. Self-restraint in Christianity has become self-mortification: but, on the other hand, when Europeans do not ...
... human race in its solidarity. The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan Graeco-Roman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake: it surrounds itself with cold floods of abstraction and the forests of solitude. The religious or Christian humanism of the West... their very nature and character. And the Divine himself is conceived of as such a Human Person—for the norm of the human personality is an eternal verity in the divine consciousness. Esoteric Christianity also has given us the conception of the Human Divine; but it is somewhat different from the Vaishnava revelation which has found rather the Divine Human. In other words, as I have already said, ...
... Aurobindo : Yes ; when the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians and that he is "Christ of the modern times" they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity and though the form that is given to it is Indian the essential spirit is Christian and he may not be exactly Christ but at any rate he comes in continuation of the same movement. He is largely... educated Indians consider him a spiritual man. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. What he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering etc. Disciple : He admits to have been greatly influenced by Tolstoi. Sri Aurobindo : Yes. Tolstoi was his Guru. Disciple : The Russian people have ...
... If people were to know all the truth about my life they would never believe that such a man could come to anything. Disciple : Moti Babu related to me about your conversion to Christianity – how one day when you did no attend Church the priest asked you about it next day and then you did not make any reply but simply wept. Sri Aurobindo : What is all this legend ? I never became... it is not India's property. But there is very little chance of its succeeding elsewhere if it fails in India. It may make an unsuccessful, or partially successful, effort somewhere else, like Christianity, and then retire. 3-9-1926 Disciple : One Mr. Sharma, president of the Spiritualist Society in India, says that spirit-communication is Page 172 not only possible ...
... for real Buddhism. That is always the case with spiritual things. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline in its substance. The King of Norway, about whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all the people who were not Christians and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The same happened to Mohammedanism where it succeeded and the followers of the Prophet became Caliphs ...
... powers that are already there. What happens is that the powers of Falsehood try at first to resist the spiritual descent. When they fail, they accept it in order to break it. Look, for instance, at Christianity. When it came, it was much oppressed, and afterwards it in its turn became oppressive. Never has there been so much oppression and persecution. I dare say many of the Christian martyrs who died... revenge—the feeling that if they got a chance they would take revenge for what they were made to suffer. And the Christians did take revenge when they got the power. So the passive resistance of Christianity became in the end a movement of persecution. It is the vital mixture—the mixture of the life-forces—that comes in and corrupts the whole spiritual movement. Even Lenin had an idea of this truth ...
... human race in its solidarity. The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan Græco-Roman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can best be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake; it surrounds itself With cold floods of abstraction and the forests of solitude. The religious... nature and character. And the Divine Himself is conceived as such a Divine Person – for the norm of the human personality in this view is an eternal verity in the divine consciousness. Esoteric Christianity also has given us the conception of the Human Divine; but it is somewhat different from the Vaishnava revelation which has found rather the Divine Human. In other words, as I have already said ...
... Plotinus & others, 441-2; with Heidegger, 442; with Gurdjieff, 442-3; with Teilhard de Chardin, 443ff; Supermind & Omega Point, 444; Sachidananda and Cosmic Christ, 445; Vedanta & Christianity, 445; Vedantic Christianity, 446; Iqbal as Islam's Aurobindo, 446; compared with Zen Buddhism, 446; with Marxism, 4467; epigraphs in, 448,460,463,469,470, 490,514,516,518,550-1,565,647,656, 658,751 Lights ...
... really spiritual it would have been much better for real Buddhism. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline. The king of Norway, on whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all people who were not Christians Page 48 and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The same happened to Mohammedanism. When it succeeded, the followers of the Prophet became Khalifas ...
... Sri Aurobindo : Yes, I read it. There is the same mixture of which I have already spoken, only by his reading of books, I am afraid, he has made it worse. There was a mixture of Tolstoi, Christianity and Jainism. Now he has added the Veda, Koran and Gita to it. Disciple : Did he not see that Ahimsa applied that way would not succeed ? Sri Aurobindo : Why ? That is his gospel. People... be extremists while retaining their calmness." An article in the Young India gave the list of books Mahatmaji read in jail. Disciple : It contains at the end Gandhiji's estimate of Christianity; he differs, he says, from orthodox Christianity. He believes in the symbolic interpretation of Christ, Mary and the Holy Ghost. Sri Aurobindo : A lot of Christians also believe the same ...
... towards spiritual seeking came in England in the last year of his stay there. The Bible was the only scripture with which he had been acquainted in his childhood. The narrowness and intolerance of Christianity repelled him considerably. "After a short period of complete atheism, he accepted the Agnostic attitude. In his studies for the I.C.S., however, he came across a brief and very scanty and bare statement... Otherwise, Sri Aurobindo made no study of Indian Philosophy. In fact, there was no positive religious or spiritual element in the education he received in England. "The only personal contact with Christianity (that of Nonconformist England) was of a nature to repel rather than attract. The education received was mainly classical and had a purely intellectual and aesthetic influence; it did not stimulate ...
... Buddha would have laboured to confirm the Pandavas in their scruples. On Krishna rests the final word & his answer is such as to shock seriously the conventional ideas of a religious teacher to which Christianity & Buddhism have accustomed us. In a long & powerful speech he deals at great length with Sanjaya's arguments. We must remember therefore that he is debating a given point and speaking to men who... for which Vedanta, Sankhya & Yoga combined to lay the foundations, which Srikrishna announced & which Vyasa formulated. No apeings or distorted editions of Western religious modes, no Indianised Christianity, no fair rehash of that pale & consumptive shadow English Theism, will suffice to save us. But Vyasa has not only a high political & religious thought and deep-seeing ethical judgments; he deals ...
... thought of the West in many of the most critical stages of [its] development; at first through Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers, then through Buddhism working into Essene, Gnostic and Roman Christianity and once again in our own times through German metaphysics, Theosophy, and a hundred strange and irregular channels. One can open few books now at all in the latest stream of thought without seeing... fellow-beings or directly through love of God. This feeling of identity is very strong in religions based largely on the sentiment of Love and Faith. I and my Father are One, cried the Founder of Christianity; I and my brother man & my brother beast are One, says Buddhism; St Francis spoke of Air as his brother and Water as his sister; and the Hindu devotee when he sees a bullock lashed falls down in ...
... others that it may live and succeed aggressively in life. The Christian martyrs perish in their thousands, setting soul-force against empire-force that Christ may conquer, Christianity prevail. Soul-force does triumph, Christianity does prevail,—but not Christ; the victorious religion becomes a militant and dominant Church and a more fanatically persecuting power than the creed and the empire which it ...
... civilisation, by Confucian China, by philosophical & Post-Buddhistic India, combated in India by the vitality of Yoga and religion, in Europe by the great united floods of barbarism and Catholic Christianity, has finally triumphed and reached a pitch of success, an extent of victorious propagation which, in human movements, is usually the precursor of arrest and decay. The movement of pure intellectualism... consciously or subconsciously reaching Europe with a slowly increasing force from the East. Therefore, the repetition, no doubt in a very different form & to very different issues, of the miracle of Christianity is psychologically inevitable. If indeed, as modern thought imagines, intellectual reason were the last & highest term of evolution, this consummation need not have been inevitable, or, if ...
... Pythagoreans, by the Stoics, by Plato and the Neo-Platonists; but still in spite of them and in spite of the only half-illumined spiritual wave which swept over Europe from Asia in an ill-understood Christianity, the whole real trend of Western civilisation has been intellectual, rational, secular and even materialistic, and it keeps this character to the present day. Its general aim has been a strong or... 209 development and the intrinsic value of its forms and means and symbols, we shall find that this evolution followed upon the early Vedic form very much for the same reason as Catholic Christianity replaced the mysteries and sacrifices of the early Pagan religions. For in both cases the outward basis of the early religion spoke to the outward physical mind of the people and took that as the ...
... Problems of Early Christianity Part Two "RAISED FROM THE DEAD" An Approach to the Problem of the Resurrection of Jesus from the Descriptions of His "Risen" Body Introduction: The Heart of the Problem "The unique and sensational event on which the whole of human history turns" - that is how, in an... an address on April 5, 1972, Pope Paul VI characterised what the doctrine which has been central to Christianity from the very beginning affirms: the Resurrection of Jesus' crucified body. This doctrine is meant to convey the sense of an unparalleled intervention by God in our world's affairs, converting an absolute-seeming defeat - Jesus' death on the cross - into a mighty triumph over mortality, ...
... current in India. In this essay I shall focus on the Vedantic dimensions, partly due to my Samskara , and partly because I do not feel qualified to speak of other theistic traditions like Islam or Christianity in India, and also I have little sympathy with heterodox theologies because of their denial of God. Also as a strategy I believe a personal narration or response has the advantage of coherence and... moment, the culmination of over five thousand years of experiment with Godliness in India. The remarkable thing about him was that he experimented with a variety of religious traditions, including Christianity and Islam, and effortlessly reached high levels of religious consciousness through these various religious traditions. The lesson the modern intellectual learns from Sri Ramakrishna is the les-son ...
... Jews as a ‘counter-race’ separated from all humanity, whom neither conversion nor assimilation could affect because their basic nature was evil and unchangeable. He shared the Wagnerian thesis that Christianity was a product of ‘Hebraic Orientalism’, and that those who clung to the ‘entire’ Christian tradition could not truly oppose Judaism or defend the ‘Nordic tradition’.” 567 “Only the Nordic gods could... the Nibelungs and evoking in soul-stirring music the world of the Nordic gods, their powers, and their ultimate Götterdämmerung. He also played a crucial role in the integration of the myths of Christianity into the vision which confirmed the German people in their role as carriers of the destiny of mankind. Parsifal, “the sacred masterpiece of Bayreuth”, upon which Wagner meditated for a quarter ...
... certainly not imposed. The Catholic Church had always been “a foreign body to the sensibility of the Germanic people, and this had created an often expressed aversion against the Paulinian-Augustinian Christianity of the father-god Jehova”. A Nazi author put it as follows: “Germany did not need oriental symbols, and in a land which had generated a religion like the German mysticism around 1300, the belief... transcendental speculation, together with the severing of the link between the German mind and the theology of revelation” was the need at a time that the last great episode in the history of global Christianity, Protestantism, came to an end. In this context a new religion was expected to be “a religion without Jewishness, without intermediaries, without dualism: a German religion of deepest inwardness” ...
... Gnosticism Gnosticism, again centred around the eastern Mediterranean, was a spiritual movement of many shades that, like Hermetism, became widespread in the first centuries of the common era. (Christianity first took shape as a gnostic sect.) Yet the thinking assimilated by Gnosticism can be traced back through most of the previous history. Direct influences are discernible of Pythagoranism, Platonism... travellers. And missionaries, e.g. those sent by Emperor Ashoka, were a well-known phenomenon. (There was a Judeo-Buddhist group of Therapeutae in the neighbourhood of Alexandria.) How close Christianity has been to Gnosticism is shown by the furore with which all remainders of the latter, and there were many, were branded as heretic and inexorably destroyed by the early Christian Church. What remained ...
... being. The distortion was symptomatic in the doctrine of Christianity, and the materialistic dogma of scientism, which abandoned the world-view of the Great Chain of Being for what Ken Wilber calls “flatland”, has made it worse. The authentic occult traditions, Hermetism for instance, knew a lot more about the human being than either Christianity or modern Science. The simple reason is that their knowledge ...
... do it Father?" 1 I wonder what God might answer to it supposing he should have ever felt inclined to ? Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about that rational animal Humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France... novel in it, as I am perfectly familiar with European atheism and it is for the most part a shallow and rather childish reaction against a shallow and childish religionism—that of orthodox exoteric Christianity as it was believed and practised in Europe. Not much food on either side of the controversy either for the intellect or the spirit! Page 257 October 20, 1932 I am glad you have ...
... nun. She presented her with St. Augustine's Confessions. After reading it, Mina passed the copy on to me. I for the second time in my life plunged into it. Although its author fascinated me, Christianity as such had no attraction by now; and Mina too outgrew its temporary influence when she accompanied me on a visit to the Ashram in 1952. It is not too much to say the Mother proved for... Sehra, like me, she went through the new-birth that creates Page 102 the disciple of Sri Aurobindo: she became the Mother's child for good. My own connection with Christianity remained only in the fact that I kept harbouring the Augustinian struggle towards the Divine. There was no draw towards the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as revived in the Vatican's Father ...
... own development has taken place in this life that 1 must have had a twofold contact with you in past lives. In the present life, at the beginning of my college-career, I was very much affected by Christianity. Even now I am tremendously interested in the earliest original form of this religion, the form which was prevalent in the time of Jesus himself as evinced from our earliest documents, the epistles... will be interesting also to know how they look at the stupendous changes in Russia and Eastern Europe? Do these changes strike them merely as the failure of materialism - a prelude to conventional Christianity returning to power? I wonder whether they can grasp what I was trying to say in my last letter to you which has been published in the April Mother India. Russia is indeed a country religious at ...
... proper meaning to the diversity of religious modes in India but also a true sense to the variety of religions in the world. One comes to see Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Zoroastria-nism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in their specific qualities as well as in their combinations, in a way that none of them by itself can see its own attributes. For, here is an all-inclusive harmonising vision instead... that one has not genuinely gone beyond them, since running down any religious outlook is precisely a defect of the single-truth creeds. All the less would I be out of tune with a western creed like Christianity. I have been enormously westernised and my whole education took place in a Roman Catholic school and college run by European Jesuits. More and more people are being "Indianised" in the higher ...
... everything and bringing what we may term a world-cry into so many of the poet's articulations. Still, Mediaeval Christianity, however universalised, is magisterial in the Divine Comedy — and with it there opens a gulf between Dante and Sri Aurobindo. No doubt, Mediaeval Christianity, no less than Graeco-Roman Classicism and Modern Europe, are included in Sri Aurobindo's vast cultural consciousness ...
... proves himself to be the full glory of panpsychism. And, since no controversy can legitimately rage over Teilhard's meaning of the "within" of panpsychism and consequently nobody can talk of orthodox Christianity as his true drift there or even of a mere omnipre- 43. Ib id., p. 270. Page 51 sence of life's action rather than a direct life-stuff being everywhere both constitutive... as a peak distinct from, and a rival to, that to which the biologically continued slope of anthropogenesis is leading us." Here the natural Omega is sought to be identified with a 44. Christianity and Evolution, p. 180. 45. Ibid., p. 240. 46. Ibid., p. 242. Page 52 natural Cosmic Christ. Then we are told 47 that "Christ's gradual rise in human con ...
... essential to another aspect of völkisch thought. For some thinkers it provided a link between the present and the past; it was a bridge that spanned a thousand years of neglect. The past, which Christianity had done its best to destroy, could be recovered and applied to the present needs of the Volk through occultism. Occultism was the chalice that quenched their thirst, and at the same time made ... fire cannot frighten them.” 508 The fabricated myth of the German past, of a Volk whose origins and therefore its very existence were arguable, had to fill the vacuum left by the rejection of Christianity and the disillusionment of the Enlightenment. The pathetic effort at imagining to be the superior people rested fundamentally on nothing. What Noll called the German “utopianism” was often a hysterical ...
... Page 484 instead of there being only one as these missionaries would have it. But is it really because the historical Christ has been made too much the foundation-stone of the faith that Christianity is failing? It may be something inadequate in the religion itself—perhaps in religion itself; for all religions are a little off-colour now. The need of a larger opening of the soul into the Light... × In his letter to the correspondent, Krishnaprem observed that "Christ and Krishna are the same." He also said: "Why is Christianity tottering? Primarily because the Christians have pinned their faith on historical events and a historical person."—Ed. ...
... Mosaic law, but rising to undeniable heights of moral exaltation when to the Law were added the Prophets, and finally exceeding itself and blossoming into a fine flower of spirituality in Judaic Christianity, 1 —was dominated by the preoccupation of a terrestrial and ethical righteousness and the promised rewards of right worship and right doing, but innocent of science and philosophy, careless of... seem to be by right the crowned sovereign of our nature. Page 101 × The epithet is needed, for European Christianity has been something different, even at its best of another temperament, Latinised, Graecised, Celticised or else only a rough Teutonic imitation of the old-world Hebraism. ...
... It seems to me that the number of people in the world accepting our Yoga of transformation would not be as large as those who accepted Buddhism, Vedanta or Christianity. Nothing depends on the numbers. The numbers of Buddhism and Christianity were so great because the majority professed it as a creed without its making the least difference to their external life. If the new consciousness were satisfied ...
... realization to another life. ( long silence ) I think I told you that when P. L. caused that scandal there [at the Vatican], I was clearly told that it was "the beginning of the conversion of Christianity." And naturally, that's what interests me, much more than personal questions.... But I see that P. L. may only be an intermediary, and R. may be... how should I put it? The channel. Yes... there's one great impersonal force, everywhere the SAME. ( Mother nods her head silence ) I don't think the time has come to wage battle, you understand.... It's this whole transformation of Christianity that's starting, this whole Western world that... We shouldn't enter into conflict as yet, we should let it be. We'll see. But you know, with this Msgr. R., I feel a man with an opening above ...
... relationship with God. He is viceregent of Allah on the planet earth. Being vicegerent of Allah is a big responsibility which other creatures refused to bear. Islam is in tune with Judaism and Christianity in that it believes that Allah (SWT) has created man in his own image. This bestows on man a very high status which other creatures are deprived of. Man's high status is not only due to his being... following verse clearly describes the purpose of man's creation: Page 354 I have not created the Jinn and man (or mankind) but to serve Me (51*56) Islam is in tune with Judaism and Christianity in that it believes that Allah (SWT) has created man in his own image. 2 This bestows on man a very high status which other creatures are deprived of. Man's high status is not only due to his being ...
... marriages but the Government prevents them! Marriages are made in heaven, they say. SATYENDRA: That is difficult to swallow. Marie Corelli writes of such things in her novels, bringing in Christianity—Electric Christianity, etc. She was very popular at one time, at least in India. SRI AUROBINDO: I used to see her novels everywhere. In England also she was a best-seller. Only the critics were hard on ...
... he wishes, earth cannot progress even when there is the occasion, because of this besetting obstacle. It has many names and many forms. It is Page 279 Sin or Satan in Christianity; Buddhism calls it Mara. In India it is generally known as Maya. Grief and sorrow, weakness and want, disease and death are its external and ubiquitous forms. It is a force of gravitation, as g... spirit become flesh: this is Grace, the benediction of the Holy One upon the sinful earth. The working of Grace in one of its characteristic movements has been beautifully envisaged in esoteric Christianity. The burden of sin-that is to say, of weakness, impurity and ignorance – lies so heavy upon man, the force of gravitation is so absolute, that it is divine intervention alone, and in the most physical ...
... human race in its solidarity. The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan Grreco – Roman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake: it surrounds itself with cold floods of abstraction and the forests of solitude. The religious or Christian humanism of the West... their very nature and character. And the Divine himself is conceived of as such a Human Person – for the norm of the human personality is an eternal verity in the divine consciousness. Esoteric Christianity also has given us the conception of the Human Divine; but it is somewhat different from the Vaishnava revelation which has found rather the Divine Human. In other words, as I have already said, ...
... Paramahansa followed in this experiment were yogic. He practiced in a quick succession, methods after methods, and taking recourse to the yogic methods contained in every major religion, including Christianity and Islam, he verified that each of these religions had at its roots a valid yogic experience and realization and that therefore all of them can be united by admitting the truths of all religions... have made, stated the following: "Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest ...
... the fountainhead of Indian Culture. He gave a new interpretation of the Veda, discarded untouchability, encouraged widow re-marriage and tried to stop the mass conversions of the poor in India to Christianity. He wanted to revive the old Vedic Society and Culture as he understood them and though he introduced many reforms in Hindu religious practice and society, he could not, (not being fully familiar... on life and philosophy. Simplicity, non-possession ( of wealth), self-control and service are some of the elements on which India would rebuild her life. Among religions, Jainism, Vaishnavism and Christianity influenced him. Among leaders of thought Tolstoy inspired him. The rejuvenated India should, according to him, build her life on (1) rejection of machinery, (2) rejection of medicine, that is, of ...
... thrills and illumines our soul in his later poetic creations, and particularly in his monumental epic, Savitri. Mrs. Drewett, Mr. Drewett's mother, wished to convert the three brothers to Christianity, but Mr. Drewett, who was a man of strong common sense, objected to it, and Mrs. Drewett had to give up her benevolent idea. In 1885 the Drewetts had left for Australia, and "the three brothers... 'Ackroyd' from his name before he left England and never used it again." Regarding 'Ackroyd' having been tacked on to his name, which gave rise to a rumour that he had been converted into Christianity, and Mrs. Drewett's pious solicitude for saving his soul, Sri Aurobindo once said: "There was once a meeting of non-conformist ministers at Cumberland when we were in England. The old lady in ...
... neither 1. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish dramatist, received the 1925 Nobel prize. His views on the Jewish-Christian God are strikingly similar to Anatole France's. He dubbed Christianity 'Crossianity.' Page 176 could nor would he is at once impotent and perverse; if he both could and would why on earth hasn't he done it, Father?" Then in his characteristic... off with." Dilip was right. Sri Aurobindo thoroughly enjoyed the joke and, what's more, didn't forget to fend it off. "Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about the rational animal man or Humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct. "But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole ...
... Needless to say that these discoveries and colonizations by the Westerners did not come in a day. The build-up had taken centuries. After the fall of the Roman Empire and the advent of Christianity a pall of darkness had fallen on Europe. For example, when Charlemagne (768-814) perhaps one of the most important rulers of the whole medieval period, needed men who could read and write, to minister... means least of all, was the replacement of parchment by paper, followed by the invention of printing with movable type. Charlemagne had conducted dozens of ruthless military campaigns to impose Christianity and establish his Holy Roman Empire. In 789, he issued an edict to churches and monasteries in his realm to establish primary schools. Many cathedral schools were indeed started, but they were devoted ...
... " Rev. Alexander Duff said contemptuously: "Of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen man, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous." Or did he mean Christianity? Was he looking at his own mirror? Do you know that the great Vyasa did not accept "the Jesuistic doctrine of any means to a good end," as Sri Aurobindo explained, "still less justify the goodness... committed for the good of the slaughtered nation?" So much so that the Indians Page 291 feared it to be the "deliberate policy of the British Government to convert them en masse to Christianity," notes the historian R. C. Majumdar. Many of the facts and figures quoted above can be found in Romesh Dutt's Economic History of India. Romesh Dutt —remember him? —met Sri Aurobindo in ...
... He had hardly set foot in Orissa, when he was gazetted back to Hugly. After a lapse of time,—Munro, I believe, had in the mean time been struck by his own astonishing likeness to the founder of Christianity and was away to spread the light of the Gospel among the heathen—after a lapse of time Page 101 Bankim was allowed to come back to Alipur. But this was the last stage of that thankless ...
... result from a large spiritual sowing. Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted ...
... syuḥ . Now that difference is no unimportant subtlety, but of a great and penetrating practical consequence. And we can see how Europe would deal with any spiritual influence by her treatment of Christianity and its inner rule which she never really accepted as the law of her life. It was admitted but only as an ideal and emotional influence and used only to chasten and give some spiritual colouring ...
... Purushottama from his high supremacy above the Immutable and the mutable has extended himself in the world and in the Veda. Still the letter of the Scripture binds and confuses, as the apostle of Christianity warned his disciples when he said that the letter killeth and it is the spirit that saves; and there is a point beyond which the utility of the Scripture itself ceases. The real source of knowledge ...
... the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of ...
... sent to bed much earlier than my brothers—and lay there in a sort of constant terror of the darkness and phantoms and burglars till my brothers came up [ incomplete ] Page 9 Exposure to Christianity [ Lines from a poem submitted to Sri Aurobindo: ] Soul of poet, thine be quiet Of the Virgin's prayerful countenance ... [ Underlining "prayerful countenance": ] Lord God! you bring ...
... as soon as I saw him he put that on my lap.... It was this big. As soon as I saw it, there immediately came (gesture of massive descent) like that, like an answer to the will to transform Christianity. And it was so powerful, there was such a powerful vibration in it that I had the feeling it was IN THE PROCESS.... The cross is the symbol of transformation, you see: Matter (transversal ...
... with which he was acquainted in his childhood; but in the form in which it presented itself to him, it repelled rather than attracted him and the hideous story of persecution staining mediaeval Christianity and the narrowness and intolerance even of its later developments disgusted him so strongly that he drew back from religion altogether. After a short period of complete atheism, he accepted the ...
... oppression, but the term pain would not accurately describe the reaction. There was no positive religious or spiritual element in the education received in England. The only personal contact with Christianity (that of Nonconformist England) was of a nature to repel rather than attract. The education received was mainly classical and had a purely intellectual and aesthetic influence; it did not stimulate ...
... of December; then the sun again mounts to the north. Mother comments: That is why the 25th of December was a festival of Light long before Jesus Christ. This festival was in vogue long before Christianity; it originated in Egypt and very probably the birthday of Christ was fixed on the same day as that of the return of the Light. Then Mother reads the first part of her article "Energy Inexhaustible" ...
... farther! This is something men find difficult to do. When they get hold of something which helps them, they cling to it, they do not want to move any more. Those who have progressed with the help of Christianity do not want to give it up and they carry it on their shoulders; those who have progressed with the help of Buddhism do not want to leave it and they carry it on their shoulders, and so this hampers ...
... Notes on the Way 25 December 1971 It is the festival of the Light—Noël is the festival of the returning Light.... It is very much older than Christianity. And next Saturday is the first of January. I hope 1972 is going to be better! ( Mother shakes her head ) I am more and more convinced that we receive things and react in a way that ...
... nt to which alone liberal philosophy is applicable and in which alone liberal institutions can flourish, is the world of Europe and America which has inherited the legacy of Rome and Greece, of Christianity and rationalistic thought and science. Asia stands outside that charmed enclosure. That this is the mental attitude of Mr. John Morley is shown by the use which he has made of a certain passage ...
... phenomena, and it is for this reason that no great religion has ever come out of the West. Asia on the other hand is full of interest in Brahman and she is therefore the cradle of every great religion. Christianity, Mahomedanism, Buddhism and the creeds of China and Japan are all offshoots of one great and eternal religion of which India has the keeping. India's Mission So with India rests the future ...
... in a new light and once more made them part of herself. So she dealt with the Greek, so with the Scythian, so with Islam, so now she will deal with the great brood of her returning children, with Christianity, with Buddhism, with European science and materialism, with the fresh speculations born of the world's renewed contact with the source of thought in this ancient cradle of religion, science and ...
... ne le fait-il, mon Père? 1 I wonder what God might answer to it, supposing he should ever feel inclined to? Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about that rational animal, man or Humanity (with a big H), and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole ...
... necessary precondition for an equal status between a European and Asiatic. But they are those who belong in spirit to a past generation and cannot value the signs of the hour which point to a new era. Christianity, for instance, has only succeeded where it could apply its one or two Page 321 features of distinct superiority, the readiness to stoop and uplift the fallen and oppressed where the ...
... century of general domination in the West, became a dead thing, impotent for creation, and generated no new or living and evolving culture in the nations that spoke it; even so great a force as Christianity could not give it a new life. The times during which it was an instrument of European thought, were precisely those in which that thought was heaviest, most traditional and least fruitful. A rapid ...
... civilisation, culture and prosperity. The British domination in India was justified by the priceless gift of British civilisation and British ideals, to say nothing of the one and only true religion, Christianity, to a heathen, orientally benighted and semi-barbarous nation. All this is now an exploded myth. We can see clearly enough that the long suppression of the Celtic spirit and Celtic culture, superior ...
... ideal of social order. But we have to note the fact that such a thing was possible and to find its explanation. We cannot ignore for instance the bloodstained and fiery track which formal external Christianity has left furrowed across the mediaeval history of Europe almost from the days of Constantine, its first hour of secular triumph, down to very recent times, or the sanguinary comment which Page ...
... sanguinary disputations, "religious" wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence. But now we have, very remarkably, very swiftly coming to the surface this new psychological ...
... decisive. The two forces that are arising to possess the future represent two great things, the intellectual idealism of Europe and the soul of Asia. The mind of Europe laboured by Hellenism and Christianity and enlarging its horizons by free thought and science has arrived at an idea of human perfectibility or progress expressed in the terms of an intellectual, material and vital freedom, equality ...
... religion of humanity was mind-born in the eighteenth century, the mānasa putra 1 of the rationalist thinkers who brought it forward as a substitute for the formal spiritualism of ecclesiastical Christianity. It tried to give itself a body in Positivism, which was an attempt to formulate the dogmas of this religion, but on too heavily and severely rationalistic a basis for acceptance even by an Age ...
... cannot be called egoism. The Divine can Page 395 be called an ego only if he is a separate Person limited as in the Christian idea of God by his separateness (though even there esoteric Christianity abolishes the limitation). An I which is not separate in that way is no I at all. The Self and the Cosmic Consciousness One has first to become aware of the Self and its wide silence and eternal ...
... from his perfect state by falling into the domination of sin; God made man perfect but man by his own fault brought sin and death into the world. This Semitic tradition passed from Judaism into Christianity and less Page 299 prominently into Mahomedanism became for a long time part and parcel of the fixed beliefs of half humanity. Yet it is doubtful whether the original legend which enshrined ...
... the solidarity, unity, mutuality of all beings in the Spirit. This was the Eastern ideal carried by Buddhism and other ancient disciplines to the coasts of Asia and Egypt and from there poured by Christianity into Europe. But these motives, burning for a time like dim torchlights in the confusion and darkness created by the barbaric flood that had submerged the old civilisations, have been abandoned ...
... December 25, 1971 Good morning! It's the festival of Light: Christmas is the festival of the return of the Light—it's much older than Christianity!—when the days were beginning to grow longer ( Mother laughs ). And next Saturday is the first of January. I'll see you.... I hope that '72 is going to be better! ( Mother nods her head ...
... inadequately conver-sant with Blake's visionary symbolic mind and method of expres-sion and with the bulk of his poetic creation in which his highly original mythopoeic and occult-spiritual form of Christianity finds vivid and profound though also at times fantastic play, we shall fail to gauge the inmost light and might of the beast of prey he sets poetically before us. Of course, the immediate charm ...
... In the face of this complete hold, the proposition about God being no creator unless creators are created by Him is no more than a brilliant epigram if understood in a Christian context. Christianity conceives the human soul as a creature brought into existence by God at some point of time and existing with some resemblance to Him yet with no essential identity with Him. Such a soul cannot ...
... tried to do this...; his thought sought after God, tried to seize the ideal, had the hope of a perfect human society. We know how the Neo-Platonists developed his ideas...and how they affected Christianity. The Stoics, still more directly the intellectual descendants of Heraclitus, arrived at very remarkable and fruitful ideas of human possibility and a powerful psychological discipline, — as we should ...
... the soul of Romanticism as it can the soul of Classicism. Sri Aurobindo 15 has well said: " An Italy with the Graeco-Roman past in its blood could seize intellectually on the motives of Catholic Christianity and give them a clear and supreme expression in Dante, while all Germanised Europe had only been stam- mering in the faltering infantile accents of romance verse or shadowing them out in Gothic ...
... ns. And of the two pantheists the more powerful was Wordsworth, though Shelley was the more vivid. Wordsworth it was who awoke in Shelley the pantheist dormant within the rebel against orthodox Christianity, and Wordsworth it was who had the more massive awareness of what he called "Wisdom and Spirit of the universe", an awareness which dissolved more effectively than Shelley's feeling of the "white ...
... ignorance or perversity are for the best in this obvious sense that God makes out of them excellent material for the work He is about, which always tends to the good of humanity. The persecution of Christianity by the powers of the ancient world was utterly evil, but it was for the best; without it there could not have been that noble reaction of sublime and exalted suffering which finally permeated the ...
... on which European society has hitherto been based and our renovated systems will be based on the renunciation of individual selfishness and the organisation of brotherhood,—principles common to Christianity, Mahomedanism and Hinduism. Page 58 ...
... subjected to egoism. 199) Religion & philosophy seek to rescue man from his ego; then the kingdom of heaven within will be spontaneously reflected in an external divine city. 200) Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, "Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing & a worm before God; renounce Page 448 then egoism, live for a future state and submit thyself to God & His priest ...
... world-life free from intolerance, yet full of faith and fervour, accepting all forms of religion because it has an unshakable faith in the One. The religion which embraces Science and faith, Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it ...
... he put that on my knees .... It was big like this. Page 497 As soon as I saw him, it instantly came ( gesture of massive descent ), like that, like an answer to the will to transform Christianity And it was so powerful, there was such a powerful vibration that I felt it was BEING done .... The cross is the symbol of transformation, you know: Matter ( transversal gesture ) penetrated by ...
... thought that Indian culture, taken as a whole, never emphasized the negation of life though some of its Page 11 philosophies did so: it seems to have done so much less than Christianity." (The Discovery of India, pp. 82-3.) As for the existence of God, his Marxist penchant makes him turn down the experiences of the mystics as probably phantasms of the self-deluded ...
... an empty space with no society or culture of its own. It was obvious that this version of India's history was only a mix of various versions floated by imperalist ideologies - Islam, Christianity, White Man's Burden, and Marxism - which had flocked to this country in the wake of foreign invasions. The message which this "history" conveyed was also loud and clear, namely, that there was ...
... its treasures by pouring them out in his writings; who writes with equal ease on the Vedas and the Bible (the Pope may with difficulty find one amongst his cardinals who knows so much about Christianity); who can write a book about the Black Lady on William Shakespeare and who can with credit break lances with Kathleen Raine, the foremost authority of our times on William Blake; and who can ...
... thousands of years... I should have thought that Indian culture, taken as a whole, never emphasized the negation of life, though some of its philosophies did so: it seems to have done so, much less than Christianity." Yes, the Indian way of being young does not cast a pallor on life's changing face. Although never giving priority to the life-force as such and always taking its stand in the deep awareness ...
... quotes which put Hitler’s mission, as he understood it, in focus. Hitler had been sent, and was constantly guided, to change the conscience and morality of man into something like the opposite of Christianity; where humanity made an effort to become step by step more conscious and individualized, Hitler saw the human individual as nothing more than a cell in a body, an ant in a nest. The perspectives ...
... of evolution and the evolutionary theories. We have also found that modern science, a product of the Western mind, reasons almost exclusively within the framework of the main Western religion, Christianity. This defines its references to history and scripture, and its concept of God. Might there then be something worthwhile Eastern spirituality has to tell about modern science in general and evolution ...
... and support of our incarnation: the soul. It is, once again, no exaggeration to state that the confusion about the soul in the religious and spiritual literature is dumbfounding, and not only in Christianity. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s view on this topic, as on all others, is on the contrary clear, complete, and a reliable basis for spiritual practice. “ The soul , representative of the central ...
... out of every hundred in the country. Like the populations of other European nations, the Germans had a long-standing tradition of deep-seated anti-Semitism, centuries ago transmitted to them by Christianity, which taught that the Jews had killed their incarnated God, and that they had been dispersed throughout the world by way of punishment. The bigger the German ego, the less place there was for ...
... explanatory concept.” 4 Nevertheless, there is obviously more than scientism (i.e. dogmatic science) in the contemporary world. The adherents of the main religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, are counted in the hundreds of millions. The Pope draws crowds of hundreds of thousands; in the year 2001 the participants in the Kumbha Mela, at Allahabad in India, the greatest human gathering ...
... is concerned [by excommunicating it]. Now we are the strongest and we will get rid of both others, the Freemasons and the Church.” 823 In the case of the Church he had to tread carefully, for Christianity was deeply ingrained in the thought and customs of the German people, but there cannot be any doubt about his ultimate intentions. Freemasonry, on the contrary, was harmless and defenceless, and ...
... the Catholic Church, for is their holy book not Jewish literature, and are many of their feasts and ceremonies not of Jewish origin? – this in direct contradiction to the anti-Semitism for which Christianity and the Catholic Church was primarily responsible. And there are of course the theories of the Jew Karl Marx, propagated to dominate the world and as such the inspiration of Lenin and his Judeo ...
... had been the masters of the world in former times and would become so again in the near future; their opponents were the Jews, the Christians and the Bolsheviks, three faces of the same enemy. For Christianity was the brainchild of the Jew Paul of Tarsus and had propagated a morality of compassion and love for one’s neighbour in order to weaken the nations and make them the Jews’ easy prey. And Bolshevism ...
... as a nation [which they were not], then the whole further development of humanity would have taken a different, probably less pleasant direction.” 474 Moreover, had not the Romans allowed Jewish Christianity to erode their strength from within, a neglect which would lead to the dissolution of their empire? More securely appreciated than the Romans were the ancient Greeks, not only because they had ...
... delight you, Dilip," he said, as I handed him his cup. "For he has paid the Christian back in his own coin, if you know what I mean." (We had had a somewhat hot debate, a few days before this, on Christianity versus Hinduism.) His humility always moved me — the more as I was myself very sensitive and never could smile if and when Gurudev or the Mother frowned. Then he read it out to me: "Arjava ...
... graduate’ with a ready sense of humour and a broad ‘Renaissance mind.’ Besides his countless writings about Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and their yoga, he has published books on comparative religion, Christianity, the origin of the Aryans, science and the scientific paradigms, Greece and its culture, and on many other subjects. He is also considered the primus inter pares among the Ashram poets and was ...
... of faith in a divine intervention could ... was the means of salvation. This was the idea of salvation. I understood Christ and faith in Christ. I understood it, and it did not apply uniquely to Christianity or to original sin. I understood what original sin and redemption through faith in Christ meant. ...
... but... one can't remain stuck there. ( silence ) No news of P.L.? No. We have gone a little beyond the times when someone could be locked up.... They can tell him he has "fallen from Christianity," but I think he doesn't care. Or does he? He would be affected, because he would be unable to do anything for Catholicism anymore. That would be a pity It would be a great pity. But it's ...
... He is a Catholic? He's going to be appointed bishop in [such and such a country]. ...!!! So there's a problem. He is an important person, and he wants to leave everything—this whole Christianity he rejects, he no longer wants it. He wants to leave his Church, his episcopate, everything, and remain here. He has "found" something here. Page 85 Yes, I saw that man: he was very ...
... There is a key in the relationship between man and woman, but not in their sexual relations. The so-called "left-hand Tantrics" (of the Vama Marga) are to true Tantrism what Boccaccio's tales are to Christianity, or what the sodden Roman Bacchus is to Dionysos of the Greek mysteries. I know Tantrism, to say the least. As for the Cathars, whom I hold in the highest esteem, it would be doing them little honor ...
... political necessity—I don't think he has the conviction that it is the pure Truth. Whereas the previous Pope really believed in it. This one knows too much in his supraconscient to believe that Christianity is the pure and exclusive Truth. Only, you see, Page 201 when you're lucky enough to be the Pope, you've got to believe that the Pope is the Pope! Try to imagine, look at the global ...
... with the bust in Sri Aurobindo's room! 1 They all make a mystic Sri Aurobindo with narrow temples, like that ( gesture tapering upward ), a long mystic face, because they can't get out of their Christianity! For them, of course, the Power, anything that expresses the Power, oh!... ( gesture of repulsion ) I wanted to say that to this American.... For them, spiritual life is sacrifice, it's the ...
... things will be different. It doesn't even understand very well how they can be different. Then there come all other beliefs, all other so-called revelations, the heavens and so on. The whole of Christianity and Islam have very easily solved the problem: "Oh, no, things here will never be fine, but over there they can be perfect." That goes without saying. Then there is the whole of Nirvanism and Buddhism: ...
... being, an archangel, who misused the "freewill" granted to all the creations of God and became the Prince of Darkness from having earlier been Lucifer, Son of the Morning. In Zoroastrianism, as in Christianity, human beings are endowed with freewill and always called upon to choose the good and reject the bad. By extension the superhumans may or must be visioned as enjoying freedom of will. Then Ahriman ...
... meditation, 117 perspectives of time, 20, 21 practice of living in the present moment, 151-153, 155 self concept, 77, 78, 80, 114, 115 C calm state, defined, 24 Christianity, 146 concentration, 119 consciousness Mother's viewpoints, 29, 30 phenomenon of, 14 reversal of, 29, 30 in the teachings of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo, 81-84, ...
... diminishing the woe-motif he sets up an opposite current of secret significance which prepares us for a dazzling climax in Book XII where the ways of God stand completely vindicated within Miltonic Christianity. Framing this climax we have the phrases addressed to Adam – then wilt thou not be loth To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far – 15 ...
... the human mind perhaps since the beginning, though more often perfection is put in some golden age of the past and deterioration and a cataclysm Page 336 is the law of the future. Christianity foresees a descent of Christ and his rule on earth, but this is figured as a natural event, not as a change produced by an inward power and process or by Yoga. A reign of the saints is also foreshadowed ...
... and claims of superiority of one system of religion or Yoga over other systems of religion or Yoga, there was fundamentally a large Catholicism and a spirit of assimilation and even of synthesis. Christianity came to India early in the first century A.D. and there came also several other influences, all of which were welcomed and given a place in the large and developing field of the Indian Religion ...
... institutional aspects of religion, (ii) they are related to individual's inner lives, and (iii) they mark important stages of the discipline of spiritual practices, even though most of them are tied to Christianity, a few to other religions, and a few that are independent of any religion. If we maintain that every religion has a spiritual core which is its most important component, and if yoga is primarily ...
... very vast, and it should cover not only the Indian history of yogic science but also the study of yogic methods and their results as we find in the esoteric core of a number of religions such as Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and even in Systems like the Chinese Taoism. Our Intention should be to bring to ourselves the treasures that are available in the records of yogic knowledge, so ...
... whole of the Rig Veda., And when people, even in India, will read my translation and understand what the Veda contains, they will find that there is nothing in it, and then they will easily turn to Christianity and embrace it." This was the confidence with which he translated, and many others who came to translate and many of those who interpreted the Veda coincided in their interpretations. And many of ...
... Spirituality '?). 37 Vide., Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, Macmillan Press, 1989, Basingstoke; vide also. Hick, J., Hellethwaite, B. (Eds), Christianity and Other Religions, Fortress Press, 1981, Philadelphia; vide also Hick, J., The Fifth Dimension, Oneworld Publications, 2004, Oxford. 38 Cottingham, J., The Spiritual Dimension, Cambridge ...
... e de médecine (6 vols., Paris, 1746), he gained valuable experience in encyclopedic system. His Pensées philosophiques (The Hague, 1746), in which he attacked both atheism and the received Christianity, was burned by order of the Parliament of Paris. He had made very little pecuniary profit out of the Encyclopedic, and Grimm appealed on his behalf to Catherine of Russia, who in 1765 ...
... bhakti as a supreme motivation of Karma Yoga and crown of Jnana Yoga. In recent times, Sri Ramakrishna synthesised various systems of Yoga as also inner practices of different religions like Christianity and Islam into a large synthesis. Swami Vivekananda expounded the concept of synthesis of Yoga in his various works. The latest task of synthesis of Yoga has been accomplished by Sri Aurobindo ...
... their depth and beauty. Page 13 Greece and India both have produced a luxuriant mythology and an abundant pantheon.* If the Greek gods belong now to the past, having been dethroned by Christianity, and are more to us figures of art and poetry, the Indian gods are still very much alive. For the Indians have always tended to retain their early beliefs and mould them in such a way as to mirror ...
... that of a red rose 9. Christ was one of the three Avatars mentioned by Sri Aurobindo. 9/a . But what is this concept of Avatarhood ? 9/b. Is it the same as that of 'Incarnation' prevalent in Christianity? 9/c. Sri Aurobindo has explained the phenomenon of Avatarhood in his Essays on the Gita.... Etc. Please note that in the succession of thoughts here, "The Mother" is still the ...
... intellectual capacity, he concedes that one might propose to equip young people with some sort of Page 88 rational capacity for the recognition of spiritual problems common to (say) both Christianity and Hinduism, one can nevertheless continue to doubt the likelihood of coming to any significant appreciation of such similarities, considering that the understanding of spiritual problems is ...
... well. " 2 1. Ibid., pp. 179-82. 2. Ibid., p. 187. Page 241 So startlingly revolutionary was Emile, so open in its attack upon the evils of society and of established Christianity, that a decree was issued for Rousseau's arrest, and the Parlement of Paris was told: That this work appears to have been composed solely with the aim of reducing everything to natural ...
... Hinduism can only be understood if we remember the fundamental character of Hinduism. For the Hindu religion is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process. All that it has met on its way it has taken into itself, content if it could put its forms into some valid relation with the truth of the supraphysical ...
... clearly such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable in a country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too three distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each has given birth. Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion and in the larger ideas that are now coming on us, even the greatest ...
... spiritual salvation. In India too the siddhis or occult powers were always shunned by the truly spiritual, although sought by the many who take to the spiritual life—often with disastrous results. In Christianity, side by side with the major saints, there was always a group or a line of practicants that followed the occult system, although outwardly observing the official creed. It is curious to note that ...
... the insistence will be on the dynamic and evolutive aspects of history. A few such subjects are listed here: birth and life of Buddha and spreading of Buddhism, life of Christ and the spreading of Christianity (martyrs, conquest of Europe, Crusades, religious wars, the Papacy and the Reformation), life of Mohammed and the expansion of Islam, the Mauryan period, the Gupta period, Charlemagne and his empire ...
... salvation. In India too the siddhis or occult powers were always shunned by the truly spiritual, although sought by the many who take to the spiritual life – often with disastrous results. In Christianity, side by side with the major saints, there was always a group or a line of practicants that followed the occult system, although outwardly observing the official creed. It is curious to note that ...
... such people. There was another man, D'Souza, whom I knew very well. He is working in Mysore State now. He is one of the cleverest brains I have ever met. He is an Indian Christian. Not that much of Christianity is left in him. He has an independent mind. NIRODBARAN: Taggart was mainly responsible for crushing the movement, we hear. He narrowly escaped being killed in Palestine the other day. SRI ...
... demanded of him – going beyond one's natural or normal self. But there is a danger here. For there can be a too much surpassing, a going away altogether, as religion or spirituality usually enjoins. Christianity, for example, which is in many senses a movement contrary to the Greek spirit, taught a transcendence that was for luring or driving the human soul away from the world and men towards an extra- ...
... to keep up an appearance. I was about ten at that time. I felt infinitely relieved when I got back to Manchester!" (Laughter) "So you became a Christian?" asked Jones. "What did I know of Christianity at that age? I remember, Page 23 my brothers also scolded me, and called me stupid. But I don't think Mr. Drewett approved of forced conversions. I lived so many years with him, but ...
... for all their elegance and culture, and the general atmosphere of friendliness exuded by them, were rather allergic to spirituality. They had their religions, of course - Shintoism, Buddhism, Christianity, with their many sectarian divisions - and they had their picturesque ceremonies, religious and secular, and their elaborate codes of behaviour; but somehow the Japanese as a general rule shied ...
... be creative, also. Experience of Beauty In ancient times religion encouraged the experience of beauty as an aspect of the Divine. There were puritanical religions like Protestant Christianity and some philosophical schools that condemned beauty, or encouraged renunciation as indispensable to spirituality. But in India the Upanishad speaks of the Supreme as "Rasovai Sah", "He ...
... EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY In ancient times religion encouraged the experience of beauty as an aspect of the Divine. There were puritanical religions like Protestant Christianity and some philosophical schools that condemned beauty, or encouraged renunciation as indispensable to spirituality. But in India the Upanishad speaks of the Supreme as "Raso vai Sah", "He is ...
... never published, but he wrote it at a time when he was in communication with that being. Disciple : Most of these people do not believe in any religion. They want to give up and suppress Christianity. Sri Aurobindo : That is what I meant when I said these people have guarded the Barbarian in them. What they have got is scientific knowledge, mechanical skill, but other cultural activities ...
... very beginning of his spiritual life to the end of his earthly days such a docile and devoted child of the Divine Mother, even though he realised the ultimate truths of the Vedânta, Vaishnavism, Christianity, Islam etc. He realises, as Totapuri, the stalwart Vedântin, was made to realise, that the Brahman and His śakti are one, and that it is the brama ś akti or mahāmāya that is the sovereign power ...
... of anything, we must be quit of the body." The Stoics gave an added impetus to the mortification of the flesh, and the Neo-Pythagorians carried on the tradition with an un- abated zeal. Nor did Christianity improve upon this pagan attitude, rather its later development tended to put a premium on the contempt and chastisement of the body, culminating Sometimes in a positive self-torture, In India the ...
... points out the evolutionary significance of the phenomenon of Avatarhood. The Divine is not some absentee land-lord away from life, it can take up human nature and a human form. Some religions, like Christianity, accept one and only one incarnation of the Divine. They practically limit the Omnipotence to one single act-but to the Hindu view Omnipotence of God cannot be limited to one incarnation and therefore ...
... on the reawakening touch of some divine impulse whenever the spirit of man flagged and failed.... These visitations of immortality in man have been known by different names such as Buddhism, Christianity, the Renaissance, Vaishnavism and the like. Asia forgetful, decadent, dying in "the scorching drought of modem vulgarity" needed most the purifying ablution of such a wave; and it has now ...
... sorts of sense enjoyments, is by killing these unbelievers." 1 1. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, II, 352-3. Page 64 And yet. Yet religions like Islam or Christianity — and most others —claim universal Brotherhood as their doctrine. "Mohammedans talk of universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in reality?" asked Swamiji. And he answered his own question ...
... memory about Judaism. Judaism is one of the oldest extant religions of mankind. The history of the Jews is one of strife and persecution. Judaism's main persecutors have been its two daughters: Christianity and Mohammedanism. These quarrelsome sisters do not forget to equally quarrel among themselves. Concerning the persecution of the Jews, Sri Aurobindo spoke of a "Cabalistic prophecy," according ...
... British Empire, we should remember, was at the height of its glory —and vainglory—and English intellectuals were often vying with one another to prove the superiority of the white race over others, of Christianity over other religions, and to demonstrate the inevitability of the 'success' of the Page 213 Western civilization. It was clearly the duty of the white man — and especially of the ...
... forgiving heart? I do embrace misfortune and fresh loss Before your friendship, lord. KING PHILIP No more of this. BELTRAN Pardon, Your Highness; this was little praise For so much Christianity. Lord Conrad, I will not trouble you further. And perhaps With help of the good saints and holy Virgin I too shall make me some room to pardon in. CONRAD I fear you not, Lord Count. Our ...
... than the prison and the gibbet, the armed men and the murderous cannon. He knows that in the fight with brute force the spirit, the idea is bound to conquer. The Roman Empire is no more, but the Christianity which it thought to crush, possesses half the globe, covering "regions Caesar never knew". The Jew, whom the whole world persecuted, survived by the strength of an idea and now sits in the high ...
... his citizenship, is not to be extended to a conquered people. This is strictly true, the Christian missions and missionaries of Europe notwithstanding. In other words Christian Europe flings her Christianity aside in her treatment of those who have had the misfortune to come under her rule; these she looks upon as Athens and Rome did on their subject peoples. Mr. Morley whilst congratulating the English ...
... worship it, it does not demand affection from its opponents; but it is content to barter acquittal for an apology. Recantation was the alternative which the old persecutors of Page 911 Christianity and the Christian persecutors of Jews and heretics offered to those whom they threatened with the cross and the arena, with the rack and the fire, and it was offered for the same reason that it ...
... accepted as a convenient instrument for self-protection against the anger of the bureaucracy. The temptation it holds out is one to which all new faiths are exposed, that which was the chief danger of Christianity in the days of persecution, to which, for a fleeting moment, Mahomed is said to have succumbed when harassed by the Koraish, the temptation of securing a respite from persecution by a false profession ...
... Paradise of the rewards of virtue has been rejected by man; the Upanishads belittled it ages ago in India and it is now no longer dominant in the mind of the people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular Islam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity. The lure of a release from birth and death and withdrawal from the cosmic labour must also be rejected, as it was rejected ...
... universe. This is the difference, the capital difference between the Buddhistic solution—with all those later solutions affected & governed by Buddhistic thought, such as Mayavada & monastic Christianity—and the ancient answer of Hinduism to the problem put to man by life. These say, "Abandon life, put away all possession & enjoyment; absolute asceticism is your only salvation"; that said "Abandon ...
... appreciation of this art. And it has to be remembered too that the religious spirit here is something Page 272 quite different from the sense of European religions; and even mediaeval Christianity, especially as now looked at by the modern European mind which has gone through the two great crises of the Renascence and recent secularism, will not in spite of its oriental origin and affinities ...
... here or hope beyond, and nothing like the sad and shrinking attitude before death and the dissolution of the body which pervades Western literature. The note of ascetic pessimism often found in Christianity is a distinctly Western note; for it is absent in Christ's teachings. This mediaeval religion with its cross, its salvation by suffering, its devil-ridden and flesh-ridden world and the flames of ...
... average man of ability, a Megasthenes for instance, could be trusted to see and understand, though not inwardly and perfectly, yet in a sufficient measure. The mediaeval European, for all his militant Christianity and his prejudice against the infidel and paynim, yet resembled his opponent in many characteristic ways of seeing and feeling to an extent which is no longer possible to an average European mind ...
... less clearness; but in this essential matter India is the quintessence of the Asiatic way of being. Europe too in mediaeval times had a culture in which by the dominance of the Christian idea—but Christianity was of Asiatic origin—the spiritual motive took the lead; then there was an essential similarity as well as a certain difference. Still the differentiation of cultural temperament has on the whole ...
... such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable, in a country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too three such distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each of these has given birth. Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on ...
... was a rationalist to whom religion is an error, a psychological disease, a sin against reason; yet he adjudges here between the comparative claims of religions, assigning a proxime accessit to Christianity, mainly, it seems, because Christians do not seriously believe in their own religion,—let not the reader laugh, the book advances quite seriously this amazing reason,—and bestowing the wooden spoon ...
... Problems of Early Christianity Christ's Kingdom of God A Letter and a Reply Apropos of the Article " Sri Aurobindo and the Kingdom of God" Mother India, in its issue of December 5, 1970, published "Sri Aurobindo and the Kingdom of God" by Dick Batstone. In one place it carried the following footnote by the Editor: "The author has overlooked ...
... Follower of Christ & a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo: Page 229 Correspondence between Bede Griffiths and K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) 25. Problems of Early Christianity 26. The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition 27. Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes 28. Teilhard ...
... the World's Future 24.A Follower of Christ & a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo: Page 212 Correspondence between Bede Griffiths and K.D. Sethna (Amal Kir an) 25.Problems of Early Christianity 26.The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition 27.Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes 28.Teilhard De Chardin and our Time ...
... forth Buddhism at the same time as it declared the Void alone to be real; the impregnation of the universe by Tao; the one God apparently distinct from his creation of Judaism and later religions—Christianity and Islam—; the supreme Being, Purushottama, who, in the Gita, is both the immutable Being and the mutable Becoming—all these definitions result of the same vision, which has been for millennia ...
... the World's Future 24.A Follower of Christ & a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo: Page 136 Correspondence between Bede Griffiths and K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) 25.Problems of Early Christianity 26.The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition 27.Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes 28.Teilhard De Chardin and our Time ...
... Ashram. 45. 1997 India and the World Scene , Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Institute of Research in Social Sciences, Sri Aurobindo Society. 46. 1998 Problems of Early Christianity , Waterford, U.S.A.: The Integral Life Foundation. 47. 1998. Sri Aurobindo and Greece , Waterford, U.S.A.: The Integral Life Foundation. 48. 2000 Problems of Ancient ...
... Problems of Early Christianity Did Jesus have Brothers and Sisters? I One of the most wide-spread beliefs among the Roman Catholics is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, not only gave birth to him by a virginal conception but also remained a virgin throughout her life. In other words, she had no marital relations with her husband Joseph and, ...
... Indian nation must keep up its individuality and recover her soul. At the same time I do not want India to imitate Europe nor to remain in the present mud. Mahatma Gandhi has introduced Tolstoyan Christianity in India and has given a set-back to Indian culture. I do not believe also that Councils will be very useful as the vision of the men there is limited. My work is meant for future India and will ...
... man leading to personal salvation; Savitri is the grace on earth working for transformation of the race. Beatrice is Theology or Church, a force in history rather limited in its implications to Christianity alone; Savitri is a cosmic involvement. The supernatural — Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, the Devils, the Angels, etc. — of the Commedia is a belief or allegory; in Savitri it is a real experience ...
... kingdom of Page 101 God away from the earth. Milton wanted "to justify the ways of God to man"; but he does not succeed in his task because perhaps the inspiration of puritanic Christianity was not sufficient to fulfil that task. Savitri is a poem of hope and fulfilment on earth. It is a poem of knowledge in the sense that it weaves the conditions of man's highest fulfilment in ...
... Indian nation must keep up its individuality and recover her soul. At the same time I do not want India to imitate Europe nor to remain in the present mud. Mahatma Gandhi has introduced Tolstoyan Christianity in India and has given a setback to Indian culture. I do not believe also that Councils will be very useful as the vision of the men there is limited. My work is meant for future India and will ...
... toward a better understanding of both Eckhart's teaching and that of Sri Aurobindo. Eckhart's teaching, which beautifully combines elements from Zen Buddhism, Advaita (nondualist Vedanta), and Christianity, is relatively neutral. However, in its views of the nature of Reality and enlightenment, his teaching is predominantly Buddhist. It is a perspective that presents a sharp contrast to some of the ...
... of Rome. He would often be cited later by German philosophers, politicians and theologians who interpreted the Reformation as the first great expression of the Germanic soul, rejecting Catholic Christianity as Latin, un-German and cosmopolitan, a threat to the Teutonic people second only to international Jewry.” 527 Luther’s attitude and the enthusiastic response it encountered resulted in the fact ...
... in Voltaire, and the legend of his anti-Semitism has persisted … He did not dislike the Jews on ‘racial grounds’, but only because they were the people of the Old Testament and the precursors of Christianity” – which looks like a curious reason for his dislike. 562 “I therefore ask, gentlemen, for the Protestant French as for all non-Catholics of the Kingdom, what you demand for yourselves: freedom ...
... occult is their domain. Western man hardly believes in the devil any more, and evil has become a metaphor. Disbelief in the devil is understandable because, as is the case with all things occult, Christianity had presented him in a too ridiculous form. The East has a much more thorough occult knowledge of “the devil”, of the anti-divine beings in their various shapes and levels of existence, including ...
... faith we call the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages there was a generally accepted system of belief concerning the conception of man, of the world, and of God. This system, the world view of Catholic Christianity in Western Europe, had elementary limitations and flaws which one day would have to be brought to the surface if homo europaeus was to fulfil his destiny, his part in the evolution of humankind ...
... officials and groups such as the Lombards, Venetians, Syrians and Greeks – Christians all. The Vatican itself was known for its sophisticated credit practices.” It may be remembered that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all condemned money lending as a sin. “Some complaints accused Christians of charging higher rates than Jews, for usury was a problem even where no Jews lived.” 600 From that time onwards ...
... the road back to the glory of the Origin, started from the absolute negation, from the extreme contraries of that Origin. In some traditions and religions (Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and even Christianity) the separation between Positive and Negative, Light and Darkness has been seen as permanent. In the Vedantic view, which is the basis of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s vision, all is one and all ...
... in union with the great universal life, and in membership of an immortal people — that was the message he would impart to the world when the time came. Hitler would be the first to achieve what Christianity was meant to have been, a joyous message that liberated men from the things that burdened their life. We should no longer have any fear of death and should lose the fear of a so-called bad conscience ...
... change from within. This is what started happening: political edifices are being changed because of the inner intenability of certain systems; religions are being changed from within — for instance Christianity by the charismatic movements and Islam by its confrontation with the Western democratic spirit. ‘In the night I am always given a state of the human consciousness which has to be put straight, one ...
... an act of God as described in the Bible, a collection of books holy to the early Hebrew tribes. The Bible was, and still is, a sacred text of three major religions – in historical order: Judaism, Christianity and Islam – although in each religion it has been complemented with additional revelations, doctrines and traditions. The first words of its first book, Genesis , are: “In the beginning God created ...
... bulwark of the mind constructed and reinforced over centuries, does not crumble from the first bolt of lightning or the impact of a new idea, in this case Darwinism. The remnants of the bulwark of Christianity, built up during the Middle Ages, are still standing in the Western world. Darwinism was one of the phenomena of scientific rationalism trying to de-construct that bulwark – after the Renaissance ...
... experience and philosophy and all-round constructivism, but if you choose Gandhi you are off the track altogether and are hardly acting in consonance with your aim. Declare your aim to be Tolstoyan Christianity in a garb of Jain and Buddhist morality coloured with the nomenclature of Hindu piety, and you will be justified in referring so frequently to Gandhi. And you will be justified in extolling whatever ...
... the Spirit from which all has come and of which all is secretly made: that is the great task, and the metaphysical basis of the vision inspiring such a task is what you "don't so readily find in Christianity" or rather in your "history of religious pursuit". Teilhard de Chardin was born with an intuition of Indian spirituality that he called "pantheism" and grossly misunderstood because of the Western ...
... stresses a special Page 122 relationship among its initiates in distinction from the rest of humanity. There is a touch of the sectarian mind - as in the Semitic religions (judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism) - in contrast to the world-wide attitude of Hinduism and Buddhism. I have nothing against Freemasonry. My father was a master mason of the Lodge "Rising Star" and I would ...
... to the Shelleyan imagination found yet extremely incongenial, no truer words have been written than by another Roman Catholic poet, Alfred Noyes. He reads in it no real conflict with essential Christianity where also God is spoken of as He "in whom we live and move and have our being". When Shelley sings of the young Keats,"Adonais", becoming by his death a portion of universal Loveliness, he does ...
... a jest?" Here is a truth not properly gauged by Allah's own followers. Though they have rightly felt a great vital force released by their Prophet, their goal is still the life beyond just as in Christianity and Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Buddhism, except that Buddhism for all its emphasis on a supra-cosmic Nirvana as the summum bonum has the doctrine of reincarnation which implies a sustained interest ...
... understood it to imply God's universal dynamic harmonising love by which the whole creation is kept going. Christ's insistence on God being love has made us believe that a poet like Dante who lived when Christianity was at its peak of power in men's lives could not have intended anything else. Yet Dante did not consciously lend his line the precise shade we see in it. Medieval theology a la St. Thomas Aquinas ...
... Pondicherry by Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran 43. A Follower of Christ & a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo: Correspondence between Bede Griffiths and K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) 44. Problems of Early Christianity 45. The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition 46. Science, Materialism, Mysticism 47. The Indian Spirit and the World's Future 48. India and the World Scene ...
... Teilhard de Chardin and our Time Towards a Vedantic Christianity: the Individual, About the "pantheistic experience...that the Divine is everywhere and is all", a letter by Sri Aurobindo 1 pronounces: "it is a very common thing to have this feeling or realisation in the Vedantic sadhana 2 - in fact without it there would be no Vedantic ...
... Teilhard de Chardin and our Time FOREWORD Part One "The Real Religion of Teilhard de Chardin - His Version of Christianity and Sri Aurobindo's Expose of the Ancient Vedanta" appears for the first time in print. Part Two "The Basic Teilhard de Chardin and the Modern Religious Intuition" brings together the articles published in ...
... Mechanics no less than problems of biological thought; chronological researches in the history of ancient India and the beginnings of history for Israel; Christian traditions and the problems of Christianity; Fate and Free-will; comments and opinions about national and international issues and events; hundreds of letters to friends and admirers dealing with matters spiritual ...
... were reprinted till the end of the Third Reich. What the nationalist literature did not promulgate were the visionary predictions of a Romantic like Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), who was a Jew. “Christianity – and this is its nicest merit – has somewhat softened the crude German fighting spirit but could not eradicate it, and when the taming Talisman, the Cross, falls to pieces, then the savagery of ...
... mainly superstitions deeply rooted in the dark ages. Even if the names of the old gods were practically forgotten, a certain mentality from olden times survived, especially in the countryside, and Christianity was, on the more popular level, no more than a set of additional superstitions added to the ancient beliefs. The German tribes, Christianized by force, had been “badly baptized”. Even Hitler will ...
... amidst furious slaughters, the Teutonic Knights seized Prussian lands and virtually exterminated the indigenous people. Building castles, forts and towns, they converted the remaining natives to Christianity, reduced them to serfdom and made themselves lords of the land.” 455 “Half of the German Reich was established on what originally had been Slavonic territory”, writes Christian von Krockow, “and ...
... it was in part because they were secretly admired (also by Hitler) for their surviving qualities and purity as a race, and for their intelligence. The characteristics of the Jews, stereotyped by Christianity in general, were ingrained, “programmed” in the thinking modes of the people; yet it was during Haeckel’s lifetime that such thought attitudes would become virulent and aggressive because German ...
... where I had come from and what my religion was. At once it flashed across my mind that those two nuns must have given a full account of me in advance. Moreover I had not gone to chapel. I respected Christianity but I could not be a hypocrite. I informed everything to the Rev. Mother. She was mystified but indeed had the grace to give an understanding smile. She told me that all the girls who resided in ...
... the highest truths of self and soul and the largest seeing of the Eternal. One or two modern poets have attempted to use in a new way the almost unworked wealth of poetical suggestion in Catholic Christianity. But the drift of the modern mind in this direction is too large in its aim and varied in its approach to be satisfied by any definite or any fixed symbolic or hieratic method, it cannot rest within ...
... liberation, in its own proper voice, so producing the sacred poetry of the Veda and Upanishads. An Italy with the Graeco-Roman past in its blood could seize intellectually on the motives of catholic Christianity and give them a precise and supremely poetic expression in Dante, while all Germanised Europe was still stammering its primitive thoughts in the faltering infantile accents of romance verse or shadowing ...
... know that there is anything exactly corresponding to them in the language of Indian spiritual thinking, although the experiences on which the distinction rests are quite familiar. On another side, Christianity insists not only on a double but a triple Divine. It even strikes me that this triple Godhead or Trinity is not very far off at bottom from my trinity of the individual, cosmic and transcendent ...
... upon a cross Fixed in the soil of a dumb insentient world Where birth was a pang and death an agony, Lest all too soon should change again to bliss. [ p. 221 ] This has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with the symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace the eternal bliss. It is not Christ but the world-soul which ...
... supramental descent is primarily a spiritual fact which will bear its necessary outward consequences. What previous vital descents have done is to falsify the Light that came down as in the history of Christianity where it took possession of the teaching and distorted it and deprived it of any widespread fulfilment. But the supermind is by definition a Light that cannot be distorted if it acts in its own ...
... much in it, as I am perfectly familiar with European atheism and it is for the most part a shallow and rather childish reaction against a shallow and childish religionism—that of orthodox exoteric Christianity as it was believed and practised in Europe. Not much food on either side of the controversy either for the intellect or the spirit! 18 October 1932 I seized a few moments to run through Russell ...
... Hindu consciousness from ancient times. There are, as we know, three means of salvation; salvation by knowledge, the central position in Buddhism; salvation by faith & love, the central position in Christianity; salvation by faith & works, the central position in Mahomedanism. In Hinduism, the Sanatandharma, all these three paths are equally accepted. But in all three the peculiar and central religious ...
... instinctively recognised by all the great religions, even when they cannot provide any philosophical justification for a tenet to which they nevertheless attach the highest importance. The one law of Christianity which replaces all the commandments is to love one's neighbour as oneself, the moral ideal of Buddhism is selfless benevolence & beneficence to others; the moral ideal of Hinduism is the perfect ...
... association and a mechanical comradeship would end in a worldwide fiasco. 323) Vedanta realised is the only practicable basis for a communistic society. It is the kingdom of the saints dreamed of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism. Page 465 324) "Freedom, equality, brotherhood," cried the French revolutionists, but in truth freedom only has been practised with a dose of equality; as ...
... of the striking developments of modern sentiment, was first brought out from our nature and made prominent by religion, compassion and the love of man first intimately and powerfully enforced by Christianity and Buddhism; if they have now a little developed, it is the natural expanding from seeds that had long been sown. Materialism was rather calculated to encourage opposite instincts; and the good ...
... general character. It casts essential Buddhism out of India and replaces it by a huge phantasmagorical complex Hinduised Buddhism; it constantly purges mysticism out of Europe and replaces essential Christianity with its sublimely tender and delicate Oriental psychology by a strenuous, external, dogmatic, materialistic and practical creed. Individual men and even men in the mass are ready enough to change ...
... in the Sun, ie the free Soul lodged in the vijñâna , and the legend "In this sign thou shalt conquer," which is appropriate, Page 233 but has the disadvantage of being borrowed from Christianity and Constantine. It would perhaps be better if you could find a Sanscrit equivalent or substitute. K. [23] Jan 2. 1920 Dear M— I write today only for your question about Manindranath ...
... know that there is anything exactly corresponding to them in the language of Indian spiritual thinking, although the experiences on which the distinction rests are quite familiar. On another side, Christianity insists not only on a double but a triple Page 88 Divine. It even strikes me that this triple Godhead or Trinity is not very far off at bottom from my trinity of the individual, cosmic ...
... in the human mind perhaps since the beginning, though more often perfection is put in some golden Page 401 age of the past and deterioration and a cataclysm is the law of the future. Christianity foresees a descent of Christ and his rule on earth, but this is figured as an outward event, not as a change produced by an inward power and process or by Yoga. A reign of the saints is also fo ...
... even when they had not the same origin, have most of them been made in the same way. We know how the Christian religion came into existence. It was certainly not Jesus who made what is known as Christianity, but some learned and very clever men put their heads together and built it up into the thing we see. There was nothing divine in the way in which it was formed, and there is nothing divine either ...
... result from a large spiritual sowing. " Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted ...
... were the starting-point of the Christian religion. To say what they have brought to the world it would be necessary to give a historical and psychological account of the development of the life of Christianity and the action of the Christian religion upon earth. That would take a long time and be somewhat out of place here. I can only say that the writers of the Gospels have tried to reproduce exactly ...
... On Thoughts and Aphorisms Aphorism - 201, 202 201—Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, "Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing and a worm before God; renounce then egoism, live for a future state and submit thyself to God and His priest." The results were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, "Man, thou art ...
... association and a mechanical comradeship would end in a world-wide fiasco. 324—Vedanta realised is the only practicable basis for a communistic society. It is the kingdom of the saints dreamed of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism. As Sri Aurobindo tells us so well, individualism is a kind of self-justified jealousy, the reign of each one for himself. But the only true remedy is the exclusive ...
... derivative - "juvenescence" - of the Latin juvenescere which means "to reach the age of youth", and using it to denote the spring-time or the beginning of an historical era, the first 2,000 years of Christianity summed up as a Year, he writes: In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger. 24 Curiously enough, Rosenthal and Smith who have read a supernatural presence of Evil in Blake's ...
... through that Christian carapace; it seems extremely solid—it's terrible, really! Oh, indeed it is. Even in America, mon petit, they're in its grip. They're always falling back into their Christianity. It's going to be very hard. I don't know why, but every time I come into contact with a Christian thought, it fills me with anger. Oh, I understand! Because it's true, you know, that ...
... and movements have been accused of practicing this kind of sexuality (I think it was the "moral" basis for the accusation against the Templars). It's probably the result of the Christian attitude; Christianity has spoken of "sin" and made it a sin, so there's the result. It's the reaction. But as soon as you are capable of having the true Ananda, truly, spontaneously, it's absolutely repugnant, just ...
... progressive unfolding), the conclusions or the "descents" in the yogic attitude are different.... There are the nihilists, the "Nirvanists" and the illusionists, there are all the religions (like Christianity) that accept the devil's intervention in one form or another; and then pure Vedism, which is the Supreme's eternal unfolding in a progressive objectification. And depending Page 96 on ...
... doesn't. But you know, he's really a victim: when he was seven, his mother sent him to a friars' convert in Spain... till the age of eighteen! Poor man! In Spain! You know, that inexorable Christianity... From seven to eighteen—it's dreadful! No, he's a very nice man, but vitally not strong enough. But if he lived in a convent for so many years, then I understand.... ( Mother remains c ...
... contact with the photo was like this: "Be careful...." I also had a recoil. But I put it down to prejudices. I don't trust my feelings, you understand, in my life I've had such abhorrence of this Christianity.... Was he wearing his habit? Page 313 No, he was in civilian clothes. But I tell you, the impression was that underneath it hasn't been spiritually cultivated. Well, see him ...
... "like that." Then you understand that nothing is impossible. × This great "Plan" is the whole enlargement of Christianity which, since 1967, appears to have taken a decisive turn. × See Agenda VI of July 3 and September ...
... happened next? I wrote her a letter in which I said this: "... You have to see for Page 276 yourself, feel for yourself. If you are satisfied with the religious experience that Christianity represents, I do not see why I should disabuse you. Each one follows the path he feels is good for him. If you came and told me, 'I am seeking something else,' it would be a different matter and ...
... words are trying to let that élan find voice. The Vedic search for the Sun lost in the cave of Earth, the Vaishnava worship of the Incarnate Divine, the Word become Flesh of neo-platonic Christianity, the belief in the resurrection of the body - these too are the same élan seeking an outlet. And an outlet is sought in all our straining towards perfect beauty in art, perfect truth in ...
... being and not the be-all and end-all of our entire life, and most religions confine themselves to a particular splendid formula of the deific and fight shy of certain sides of mystical experience - Christianity, for instance, of the pantheistic realisation or the realisation of absolute union between God and man, and Islam not only of these realisations but also of the God with form as well as of the incarnate ...
... sentimental and sonorous alexandrines? According to Lucas, Hugo himself in his famous preface to that early play of his, Cromwell, associates Romanticism above all with "the grotesque". Christianity, with its sense of Sin, is said to have brought melancholy into the world by making man realise the paradox of his imperfect nature: as William Watson puts it - Magnificent out of the dust we ...
... this emanation-sense of his early days. He can still refuse to make God stand over against Nature as a watchmaker Page 123 facing a watch: he seeks a via media between orthodox Christianity and Nature-mysticism by conceiving Nature as a piece of art, an imaginative creation in which God's Self gets expressed with an inner warmth and intimate subjectivity as a poet's being gets expressed ...
... longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of Time. Although the necessity of renunciation is evidence of the existence of evil, yet Christianity, in preaching it, has shown a wisdom exceeding that of the Promethean philosophy of rebellion. It must be admitted that, of the things we desire, some, though they prove impossible, are yet real ...
... increased that feeling of optimism. A kind of vague humanism appealed to me. Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life's problems which was certainly not that ...
... Games, however, went on without interruption. Roman aristocrats and athletes now came across the seas to compete with Greek athletes in the ancient Games. But when the Roman Emperors converted to Christianity, the Games lost their patronage. An edict of the Emperor Theodosus I, in AD 393, closed all "pagan" shrines. Zeus the Thunderer and all the other gods of Mount Olympus were banished. The last Olympiad ...
... new race, a new age. Both Mother and Sri Aurobindo have come down here, into this clay world of ours, with a particular mission. It is not to establish another religion like Buddhism, Islam or Christianity. All these -isms are now back in great numbers. But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother do not want to found a religion; they want to establish a new race, a new race of Supramental beings, out of this ...
... Tamilian? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, and also that the Tamilians were Jews! Do you know that now the Germans claim Christ as a German? PURANI: But I thought Hitler and Ludendorf were trying to give up Christianity and go back to the old Norse religion. SRI AUROBINDO: That's because they found Christ inconvenient in many ways. The Turks also tried, when they became free, to go back to everything of old ...
... civilisation left there. What reigns there is barbarism supported by science—science meaning physical science. And Hitler has destroyed human civilisation wherever he has gone—as in Poland. PURANI: Christianity and all religion seem to be his targets. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. What he may want is Ludendorf's religion—the Norse religion of a primitive type where primitive instincts are worshipped. PURANI: ...
... period. SRI AUROBINDO: That is true, though there was still some Muslim rule. PURANI: The Madras man also says that the argument about being rulers is funny. The Harijans, who are converts to Christianity, may after fifty years claim that because they have the same religion as the British, they were the rulers. (Laughter) Somebody else said that if only one district from U.P. was included in Punjab ...
... should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly ...
... European impact. She aimed at something more. Nature demanded of her that she should discover a greater secret of human unity and through progressive experiments apply and establish it in fact. Christianity did" not raise this problem of the greater synthesis, for the Christian peoples were more culture-minded than religious-minded. It was left for an Asiatic people to set the problem and for India ...
... world. And one can take it as the pattern of human growth generally; but in the scheme described above we have left out one particular phase and purposely. I refer to the great event of Christ and Christianity. For without that European civilisation loses more than half of its import and value. After the Roman Decline began the ebbtide, the trough, the dark shadow of the deepening abyss of the Middle ...
... Druidic Mysteries were more ancient than the Greek culture and formed perhaps the basis of the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries-which impelled her foremost to embrace the new revelation brought on by Christianity. As she was among the pioneers to champion the cause of the Christ, she became also the fortress where the new cult found a safe refuge when the old world was being overwhelmed and battered to pieces ...
... Chamberlaine, Neville, 100 Chandragupta, 93, 394 Chaucer, 194 China, 119, 238-40, 242 Christ, 6, 50, 14511., 151, 154, 164, 195, 208,213-14,259,273-4,381,384 Christianity, 23, 58, 151, 168, 213, 280,282,359 Churchill, Winston, 91, Ill, 128 Coleridge, 194 Commonwealth, 91, 106, 236 Communism, 25, 27-8, 125-6 Confucius, 222 ...
... long reply suffused with sparkling humour. Here is it: Anatole's boutade and God's rejoinder! "Dilip, "Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about that rational animal man or Humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct. "But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole ...
... Materialism, Asceticism and the Middle Path (c) Spirit of tolerance, assimilation and synthesis (d) True understanding of religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism. (e) Synthesis of spiritual experience. 2. Indian Literature: (a) Sanskrit and Tamil (b) Birth of modem Indian languages (c) Great literary ...
... and claims of superiority of one system of religion or Yoga over other systems of religion or Yoga, there was fundamentally a large Catholicism and a spirit of assimilation and even of synthesis. Christianity came to India early in the. first century A.D. and there came also several other influences, all of which were welcomed and given a place in the large and developing field of the Indian Religion ...
... Odyssey provided the basis of Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and they formed the backbone of humanistic education down to the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity. We should also note that Virgil's Aeneid was loosely moulded after the pattern of the Iliad and Odyssey, and thus the Aeneid's influence on Roman and subsequent history can be traced to Homer's ...
... al aspects of religion, (ii) they are related to individual's inner lives, and (iii) they mark important stages of the discipline of spiritual 5 practice, even though most of them are tied to Christianity, a few to other religions, and others that are independent of any religion. If we maintain that every religion has a spiritual core which is its most important component, and if yoga is primarily ...
... a relative which meant that he could talk freely with her. He disliked the suite appointed to attend him and he hated Brummer. Moreover, he had only contempt for the Russians and their Orthodox Christianity. He even told her that he really loved and wanted to many one of the Empress's ladies-in-waiting who, because her mother Page 18 had been guilty of conspiring against the throne, had ...
... recent times the yogic quest undertaken by Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, as also by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, has verified the yogic truths of religions like Buddhism and Jainism as also Christianity and Islam and others, and they have been discovered and reconfirmed in their veracity and in their place in the ever-enlarging domain of yogic knowledge. This has opened up a new possibility of ...
... engaged in a vigorous proselytization of the Hindus who were given to sending their children to the missionary institutions. About a decade earlier, in 1841, three Hindu students were converted to Christianity. This 'conversion' caused a great panic among the Hindu community. This was also directly responsible for the founding of the Pachaiyappa's School in 1842 with a view to providing education to the ...
... cross to be worn next to the heart, the fakirs proclaimed that these would lead to the eventual conversion of all sepoys to Page 17 Christianity. Ostensibly, the Mohammedan soldiers, being the erstwhile ruling class, resented the idea of conversion more than their Hindu counterparts. According to Maya Gupta's research, based ...
... quotation from Sri Aurobindo: Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection. Christianity gave him Page 180 some vision of Divine love and charity, Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler and purer; Judaism and Islam, how to be religiously ...
... economic success, and a strong national defence as the underpinnings of our future. Finally, and most important, we must reinterpret all the religions practised in India - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and all other religions, which are practised in the country — at a deeper level. The time has come when we have to begin to seriously consider what they all really mean and are in their soul, that ...
... about his approach. I never knew what was Jean Monnet's philosophy but it was clear for me that his project of human unity, for which Europe after all was only a stepping stone, was quite similar to Christianity." 30 Of course this way of functioning implied that Monnet at a given time could have access to the leaders in power, either , directly or through their subordinates. It meant that his credit ...
... world. And one can take it as the pattern of human growth generally; but in the scheme described above we have left out one particular phase and purposely. I refer to the great event of Christ and Christianity. For without that European civilisation loses more than half of its import and value. After the Roman Decline began the ebb-tide, the trough, the dark shadow of the deepening abyss of the Middle ...
... European impact. She aimed at something more. Nature demanded of her that she should discover a greater secret of human unity and through progressive experiments apply and establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise this problem of the greater synthesis, for the Christian peoples were more culture-minded than religious-minded. It was left for an Asiatic people to set the problem and for India ...
... ya, Harindranath, 69n -The Strange Journey, 69n -"Blue Profound", 69n Chicago, 196n China, 133, 281 Christ, Jesus, 68, 107, 114, 116-18, 120, 122-4, 129, 240, 267 Christianity, 120, 125, 240, 244, 276 Coleridge, 84, 235 -Kubla Khan, 84 Commonwealth, 284, 290 Communism (Sovietic), 253 Confucius, 281 Cousins, James H., 52n -New Ways in English ...
... has not confined itself within the play of the lower – the three gunas of nature. Its gaze is fixed on a still higher region. Europe claims herself to be the follower of the Christ. But how has Christianity developed there? It was the Church martyr in the beginning, it developed into the Church militant which finally turned into the Church political. The Christian church aimed at establishing the kingdom ...
... Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a ...
... 112, 150, 187, 189,232, 268,317,347 Byron, 209 CAESAR, 116,209,324,406 Chaitanya, 209 Cha1dea, 199 Christ, 64, 73, 82, 93, 116, 118, 127, 130, 187, 189, 191,209, 243, 283, 317 Christianity, 192 Chronos, 226 Colbert, 209, 411 Congo, 323-4 Curie, 428 Cyclops, 99 DAITYA, 46 Danege1d, 117 Dante, l8ln., 203, 209 – Divina Commedia, 181n. – Irifemo, 181n ...
... sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Life – hell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal demands an absolute denial and rejection of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in. heaven) ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Buddhism and Hinduism I BUDDHISM, or for that matter, Christianity or Mohammadenism or any credal and personal religion, is easy to understand. For they are each of them a single and simple entity, whereas Hinduism is a multiple and complex organism. The difference is that between a tree, a ...
... universal religions could be studied with the methods of comparative studies. Particularly we may emphasise the study of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. Along with these religions, there should be a detailed study of the lives of great personalities associated with these religions, or various systems of yoga such as Rama, Krishna ...
... advent of the dialectic philosopher Hegel it has become a fashion among Western scholars to find an antithesis in every field of historical truth. From their own history they come to learn that Christianity arose as a revolt against the idolatry of the Romans, again Martin Luther and Protestantism stood out against the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise they are, as it were, eager to discover a revolt ...
... On the other hand, the self-poised Vidyapati with his eyes wide open sang: Childhood and youth fuse together. ¹ A similar event seems to have taken place in Europe with the advent of Christianity. The Graeco-Latin culture was predominantly based on reason and knowledge like that of the Indian Aryans. But Christ appeared on the. scene with the emotional gift of the psychic being. Page ...
... people try and fool the poor, simple, uneducated people of the villages in many ways. In one such incident a group of Westerners came to a village in their car. Their objective was to propagate Christianity among the poor simpletons of the villages. They wanted to prove that Jesus Christ was greater than the gods and goddesses, Allah or the saints and fakirs of the village. The Westerners ...
... Page 155 sure you would too, hoping you would have something to say to it. Dilip Dilip, Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about the rational animal humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France when ...
... its worthiness to reach the kingdom of God away rom the earth. Milton wanted "to justify the ways of God to man" but he does not succeed in his task because perhaps the inspiration of puritanic Christianity was not sufficient to fulfil that task. Sāvitrī is a poem of hope and fulfilment on earth. It is a poem of knowledge in the sense that it weaves the conditions of man's highest fulfilment in ...
... Chinese spiritual tradition regards Chien (Heaven) as the Father and Khun (Earth) as the Mother of all terrestrial existence. The union of Earth and Heaven has been the ideal not only of esoteric Christianity but also of many of the more ancient forms of spiritual mysticism. Seen in this perspective, the Earth appears as the only field in the whole universe for the highest divine realisation and ...
... life in the world. The second attitude of qualified rejection is of a much wider applicability. The Vedanta as interpreted by Shankara, the catholic forms of Mahayana Buddhism, Jainism and Christianity accept action as a preliminary means of purification. Certain prescribed actions, calculated to calm the mind of the neophyte and help the growth of disinterestedness and concentration, are enjoined ...
... spiritual realization, or give the lie to sane and substantial finding of metaphysical speculation. I luminous amplitude Vedanta joins hands with Sankhya, Tantra with Vaishnavism, Paganism with Christianity, and even Materialism finds its essential quest justified, rightly interpreted and enlightened, and itself united with spirituality in a happy wedlock. It is a synthesis, not achieved by an in ...
... deals with mysticism one has to be very careful, because there are many truths and also many imaginations. Disciple : The Rosicrusians also believe in the reality of mystic experience of Christianity. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, X belonged to that group in England. But it created a lot of difficulty in his Sadhana because they posit two things in man, good and evil persons. The evil person ...
... comes in Yoga also. But these things are not deep and profound." Page 304 The symbolism which he claims to have evolved for the complete explanation and interpretation of Christianity looked very elaborate to me. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, all that may be true but it is not poetry. Middleton Murray and some others try to make so much of his poetry. It is the same you find people ...
... untouchables. But there is a saying, "none so blind as those that will not see." To call Sri Ramakrishna orthodox is also more than an innovation for he practised not only Hinduism but tried Islam and Christianity too. He came to the conclusion that all religions, if followed sincerely as paths for the realisation of God, lead ultimately to the same experience. This is not "Hindu Godami", by any stretch of ...
... price for a painting understands art. The first genuine outburst of inspiration in European art,—apart from Greek which derived much from Crete, Asia minor and Egypt,—was after the spread of Christianity. It was during the Renaissance that churches, statues and paintings came as if in floods. Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque and other styles found expression in church-building. Great creators came ...
... in countenancing the emergence of new sects; they solve nothing, and only add to our problems or give further vicious twists to them: The religion which embraces Science and faith. Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because ...
... of this incident and partly also because of his apparently christianised name 'Aravinda Ackroyd Ghose' that there was once current the unfounded rumour that Sri Aurobindo had been converted to Christianity. Three or four years after Sri Aurobindo and his brothers had taken residence with the Drewetts, on account of differences with the deacons Mr. Drewett resigned the pastorage of the Stockport ...
... the face of a Mother. (P.44 L. S) "Still dolorously nailed upon a cross Lest all too soon should change again to bliss" Book II Canto 8. These have nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with the symbol of the Cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain. It is not Christ but world-soul which hangs here. (P ...
... of the life of suffering into the silence of the Void, or the fathomless peace of the Permanent, beyond the swirl of sanskaras. For life its only message is one of sudden or gradual extinction. Christianity regards life as a long probation and preparation, and counsels its adherents to lay up for themselves "treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and whence thieves do not break ...
... some of them time to grow towards a possibility of a clear and willed choice." However, old mother Drewett was a fervent Evangelist, and wished very much to convert the three Indian boys to Christianity 'to save their souls.' But her son would not hear of it. Nothing daunted, the old lady took her chance with the Page 126 youngest. Was he then converted? "What is all this legend ...
... her creation in a close embrace. But now her children, the educated men of Bengal, were turning away from her, from the truth of their forefathers; many were becoming agnostic or embracing Christianity. The very fabric of the Hindu society was threatened. Such was the scene when there appeared on the stage a rationalist and a great reformer, Raja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833). He is considered ...
... His teacher of Tantrism was a Bhairavi, a Brahmin lady. Not only did Ramakrishna master the intricacies of various lines of Hindu spirituality, but he experienced also the essence of Islam and Christianity ... and found them dry and poor. Ramakrishna summed up in his life the final message of Hinduism. "In the life of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity, first driving ...
... all-demanding God, Zoroastrianism's call for a purity of prayer like a fire rising up to an overarching Truth-supporting Divinity and for a smiling service to one's fellow Truth-lovers in need, Christianity's ardour for a World-Saviour sent by a Deity of justice and mercy to a sinful mankind through a miraculous virgin birth and insisting on works of charity and on converting by all means possible the ...
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