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→What is Religion?
...religion is the spiritual and ethical life of the individual, the relations of his soul with God and the intimate dealings of his will and character with other individuals, and no monarch or governing class, not even a theocracy or priesthood, can really substitute itself for the soul of the individual or for the soul of a nation.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/the-drive-towards-legislative-and-social-centralisation-and-uniformity#p10</ref>
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The Supreme is, finally, Pure Ecstasy, Absolute Bliss, NANDA. Now just as SAT and CHIT are the same, so are SAT and CHIT not different from NANDA; just as Existence is Consciousness and cannot be separated from Consciousness, so Conscious Existence is Bliss and cannot be separated from Bliss.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/the-philosophy-of-the-upanishads#p36</ref><center>~</center>
God is Universal, he is Omnipresent, Infinite, not subject to limits.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/an-incomplete-work-of-vedantic-exegesis#p2</ref>
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...universal religion, a system, a thing of creed and intellectual belief and dogma and outward rite. Mankind has tried unity by that means; it has failed and deserved to fail, because there can be no universal religious system, one in mental creed and vital form
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/summary-and-conclusion#p11</ref>
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...very essence of religion is the discovery of the immaterial Spirit and the play of a supraphysical consciousness.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/reason-and-religion#p8</ref>
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Sri Aurobindo defines religion as the seeking after the spiritual, that is, the Supermind, of what is beyond the ordinary human consciousness, and what ought to influence life from a higher realm. So, as religion seeks this it is beyond the reason, because it goes to the suprarational. And so how can reason help in the realm of religion? What he means is that if one uses reason to judge the field of religion and progress in it, one is sure to make mistakes, because reason is not the master there and it is not capable of enlightening. If you want to judge any religion with your reason, you are sure to make mistakes, for it is outside and beyond the field of reason. Reason can judge things which belong to the rational domain of ordinary life. And as he says later, the true role of reason is to be like a control and an organiser of the movements of human life in the mind and the vital. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/25-may-1955#p8</ref>
===Brahman===
Brahman, we have seen, is the Universal Consciousness which Is and delights in Being; impersonal, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, sole-existing, the One than whom there is no other, and all things and creatures have only a phenomenal existence in Brahman and by Brahman.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/an-incomplete-work-of-vedantic-exegesis#p2</ref>
===The Lord===
In the universe there is a constant relation of Oneness and Multiplicity. This expresses itself as the universal Personality and the many Persons, and both between the One and the Many and among the Many themselves there is the possibility of an infinite variety of relations. These relations are determined by the play of the divine existence, the Lord, entering into His manifested habitations. They exist at first as conscious relations between individual souls; they are then taken up by them and used as a means of entering into conscious relation with the One. It is this entering into various relations with the One which is the object and function of Religion. All religions are justified by this essential necessity; all express one Truth in various ways and move by various paths to one goal. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/17/the-lord#p13</ref>
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Gods are those who are turned to the Light, who live in the Power and the Knowledge; that is what the Buddha means, he does not mean the gods of religion. They are beings who have the divine nature, who may live in human bodies, but free from ignorance and falsehood. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/happiness#p16</ref>
===Theocracy===
...true theocracy is the kingdom of God in man and not the kingdom of a Pope, a priesthood or a sacerdotal class.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/religion-as-the-law-of-life#p5</ref>
===Philosophy of Vedanta===
The philosophy of the Upanishads is the basis of all Indian religion and morals and to a considerable extent of Hindu politics, legislation and society. Its practical importance to [our] race is therefore immense. the Unity of all things is the rock on which the Upanishads have been built. Evolution has been discovered and [analyzed] by Science; Evolution of a kind is implied at every turn by the Vedanta. Vedantism like Science, [but] after its own fashion, [is] severely conscientious in its logical processes and rigorously experimental; [Vedantism] has mastered physical and psychical laws which Science [is] now beginning to handle.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/the-philosophy-of-the-upanishads#p2</ref>
=== Adwaita Philosophy===
In the Vedantic theory of this Universe and its view of the nature of the Brahman and Its relations to the phenomena that make up this Universe, there is one initial paradox from which the whole Vedantic philosophy, religion and ethics take their start. We have seen that in existence as we see it there is Something that is eternal, immutable and one, to which we give the name of Brahman, amidst an infinite deal that is transient, mutable and multifold. Brahman as the eternal, immutable and one, is not manifest but latent; This Brahman, this Sacchidanandam, this eternal Consciousness unknowable, unnameable and indefinable, which reason cannot analyse, nor imagination put into any shape, nor the mind and senses draw within their jurisdiction, is the Transcendent Reality which alone truly exists. The sole existence of this Turiya Brahman or Transcendent Eternal Consciousness is the basis of the Adwaita philosophy.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/an-incomplete-work-of-vedantic-exegesis#p4</ref>
=== Visishtadwaita===
even though Brahman be the One Self, He has become Many by His own Iccha or Will and the exercise of His Will is not for a moment or limited by time & space or subject to fatigue, but for ever. He is eternal and therefore His Iccha is eternal and the Many Selves which live in Him by His Iccha are eternal and do not perish, for they also being really Brahman the Self are indistinguishable from Him in nature and though their bodies, mind-forms and all else may perish, cannot themselves perish. He may draw them into Himself in utter communion, but He can also release them again into separate communion, and this is actually what happens. All else is transient and changes & passes, but the Self that is One and the Self that is Many are both of them real and eternal; and still they are One Self.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/an-incomplete-work-of-vedantic-exegesis#p5</ref>
===Dwaita===
This eternity of the Oneself and eternity of the Many-Selves shows that both are real without beginning and without end and the difference between them is therefore without beginning and end. The One is true and the Many are true, and the One is not and cannot be the Many, though the Many live in and for the One. This is Dwaita
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/an-incomplete-work-of-vedantic-exegesis#p5</ref>
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Religion, however imperfect, has the secret of that mastery; religion can conquer the natural instincts and desires of man, metaphysics can only convince him logically that they ought to be conquered—an immense difference. For this reason philosophy has never been able to satisfy any except the intellectual few and was even for a time relegated to oblivion by the imperious contempt of Science which thought that it had discovered a complete solution of the Universe, a truth and a law of life independent of religion and yet able to supersede religion in its peculiar province of reaching & regulating the sources of conduct and leading mankind in its evolution. But it has now become increasingly clear that Science has failed to substantiate its claims, and that a belief in evolution or the supremacy of physical laws or the subjection of the ephemeral individual to the interests of the slightly less ephemeral race is no substitute for a belief in Christ or Buddha, for the law of Divine Love or the trust in Divine Power & Providence… Religion which satisfies the heart and controls conduct, cannot in its average conceptions permanently satisfy the reason and thus exposes itself to gradual loss of empire over the mind. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/an-incomplete-work-of-vedantic-exegesis#p19</ref>
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In spirituality, then, understood in this sense, we must seek for the directing light and the harmonising law, and in religion only in proportion as it identifies itself with this spirituality...Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one's own nature, dharma. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/religion-as-the-law-of-life#p9</ref>
...self-searching, self-controlled expansion and a many-sided finding of their greatest, highest and deepest potentialities.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/religion-as-the-law-of-life#p9</ref>
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God gives Himself to His whole creation; no one religion holds the monopoly of His Grace. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/religion#p1</ref>
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We give the name of religion to any concept of the world or the universe which is presented as the exclusive Truth in which one must have an absolute faith, generally because this Truth is declared to be the result of a revelation.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/aims-and-principles#p237</ref>