Religion Summary

Read more about Religion from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being,—religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue of entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, connected, sometimes in a variable collaboration, sometimes in dispute with each other, sometimes in a separate independence. All these variations were necessary; the evolutionary endeavor of Nature has experimented on all lines to find her true way and her whole way towards the supreme consciousness and the integral knowledge.

What is Religion?

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.

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.

The aim of religion is to link the human with the Divine and in so doing sublimate the thought and life and flesh so that they may admit the rule of the soul and spirit.

The very essence of religion is the discovery of the immaterial Spirit and the play of a supraphysical consciousness.

God gives Himself to His whole creation; no one religion holds the monopoly of His Grace.

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.

Misconception of Religion

Religious consciousness which is limited & enslaved by its creeds and to which its way of worship is a master and not a servant, because it leaves no room for a "Personal" God.

Religious thought cannot be used unless it is liberated from the influence of religions.

If you want to find one teaching, one doctrine upon which to base your progress, you will never find anything.

Religion is always a limitation for the spirit.

Instead of taking these religions in their outward forms which are precisely dogmas and intellectual conceptions, if we take them in their spirit, in the principle they represent, there is no difficulty in unifying them… that last "spiritual revolution" Sri Aurobindo speaks about, which will open a new age, that is, the supramental revolution.

"All would change if man could once consent to be spiritualized; but his nature, mental and vital and physical, is rebellious to the higher law. He loves his imperfection."

Why Religion is Important?

Purpose of Religion

To see your Self in all creatures and all creatures in your Self—that is the unshakeable foundation of all religion, love, patriotism, philanthropy, humanity, of everything which rises above selfishness and gross utility.

The Spirit is the truth of our being; mind and life and body in their imperfection are its masks, but in their perfection should be its moulds. Religions are forms, much too human, of spiritual life. Each one expresses one aspect of the single and eternal Truth, but in expressing it exclusive of the other aspects, it deforms and diminishes it.

The truth of Sri Aurobindo is a truth of love and light and mercy. He is good and great and compassionate and Divine. And it is He who will have the final victory.

Spiritual religion of humanity is the hope of the future. spiritual life insists on freedom and variation in its self-expression and means of development.

Why People Follow Religion?

People cling to a religion, because that religion has helped them in one way or another, it has helped in them precisely something which wanted to have a certitude, not to have to search but to be able to rest on something solid without being responsible for the solidity.

Why Morality?

Its true aim is a preparation and purification of the soul to fit it for the presence of God.

How to Embrace God?=

Karmamarga, the Way of Works, one of the three ways by which the spirit of man may see, embrace & become God.

Give up the natural desire for the fruits of our works and surrender all we do, think, feel and are into the keeping of the Eternal, To identify ourself with all creatures in the Universe both individually and collectively, realising our larger Self in others.

In every religion there are some who have evolved a high spiritual life. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion.

The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity.

The children of Auroville should replace the exclusiveness of one religion by the wide faith of knowledge.

Religion and philosophy seek to rescue man from his ego; then the kingdom of heaven within will be spontaneously reflected in an external divine city. If one has faith in the god of a religion, how can one have faith in the incarnate Divine?

Why Religion Failed?

Religion too by putting God far above in distant heavens made man too much of a worm of the earth little and vile before his Creator and admitted only by a caprice of his favour to a doubtful salvation in superhuman worlds.

False socialisation of religion has been always the chief cause of its failure to regenerate mankind.

People follow religion by social habit, in order not to get into the bad books of others. One of the greatest comforts of religion is that you can get hold of God sometimes and give him a satisfactory beating. People mock at the folly of savages who beat their gods when their prayers are not answered; but it is the mockers who are the fools and the savages.

The Way Forward

A revolutionary reconstruction of religion, philosophy, science, art and society is the last inevitable outcome. It proceeds at first by the light of the individual mind and reason, by its demand on life and its experience of life; but it must go from the individual to the universal.

What is farther needed is the awakening of a certain vision, an insight and an intuitive response in the soul.

Read more about Religion from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.