Chapter 6Idealism and Spirituality · The Collapse of Twentieth-Century Idealism

form of religion is something permanent and unchangeable, then that cannot be accepted. But if religion here means one’s way of communion with the Divine, then it is true that that is something belonging to the inner being and cannot be changed like a house or a cloak for the sake of some personal, social or worldly convenience. If a change is to be made, it can only be for an inner spiritual reason, because of some development from within. No one can be bound to any form of religion or any particular creed or system, but if he changes the one he has accepted for another, for external reasons, that means he has inwardly no religion at all and both his old and his new religion are only an empty formula. At bottom that is, I suppose, what the statement drives at. Preference for a different approach to the Truth or the desire of inner spiritual self-expression are not the motives of the recommendation of change to which objection is made by the Mahatma here; the object proposed is an enhancement of social status and consideration which is no more a spiritual motive than conversion for the sake of money or marriage. If a man has no religion in himself, he can change his credal profession for any motive; if he has, he cannot; he can only change it in response to an inner spiritual need. If a man has a bhakti for the Divine in the form of Krishna, he can’t very well say, “I will swap Krishna for Christ so that I may become socially respectable.”

* You can write to him not to be depressed by his failures but to go on aspiring and trust in the Divine Grace. He should not allow himself to be impeded by narrow caste ideas. Always in India the Brahmins have bowed down before a man of spiritual realisation, who becomes by that very fact of realisation above caste. He should open himself more to the help from here. Man is a mass of imperfections — it is only by the divine Grace that he reaches the Divine.

It is correct, religions at best modify only the surface of the nature. Moreover they degenerate very soon into a routine of ceremonial habitual worship and fixed dogmas.

* If you feel no enthusiasm for the ´sr¯addha it is better definitely to stop it. Once on this path there is no meaning in it any longer, — for the reason you yourself give.2 The ´sr¯addha is, besides, entirely on the vital plane and if help has to be given to those who have passed into other worlds of consciousness, there are better ways of doing it.

* Replace the ´sr¯addha by a long meditation with X on the father praying that he may have all the rest and illumination that the departed can have.

* I only said what was originally meant by the ceremonies — the rites. I was not referring to the feeding of the caste or the Brah-mins which is not a rite or ceremony. Whether the ´sr¯addha as performed is actually effective is another matter — for those who perform it have not either the knowledge or the occult power.

* The old traditions [stotras, homas, aradhanas, recitations, etc.] are still strong with many — let them satisfy this tendency in this way so long as it does not drop from them.

* Useless and therefore inadvisable [to sacrifice animals to Kali]. External sacrifices of this kind have no longer any meaning — as so many saints have said, sacrifice ego, anger, lust etc. to Kali, not goats or cocks.

2 The correspondent said that a sadhak is expected to forget all conventional family relationships and live only for the Divine. — Ed.