“Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses' ordinances
are dead for humanity and the Shastra of the Brahmin is corrupt and dying. Law
released into freedom is the liberator. Not the Pandit, but the Yogin, not
monasticism, but the inner renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism.”
Each religion has a truth in it but when it becomes exclusive it mutatis
mutandis gets corrupted. Each ism in the social organization has a truth in it
but when it becomes exclusive, again, it gets corrupted. The realization of the
inner law of one’s own being is the only guarantee that can lead one on the
path of true progress. The problem is the realization of the inner law of each
collective unit in the possibilities of the manifesting spirit and our
endeavour must be to attend to it. ~ RYD
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. [p. 117]
A nation is not made by common blood, a common tongue
or a common religion; these are only important helps and powerful conveniences.
But wherever communities of men not bound by family ties are united in one
sentiment and aspiration to defend a common inheritance from their ancestors or
assure a common future for their posterity, there a nation is already in
existence. [p. 118]
The quarrels of religious sects are like the disputing
of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalising nectar. Let
them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in whatever pot and
obtain immortality. [p. 84]
Christ came into the world to purify, not to fulfil. He
himself foreknew the failure of his mission and the necessity of his re- turn
with the sword of God into a world that had rejected him. [p. 99]
Mahomed's mission was necessary, else we might have
ended by thinking, in the exaggeration of our efforts at self-purification,
that earth was meant only for the monk and the city created as a vestibule for
the desert. [pp. 99-100]
When all is said, Love and Force together can save the
world eventually, but not Love only or Force only. Therefore Christ had to look
forward to a second advent and Mahomed's religion, where it is not stagnant,
looks forward through the Imams to a Mehdi. [p. 100]
Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses' ordinances
are dead for humanity and the Shastra of the Brahmin is corrupt and dying. Law
released into freedom is the liberator. Not the Pandit, but the Yogin, not monasticism,
but the inner renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism. [p. 100]
The old Indian social ideal demanded of the priest
voluntary simplicity of life, purity, learning and the gratuitous instruction
of the community, of the prince, war, government, protection of the weak and
the giving up of his life in the battlefield, of the merchant, trade, gain and
the return of his gains to the community by free giving, of the serf, labour
for the rest and material havings. In atonement for his serfhood, it spared him
the tax of self-denial, the tax of blood and the tax of his riches. [pp. 102-03]
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 the 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 an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature
than the ant and the earthworm, a transitory speck only in the universe. Live
then for the State and submit thyself antlike to the trained administrator and
the scientific expert." Will this gospel succeed any better than the
other? [p.104]
Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms, Vol.17