During the World War Two Winston Churchill was asked: “What is your aim in the War?” He simply replied: “Victory.” In that one word is the quintessence of time that shaped history. Some other power had entered into operation and it seized the ready instrument. It is some noble force of that kind which must enter into our reckoning.

Interfaith dialogue is political

Yet let us look into some of the immediate characteristics of these dialogues. Generally these are motivated by religious-political considerations, lacking deeper concerns.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron says: “We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so. The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today. Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.” When the stand is to defend, at once ends there the dialogue.

In Cameron’s contention there is a warning about the conflict that exists between Religion and the State, a thing which was supposed to belong to the past. But when religiosity overtakes a State things become ominous, dreadful. This has happened in the long history, it happens repeatedly even now, as in Pakistan. At the time of the ill-conceived Partition of India in 1947, the sole consideration was religion. But what has that accomplished? misery, all around desolation and wretchedness. Religion has debilitated human society. We are now nourishing extreme radicalization.

We build walls of every kind. And then we talk of dialogues. Most byzantine walls to knock down are the walls of the dark-browed faith. We should also understand that dogma never comes in the purview of discussion. It is futile to engage ourselves with it. What cannot be proved can neither be disproved. That is plain logic. All these go in support of exclusivist claims. If the Hindu thought believes in, say rebirth, there is just no point in arguing with them who don’t. These could be facts not for them who live in another world of life with its own exclusivist claims.

Sri Aurobindo on Hindu-Muslim unity

About a hundred years ago Sri Aurobindo had spoken of Hindu-Muslim Unity. His was the solitary voice that firmly opposed the 1916-Luknow Pact which proposed separate representations based on religious ground; but the voice remained unheard. Then, in a talk dated 18 April 1923, he says: “I am sorry they are making a fetish of this Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself, it would automatically solve the problem.” The problem is, the lack of organization of the Hindu society and among the Muslims largely the want of liberal education. The twin evils remain intact even today. We have lent ourselves to falsehood. And falsehood has the habit of promoting falsehood further.

Then there are issues which are neither religious nor academic. In the remote Siberia an orthodox organization maintains that the Indian scripture Bhagavad Gita upholds terrorism; it demands its inclusion in the list of extremist literature, in the class of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. A legal case is made for the ban. We may dismiss the affair by calling it sad or absurd or grotesque; we may ridicule it altogether. But behind this there could be operating the fundamentalist-national-political factors.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, stuns the Indian audience by quoting the Vedas—“reality is one but wise men perceive it differently.” He goes on to say, “Every religion promotes peace. We know how much India needs peace and harmony and the world needs it too.” And who is to bring peace to India? The answer is obvious: the self-appointed Cardinal.

Inculturation

This leads us to the mischievous inculturation. Set out by the Vatican Council, it is a camouflage to trap people from other faiths into the fold of Christianity; it has become a legitimate instrument. Building temple-like churches using Hindu symbols and paraphernalia is an obvious stratagem. Professor FX Clooney from Harvard University's Divinity Department is one such promoter. He follows the steps of Roberto de Nobili who, a Jesuit, came from Italy posing as a "Roman Brahmin", donning ochre robe, learning Indian languages, forging "Yasur Veda", and what not. Borrow native cultural habits and practices, insinuate into the local culture, penetrate into their ideals and imaginations,—that is inculturation. There is no end to subterfuges unappeasable ambition can employ. When the mind enters into the vital domain there appear two hungry wolves in us, each justifying and exploiting the existence of the other.

But the Bible was not handed to mankind by God, nor was dictated to stenographers, says a commentator. In actuality, the Bible wasVOTED by a group of men during the 4th century. Constantine paid large sums to have "holy scriptures" prepared. For him religion was an excellent tool for conquest, Religion serving the State. What had come down as a spiritual force got appropriated by darkness of the human nature. As an extension of it the Indian Bible published in 2008 has a hundred quotations from the Hindu scriptures. This is a matter of concern. This is motivated-calculated universality.

Monier-Williams who had to commit for evangelisation in India, wrote some 150 years ago that when Sanskrit has been baptized and thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of Christianity, will be found the most expressive vehicle of Christian Faith.

Jesus dying for sins and resurrecting on the third day is central to the Christian doctrine. While Christianity also teaches values, one cannot be a Christian simply by holding on to these values. One needs to accept the Nicene creed. Same with Islam. History got written in inquisition and blood when creed and doctrine were flouted.

Spirituality cannot be realised through dialogues between religions, through seminars, discussions, symposia. It is a quest for Reality, first an individual quest and then possibly for the collective; it is in the latter that all the problems arise in their cosmic proportions. The sages describe the One Being in various ways, they call him the Effulgent, the Ordainer of the World, Life-energy of the Universe. These different names are manifestations of the same supreme Reality—ekam sadviprāh bahudā vadanti. But in this central realization smart people start seeing the universal principle of the West given to the Indian tradition. One can be even flippant and say, “We are all Hindus Now.” This is the problem with the American Veda. But that leads to a dangerous situation. In it is the pretext and ruse of swallowing up the host.

Swami Devananda had four decades of dealing with Christian missionaries, and he gives this ominous warning to Hindus: "Christianity is a parasitical religion, which attaches itself to a host culture and feeds off it, absorbing its spirit and lifeblood into itself until the host culture dies and become Christian."

In a Mahabharata story Krishna sent Duryodhana and Dharmaraja around the world. Duruyodhana found it filled with villains. Dharmaraja reported that it is impossible to find even one malicious soul in it. But we are a mixed lot—engaged in a dialogue!

Religion appears nothing but a blood-sucking spider

Here religion appears nothing but a blood-sucking spider. The Mother tells what she noticed in a beautiful cathedral in France. She saw an enormous black vital spider that had spread its web over the whole place, and was catching in it and absorbing all the forces emanating from people's prayers and devotion. It was feeding upon them. Atheism seemed better than devotional worship, worshippers knowing not where their worships went. It is a pity that we are ignorant and blind to the occult agencies who enter into our daily lives. Unless the psychic fire is alert there cannot be any hope for us. Only after coming out of this evil can one rise to authentic spiritual heights, can one participate in the work of the forces of Truth and Consciousness and Power. 

And then there is the strange question of patronization of minority communities in a secular State. Asymmetry gets accentuated with defined minorities eating the cake and cream. The court becomes smart to justify it. It opines that a relatively small part of the tax is utilized for providing some conveniences or facilities or concessions to any religious denomination, and that would not be violative of the Constitution. And then, strangely, it goes on to say that India is a country of immigrants, like North America!

It is truism that in a dialogue neither side is ever willing to sacrifice its principle tenets. One might say that the truth is one but each one has his special truth-claim. Often that truth-claim exhibits insolence towards other truth-claims. Mutual respect between faiths—this is what Being Different proposes. Differences between the Dharmic and Abrahamic-Enlightenment are real in the cosmic mind, and these have just to be lived with. In search of the truth one has to go by the Gita’s injunction: follow your own dharma, but dharma discovered in the inner law of your individual working. “Follow your soul and not your mind that leaps at appearances.”

There is wisdom in Father Bede Griffiths statements: The realm of the sacred is not open to rational argument. Mysticism holds the key to all religious understanding and that is where you and I meet—he writes to Amal Kiran. About twenty years ago they had a long scholarly correspondence, a “dialogue”, but finally it fizzled out into not very unexpected disenchantment. The Father with a round Hindu tilak mark on his ponderous forehead writes: “Our correspondence began because of my great interest in the way the experience of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother confirmed and illumined my faith in the Gospel. But we disagree in our understanding of the significance both of the Gospel and of Sri Aurobindo. … I think we have to stop at that.”

Terrorism is often religiously motivated

These days Islam is the target of Christian missionaries laying the blame of terrorism on it. The Pope intones gravely: “We know that terrorism is often religiously motivated and that the specifically religious character of the attacks is proposed as a justification for the reckless cruelty that considers itself entitled to discard the rules of morality for the sake of the intended ‘good’. In this case, religion does not serve peace, but is used as justification for violence.” But the question is: when was it not? History is full of it.

And what about the other side? On 10 January 2012 a high-ranking Islamic cleric in Madhya Pradesh issued a Fatwa against Surya Namaskar—a physical exercise named Bowing to the Sun-God—even as thousands of school students were participating in the programme. He wanted that to be stopped.

There is another one. It is harām to support the idea of Christmas by taking part in Nativity plays. Christmas is for Christians, Eid is for Muslims. Christmas is a made-up pagan festival for the Christians/non-Muslims. Eid is a Gift from Allah for the Muslims.

It can go farther and say: “Those who reject Faith, fight with them in the cause of Allah; and slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. If a husband divorces his wife he cannot, after that, re-marry her until after she has married another husband and he has divorced her. Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error.”

To the non-Muslim much of this appears weird, but he values the following: “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds; Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Show us the straight way.”

Two hungry wolves within us constantly feed upon us as much as we feed them.

A dialogue had opened new doors of learning

It was perhaps some nobler spirit of religion that had inspired Dara Shikoh. His translation of the Upanishads into Persian, Sirr-e-Akbar (The Greatest Mystery) in course of time reached Max Mueller. A new chapter had begun. Here was a dialogue—in Dara’s phrase the Confluence of the Two Seas—which eventually opened new doors for the West. Had Dara Shikoh instead Aurangazeb ascended the throne the history of the sub-continent would have been different. But Destiny had another dice to play.

Dara was almost a Hindu soul. Professor Munis Faruqui of Berkeley University speaks of his deepening interest in Sufism, “eventually zeroing in on the prince’s attempt to find common language between Islam and Hinduism. He came to the conclusion that the ‘hidden book’ mentioned in the Quran is none other than the Upanishads and believed that in order to understand the Quran, one needed to study the Hindu text.”

In recent days, in the 1930s, Dara—a Muslim disciple of Sri Aurobindo—had a different suggestion for solving the Hindu-Muslim problem. He says the places where they are almost equal in number, let them fight it out among themselves. Fight till they come to a solution? Not quite without sense. If there is the possibility of such a fight, then people instead of talking endlessly would come around. Apropos of the division of the country based on religion, Sri Aurobindo pithily comments in a private talk that, like religious groups, barbers would now start an agitation for an India of their own.

History-centricity

However, in the entire context the question “does God have a religion?” needs to be understood. If the answer is “yes” then we must ask, which one. And if it is his own, is that religion accessible to us? It is here that all the differences start appearing.

Rajiv Malhotra calls upon the western mind to look at the Indian tradition not through Judeo-Christian perspective but in its own terms. It has its own brand of universalism and to look at it it is necessary for the other brand of universalism to widen itself into it. He finds it happening in the sponsorship of such a dialogue by Professor Clooney from Harvard. But there is a big difficulty, of one universalism widening into another universalism. No one knows how this is going to happen—if it can happen.

There is another issue, of the Abrahamic traditions being "history-centric". This is crucial because of the transcendental God interfering in human history. Christ’s birth and crucifixion are important for Christians, and hence of historicity in their tradition.

But can one say that it is not present in the Indian tradition? In fact it is very much there, and the Gita and the Puranas speak of the Avatars and Vibhutis taking birth at every crucial stage. At every historic moment there arrives a Caesar or a Napoleon and he moulds the course of world-events. These interventions seem to be a part of the process; sages and seers have always prayed for their birth. This is because the measures we take mostly belong to tired actions; our attempts prove inadequate. There is of course more to it than that in the birth of the Avatar who comes to establish a new grade of consciousness in the evolutionary advance of this creation.

Let us understand Vivekananda: “I believe religions are not contradictory—they’re supplementary. Each religion takes one part of the same universal truth, as it were, and spends its whole force in embodying and typifying it.”

Religious houses are all half in ruins

Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter about Religion as follows: “Religion is always imperfect because it is a mixture of man's spirituality with his endeavours that come in in trying to sublimate ignorantly his lower nature. Hindu religion appears to me as a cathedral-temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance—crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral-temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit. … I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage…”

What Sri Aurobindo speaks of the house of Hindu religion half in ruins, that is true for the houses of all religions. There are present only traditions and cults. And then a house half in ruins talking to another house which is also half in ruins looks bizarre. There no meaningful dialogue is possible. That is what we may call practical fallacy of a dialogue between different faiths. There are other degrees of fallacy also.

We must know that there are three aspects of the problem, there are three types of life, spiritual, religious, and the common human life. All the three are governed by the laws of Ignorance. They must move in the movement of the Truth, in its Rhythm. “The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness… in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.”

But the trouble is, the western mind refuses to accept that Mind is an instrument of limited knowledge only. The fact is, we are governed by pigmy Thought, and rash Intelligence, and Reason who is but a squat godhead. “Mind cannot arrive at Truth; it can only make some constructed figure.” Sri Aurobindo writes: “Western thought has ceased to be dynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic. It is the spiritual way, the passage from the outer being to the inmost Self, which has been lost by the over-intellectuality of the mind of Europe.”  

An Overmind Creation

In the wake of the realization Sri Aurobindo had in 1926—the working of the Overmind consciousness in the physical—the Mother was bringing down those great  gods, the Overmind Gods, and an inspiring creation was poised for manifestation here on earth. But Sri Aurobindo saw things differently and told her so, that this will delay their real work by thousands of years. Here is what the Mother herself narrates:

Sri Aurobindo had given me charge of the outer work because he wanted to withdraw into concentration in order to hasten the manifestation of the supramental consciousness. … Suddenly, immediately, things took a certain shape: a very brilliant creation was worked out in extraordinary detail, with marvellous experiences, contacts with divine beings, and all kinds of manifestations which are considered miraculous. Experiences followed one upon another, and, well, things were unfolding altogether brilliantly and… in an extremely interesting way.

One day, I went as usual to relate to Sri Aurobindo what had been happening… Sri Aurobindo looked at me and said: “Yes, this is an Overmind creation. It is very interesting, very well done. You will perform miracles which will make you famous throughout the world, you will be able to turn all events on earth topsy-turvy...” and then he smiled and said: “It will be a great success. But it is an Overmind creation. … we want to establish the Supermind on earth.”

With my inner consciousness I understood immediately: a few hours later the creation was gone… and from that moment we started anew on other bases.

The Mother quietly went to her room and dissolved that brilliant formation. The rest was not hers; it was Sri Aurobindo’s concern.

Overmind in the Upanishadic language is the golden lid which conceals the face of the Truth. That lid has to be removed for the authentic Law, for sight. “O Sun, O sole Seer, marshal thy rays, gather them together,—let me see of thee thy happiest form of all; that Conscious Being everywhere, He am I.” This is the prayer of the Isha Upanishad. Soon open out the worlds of the Truth, the Right, the Vast.

Nature of Overmind

Sri Aurobindo reveals the nature of Overmind as follows. It is essentially a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness. Through it Supermind acts indirectly on Ignorance. Supermind leaves to Overmind to formulate all movements according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth but a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees. While the Overmind embraces the totality, it takes each Aspect and gives to it an independent action in which it is able to work out its own world of creation. In Overmind all possibilities of combination and relation are freely organised. One can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. Here infinite possibilities come into play.

Overmind Consciousness is global and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences without antagonism. To it all religions would be true as developments of the one eternal religion, all philosophies would be valid each in its own field as a statement of its own universe-view from its own angle, all political theories with their practice would be the legitimate working out of an Idea-Force with its right to application and practical development. In our separative consciousness these things exist as opposites; each claims to be the truth and taxes the others with error and falsehood, each feels impelled to refute or destroy the other. An overmental Intelligence will have nothing to do with this exclusiveness; it would allow all to live each in its place in the whole or assign to each its field of realisation or of endeavour.

In the Overmind each principle loosed into action follows its independent line and carries out its complete consequences; this is the inevitable descent, facilis descensus, which Consciousness follows till it enters into the material Inconscience, enters by obscuring infinitesimal fragmentation, tucchyena, the Vedic Inconscient Ocean.

The time of religions is over

The Mother explains it equally revealingly:

I saw recently a sort of exhibition or procession of all the possible theories of humanity explaining the creation. All those conceptions came before me one after another, from the seemingly most primitive and most ignorant to the most scientific—and they were all on the same plane of incomprehension ... but ALL had the same RIGHT to express the true aspiration that was behind. And it was miraculous! Even the faith of the savage, even the most primitive religions and most ignorant convictions had behind them the same right to express that aspiration. It was wonderful. And then the sense of the ‘superiority of intelligence’ fell away completely, instantly.

On another occasion she said:

“Oh, the world needs a new religion,” and they wanted to take Sri Aurobindo's name and make a new religion out of it! So I answered them, “The time of religions is over.” They were appalled! I wrote to them: “The time of religions is over, this is the age of universal spirituality.” I said that religions are based on spiritual experiences brought down to a level where mankind can grasp them, and that the new phase must be that of spiritual experience in its purity, not brought down to a lower level. Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality.

The age of universal spirituality has arrived

Hazrat Ali said, “If I so will I can certainly load 70 camels with the exegesis of the opening Surah of the Book [Quran].” Yet its meaning will not be grasped, understood.

Well, that is the difference between revelation and human understanding of the occult-mystical-spiritual realities. You may make a camel pass through the eye of a needle but you will never be able to convince a wise man stuck with his ideas about matters spiritual. Not that these beliefs and ideas, these dogmas would not have contents of the truth in them; but those will be of the truth distinct from other expressions of the truth. But what is it that does not have truth-content in it?

It is on truth that the creation is founded. Night has the truth of the Day behind it, Evil has the Good concealed in its soul, Death has the truth of Life in its womb. Go deeper yet into the Void, and there is the solid presence of the Supreme its nothingness. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” When this realization comes, one goes beyond all formulations of theology and metaphysics and philosophy, even all expressions of spirituality. Yet there need not be disappearance into the Void who could be the Supreme himself. There could be a new expression of the spirit in life. This could be a mechanism for manifestation, for being many.

I want to be many

Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of the wish to be Many—bahusyām prajāyéyéti, I want to be many; that is the will of the Non-Manifest behind this creation. To participate in it was the choice made by us. In it is the joy of creation out of the first Nothingness. This meant meaningful differentiation. It is this being different that must be seen in its authentic sense. Bridging the differences on the mental plane, holding dialogues for the search of an undifferentiated oneness turns out to be fallacious. Innumerability is the idea of the One whose Oneness does not get abrogated by the innumerability and in whom this innumerability finds its large multiple oneness. The point is: respect differences but in knowledge. In it is the arrival of universal spirituality. That would make being different central. The basic law of multiplicity is there for a purpose.

We are all made of electrons-protons-neutrons, all our fingers are made of the same common ingredients, yet we all are different. Something else enters in and makes us so. Whence arise these differences? whence these new features, new properties? And for what purposes these differences? Why are our genes different? We don’t ask such questions, or else we don’t answer them. We use the same construction materials but each house has its uniqueness, its characterizing spirit and soul. It is in that distinctive identicalness as much as in the rich identical distinctiveness we must live.

Behind the mystery of matter there is the truth of matter, behind the mystery of life there is the truth of life, behind the mystery of life-in-matter there is another truth, the truth of life-in-matter. Our task is to discover that truth. That discovery belongs not to religion but to the mystic-occult-spiritual pursuit and discipline.

Surely enough, we have to be different, that is the content of existence; we have to be individuals, communities, provinces, counties, states, nations, continents—but each governed by its fundamental law, the truth expressing itself in truths, the Law of Multiplicity in the Reality of the One. There is the transcendental poise and dynamism which embraces each formulation in possibilities of manifestation. Those have to be discovered and lived in. That is being different without being not different. One has to be different but never indifferent. In the days of globalization the local identity should not get lost but must be preserved. Each “litel spot of erthe”—as Kathleen Raine would speak of her England—has its uniqueness, and that must be cherished, esteemd.

There is the Truth of which the world’s truths are shreds

“There is the Truth of which the world’s truths are shreds.” This is what a line from Savitri proclaims. Universal spirituality arrives at the recognition of these thousand shreds of truth. It does not get baffled by them, does not get lost in their different assertions. There are a thousand clay-lamps that have been lighted and they are afloat on rushing flow of the Ganges in the evening, each with its wonderful aspiring flame. The Veda speaks of fragmentation of Consciousness, and it begins with the Overmind. “In the Overmind each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence.”

There is a natural corollary to this. We must respect differences in their respective effects and significances. Obviously that would make the concept of dialogue between differences illogical. In that context let us witness an example or two. We could take the Indian Dharmic formulation and the Gospel for this purpose.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” This is one of the most profound statements of the Gospel, and I don’t have to be a Christian to see its profundity. Everything is contained in “all things” and “him”. All things acquire respect and value because of him, even as he chooses to be all things and in all things. That is also Vedic-Vedantic, one reality expressed in a thousand ways, or each individual a part of the Indivisible.

These assertions or statements come from a high realm of knowledge which is trans-religious. To say that these have Christian or Indian or any other universality is to confine ourselves to the world of limited and limiting mind. Obviously these are also trans-historic. We cannot say that the Indian thought has influenced the Christian thought, nor suggest that it was a later incorporation of the Christian in the Indian.

Jesus appeared in time and space “for a short time”

When Christianity speaks of transubstantiation, of the dense communion of matter with spirit, it is giving us a profound truth. Re-creation of bread and wine into blood and body of Christ is a striking mystical statement, notwithstanding the controversies associated with it. It might not have come directly from Christ, but Christian mysticism has certainly discovered something of a very fundamental nature. "His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been transubstantiated, by God's power, into his body and blood". It also joins other seekings. There are parallels perhaps of the glorious body, le corps glorieux, or chinmaya deha, of the possibility of the physical transformation as is claimed at times. But transubstantiation of this kind belongs to the non-terrestrial worlds. Physical transformation and immortality on earth are prospects of the future.

The Veda carries such expectations, of hiraņya tanu; in the final transformation on earth man will develop a body to hold and express immortality in it, amŗta. It was called the corps glorieux—body of glory—by the Mother's first spiritual instructor, Théon, tells Sri Aurobindo. He also clarifies what he means by transformation. "I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind."

While these formulations of Sri Aurobindo are recognized by Father Bede Grifitths, he immediately goes back to the Gospel. His contention is that such is also the goal of the Christian Yoga. In his dialogue with Amal Kiran he writes that this transformation “has already taken place in the resurrection of Christ. In his body matter has already been transformed, so as to become a spiritual body.” But the mistake is, he takes resurrection for transformation. But in Sri Aurobindo’s terminology transformation has a vaster connotation, of the inconscient substance changing into the superconscient. In it the material consciousness itself will undergo an alchemic change. What matters is not the crucified body but the glorified body. This will be the basis of the divine life in a divine body. Christianity nor any other religion has that notion of it. In fact it is a new yogic-spiritual proposal. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were engaged in working out the dynamics of such a possibility. This might be a certain type of belief and one has to be simply open to it if there is something in it which would appeal to one’s soul.

It looks that it is absent in the Amal-Griffiths dialogue. The Father writes to Amal Kiran: “Jesus appeared in time and space for a short time, and then he passed beyond into a final state beyond time and space—that is the eternal state. On this theory death is a passage to this higher state of consciousness. Jesus opened the way through death.” Without passing through the gates of death, mŗtyusya dwārāh, this cannot happen. The Christian sees supramental manifestation in the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, that it has power to bring about a new creation. This would make Sri Aurobindo’s work no more than a new “insight” into the past. But this can be decided if we know the contents of that “short time” in the life of Christ.

The Virgin Birth

Apart from the issue of transubstantiation, there is the question of the Virgin Birth, and of the Assumption of Virgin Mary which actually connotes the wonderful aspect of the divinisation of Matter. Now there is something more in it than Christianity would hold. The one whom the Catholics identify as Virgin Mary is for the Indian the divine Mother; she is again the same for the Japanese who call her Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy; others would give her other names. “It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths,” tells the Mother.

If that Goddess is Maheshwari here and over there she is Pallas Athene. It is the same Power who is called differently in different places. But in our ignorance we quarrel over it fiercely; we kill each other. By making a religion of each aspect of the truth-reality we create religions and set one against the other. Intellectuals soon get busy trying to build bridges—without realising that at the other end of the rainbow bridge there is a beautiful pot of burning gold. We engage ourselves in non-availing dialogues. Any search for truth then gets sacrificed on the altar of one-upmanship. The point is, the mystics who first spoke of the Virgin Birth or the Assumption of Virgin Mary were serious about a fundamental possibility. That fundamental aspect is trans-religious.

The highest preoccupation of man

In trans-religious preoccupation of man is the envisioning of the Godhead in him. It is the founding urge, it is the impulse of our native self towards perfection, a search after Truth, the sense of the secret immortality. “The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last,—God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.” Religion-Art-Literature-Thought-Science could be a noble preparatory endeavour towards this, the bright triumphing will or emotion or thought of the aspiring soul. The entire issue lies in it. But when this focus is lost, all becomes frustrating and futile. It is indeed a laughable matter that we set God against God. Man’s mind is an instrument of ignorance, but we take pride in it.

One such question belonging to it is: Are the Indian Dharmic traditions founded on the universal paradigms of the West? Rajiv Malhotra’s attempt in Being Different is to tell that it is a misconception. They precede them, the Vedic pursuit and knowledge and practices were already present here, in the deep soul of mankind. Historically such a comparison becomes strange, if not dubious. But even otherwise one begins to wonder if it is worthwhile to engage oneself in such a comparative dialogue at all. What is our concern? what should be our concern? the discovery of the Godhead in man. Wherever that concern gets answered, it is that we must follow. The criterion is the inner perception, and it is in that perception that we must grow and increase and progress.

All debates and dialogues belong to the domain of mental ignorance. Often in them the spiritual quest gets bypassed. When that spiritual quest is missed all is missed. The motivation behind the spiritual quest is not seen in these discussions, perhaps as it happened in the long series of exchanges of scholarly letters between Father Griffiths and Amal Kiran. Eventually it ended with a sour taste in our mouth. In the end the Father wrote back: “Any further discussion will be useless. So it is well that we should cease.” This is not surprising and that is how all the dialogues stop, stop with “we agree to disagree”. The upshot is, the difference of faith is deep-rooted and no amount of argument can remove it. But the hilarious thing is, knowing all this well in advance we in our wise enthusiasm keep on arguing all the while. There is no remedy. We do not know differences in their fundamental contents, that they are meant to be there.

If the mystic truth behind religious formulations is not understood and recognized, if it is not made a way of life, we could say that the higher human aspiration has remained unfulfilled. But it seems that, unknown to us, the age of universal spirituality is dawning in our skies, and it is in that opening, in that expectant wideness and dynamism, of the arrival of ŗtam-bŗhat, of that purity and in that experience that we must live; in it we must grow, in it we must realize ourselves, breathe in its love and beauty and joy and truth and harmony as much as in its light and power and force.