THE REALITY OF RELIGION
In his essay “The Reality of
Religion, Rabindra Nath Tagore said “I do
not mean to advocate a common church for mankind, a universal pattern to which every act of worship
and aspiration must conform.’’ This view
was in fact the substance of an address given at the Sri Ramakrishna Centenary
Parliament of Religions, 1936 and was later
published in a book entitled: “Vedanta for Modern Man” with 60 other essays
contributed by renowned spiritualists
like Aldous Huxley, Alan W. Watts, Gerald Heard, Swami Prabhavananda, Anne
Hamilton, and others.
Tagore said
in his address: The arrogant spirit of sectarianism which so often used either
active or passive, violent or subtle , methods of persecution on the least provocation
or without any , has to be reminded of the fact that religion like poetry, is
not a mere idea ----- it is expression. The self-expression of God is in the
variedness of creation; and our attitude toward the infinite must in its expression also must have a variedness
of individuality, ceaseless and unending.
According to Tagore when a religion develops
the ambition of imposing its doctrine on all mankind, it degrades itself into a
tyranny and becomes a form of imperialism.
This is why, says Tagore, we find ruthless methods
of autocracy in religious matters prevailing in most parts of the world,
trampling flat the expansion of the spirit of man under its insensitive heels.
The most important part of the address mentioned above reads like this; The attempts to make the
one religion which is their own, dominate
all time and space, comes naturally to men addicted to sectarianism.
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14th October 2022 G.R.Kanwal
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