A Comparative Study of Religions

This book has been written by a scholar who has occupied himself with the subject of religion for over fifty years. But no finality can be claimed. The reason is that religion deals with what is transcendent, in the sense that it deals with what man is going to be. Advaitism terms this futuristic end as becoming Brahman. However, Bergson and other evolutionists would say that religion is a collective and cooperative effort of men to become gods. This simply means the divinising of man what Aurobindo calls super-mind. The terms gods and supermind are vague and impre-cise. They refer to a state beyond human ills, beyond human infatuation and beyond the befogging of human intellect.

One thing is clear that fighting with other human beings in the name of religion is sub-human. As religious men we are fellow-travellers in the direction of the realm of spirit. Here the nomenclature of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc., ceases to be meaningful. Hence, the religion of man to which we are looking forward is not so much in the past as it is yet to be.

Of course, we have to go very far and we have not made any beginning yet. However, at present the advaitic principle of differenceless Brahman can serve the purpose of harmonizing all religions. Here this principle has been adopted and key-concepts of different religions have been shown to mingle into one another.