This book is intended to give, in bare outline, what we should understand by religion, in order to make it universally and pragmatically necessary. It also seeks to present that aspect of the idea of the God-head which has a direct bearing on the motives and actions of every minute of our lives. It is true that God is Infinite in His nature and aspect, and it is also true that to prepare a chart detailing, so far as is consistent with reason, what God is like is only an evidence of the limitations of the human mind in its attempt to fathom God. Still it is equally true that the human mind, in spite of all its drawbacks, can not rest perfectly satisfied with what is finite. It has a natural urge to interpret what is human and finite in the light of what is super-human and infinite,-what it feels but can not express, what within it lies implicit but under circumstances refuses to be explicit. Our ordinary conception of God is that He is Super-human, Infinite, Omnipresent, Omniscient, and the like. In this general conception there are many variations. Some call God Personal, some Impersonal, and so forth.
The point emphasized in this book is that whatever conception we have of God, if it does not influence our daily conduct, if every-day life does not find an inspiration from it, and if it is not found universally necessary, then that conception is worse than useless. If God is not conceived in such a way that we can not do without Him in the satisfaction of a want, in our dealings with people, in earning money, in reading a book, in passing an examination, in the doing of the most trifling or the highest duties, then it is better we should act discreetly, taking His useless name less into churches and temples. God may be Infinite, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Personal, Merciful, or anything, but these conceptions are not sufficiently compelling to make us try to know God. We may as well do without Him. He may be Infinite, Omnipresent, and so forth, but we have no immediate and practical use for those conceptions in our busy, rushing lives. We fall back on those conceptions only when we seek to justify, in philosophical and poetical writings, in art or in warmed-up, idealistic talks, the finite craving for something beyond; when we, with all our vaunted knowledge, are at a loss to explain some of the most common phenomena of the universe; or when we get stranded in the vicissitudes of the world. "We pray to the Ever-Merciful when we get stuck," as the Eastern maxim has it. Except for all this, we seem to get along all right in our work-a-day world without Him. These conceptions appear to be the safety-valves of our pent-up human thought. They explain Him, but do not make us seek Him.
Vedas (1182)
Upanishads (493)
Puranas (624)
Ramayana (741)
Mahabharata (354)
Dharmasastras (165)
Goddess (496)
Bhakti (242)
Saints (1503)
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Shiva (370)
Journal (187)
Fiction (60)
Vedanta (362)
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