Where do the differences among religions come from?
Podcast
Transcript
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very much.
So I talk, different religions are meant for the same common spiritual goal, but there are many differences among them. So where do these differences come from? So you asked the question about the very point, I did not get time to speak. So, can you just go one slide ahead? Yeah.
So here, I will try to explain the relationship between science and between science and spirituality in a different perspective. The science has these two aspects. There is theory and there is experiment.
So in theory there is postulation. Newton’s law of fruit falling. Maybe there is a law of gravity.
Experiment is, we try to drop different objects and see what happens. So similarly, in spirituality there is an intellectual aspect and there is a propositional aspect, you could say. And then there is an experiential aspect.
So philosophy is the propositional aspect. Where, say for example, the consciousness doesn’t come from matter, it comes from the soul. This is a philosophical proposition.
And religion is not just a set of rituals. Although many people may practice it like that, but religion is actually meant to be a set of practices that enable us to experience what the philosophy is talking about. So for example, philosophy says that we are the soul.
Then religion offers a set of practices by which we can realize ourselves as souls. So now these specific practices of religion, they are often expressed according to time, place, circumstance. So for example, sometimes this expression according to time, place, circumstance can not only be different, they can be opposite.
So consider traffic. The purpose of traffic rules is regulation. Regulation, smooth flow of traffic on the roads.
But if you consider India and America, now which side of the road we should drive on, it’s opposite. The purpose is the same, but the rule is the opposite. The same way in different religions, there are, every religion has an exoteric aspect and an esoteric aspect.
Exoteric is external, esoteric is internal, confidential. So the exoteric aspects differ. So for example, the idea of offering reverence to the infinite consciousness, the supreme, that is common to all religions.
Now, the Hindus may do it by folding hands. The Muslims may do it by raising their hands in namaz. And the Christians may do it by offering mass.
The essential expression, that is to be the essential emotion that is expressed is the same, but the form in which it is expressed is different. So there are these regional variations, cultural variations, age-wise chronological variations, they can always be there in religion. The people who obsess only on the externals, they often, that often leads to conflicts.
The differences in religion are because religion philosophy is abstract, it is intellectual, it is conceptual. Religion is practical. So the practical expression means it has to be done according to time, place, circumstance.
There will be variation naturally. The differences come because the religion offers practices according to time, place, circumstance. And if we understand the purpose, then we will see beyond those differences to the common essential purpose.
That essential purpose is to raise human consciousness to the spiritual level. When there is, so what happens when there is no philosophical understanding, when there is only religion, then it often leads to conflicts because you do like this, I do like this, this is different. So the conflicts especially come when the philosophical understanding is lacking.
Does that answer your question? Thank you. Hare Krishna. Okay.
Do we have time? Yeah, please. Okay, fine.