Selected Writings of S. Radhakrishnan

On Christianity -:

When righteousness is practiced, not for its own sake but because it is the will of God, it is practiced with a fervor and a fanaticism that are sometimes ungodly. When the well of God is known, we feel driven to pass it on and think it intolerable that it should be disobeyed. ‘The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?’ While such a belief gives definiteness, conviction and urgency to the ethical message, which no abstract logic could give, it at the same time shuts the door against all change and progress.

The Jew first invented the myth that only one religion could be true. As they, however, conceived themselves to be the ‘Chosen People’, they did not feel a mission to convert the whole world. The Jews gave to Christianity an ethical passion and a sense of superiority; the Greeks gave the vague aspirations and mysteries of the spirit a logical form , a dogmatic setting; the Romans with their practical bent and love of organization helped to institutionalize the religion. Their desire for world dominion transformed the simple faith of Jesus into a fiercely proselytizing creed. After the time of Constantine, authorities , clerical and secular, displayed systematic intolerance towards other forms of religious belief, taking shelter under the words ‘He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me, sacctereth’.

On Self-Discovery –:

The process of self-discovery is not the result of intellectual analysis but of the attainment of a human integrity reached by a complete mastery over nature. The old faith is mere reason that we will act properly if we think rightly is not true. Mere knowledge is of the nature of a decoration, an exhibit with no roots. It does not free the mind. In the Chandogya Upanishad Narada confesses that all his scriptural learning has not taught him the the true nature of the self, and in the same Upanishad, Svetaketu, in spite of his study of the scriptures for the prescribed period, is said to be merely conceited and not well instructed. Spiritual attainment is not the perfection of the intellectual man but an energy pouring into it from beyond it, vivifying it. The Katha Upanishad Says: ‘As the self existent pierced the openings of the senses outward, one looks outward, not within himself. A certain thoughtful person, seeking immortality, turned the eye inward and saw the self. It is seeing with the spiritual eye the pure in heart, who have overcome the passions of greed and envy, hatred and suspicion, that is here insisted on. This is the fulfillment of man’s life, where every aspect of his being is raised to its highest point, where all the senses gather, the whole mind leaps forward and realized in one quivering instant such things as cannot be easily expressed,. Though it is beyond the word of tongue or concept of mind, the longing and love of the soul, its desire and anxiety, its seeking and thinking, are filled with the highest spirit. This state of being or awareness to which man could attain is the meaning of human life. It is religion, and not mere argument about it, that is the ultimate authority for one’s ideas of God and life. God is not an intellectual idea or a moral principle, but the deepest consciousness from whom ideas and rules derive. He is not a logical construction but the perceived reality present in each of us and giving to each of us the reality we posses. We are saved not by creeds but the jnyana (knowledge) or spiritual wisdom. This is the result of the remaking of man. Logical knowledge is comparable to a finger which points to the object and disappears when the object is seen. True knowledge is awareness, a perception of the identity with the supreme, a clear-sighted intuition, a dawning of insight into the which logic infers and scriptures teach. An austere life turns knowledge into wisdom, a pundit into a prophet.

( Eastern Religions & Western Thoughts , published by Oxford India Paperbacks)