REPLY TO CERTAIN QUERIES BY A SCEPTICAL FRIEND

Dive deep into the Self and you will get the proof. It is a subjective experience and not an empirical experimental verification. But it is proof nonetheless. Read THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA and the COMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, friend, for confirmation.

I appreciate your rationalistic posture and it is the healthiest approach to spiritual matters too where the cobwebs of the superstitious mind so blur vision and take appearance for reality. But one must traverse through reason to beyond its domain to the realm of transcendental truth. But it is an individual's choice to adopt one mode or the other enroute to the summit of realizations, the perception of the Absolute Self, or, to alternatively stay put at a place for a while questioning the validity of these spiritual affirmations.

The question then shifts from purely theoretical considerations to the practical part of organized religion as it prevails today. While I am attempting to neither affirm nor negate your stance regarding practising religion for these are horizon issues and keep shifting in their relative assigned values, I, nonetheless, exhort you to look beyond mere fractional scientific postures regarding spiritual culture to deeper scientific affirmations of quantum mechanics and relativistic physics where the borders of science and religion are no more so sharply defined as in Newtonian times, where matter and spirit are coalescing to produce the modern man's integrated vision of Truth.

I fully corroborate your views regarding the poverty situation and share like feelings too but, friend, let us do something to alleviate the misery of the masses instead of merely denigrating things for that will be energy misspent when our suffering sisters and brothers are in such dire need of our help. So, let us be positive and let us act on our resolve to lessen the misery of our kith and kin by not yielding to pseudo-religiosity. Rather we should devote our life's blood to attaining to real perception of the oneness of all existence and thereon plunge headlong into the mission of bringing relief to whosoever needs it, the sharing of our hearts of joy with the poor and the dispossessed, the sharing of our wealth and care and love that knoweth not any boundary.