Fanatical faiths must stop conversion and seek enlightenment from Hinduism in the science of spirituality that is neither doctrinaire nor personality-based, neither heaven-oriented nor hell-centred but is simply the statement of the divine in all of sentience whose highest manifestation man is.
Spirituality consists not in numbers but in purity of being, catholicity of comprehension and universality of acceptance. Holiness goes along with liberalism of a high order and never so with narrow fundamentalist attitude that is the bane of the Abrahamic religions with the unmitigated evil of fanaticism progressing down the historical line. Time it is that these religions, barring Judaism which does not convert, give up their malefic agenda of numerical expansion and concentrate on real human welfare. Only then may inter-faith dialogue have any substance to it.
But will these archaic formulations of godhead resort at last to fundamental honesty about the whole discourse or will they continue to verbally harp on one thing and in real harbour another? Will these archaic articles of absolutist arbitration on matters spiritual ever be challenged in a manner forthright enough to cause them to take sufficient cognisance of the resistance to their malefic agenda or will they continue to benefit from liberal non-intervention and cowardly acquiescence to their endless arrogance and relentless aggression?
If the current inertia to change and the persistent diffidence to effectively counter these medieval monstrosities masquerading as messianic mercy continues, then humanity is gravely imperilled. In such a case Hinduism, shorn of pretentious selective self-reading, must take the lead and invest all its energy in redirecting the course of the world to the righteous path redolent of the realisations of the rishis (seers of transcendental Truth) and save civilisation from its precipitous fall into barbarism. The Sanatan Dharma is the only way out of the chaos of the times but how it may engineer the change in a resistive social order that is culturally bound to its fanatical formulations is a matter for investigative study which ought to engage our best attention if we are serious about meeting the threat of impending cultural subversion at the hands of horrific hoodlums masquerading as messiahs of peace, for, after all, these are religions of the Almighty who is the ever-munificent and the peaceful one.
It will be a tribute to those that take the charge of altering this decadent course of the historical stream and steer the wheel of evolution to humanity's highest cherished ends. The Christian Reformation was bloody and was rooted out of Europe to be relocated in colonial-imperial terms in Asia, Africa and America. It remains to be seen what the magnitude of the price humanity has to pay to make for similar reformation in the Islamic world.
But the transformation must happen and happen it will. Enlightenment came to Europe despite opposition from the Church and enlightenment must come to Arabia despite the resistance of tradition. Education will proliferate and make for the change and it is here that Hinduism must come to the aid of the world in setting the discourse between matter and the Spirit straight, in meeting midway between science and spirituality to harmonise each in the light of the other and in helping humanity stand together as the supreme manifestation of the highest ultimate reality that is the eternal essence of all.
Such a day is not yet in the offing and it seems we are in for a protracted struggle for human transformation, especially, when geopolitics plays truant with the entire episode of this religious cultural change.
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