A religion that places God above man does damage to man in the name of God. In effect it damages God, too, for it hinders through absolute scriptural injunctions the growth of the conception about God or its amended evolving application in religious life. Only a religion where man at his highest is at the focus does justice to both God and man for it allows the free flow of evolving thought its fullest play en route to the summit of realisations where the multiplicity of phenomena resolves out to unitary Self-consciousness. This is the fundamental difference between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the three religions of the Abrahamic tradition on the one hand, and Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, the three ancient dharmas of the Indian dharma tradition on the other. The former is focused on an arbitrary absolute divine despot that grants and inflicts infinite rewards and punishments for finite deeds done in a single earthly life while the latter revolves round the uncovering of the latent divinity of the being, although, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism differ in the terminology associated with the process and the description of the end-point reached at the summit of realisation. The absolute will and whim of a merciless, merciful, capricious God of the Abrahamic faiths dispensing justice, so to say, is in sharp contrast to the principle of karma evolving a God out of the lowest life-form over millions of lifetimes. The goal in the former is heaven or hell, as the case may be, but the goal in the latter is freedom from name and form and freedom from the cycle of birth, life and death in an absolute state of consciousness, bliss and existence. Thus, these two religious traditions are entirely different with contrasting ideals, means adopted and ends aspired for, and to say that all religions speak of the same thing and lead to the same goal is to expose one's shallowness of knowledge about them and to misrepresent truth.
Now comes the major argument as to why Sri Ramakrishna had said that all religions are valid paths for the attainment of God and if he was right or not in his affirmation.
To be continued...
Written by Sugata Bose
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