1. We must be rooted to our heritage in a very enlightened way that allows us sufficient freedom to forge ahead. Hyper-conservatism is to be avoided and a fluid growth encouraged. Enlightenment must be the watchword.
2. The Bible says nothing about purgatory and, yet, the purgatory persists to this day in Church doctrine where Catholics are cleansed after death, a process that supposedly readies them for ascension to heaven. The Bible even does not mention indulgences whereby one can buy reduction of term in the purgatory or even a complete pardon for all sins committed on earth, the payment made to Church authorities right up to the Pope. Finally, the Bible does not even mention a Pope. All these are accretions with the passage of time, exigencies of organisational survival.
3. Holiness is a state of the mind but the mind's intimate connection with the body makes it imperative for one to maintain the strictest physical purity as well. Physical energy stored thus is transmuted into higher spiritual energy which helps ascend the peaks of realisation leading to ultimate freedom.
4. Ideology is a force but often for evil when it resists change and stagnates. It is here that the scientific method of examination and reexamination of existing theories and assumptions becomes relevant. Religious dogma holds the human spirit to ransom and must be rejected just as much as political dogma is to be rejected. The soul, freed of arbitrary assumptions, archaic injunctions and devout beliefs thrust on it, flourishes to usher in higher learning, a brighter understanding of the workings of Nature and a clearer vision of truth, both material and spiritual.
5.Ultimately almost all of religion is social relations but once in a while a saintly figure comes along who lends the touch of the Spirit to what ordinarily without merit goes by the name of spirituality. It is such sages, who transcend the limitations of the physical senses and reach the realm of spiritual realisation, that give validity to all the sublime transcendent principles of religion that otherwise remain food for common acceptance by way of tradition and faith. Religion stands on the secure foundation of the realisations of these seminal figures of light and love that transcend all barriers, temporal and phenomenal.
6. What a terrible thing to be weighed own eternally by the idea of 'original sin' that simply has no basis in reason whatsoever to abide by ! Christianity is founded on such fragile concepts -- but with their rigid hold on superstitious man -- that perpetuate weakness in humans and retard civilisation unless men choose to reject such impossible doctrines.
7. This Christian idea of meeting one's Maker when one dies is utterly false. A single earthly life, incomplete and fractured by in experience, unfulfilled by the realisation of the oneness of all existence, cannot be the springboard for heaven or hell or even of redemption otherwise but is rooted in rank material superstition. Sooner or later the entire edifice of the three Semitic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, will crumble under the sledgehammer blows of reason and they will have to befriend Indian spiritual philosophy for sheer survival. The Vedas were the primal body of philosophical articulation and they will be the final body of the same as well.
8. There is but one religion in the world that can be called 'the science of the soul' and that is the Sanatan Dharma, in linguistic aberration popularly known as Hinduism. This is the eternal religion, the 'Perennial Philosophy', as Aldous Huxley put it, and this is the eventual destination of the spiritual man as he spirals unto his Self through the myriad experiences of evolving life.
9. Do not allow anybody to sell you religion however great he be in the eyes of society. He is merely duping you with pompous talk.
10. It is good to pay to learn engineering of the material world but beware if anybody sells you the secrets of 'inner engineering'.
11. Making commerce out of the Sanatan Dharma is not quite upholding its principles. This is no way to regenerate the nation.
12. To affirm the individual is not to negate God but to affirm God in humanity.
13. God is love. Love and spread love. That is all there is to life and that is all there is to living.
14. The Lord is with the simple folks, men of ignorance who trust Him in all their innocence.
15. Try to find God, free of organisation, free of allegiance to Church, in your own simple way.
16. Bow not to the tyranny of man or God but raise your head high in the sunshine of freedom.
17. 'Incorrigible' is the word reserved for the modern fanatical devotees of Netaji whose only business is Gandhi-baiting.
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