71 quotes
Religion is a kind of life or experience.
The human race is not divided into the kingdom of Ormuzd and the kingdom of Ahriman [the good spirit and the evil spirit in the Zoroastrian religion]. In each man are these two kingdoms of light and darkness.
We invent by intuition, though we prove by logic.
Eminent Indians (1947)
We must respect our own dignity as rational beings and thus diminish the power of fraud. It is better to be free than be a slave, better to know than to be ignorant.
Eminent Indians (1947)
There is life in movement. Our Dharma is Sanatana, eternal, not in the sense that it is a fixed deposit but in the sense that it is perpetually changing. Its uninterrupted continuity is its Sanatana character.
Logical knowledge is indirect and symbolic in its character. It helps us to handle and control the object and its workings.
Intuition is a positive feeling of calm and confidence, joy and strength. Intuition is profoundly satisfying . It is peace, power and joy.
While no tradition coincides with experience, every tradition is essentially unique and valuable. While all traditions are of value, none is finally binding.
Among the races, religions, and nations which live side by side on the small globe, there is not that sense of fellowship necessary for good life. They rather feel themselves to be antagonistic forces.
Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Asceticism is an excess indulged in by those who exaggerate the transcendent aspect of reality. Instead, the rational mystic does not recognize any antithesis between the secular and the sacred. Nothing is to be rejected; everything is to be raised.
The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision.
The new nearness into which we are drawn has not meant increasing happiness and diminishing friction, since we are not mentally and spiritually prepared for the meeting.
Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
The creeds of religion correspond to theories of science... intuitions of the human soul should be studied by the methods which are adopted with such great success in the region of positive science.
Knowledge when acquired must be thrown into logical form and we are obliged to adopt the language of logic since only logic has a communicable language.
Intuitions are convictions arising out of a fullness of life in a spontaneous way, more akin to sense than to imagination or intellect and more inevitable than either.
Wars of religion which are the outcome of fanaticism that prompts and justifies the extermination of aliens of different creeds were practically unknown in Hindu India.
So long as this devil-dance does not disgust us, we cannot pretend to be civilized.
Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
It is for philosophy of religion to find out whether the convictions of the religious seers fit in with the tested laws and principles of the universe.
The readjustment [of previously known facts] is so easy that when the insight is attained it escapes notice and we imagine that the process of discovery is only rational synthesis.
The tradition of the Rishi is alive in India even today. He was the twentieth century equivalent of the ancient Hindu Rishi; the inspired philosopher at whose feet the tempests lose their guile...D. B.Dhanapala.