| Essence Of Hinduism |
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INTRODUCTION |
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| No great religion
can ever exist without its patterns of prayer and meditation by means of which it directs
the feelings and aspirations of the faithful towards heaven. And, finally, as man not only
feels and wills, but also understands and reasons, there must be something in religion which satisfies his intellect and makes him understand, unlike the other animals, his position in the universe and his relations to the ultimate Reality which we call God. Thus every religion is bound to possess a philosophy of its own, a body of doctrine arising out of secular knowledge, but going far beyond it and including in its scope not only the visible world outside man, but also the invisible world inside him. Thus we arrive at the Well-known divisions of religion, viz., its rituals, its ethics, its forms of worship and its philosophy. It is only when all thew four elements,- traditional, moral, emotional and rational-receive due emphasis that we have a well-balanced religion. The rituals appeal to the unconscious mind of man, the ethics to his will, the forms of worship to his emotions and the philosophy to his intellect. Therefore, as we have said, the whole being of man is involved in religion, and all his activities, properly understood are included in it. His ethics really includes politics, economics, law and sociology, his-modes of worship really include all forms of literature and the fine arts, and his philosophy really includes all sciences both positive and speculative. |
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