The Hidden Stream (1952). London: Burns Oates, p. 105
Often misquoted as "The study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious."
Context: I suppose there has been no subtler attack upon the Christian faith devised by its enemies in these last hundred years than the attack made in the name of "comparative religion". If you pick up a book on "Atonement", and plough your way through ideas of atonement among primitive tribes, pagan ideas of atonement, Jewish ideas of atonement, Christian ideas of atonement, you will find by the end of it that atonement, for the author's mind, has ceased to have any meaning. And he has been successful, in so far as he has managed to infect your mind with the wooliness which is the leading characteristic of his own. Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.
“Your religion is not the best nor the worst when compared to other beliefs.”
Source: 1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
“A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.”
Ariel (1923)
Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section IV, On Value, p. 19
Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.A.Sangama in: p. 233.
“The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new.”
Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)
Source: Prometheus Rising (1983), Ch. 1 : The Thinker & The Prover, p. 25
Context: Comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent (Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universe—among many possibilities.
As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick, and can even think itself well again.
The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.
To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money somewhere.
