In this article, we lay out briefly our interpretation of the Sanaatan thought and its corollaries:
Religious Devotion:
Religious Devotion is a humble practice in which one surrenders to God in an attempt to become one with the Universal Soul. It is a practice that sheds the human ego and strips away the human attributes of intelligence, valor and wealth. The only thought that matters is devotion to the entity one calls God. That entity could an Avatar of God, an Enlightened Messenger of God, a Son of God or a Prophet of God. The name or the title does not matter.
This is why the old prayer* says “You are the Mother, You are the Father, You are the Brother, You are the Friend, You are the Wisdom, You are the Wealth, You are everything to me, My God”. In other words, there is no one in my life but you, my God. This is the essence of True Devotion.
Such true Devotion provides peace and tranquility. This is to be felt and not analyzed or understood.
This is what the Great Sages felt at the beginning of modern civilization and this is what they formulated as Sanaatan Dharma.
Religious Fascism
The definition states that political fascism seeks to replace the concept of diversity of political thought to create the concept of a single party or a single dictator.
The concept of Religious Fascism is similar. It seeks to replace the concept of multiple paths to God to create the belief of a single path to God by allegiance to one religious icon or one religious book.
Religious Fascism created the concept of a “Non-Believer” in a bid to cement its followers into a tight group and to exclude people who did not share the belief that their specific path to God was the ONLY path. It was Religious Fascism that created the concept of Hell as a means to scare its followers into submission.
Religious Terrorism
Religious Terrorism is an extreme version of Religious Fascism. It takes the beliefs of Religious Fascism and acts on them willfully and deliberately.
Religious Terrorism preaches that it is OK or even Good to punish non-believers for their lack of belief in the terrorist’s path to God. It exhorts its followers to force non-believers to convert into the belief systems of the terrorists by:
- preachings that terrorize non-believers about going to hell for eternity and promise the glorious pleasures of heaven if they convert to the faith of the terrorists;
- if that fails, by monetary inducements for their conversion;
- if that fails, by brutal physical force.
If none of these methods work, Religious Terrorism permits its followers to kill non-believers and formally absolves them of the crime of murder.
Physical Terrorists may often take mercy on their victims because it is inhuman to take a physical life for material things. But, Religious Terrorists do not suffer from any uncertainty or doubt. They are taught and they so believe that killing a non-believer is equivalent to purifying the soul of the non-believer.
It is a sad fact that such religious terrorism is thriving all over the world and the practice of exclusion is winning over the virtues of tolerance, inclusion and acceptance.
* The original Sanskrut prayer reads “Tvam Ev Mata cha Pita Tvam Ev; Tvam Ev Bandhu: cha Sakha Tvam Ev; Tvam Ev Vidya, Dravinam Tvam Ev; Tvam Ev Sarvam, Mam Dev Dev”
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