Ferm, Vergilius (ed);
Religion in Transition
Macmillan, 1937, 270 pages
topics: | religion | philosophy |
My primary interest in this remote text was the autobiographical fragment by Radhakrishnan. This seems to be one of the few snatches of autobiography he ever wrote. As his biographer-son, the historian Gopal has observed, Radhakrishan was deliberately reticent in speaking in matters concerning himself. He believed that his work was his best biography. He had said all that he had to say, and the rest was not for public gaze. Thus the essay contributed here remains one of the few documents providing a background to Radhakrishnan's motivation for working on Indian philosophy and religion.
I was born on September 5, 1888, at a small place, Tirutani, forty miles to the north-west of Madras, in South India, the second child of Hindu parents, who were conventional in their religious outlook. p.11 I have not had any advantages of birth or of wealth. The early years of my life till twelve were spent in Tirutani and Tirupati, both famous as pilgrim centres. I cannot account for the fact that from the time I knew myself I have had firm faith in the reality of an unseen world behind the flux of phenomena, a world which we apprehend not with the senses but with the mind, and even when I was faced by grave difficulties, this faith has remained unshaken. A meditative frame of mind is perhaps responsible for my love of loneliness. Side by side with my outward activities, there is in me an inner life of increasing solitude in which I love to linger. Books, the vistas they unveil, and the dreams they awaken, have been from the beginning my constant and unfailing companions. While I am essentially shy and lonely, I pass for a social and sociable man. My withdrawn nature and social timidity have given me a reputation that I am difficult to know. if the editor thinks it worth his while to ask me to contribute an autobiographical essay to this volume, it is due to good luck. When Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers proposed for promotion to higher rank, he used to scribble in the margin of a name "Is he lucky?" I have luck, and it is this that has protected me thus far. It is as if a great pilot had been steering my ship through the innumerable rocks and shoals on which other barks had made shipwreck. I enjoy the special care of providence. p.13
I had my school and college career in Christian missionary institutions. [German Mission High School, Tirupati (1896- 190O), Voorhees' College, Vellore (1901-4), and Madras Christian College (1905-9)] At an impressionable period of my life, I became familiar not only with the teaching of the New Testament, but with the criticisms levelled by Christian missionaries on Hindu beliefs and practices. p.15 My pride as a Hindu roused by the enterprise and eloquence of Swami Vivekananda was deeply hurt by the treatment accorded to Hinduism in missionary institutions. ... I know that the people of India are the victims of paralysing superstitions, but I cannot believe that they are devoid of religious sense. My religious sense did not allow me to speak a rash or a profane word of anything which the soul of man holds or has held sacred. This attitude of respect for all creeds, this elementary good manners in matters of spirit, is bred into the marrow of one's bones by the Hindu tradition, by its experience of centuries. Religious tolerance marked the Hindu culture from its very beginnings. When the Vedic Aryans came into contact with people professing other creeds, they soon adjusted themselves to the new elements. The Vedic religion received incalculable material and impulse for the determining of its own unique character through the re-shaping of its foreign elements. The famous Hindu scripture, bhagavadgItA declares that if one has faith and devotion to the other gods, it is faith and devotion to the supreme One, though not in the prescribed way. The end of religion is an essential knowledge of God. Doctrines about God are only guides, [they] represent God under certain images, as possessing certain attributes and not as He is in himself. For example, in Christendom, God the Father gave place to God the Mother in the Middle Ages as in Mariolatry when she was said to be "Queen of Heaven, who can do all that she wills." [Dante, Paradiso, xxiii. 34] No formula can confine God. Compare: Some seek a Father in the heavens above; Some ask a human image to adore;nne Some crave a spirit vast as life and love; Within thy mansions we have all and more. [Hymn Gather us in, George Matheson (1842-1906)] The true teacher helps us to deepen our insight, not alter our view. He gives us a better access to our own scriptures, for "the path men take from every side is mine." [bhagavadgItA, iv. ii]
The different religions are not rival or competing forces, but fellow labourers in the same great task. God has not left Himself without witness among any people. Clement of Alexandria allows that there was always a natural manifestation of the one Almighty God amongst all right-thinking men. [Clement, Stromata / Misc. Book V] Bred in such beliefs, I was somewhat annoyed that truly religious people -- as many Christian missionaries undoubtedly were -- could treat as subjects for derision doctrines that others held in deepest reverence. This unfortunate practice has, in my opinion, little support in the teaching or example of Jesus, though some of his later followers encouraged it. Religious truth outside the Biblical revelation was according to Augustine a work of the devil, a caricature perpetrated by demons. Serious students of comparative religion are impressed by the general revelation of God. All truth about God has its source in God. The conception of a unique revelation, of a chosen people is contrary to the love and justice of God. p.18 It is a pet fancy of the pious that their own religion is the flower of the development of religion, its final end into which all others converge. In the new world order such a view of spiritual monopolies has no place.
The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it. The spirit of the times, in which India, so to say, was turning in its sleep, strengthened this resolve. The philosophy courses for the B.A. and the M.A. degrees in the Madras University did not demand any acquaintance with the Indian systems of thought and religion. Even to-day Indian philosophy forms a very minor part of philosophical studies in Indian Universities. In partial fulfilment of the conditions for the M.A. degree examination, I prepared a thesis on the Ethics of tke Vedanta, which was intended to be a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics. At the time (1908) when I was only a young student of twenty, the publication of a book with my name on the title-page excited me a great deal though now, when I look back upon the juvenile and rhetorical production, I am ashamed that I ever wrote it. My great surprise, however, was that my distinguished teacher, Professor A. G. Hogg, the present Principal of the Madras Christian College, a thinker of great penetration in theological matters, awarded me a testimonial, which I still treasure, in which he expressed himself thus: "The thesis which he prepared in the second year of his study for this degree shows a remarkable understanding of the main aspects of the philosophical problem, a capacity for handling easily a complex argument besides more than the average mastery of good English." From April 1909, when I was appointed to the Department of Philosophy in the Madras Presidency College, I have been a teacher of philosophy and engaged in the serious study of Indian philosophy and religion. I soon became convinced that religion is an autonomous form of experience which cannot be confused with anything else, not even with morality, though it cannot help expressing itself in a high code of morality. Religion is essentially a concern of the inner life. Its end is to secure spiritual certainty which lifts life above meaningless existence or dull despair. It must be judged by its own standard, whether it gives security to values, meaning to life, confidence to adventure. Its roots lie in the spirit of man, deeper than feeling, will or intellect. [...] My occasional contributions to learned magazines like the International Journal of Ethics, Monist, Quest, had for their objective the establishing of the ethical character of the Hindu religion. Spiritual values are realized on earth through the empiric means of family love, of love and friendship, of loyalty and reverence. To the truly religious, all life is a sacrament.
Editor's preface : Vergilius Ferm 7 S. Radhakrishnan : My search for truth 11 C. F. Andrews : A Pilgrim's Progress 60 George A. Coe : My own little theatre 90 Alfred Loisy : From credence to faith 126 James H. Leuba : The making of a psychologist of religion 173 Edwin D. Starbuck : Religion's use of me 201 Index 261