August 22, 2012 – Your Belief and Others’ Beliefs

Sin is that which was once in its place,
persisting now it is out of place;
there is no other sinfulness.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 66)

Your Belief and Others’ Beliefs

To think that your knowledge is the only true one, that your belief is the only true one and that others’ beliefs are not true, is to do precisely what is done by all sects and religions…. The contact which you have had with the truth of things, your personal contact – a contact which is more or less clear, profound, vast, pure – may have given you, as an individual, an interesting, perhaps even a decisive experience; but although this contact may have given you an experience of decisive importance, you must not imagine that it is a universal experience and that the same contact would give others the same experience. And if you understand this, that it is something purely personal, individual, subjective, that it is not at all an absolute and general law, then you can no longer despise the knowledge of others, nor seek to impose your own point of view and experience upon them. This understanding obviates all mental quarrels, which are always totally useless

The Mother

The Great Adventure 25