Page 556 - Bodhayanti Parasparam Vol 6

Bodhayanti Parasparam Vol 6
When we hold on to ideas especially related to religion or God , which do not stand the rigor of rationality are generally called as Dogmas. Babuji Maharaj, in one of the answers to a question ,” what is religion?” as quoted in Sparkles and Flashes says, “Certain dogmas collected at one place is religion”. Since religion is a personal faith for any individual, so the attachment is more of an emotional nature than having much rational basis and as a result one becomes dogmatic or close chested. However, the dogmacity graduates into bigotry when one starts insisting ultimacy or finality to one’s dogmas.
In the common parlance, the word dogmatic would mean rigid, inflexible, unbending, strict, assertive, narrow, doctrinaire, fixed etc. As discussed earlier, religion is a set or a body of beliefs that one has w.r.t to God, Man and Nature interrelationships. When the beliefs are given immunity to the rigor of logic or rationality, we enter into the sphere of Dogma, a kind of a blind alley and finally culminating into a dead end, then it is called as superstition. While discussing about superstition, Master gives the following examples which are quite illustrative, “`Since I tamed this cow I began to get enough money, I tamed a horse and I have a grandson'. So such ideas are nurtured. Such conditions when observed for some time breed so many other ideas which we call superstitions which themselves denote they have no meaning. But this is the result of only gross thinking. When we take the finer aspect of grossness we begin to think ourselves spiritual. That is also a superstition. They think of what they are not really. If milk is adulterated in wine it remains no more milk.”
Belief leads us to faith. Faith has always been considered an important aspect of one’s religious life, But in spiritual life, Master states that faith is the foundation,
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