Book Title: Religious Problem in India
Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

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Page 126
________________ 118 have been established. That is the road that some of us, following our great Teachers, are striving to tread, not ourselves as teachers but as messengers merely, taking no authority but only telling what we have heard and seen, asking no man to believe until his own intellect is convinced. For the worst hypocricy of all is to say "I believe," ere the intellect has been illuminated, and to repeat the creed with the lips, which has no place in the intellect, no answer in the heart. THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA No man may be coerced into any form of belief. Who shall dare to coerce the free Spirt, finding his own way, shaping his own future, according to his own word. Aṭmā wills, and all follows that will, and who shall dictate to another the road along which he shall go? Keep your own faith, but honor the faiths of your brothers; religious unity is no more to be found in the form of a single religion, but in the realisation that all faiths are one, that all faiths have the same origin and lead to the same end. Drop all the words of reproach that we all too often use in speaking of men of other faiths; do not let harsh terms come from the mouth. The term Mlechchha, the term Infidel, the term Unbeliever, the term Heathen, these are of the devil of separateness and not of the divine Spirit of unity. Do not let your lips speak hard words. Your brother differs from you. What does it matter? Are you so infallible, do you so hold the whole truth, that you shall blame him because his view of

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