World Religions Conference November 1957

Author(s): Sushil Muni
Publisher: Achal Singh Seth

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Dr. Radhakrishnan, Vice-President of India
Address from the Chairman of the Session Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, Vice-President of India
Mr. President and Friends,
I am glad to have this opportunity of saying a few words to this vast gathering. We are living in times of revolution. Different cultures. civilisations and religions have met together. Material contacts and spiritual encounters are taking place. Living in an age of tremendous advances in science when weapons of death and destruction are multiplying, if we are to save the future of humanity, what is needed is a change in the minds and hearts of the people. The discipline which is calculated to bring about such a kind of self-transformation is religion We cannot have a religion today unless it is acceptable to the findings of science. At any rate it must not be inconsistent with the conclusions of science.
Science tells us that the world has been evolving from one state to another. From a mass of molten fire it has hecome a habitable globe. While light threads from that we have come to animal minds : from animal minds we have reached intellectual current. It is possible for us to penetrate into thc secrets of Nature and find out utmost things which have been not revealed to our predecessors, but this climb. but this evolution has not come to an end, with the advent of human intelligence,
Human intelligence is still a victim of divisions and discords. Its aspirations for peace are one thing ; Its actual conflicts are another. If we have to bring about an Integration of our personality, our intelligence, we have to grow into spirit. In other words, from our intellec. tual consciousness we have to become an illumined consciousness. We must grow into what is called the universality of spirit ; so the purpose of religions is to help human intelligence to rise from its present level of intellectuality to the level of spirit, of charity etc.
Now if we take up religion we must distinguish in it two things--the spiritual centre and the accretions that have become associated with it. We must know what is vital and the form, the ritual, the ceremonial, the social machinery, all these things which have become mixed up with religion, we have to distinguish from that vital centre of which all these are said to be the outer expression. Religion is essentially a transmutation of personality. It is a change of the intellectual man into the illumined spirit. That is the purpose of religion. All thinkers have laid the greatest stress on that aspect. We have said from 'agyana' (ignorance), from unreligiously conditions Into
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