The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?
The only real knowledge is who you really are - a spiritual being created in the image in the likeness of a loving God. If you know that, everything you do will honor the wisdom and beauty you already own.
Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform calamity and misfortune into the path.
If we are to include the outer and the inner struggle in a conception more definite than that of conflict in general, we must employ some such phrase as 'spiritual force.' This will mean whatever forces act in the human spirit, whether good or evil, whether personal passion or impersonal principle; doubts, desires, scruples, ideas-whatever can animate, shake, possess, and drive a man's soul. [19]In a Shakespearean tragedy some such forces are shown in conflict.
I believe that the Hindu faith has developed the spiritual in its devotees at the expense of the material, and I think that in the Western world the contrary is true. By uniting the materialism of the West with the spiritualism of the East I believe much can be accomplished. It may be that in the attempt the Hindu faith will lose much of its individuality.
If religion, instead of being the manifestation of a spiritual ideal, gives prominence to scriptures and external rites, then does it disturb the peace more than anything else.
All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.
I do not doubt that all those who have received Baptism anywhere and from whomever do have Baptism, as long as it was consecrated with the words of the Gospel and they received it without pretence on their part and with some degree of faith. However, it would not avail them for their spiritual salvation if they were lacking in that charity by which they might be implanted in the Catholic Church.
I really feel that some people neglect and overlook compassion because they associate it with religion. Of course, everyone is free to choose whether they pay religion any regard, but to neglect compassion is a mistake because it is the source of our own well-being.
What matters are not the truths other people tell us or the practices that we are able to mimic, but the spiritual discoveries we make through personal investigation.
We need to deprogram ourselves. I know for sure that you can't give what you don't have. If you allow yourself to be depleted to the point where your emotional and spiritual tank is empty and you're running on fumes of habit, everybody loses. Especially you.