Religion is basically to help us become a more caring person

Acrimony among the followers of different religions is a real phenomenon and continues to bedevil us.

We have covered a long way on the road to philosophical distillation to seek answers to uncover the aetiology of this most distressing and seemingly never-ending problem but somehow always drawn a blank!

Why we need a religious appellation in the first place? We have to comprehensively disabuse ourselves from the notion that religion is needed to provide us the short cut to the other world of divine benefaction. It is not!

Religion is essentially there to assist us to become more caring human beings by learning to empathise with others. Any deviation from this most fundamental insight is an aberration.

I call myself a Vedantist – the true nomenclature of the religion I was born into and subscribe to. Incidentally, Swami Vivekanand used the term Vedantist in his address as did Swami Ram Tirth is his writings.

‘Hindu’ is not a word to be found in any of the scriptures. I am quite content to let the uninformed call themselves Hindus and propagate precepts that are grossly un-Vedantic. I simply have nothing in common with them.

Vedantism is an ideal that has to be realised and is believed to be a commentary on the Upanishads. Ram Tirth describes it beautifully.

And when one peruses the Guru Granth Sahib, there is hardly any difference between what it extols and what Ram Tirth has to say.

It is universally accepted that Islamic humanism is best expounded in Jalaluddin Rumi’s Masnavi-e-Manavi.

The book is mesmerisingly evocative. I defy anyone to dissect the differences between what Rumi says and the Vedantic principles. And I include St. Thomas Aquinas in the same category.

In other words, I am saying that if one subscribes to Vedanta, he or she would have no problems in accepting the precepts coming from Rumi.

I would very strongly urge everyone to peruse Bhagwan Das’s ‘Essential Unity of All Religions’.

All of us know that Dr Bhagwan Das was one of the earliest recipients of the Bharat Ratna for his philosophical scholarship.

We demean ourselves by ignoring the scholars and listening to mischief-mongers who do not have even the capacity to work out the difference between Mimansa and Vedanta, or those who have never bothered to study Rumi.

I also happen to be a psychoanalyst. When we train as psychoanalysts we have to undergo a process of self-analysis before we see patients. In the process, we confront our own most primitive instincts that we never even realised we carried. We appreciate that

buried in our unconscious are all the most despicable instincts that we despise in others. The only difference is that they have not yet found expression.

That makes us much less judgemental in our dealings with others. It is sombering realisation that what separates us from the people we are tempted to judge harshly is a very thin line indeed.

The real revelation comes when we start seeing patients. We uncover all that is buried in their unconscious. And any analyst would confirm that we carry identical instincts in our subconscious.

In other words, there is no fundamental difference between two human beings irrespective of the labels we may individually carry. No psychoanalyst worth his or her salt would ever accept the validity of any distinction between two human beings on the grounds of religion, nationality, region or any other seemingly artificial premise.

I was trained as a Jungian analyst in Zurich. Jung believed in a universal archetype known as mandala that we all carry. The Freudians do not accept mandala but are in agreement with similarity of primitive instincts which they call Id.

In other words there is no fundamental difference between two human beings. Those who are familiar with analysis would accept nothing else.

And when it comes to our own self importance, let us remember there are 3 billion stars in our galaxy each of which has its own solar systems. And there are billions of galaxies!

That is our actual place in the scheme of things. As an existential philosopher that should place everything in its proper perspective.