Cuttack
27 February 1893
But the person called M—— who was sitting on the stage had given such a long speech that the audience had become very impatient. If you have to listen continuously to so many words the mind becomes quite frantic—it’s just the opposite effect of meditation. One is happier sitting at home playing cards or dice. This is why I don’t feel like going to the weekly sermon at the Brahmo Samaj. Everything has a good and a bad side, an appropriate and an inappropriate side. You really can’t say that it’s my duty to go every week and patiently sit and listen to any old person who is going to speak in any which way he likes about religion. Instead, it makes me feel dissatisfied and rebellious. The person who speaks well should speak, and I will hear what he says—that’s the rule. The nobler the subject matter, the better the speaker should be. But it’s become the case that a religious speech is frequently assigned to an incapable person. That’s because people think a good deed is done the moment they hear anything religious—that’s why anybody can climb up on a rock and speak anyhow and people listen silently and do their duty and leave. That’s why nobody judges the capability of a man making a religious speech. I think this is completely wrong. A person with a finer appreciation for a particular subject cannot tolerate fraudulence in that subject. I cannot comprehend how those who have any appreciation of religion or literature can tolerate this pallid and tasteless flow of old nonsense. And I don’t see how such a sermon can make those without it develop any sense of appreciation either. Actually, what George Eliot calls otherworldliness is how many people think unconsciously of religion—they think that the time you spend in any religion-related activity is like an investment entered into some ledger where the interest rates keeps increasing. But I think it’s a great loss if a worthy subject is not spoken about well enough. Not only is your mental equilibrium ruined, your innate conscious ability to understand is also destroyed. Just as listening regularly to songs that are not sung in tune is bad education, so too listening regularly to unsuitable religious sermons is a very harmful thing for mankind. That’s why I don’t want to get onto the stage myself to speak either: I know I don’t have a natural ability for it, nor is there an irresistible urge in me to do it—and I don’t consider it my duty to go every Wednesday to listen to ——’s sermons—rather, when Baṛ-dada speaks then my heart is wholly absorbed and I benefit from it. When incompetent people begin to speak, my mind fills with an unbearable impatience and irritation which is detrimental.