Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
Some comments here, anything for a sport, what?
Nothing much to comment. What he [Krishnaprem] says – the central thing – is very correct, as always; the position of all who have any notion of spirituality, though the religionists like Jones and the Christ-lover on board ship seem to find it difficult to get to it. But though Christ and Krishna are the same, they are the same in difference, that is indeed the utility 
of so many manifestations instead of there being only one as these missionaries would have it. But is it really because the historical Christ has been made too much the foundation-stone of the faith that Christianity is failing? It may be something inadequate in the religion itself – perhaps in religion itself; for all religions are a little off-colour now. The need of a larger opening of the soul into the Light is being felt, an opening through which the expanding human mind and heart can follow. I have not read Stanley Jones, but I should not be surprised to find there is some justification for the feeling of sickness. I don’t know why so many Christian writers have a way of writing and preaching which gives a sense of unpleasant unctuousness, a very small dish of religious emotion swimming in a too fat oil of holiness – as if the Pharisees1 and Sadducees2 had not only crucified Christ but laid the grip of their ecclesiasticism and Pharisaism on the religion also. Excuse the culinary simile – a little sport, as you say – and my growl is quite private.