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A brief account of the Brahmo Samaj

 

Brahman is Sanskrit for the Supreme Being, the author and governor of the Universe. The worshippers of this Supreme Being are Brahmos, and the Samaj means congregation or church. Brahmo Samaj thus means a congregation of the worshippers of the Supreme Being.

Affirmations

The Brahmo Samaj believes in :

  1. the existence and personality of God;
  2. the immortality of the human soul;
  3. theu duty and efficacy of divine worship;
  4. the continual self-revelation of God through nature, through the spirit of man, and the collective experiences of humanity;
  5. the eternal progress of the human soul.

Negations

The Brahmo Samaj does not believes in :

  1. any supernatural revelation;
  2. any particular book or collections of books as the one infallible revelation of divine truth, love, or law, and as the absolute and final authority and standard concerning human duty;
  3. any human being as a special or specific incarnation of the Deity, who is the full and final revelation of His word or idea;
  4. any prophet or saint or teacher as absolutely infallible, or as the one only guide to God, or the only one way of salvation.

Scriptures And Teachers

The Brahmo Samaj accepts, respects, and uses:

  1. the scriptures of the world, not as infallible or supernatural revelations, but as ancient records of the moral and spiritual experiences of the race, and as such, essential and exceedingly helpful to the spiritual life and progress of man;
  2. it honours all true prophets and teachers of humanity, not as specific incarnations or mediators, but as manifestations (within the necessary limitations of finitude and the accidental limitations of their own time and race) of the nature of God, in whose image and out of whose substance humanity is created; these prophets and teachers are revelations of the possibilities of humanity; and therefore they are supremely helpful to men by the strength and inspiration of their life and character.

The Brahmo Samaj preaches and proclaims:

  1. the absolute unity and spiritual nature of God;
  2. the perpetual presence and working in man of God, who as the True is at once the root and realization of man’s intellectual life, as the Good in both norm and the form of his moral life, and as the Beautiful is as much the source as the satisfaction of his aesthetic life;
  3. the harmony of all scriptures and all prophets;
  4. the reconciliation of reason and faith, authority and independence, universalism and nationalism;
  5. the divine right of every man and woman to the free and unrestricted use of enjoyment of all their gifts and powers, to the good of themselves, and the advancement of the race, and the glory of God, - a right which is absolutely inalienable and inviolable by any authority, whether it be priest, sovereign, or society.

Union with God

The Brahmo Samaj looks upon Union with God, intellectually through truth, morally through goodness, and emotionally through love and beauty, and practically through the furtherance of the universal well-being, as the greatest aim of human life. To be so united with God and live in a perpetual consciousness of the Divine Presence is what we understand by Heaven, which is neither a state of absorption in God, nor a condition of mere rest and enjoyment, but of unbroken and eternal progress in truth, goodness, and love. Freedom from sin, that is from the desire or habit of following self or sense in any matter where it comes in conflict with the rights or the good of others or the need of the Spirit, is salvation; and this is an absolute pre-condition of the attainment of eternal process which is the destiny of the human soul.

Worship

Divine worship, which means to love God and to do such things as are acceptable and pleasing to Him, is the only method of attaining salvation that the Brahmo Samaj accepts as essential and valid.
The elements of divine worship, according to the liturgy of the Brahmo Samaj, are four namely:

  1. Awakening, which means inducing the right attitude of worship by arousing the mind to a sense of Divine Presence by hymns, prayer, readings from Scriptures, or, in public worship, by the exhortation of the minister;
  2. Adoration, which means devoutly dwelling upon the various attributes of God, and remembering His love and mercy and goodness as revealed in our own lives, and in general history of the race;
  3. Communion, which means a vivid realization of God in the depths of our own consciousness, and
  4. Prayer.