India - the Mother

September 24, 1958

Religions are always mistaken—always—because they seek to standardize the expression of one experience and to impose it on everyone as an irrefutable truth.¹⁰ The experience was true, complete in itself, convincing—for the person who had it. The formula he made out of it was excellent—for himself. But to seek to impose it on others is a fundamental error which always has quite disastrous consequences and always leads far, far away from the truth.

That is why all religions, however true they may be, have always led man to the worst excesses. All crimes, all horrors perpetrated in the name of religion are among the darkest stains on human history, and simply because of that small original error: to want what is true for one individual to be true for the mass or the collectivity.

Questions and Answers (1957 - 1958): 24 September 1958