Volume 1, Foreword

One of the great questions facing modern society is how to reconcile different religious traditions. The conflicts between competing religious doctrines and metaphysical systems give strength to the skeptical argument that religion is simply a product of human imagination, with no basis in truth. Even if a person wants to follow a spiritual path, what is he to believe?

This book, Spiritual Warrior I, by Bhakti Tirtha Swami, presents a universal approach to religion and spiritual growth that attempts to reconcile several important spiritual traditions. The book's underlying philosophy is taken from the Vaisnava tradition of India. However, the book is aimed primarily at people influenced by a number of other traditions. These include Christianity and Islam, the mystery schools of ancient Egypt, the spiritualistic traditions of Africa, and the many supernatural and quasi-supernatural manifestations of the “new age.”

Two basic approaches to the problem of religious diversity are the exclusive approach and the inclusive approach. According to the exclusive approach, ideas which differ from a given set of accepted religious doctrines are rejected as invalid. This approach simplifies things for those who can fully place their faith in a particular set of doctrines. It can be of great value for some people, because it allows them to imbibe the wisdom of their particular tradition without distraction. However, for people who are doubtful and confused by many conflicting claims, religious exclusivism may act as a barrier to spiritual progress.

The inclusive approach attempts to unite diverse schools of thought by combining them together. According to this idea, different traditions are describing the same reality from different perspectives. Even though some accounts may be corrupted or adulterated with false material, one can arrive at a consistent picture of reality by combining different traditions and noting their strong points and their common features. This is the method used in this book.

What picture emerges if we try to combine different traditions? Bhakti Tirtha Swami emphasizes a basic three-tiered picture of reality based on the world of gross matter, the world of subtle material energy, and the transcendental world of pure spirit. Paralleling this is a threetiered picture of ourselves (and other living beings) as combinations of gross physical body, subtle mind, and transcendental soul.