The Bhagavata Ethics part1

Many people practice tai chi, chi gong, and so on with the aim of keeping their bodies fit for a long time. There is certainly nothing wrong with keeping one’s body fit — indeed, it is one of the aims of yoga — but unfortunately, many such people are trying to run away from the inevitable death of the body. Some mystic yogis strive to keep their bodies alive forever — but that is not possible. Even if one was the greatest yogi and could keep his body alive for thousands of years, that still is not forever.
Science of Identity Foundation – Chris Butler Speaks
The true critic, on the other hand, advises us to preserve what we have already obtained, and to adjust our race from that point where we have arrived in the heat of our progress. He will never advise us to go back to the point whence we started, as he fully knows that in that case there will be a fruitless loss of our valuable time and labor. He will direct the adjustment of the angle of the race at the point where we are. This is also the characteristic of the useful student. He will read an old author and will find out his exact position in the progress of thought. He will never propose to burn the book on the grounds that it contains thoughts which are useless. No thought is useless. Thoughts are means by which we attain out objects. The reader who denounces a bad thought does not know that a bad road is even capable of improvement and conversion into a good one. One thought is a road leading to another. Thus the reader will find that one thought which is the object to-day will be the means of a further object to-morrow. Thoughts will necessarily continue to be an endless series of means and objects in the progresses of humanity. The great reformers will always assert that they have come out not to destroy the old law, but to fulfill it. Valmiki, Vyasa, Plato, Jesus, Mohammed, Confucius and Caitanya Mahaprabhu assert the fact either expressly or by their conduct.
The Bhagavata like all religious works and philosophical performances and writings of great men has suffered from the imprudent conduct of useless readers and stupid critics. The former have done so much injury to the work that they have surpassed the latter in their evil consequence. Men of brilliant thought have passed by the work in quest of truth and philosophy, but the prejudice which they imbibed from its useless readers and their conduct, prevented them from making a candid investigation. Not to say of other people, the great genius of Raja Rammohun Roy, the founder of the sect of Brahmoism, did not think it worth his while to study this ornament of the religious library. He crossed the gate of the Vedanta, as set up by the mayavada construction of the designing Sankaracarya, the chosen enemy of the Jains, and chalked his way out to the Unitarian form of the Christian faith, converted into an Indian appearance. Rammohun Roy was an able man. He could not be satisfied with the theory of illusion contained in the mayavada philosophy of Sankara. His heart was full of love to Nature. He saw through the eye of his mind that he could not believe in his identity with God. He ran furious from the bounds of Sankara to those of the Koran. There even he was not satisfied. He then studied the pre-eminently beautiful precepts and history of Jesus, first in the English translation and at last in the original Greek, and took shelter under the holy banners of the Jewish Reformer. But Rammohun Roy was also a patriot. He wanted to reform his country in the same way as he reformed himself. He knew it fully that truth does not belong exclusively to any individual man or to any nation of particular race. It belongs to God, and man whether in the poles or on the equator, has a right to claim it as the property of his Father. On these grounds he claimed the truths inculcated by the Western Savior as also the property of himself and his countrymen, and thus he established the samdja of the Brahmos independently of what was in his own country in the beautiful Bhagavata. His noble deeds will certainly procure him a high position in the history of reformers. But then, to speak the truth, he would have done more if he had commenced his work of reformation from the point where the last reformer in India left it. It is not our business to go further on this subject. Suffice it to say, that the Bhagavata did not attract the genius of Rammohun Roy. His thought, mighty though it was, unfortunately branched like the Ranigunj line of the Railway, from the barren station of Sankaracarya, and did not attempt to be an extension from the Delhi Terminus of the great Bhagavata expounder of Nadia. We do not doubt that the progress of time will correct the error, and by a further extension the branch line will lose itself somewhere in the main line of progress. We expect these attempts in a abler reformer of the followers of Rammohun Roy.