07-26-2005, 04:51 AM
I give below some of the thoughts of Swami Vivekananda on different religions:
You must remember that humanity travels not from error to truth, but from
truth to truth; it may be, if you like it better, from lower truth to higher
truth, but never from error to truth. Suppose you start from here and travel
towards the sun in a straight line. From here the sun looks only small in size
. Suppose you go forwards a million miles, the sun will be much bigger. At
every stage the sun will become bigger and bigger. Suppose twenty thousand
photographs had been taken of the same sun, from different standpoints; these
twenty thousand photographs will certainly differ from one another. But can
you deny that each is a photograph of the same sun? So all forms of religion,
high or low, are just different stages towards that eternal state of light,
which is God Himself. Some embody a lower view, some a higher, and that is all
the difference.
- Vivekananda (Complete Works IV, p147)
You must remember that humanity travels not from error to truth, but from
truth to truth; it may be, if you like it better, from lower truth to higher
truth, but never from error to truth. Suppose you start from here and travel
towards the sun in a straight line. From here the sun looks only small in size
. Suppose you go forwards a million miles, the sun will be much bigger. At
every stage the sun will become bigger and bigger. Suppose twenty thousand
photographs had been taken of the same sun, from different standpoints; these
twenty thousand photographs will certainly differ from one another. But can
you deny that each is a photograph of the same sun? So all forms of religion,
high or low, are just different stages towards that eternal state of light,
which is God Himself. Some embody a lower view, some a higher, and that is all
the difference.
- Vivekananda (Complete Works IV, p147)