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These days, as the issue of religious conversion comes increasingly to
the fore, with the rise of "religious terrorism" all around the world, it is essential that the pacifying influence of Hindutva, with its fundamentally "secular" nature, characterised by its central message of "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" (The whole world is one big family) and "Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudah Vadanti" (Truth, or God, is one, but wise men call It by different names), be once more spread throughout the world, acting like a soothing balm to relieve the tension of such religious fanaticism.
The Hindu Dharma has always been, and still remains, deeply and
fundamentally committed to the concept of true Universal Brotherhood, and has thus been given the name "Vishwa Dharma" (Universal Dharma). Moreover, the Hindu concept of Universal Brotherhood does not contain as its prerequisite the conversion of all that disagree with its teachings, but it is essentially based on a concept of assimilation, not of annihilation.
Whilst other faiths, in their bid for Universal Brotherhood, preach a
doctrine of conformity, whereby, in the cause of Universal Brotherhood and global harmony, individual cultures and traditions are eradicated, and one faith is accepted by all, Hindutva teaches a doctrine of respect for other cultures and not merely tolerance, but complete acceptance of foreign concepts, philosophies and ideas.
The vast collection of myriad different cultures and subcultures, sects
and subsects, faiths and belief systems, which combine together to make up that ever-expanding, growing and evolving entity that is given the name Hindutva, thus remains completely free of any limits which one may seek to place upon it in the form of strict adherence to religious dogmas, traditions, rules or belief codes. Rather than defining itself or being defined by any narrow limits or boundaries, therefore, Hindutva constantly expands itself, and comes to include ever more forms of belief and religious patterns.
It is thus that when faced with the beliefs of Islam on their voyage
through the Middle East, a certain group of Dutt Brahmins did not hesitate in simply assimilating the Islamic teachings into that all- embracing Hindu fold. Those Brahmins have retained their Hindu heritage, and are now known as "Hussaini Brahmins". Whilst they remain committed to the values of Hindutva, they now also follow certain tenets of Islam, which they have absorbed into that Hindu lifestyle, thereby adding yet another wonderful dimension to the eternal glory of the "Sanatana Dharma" (Eternal Dharma), which is truly "anaadi" (without beginning) and "anant" (without end).
And so it can be seen that the Hindu interpretation and idea of the
Universal Brotherhood and the aim of global harmony is indeed far removed from the fundamentalist notions of the religious extremists, as the Hindu views this Universal Brotherhood as being not mutually exclusive from the notion of diversity of belief and tradition, but indeed its very essence. Whilst the norm today is to view cultural unity and similarity as the fundamental prerequisite for any kind of global harmony, the Hindu is guided by the concept of "Anektaa me ektaa" (Unity in Diversity), or even, "Anektaa se ektaa" (Unity through Diversity).
Indeed, Hindutva is so deeply committed to this fundamental
philosophy that even the notion of "militancy" or "fundamentalism" itself is not, in its purest form, regarded as any kind of anathema. The Hindu does not reject the possibility or validity of religious conversion, but accepts it willingly as yet another manifestation of that glorious diversity of expression he has come to know simply as "Dharma", in recognition of the essential fact that this term, by its inherent Universal application and all-encompassing nature, requires no further qualification or qualifying term.
Hence, "fundamentalism", or strict adherence to the precise, exact
system of a religious belief at the fundamental level - i.e. complete committment to each and every fundamental (i.e. "basic") principle of that belief - is completely acceptable to the Hindu. Furthermore, "militancy", or the active seeking of religious conversions, is also not at all rejected by the Hindu. In fact, several so-called "Hindu sects" are themselves essentially "militant" in nature, for example the Arya Samaj and ISKCon.
Religious conversion then, or "militancy" in its truest sense, is not at
all frowned upon by the Hindu. However, what Hindutva does object to is the confusion of this pure form of "militancy" or "fundamentalism" with fanaticism or extremism. Conversion is perfectly acceptable, since changing from inherited beliefs to a different set of beliefs, which are more in accordance with the personal preference, is natural, and indeed to be encouraged, for remaining entrapped by a fixed set of beliefs which are not suited to the individual is clearly against the whole purpose of religion and spirituality, which are intended to guide the individual towards a higher existence.
However, the Hindu maintains that the motives and reasons for this
conversion must be absolutely pure. Thus, Hindutva does forcefully object to conversion which occurs due to any kind of coercion, or that which occurs through misunderstanding or lack of knowledge. Thus, conversion "at sword point", conversion as a condition for e.g. marriage, conversion due to false propaganda or trickery, etc. are all aspects of extremism and fanaticism which are considered by the Hindu to be not just undesirable, but extremely dangerous and a threat to humanity itself.
It is here then that Hindutva's intrinsic merit and profound strength
come most powerfully to the fore. In admitting the inherent value and worth of all other belief systems and religious paths, Hindutva clearly demonstrates the power of acceptance and harmony, whilst in its forceful and outright condemnation of any kind of extremism or fanaticism, it also gives out a powerful signal of what is to be avoided in oneself, treated in others, and fought and overcome generally. It is also important to note that Hindutva, in its clear stance on this issue, demonstrates its true committment to yet another great virtue - condemn the sin, and not the sinner. Hindutva fights no battle against the religious fanatic, but against the fanaticism within him. The individual himself is guided, helped and cured of his affliction, and at no point does the Hindu curse or condemn that individual, for in the famous words of the great Swami Vivekananda,
"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest the divinity
within by controlling nature internal and external. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines and dogmas, rituals and books, temples and forms are but secondary details."
Thus does Hindutva approach the issue. The fanatic is not to be
condemned or cursed, but he is to be helped and guided, and given the understanding to enable him to realise his full potential, thus allowing him to contribute fully and productively towards the common good. Hindutva recognises that this common good is to be sought not by eradicating all other faiths but one's own, but by bringing out the best in each religious faith, and guiding the followers of each and every religion to contribute their own unique splendour and greatness to the cause of global harmony. Again, to quote Swami Vivekananda, "Let us ennoble the world." In truth, the Hindu has never sought anything but the global good, and he has voiced his absolute devotion to this cause in the Vedas themselves :-
"AUM, Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niraamayaah,
Sarve bhadraani pashyantu, maa kaschit dukha bhaag bhavet."
(AUM, May all find happiness, May all be free from misery,
May all realise goodness, May noone suffer pain or sorrow.)
Thus it becomes clear that it is Hindutva alone which, in its all-
inclusive, all-embracing philosophy, has the ability to tackle the greatest and most dangerous threat to the world today - the curse of religious fanaticism. To quote another great thinker, the noted historian Arnold Toynbee,
"It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western
beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the only way of salvation of mankind is the Indian way." |
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Swami Vivekananda
Hinduism-a Universal Religion - Part 1
(The following is an excerpt taken from Swami Vivekananda's lecture given
at the Parliament of Religions held at Chicago in 1893)
Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from
time prehistoric-Hinduism, Zorostrianism and Judaism. All of them have received tremendous shocks, and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place by its own daughter, and while a handful of Parsis is all that now remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India, seeming to shake the religion of Vedas to its very depths, but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake, it receded for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith.
From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy of which the latest
discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the ideas of idolatry, with its multifarious mythology, the agnostics of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.
Where then, the question arises, where is the common center upon which all
these widely diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis upon which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? And this is the question I shall attempt to answer.
The Hindus have received their religion through Vedas. They hold that the
Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons at different time. Just as the laws of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would continue to exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain, even if we forgot them.
The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis and we honor them as
perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women.
Here it may be urged that these laws as laws may be without end, but they
must have had a beginning. Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that sum total of the cosmic energy is always same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was the manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make him mutable. Everything mutable is compound and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there was never a time when there was no creation.
If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines without
beginning and end, running parallel to each other. God is the ever-active Providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos made to run for a time, and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmana boy repeats every day: "The sun and the moon, the Lord created, like the sun and the moons of previous cycles". And this agrees with the modern science.
Here I stand and if I shut my eyes and try to conceive of my own existence "I"
"I" "I"-- what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, the nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, "No". I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. here I am in this body; it will fail but I will go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination, which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health, with beautiful body, mental vigor and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable, some are without hands or feet, others again are idiots, and only drag on a wretched existence. Why, if they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy? Nor would it mend matters least to be hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in a future one. Why should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?
In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly,
but simply expresses the cruel flat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.
Are not all the tendencies of mind and body accounted for by inherited
aptitude? here are two parallel lines of existence--one of the mind, the other of the matter. If matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been evolved out of matter, and if philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism. But neither of these is necessary here.
We cannot deny bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those
tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind can act in a peculiar way. There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by its past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would by the laws of affinity take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. This is in accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetition. So repetitions are necessary to explain the natural habits of a newborn soul. And since they were not obtained in this present life, they must have come down from past lives.
There is another suggestion. Taking all this for granted, how is it that I do not
remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother-tongue, in fact no words of my mother- tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up and you would be conscious even of your past life.
This is the direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect
proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the whole world by Hindu Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which they very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up--try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life.
So then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword can not pierce--
Him the fire cannot burn--Him the water cannot melt--Him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in the body, and that means the change of the center from body to body. Nor is soul bound by conditions of matter. In its very essence, its free, unbounded, holy, pure and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matte, and thinks itself as matter.
Why should the free, perfect, and pure being be thus under the thralldom of
matter, is the next question. How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect? We have been told that Hindus shirk the question and say that no such question can be there. Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill the gap. But naming is not explaining. The question remains the same. How can the perfect become quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute, change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion.; and his answer is "I do not know how the perfect being, the soul came to think of itself as imperfect, as joined to and conditioned by matter.". But the fact is a fact for all that. It is a fact in everybody's consciousness that one thinks of oneself as the body. The Hindu does not attempt to explain why one thinks of oneself as the body. The answer that it is the will of God is no explanation. This is nothing more than what the Hindu says, "I do not know".
Well, then the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and
death means a change of center from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a pillow and dashed down into the yawing chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions--a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing uncompromising current of cause and effect; a little moth placed under the wheel of causation which rolls in crushing everything on its way and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape?- was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: "Hear, ye children of immortal bliss! Even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found an Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion; knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again". "Children of immortal bliss"--what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you brethren, by that sweet name-heirs of immortal bliss, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners. Ye are children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth--sinners! It is a sin to call a man so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep. You are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal. You are not matter. You are not bodies. Matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.
Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful combination of unforgiving
laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but that at the head of these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One "by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain, and death stalks upon earth."
And what is His nature ?
He is everywhere, the pure and formless one, the Almighty and All-merciful.
"Thou art our father. Thou art our mother. Thou art our beloved friend. Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe.; help me to bear the little burden of this life". Thus sang the Rishis of the Vedas. And how to worship Him? Through love. "He is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than anything in this life and next."
This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas. And let us see how it is
fully developed and taught by Krishna, whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on the earth.
He taught that a man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows
in water but is never moistened by water, so a man ought to live in the world-- his heart to God and his hands to work or Karma. It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake. And the prayer goes: "Lord, I do not want the wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward--love unselfishly for love's sake."
The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of the
matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti--freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery.
And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God and this mercy
comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the crookedness if the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. He is no more the freak of a terrible law of causation. This is the very center, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories. If there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, he wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him which does not matter, if there is an all-merciful Universal Soul, he will go to Him direct. He must see Him, and that alone can destroy all doubt. So the best proof of a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God is: "I have seen the soul, I have seen God". And that is the only condition of perfection.
The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a
certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing--not in believing, but in being and becoming. Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God, and this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect constitutes the religion of the Hindus.
And what becomes of a man when he attains perfection? He lives a life of
bliss infinite. He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss--having obtained God, the only thing in which man ought to find pleasure,--and enjoys the bliss with the God.
So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects
of India; but then perfection is absolute and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahman (The Supreme Self), and it would realize the Lord only as the perfection, the reality, of its own nature and existence,-- Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute. We have often and often read this called the losing the individuality and becoming a stock or a stone.
"He jests at scars that never felt a wound."
I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness
of this small body, it must be greater happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, the measure of happiness increasing with the consciousness of an increasing number of bodies, the aim, the ultimate of happiness being reached when it would become a universal consciousness.
Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little
prison-individuality, this miserable little prison-individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life, then alone cal all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and this is the necessary scientific conclusion. Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter, and Advaita (unity) is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, soul.
Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach
perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus Chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all others are but manifestations, and the science of religion becomes perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no further. This is the goal of all science.
All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation,
and not creation, is the word of the science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language, and with further light from the latest conclusions from science.
Descend now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the
ignorant. At the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, one will find the worshippers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence, to the images. It is not the polytheism., nor would the name henotheism explain the situation. "The rose called by any other name would smell as sweet." Names are not explanations.
I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to a crowd in
India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick, what could it do ? One of his hearers sharply answered, "If I abuse your God, what can He do?" "You would be punished", said the preacher, "when you die." "So my idol will punish you when you die", retorted the Hindu.
The tree is known by its fruits. When I have seen amongst them that are
called idolaters, men, the like of whom in morality and spirituality and love I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, "Can sin beget holiness?"
Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a
Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there are so many images in the minds of Protestant when they pray? My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. After all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It means merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat the word "omnipresent", we think of the extended sky or space, that is all.
As we find that somehow or other, by the laws of our mental constitution, we
have to associate our ideas of infinity with the image of the blue sky, or of the sea, so we naturally connect our idea of holiness with the image of a church, a mosque or a cross. The Hindus have associated the ideas of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms. But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole of the Hindu is centered in realization. Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples or books are only the supporters, the helps of his spiritual childhood; but on and on he must progress.
He must not stop anywhere. "External worship", say the scriptures, "is the
lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage; but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized." Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you: "Him the sun cannot express, not the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire. Through Him they shine". But he does not abuse any one's idol or call its worship sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of life. "The child is father of the man." Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?
If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be
right to call that a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error? To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth. To him all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, means so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun.
Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognized it. Every
other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas, and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry, he must go without a coat to cover his body. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of , or stated, through the relative, and the images, crosses and crescents are simply so many symbols--so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for every one, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. To the Hindu, the whole world of religions is only a travelling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there are so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions have come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures. It is the same light coming through glasses of different colors. And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindu in his incarnation as Krishna: "I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest purifying humanity, know thou that I am there." And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, "We find perfect men beyond the pale of our caste and creed. One thing more. How then, can the Hindu, whose whole fabric of thought centers in God, believe in Buddhism which is agnostic, or in Jainism which is atheistic? The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion: to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father also. This, brethren, is a short sketch of the religious ideas of the Hindus. The Hindu may have failed to carry out his plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ or saints and sinners alike; which will no be Brahmanic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for every human being, from the lowest groveling savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, and making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman and whose whole scope, whose whole force will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true and divine nature. Offer such a religion and the nations will follow you. May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehova of the Jews and the Father in heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea! The star rose in the East; it traveled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world; and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of Sanpo, a thousand fold more effulgent than it ever was before. |