Vedanta Society of Southern California

Vivekananda, who traveled widely to deliver his spiritual message, in Pasadena, California in 1990.

“Religions must also be inclusive and not look down with contempt upon one another, because their particular ideals of God are different.” What a wonderful statement of peace… so many beautiful statements have come from the words and writing of the wandering monks of India – the saints, the saddhus, and the fakirs. To me, this one resonates fully with truth: contempt brings us away from union, contempt separates us from our fellow human beings.

http://www.ramakrishna.org/

In my metaphysical lessons, I encountered the name “Swami Vivekananda” for the umpteenth time, and for the first time, a desire was raised in me to learn more about this man who brought Jnana Yoga teachings in Vedanta form to North America in the early nineteenth century. After the death of his guru, Sri Ramakrishna, he renounced the world and spent the remainder of his days as a wandering monk. Most interesting were his viewpoints on religion:

“All narrow, limited, fighting ideas of religion have to go. All sect ideas and tribal or national ideas of religion must be given up. That each tribe or nation should have its own particular God and think that every other is wrong is a superstition that should belong to the past. All such ideas must be abandoned.”

“Religions must also be inclusive and not look down with contempt upon one another, because their particular ideals of God are different.”

“Even at the present time we find many sects and societies, with almost the same ideas, fighting each other, because one does not want to set forth those ideas in precisely the same way as another. Therefore, religions will have to broaden. Religious ideas will have to become universal, vast, and infinite; and then alone we shall have the fullest play of religion, for the power of religion has only just begun to manifest in the world.”

In other words, the “specialness” of religion is separating us.