A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda
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A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

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314 THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.selves. What can you and I do ? Do you think you canteach even a child ? You cannot. A child teaches himself.Your duty is to remove the obstacles. A plant grows. Doyou make the plant grow? Your dutyis to put a hedgeround, and see that no animal eats up the plant, and thereit ends. The plant must growitself. So in the spiritualgrowth of every man. None can teach you none can make;you spiritual ; you have to teach yourselves ? t\ie growthmust come from inside, not out.What can an external teacher do ? He can remove theobstructions a little, and there his duty ends. Thereforehelp, if you can, but do not destroy. Give upall such ideasthatyou can make men spiritual. It is impossible. There isno other teacher but your own soul. Admit this. Whatcomes ? In society we see so many various natures of mankind. There are thousands and thousands of varieties ofminds and inclinations. A practical generalization will beimpossible, but for my purpose I have sufficiently characterized them into four. First the active working man he;wants work ;tremendous energy in his muscles and hisnerves. He likes te work, build hospitals,do charitableworks, make streets, and do all sorts of work, planning,organizing ; an active man. There is then the emotionalman, who loves the sublime and the beautiful to an excessive degree. He wants to think of the beautiful, the mildpart of nature, Love, and the god of Love, and all thesethings he likes. He loves with his whole heart those greatsouls of ancient times, the prophets of religions, the incarnations of God on earth ;he does not care whether reason can prove that Christ existed, or Buddha existed ;hedoes not care for the exact date when the Sermon on theMount was preached, or the exact moment of Christ sbirth ;what he cares for is His personality, the figure be-

""Can"THE IDEAL OF A UIVEKSAL RELIGION. 315fore him. He does not even care whether it can be provedthat such-and-such men existed or not. Such is his ideal.Such a nature as I have pictured, is the lover ;he i theemotional man. Then again there is the mystic man, whosemind wants to analyse its own self, understand the workings of the human mind, the psychology, what are theforces that are working inside, how to manipulateand knowand get control over them. This is the mystical mind. Thereis then the philosopher, who wants to weigh everything,and use his intellect even beyond the philosophy.Now a religion to satisfy the largest portionof mankind, must be able to supply food for all these various minds,and this is wanting, the existing sects are all one-sided.You go to one sect. Suppose they preach love and emotion.They begin to sing and weep, and they preachlove and allsorts of good things in life, but as soon as you sayMyfriend, that is all right, but I want something strongerthan that ; give me an ounce of reason, a little philosophy ;"I want to handle things more gradually."Get out, rthey say, and they not only say get out, but want to sendyou to the other place, if they can. The result is that sectcan only help people of an emotional mind, and none else ;others, they not only do not help, but try to destroy, andthe most wicked part of the whole thingis that they willnot only not help others, but do not believe that they aresincere, and the sooner they get out the better. There is thefailing of the whole thing. Suppose you are in a sect ofphilosophers, talking of the mystic wisdom of India andthe East, and all these big psychological terms fifty syllables long, and suppose a man like me, a common everyday man, goes there and says youtell me anything to make me spiritual The first thing they da?"is to smile and sayOh, you are too far below us in reason

314 THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.selves. What can you and I do ? Do you think you canteach even a child ? You cannot. A child teaches himself.Your duty is to remove the obstacles. A plant grows. Doyou make the plant grow? Your dutyis to put a hedgeround, and see that no animal eats up the plant, and thereit ends. The plant must growitself. So in the spiritualgrowth of every man. None can teach you none can make;you spiritual ; you have to teach yourselves ? t\ie growthmust come from inside, not out.What can an external teacher do ? He can remove theobstructions a little, and there his duty ends. Thereforehelp, if you can, but do not destroy. Give upall such ideasthatyou can make men spiritual. It is impossible. There isno other teacher but your own soul. Admit this. Whatcomes ? In society we see so many various natures of mankind. There are thousands and thousands of varieties ofminds and inclinations. A practical generalization will beimpossible, but for my purpose I have sufficiently characterized them into four. First the active working man he;wants work ;tremendous energy in his muscles and hisnerves. He likes te work, build hospitals,do charitableworks, make streets, and do all sorts of work, planning,organizing ; an active man. There is then the emotionalman, who loves the sublime and the beautiful to an excessive degree. He wants to think of the beautiful, the mildpart of nature, Love, and the god of Love, and all thesethings he likes. He loves with his whole heart those greatsouls of ancient times, the prophets of religions, the incarnations of God on earth ;he does not care whether reason can prove that Christ existed, or Buddha existed ;hedoes not care for the exact date when the Sermon on theMount was preached, or the exact moment of Christ sbirth ;what he cares for is His personality, the figure be-

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