A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 325I have preached to you as the life of this universe, who ispresent in the atom, who is present in the bigm>ons,suns andHe is the basis of our own the life, background ofour soul. Nay, thou art That that."is what this Gnana Yogateaches. It tells man he is the essentially divine. It showsto mankind the real unity of being ;that each one of us isthe Lord God himself, manifested on earth. Each oneof us, from the lowest worm that crawls under our feetthe highest beings at whom we look with awe, all these aremanifestations of the same Lord.Then again, all these various Yogas, have to be carriedout into practice theories will not do. First we have to;hear, then we have to think reason it; out, impress it inour mind ;and lastly,we kave to meditate upon it, realizeit,until it becomes our whole life. No more it remains asideas or as theories ;it comes into our Self. Religion isrealization, not talk, nor [doctrine, nor theories, howeverbeautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, nothearing or itacknowledgingis not an intellectual assent,;but the whole nature becoming changed into it. That isreligion. By intellectual assent we can come to a hundredsorts of foolish things, and change next day, but this beingand becomingis what is religion.to