Vivekananda

An Open Letter from God

What is the Universal Light? What is the True Religion?

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Truth Love Balance Oneness

The Ideal of a Universal Religion

by Swami Vivekananda - excepted from Vedanta, Voice of Freedom

In society, we see so many different natures. There are thousands and thousands of varieties of minds and inclinations. A thorough generalization of them is impossible, but for our practical purpose it is sufficient to have them characterized into four classes. First, there is the active man, the worker. He wants to work, and there is tremendous energy in his muscles and his nerves. His aim is to work - to build hospitals, do charitable deeds, make streets, to plan and organize. Then there is the emotional man, who loves the sublime and the beautiful to an excessive degree. He loves to think of the beautiful, to enjoy the aesthetic side of nature, and to adore Love and the God of Love. He loves with his whole heart the great souls of all times, the prophets of religions, and the Incarnations of God on earth. He does not care whether reason can or cannot prove that Christ or Buddha existed. He does not care for the exact date when the Sermon on the Mount was preached, or for the exact moment of Krishna's birth. What he cares for is their personalities, their lovable figures. Such is his ideal. This is the nature of the lover, the emotional man. Then there is the mystic, whose mind wants to analyze its own self, to understand the workings of the human mind - what the forces are that are working inside, and how to know, manipulate, and gain control over them. This is the mystical mind. Then there is the philosopher, who wants to weigh everything and use his intellect even beyond the possibilities of all human thinking.

Now, a religion to satisfy the largest population of mankind, must be able to supply food for all these various types of minds. And where this capability is wanting, the existing sects all become one-sided....

For religion must be able to show us how to realize the philosophy that teaches that this world is one, that there is but one Existence on the universe. Similarly, if the mystic comes, we must welcome him, be ready to give him the science of mental analysis, and practically demonstrate it before him. And if emotional people come, we must sit, laugh, and weep with them in the name of the Lord. We must "drink the cup of love and become mad". If the energetic worker comes, we must work with him with all the energy that we have. And this combination will be the ideal of the nearest approach to a universal religion.

Would to God that all men were so constituted that in their minds all these elements - of philosophy, mysticism, emotion and of work - were equally present in full! That is the ideal, my ideal of a perfect man....

To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion.

Universal Light Institute