Swami Shivapadananda on the personality behind all religions

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

Day 529

 
 

A Christian may say, 'I do not worry about Christ but I accept the Bible.' That person is accepting the principles given by a personality and those principles embody the personality called Jesus the Christ. How, without knowing the personality, will I know if he is speaking the truth? I have to examine his life to see the environment he has come from and to see the good that he has done (and is still doing) to the whole world.

Principles are abstract things which are concretised in personalities. All religions have made a cult around a personality. Swami Vivekananda has said that we must stress less on the cult and more on the principles of that cult i.e. what the personality practised in his life as far as abstract universal truth goes.

If someone asked me, 'Swamiji, are you a personality worshipper?' I would say, 'Yes,' because I am proud to worship the person who has given something which is above him (i.e. principles). The Ramayana tells us the same thing. It tells us that it is the unmanifest Brahman that has taken the manifested form of Sri Rama. Through Sri Rama's mouth we hear that all people who are doing good (he calls them sadhus) are the embodiment of Sri Rama and the embodiment of the principles he preached, the principles he practised, the principles that had existed long before him. One great thing about worshipping the principle is that if you find fault with the personality it does not affect the religion at all.

All Swami Vivekananda said was, 'Do not stress too much on personality.' No man can live without a personality. No man can live without a scripture. Any religion without a scripture is a very weak religion and it must fade sooner than other religions.

1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's
words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave
was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time.

2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in
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