VML-3/15/00

[Guest guest]

There is then the Bhakti-Yoga for the man of emotional nature, the

lover. He wants to love God, he relies upon and uses all sorts of

rituals, flowers, incense, beautiful buildings, forms and all such

things. Do you mean to say they are wrong? One fact I must tell you.

It is good for you to remember, in this country especially, that the

world's great spiritual giants have all been produced only by those

religious sects which have been in possession of very rich mythology

and ritual. All sects that have attempted to worship God without any

form or ceremony have crushed without mercy everything that is

beautiful and sublime in religion. Their religion is a fanaticism at

best, a dry thing. The history of the world is a standing witness to

this fact. Therefore do not decry these rituals and mythologies. Let

people have them; let those who so desire have them. Do not exhibit

that unworthy derisive smile, and say, " They are fools; let them have

it. " Not so; the greatest men I have seen in my life, the most

wonderfully developed in spirituality, have all come through the

discipline of these rituals. I do not hold myself worthy to sit at

their feet, and for me to criticize them! How do I know how these

ideas act upon the human mind, which of them I am to accept and which

to reject? We are apt to criticize everything in the world without

sufficient warrant.