Subject: Here OR There ?

[Guest guest]

> One question that I have been trying to find a suitable solution is this...

> We talk of spirituality and worldliness.

> Strange situation ! Any clue ?

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Swami Vivekananda says:

 

" Sometimes I agree that there is some good in the dualistic method; it

helps many who are weak. If a man wants you to show him the polar star,

you first point out to him a bright star near it, then a less bright,

then a dim star, and then the polar star. This process makes it easy for

him to see it. All the various practices and training, Bibles and Gods,

are but the rudiments of religion, the kindergarten of religion. "

 

" But then I think of the other side. How long will the world have to

wait to reach the truth if it follows this slow, gradual process? How

long? And where is the surety that it will ever succeed to any

appreciable degree? It has not so far. After all, gradual or not

gradual, easy or not easy to the weak, is not the dualistic method based

on falsehood? Are not all the prevalent religious practices often

weakening and therefore wrong? They are based on the wrong idea, a wrong

view of man. Would two wrongs make one right? Would the lie become

truth? Would darkness become light? "

 

{From 'Is Vedanta The Future Religion' Complete works of S V, Vol. VIII,

pages 122-141}

 

Comments:

Thus we see that now the time has come to call spade the spade. Other

than advaita, every other system is to be given up as an end in itself.

All worldliness, including dualistic religion and its associated

worship and rituals, philanthropy and duty, must be conducive to take

one beyond them! If this is the aim and the result, then worldliness

and dualism are welcome as spiritual disciplines; road to advaita.

Anything less or other than this would be a folly as, I feel, Swami

Vivekananda tries to say.

 

c s shah