Vivekananda Mailing List-9/20/02

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Apart from the consideration of the question how far these facts

claimed by religions are true, we find one characteristic common to

them all. They are all abstractions as contrasted with the concrete

discoveries of physics, for instance; and in all the highly organized

religions they take the purest form of Unit Abstraction, either in

the form of an Abstracted Presence, as an Omnipresent Being, as an

Abstract Personality called God, as a Moral Law, or in the form of an

Abstract Essence underlying every existence. In modern times, too,

the attempts made to preach religions without appealing to the

supersensuous state of mind have had to take up the old abstractions

of the Ancients and give different names to them as " Moral Law " , the

" Ideal Unity " , and so forth, thus showing that these abstractions are

not in the senses. None of us have yet seen an " Ideal Human Being " ,

and yet we are told to believe in it. None of us have yet seen an

ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress.

Thus, this one fact stands out from all these different religions,

that there is an Ideal Unit Abstraction, which is put before us,

either in the form of a Person or an Impersonal Being, or a Law, or a

Presence, or an Essence.