Vivekananda Mailing List-9/19/03

[Guest guest]

This eye-opener of the aspirant after religion is the teacher. With the

teacher, therefore, our relationship is the same as that between an

ancestor and his descendant. Without faith, humility, submission, and

veneration in our hearts towards our religious teacher, there cannot be

any growth of religion in us; and it is a significant fact that, where

this kind of relation between the teacher and the taught prevails,

there alone gigantic spiritual men are growing; while in those

countries which have neglected to keep up this kind of relation the

religious teacher has become a mere lecturer, the teacher expecting his

five dollars and the person taught expecting his brain to be filled

with the teacher's words, and each going his own way after this much

has been done. Under such circumstances spirituality becomes almost an

unknown quantity. There is none to transmit it and none to have it

transmitted to. Religion with such people becomes business; they think

they can obtain it with their dollars. Would to God that religion could

be obtained so easily! But unfortunately it cannot be.