A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

",MY""AsMASTER.>25number, and some of them apparently hopelessly contradictory. Yet tlteyall tell you they are but different manifest-Cations of Religion.different rivers, taking theirstart from different mountains, running crooked or straight,all come and mingle their waters in the ocean, so thedifferent sects, with their different points of view, at lastall come unto Thee." This is not a theory, it has to berecognized, but not in that patronizing way which we seewith some. Oh, yes, there are some very good things."(Some even have the most wonderfully liberal idea thatother religions are all little bits of a prehistoric evolution,but ours is the fulfilment of things.")One man saysbecause his is the oldest religion it is the best ;anothermakes the same claim because his is the latest. We haveto recognize that each one of them has the same savingpower as every other. It is a mass of superstitionthat you have heard everywhere, either in the templeor the church, that there is any difference. The same Godanswers all,and it is not you, nor nor I, any body of men,that is responsible for the safety and salvation of the leastlittle bit of the soul ;the same Almighty God is responsible for all of them. I do not understand how peopledeclare, themselves to be believers in God, and, at the sametime, think that God has handed over to a little body ofmen all truth, and that they are the guardians of the restof humanity. Do not try to disturb the faith of anyman. If you can give him something better, if you canget hold of a man where he stands and give him a pushupwards, do so, but do not destroy what he has. Theonly true teacher is he who can convert himself, as it were,into a thousand persons at a moment s notice. The onlytrue teacher is he who can immediately come down to thelevel of the student, and transfer his soul to the student s