Take a thousand idols more if you can produce Ramakrishna Paramahamsas through idol-worship, and may God speed you!
Produce such noble natures by any means you can.
Yet idolatry is condemned!
Why? Nobody knows.
Because some hundreds of years ago some man of Jewish blood happened to condemn it?
That is, he happened to condemn everybody else's idols except his own.
If God is represented in any beautiful form or any symbolic form, said the Jew, it is awfully bad; it is sin.
But if He is represented in the form of a chest, with two angels sitting on each side, and a cloud hanging over it,
it is the holy of holies.
If God comes in the form of a dove, it is holy. But if He comes in the form of a cow, it is heathen superstition;
condemn it!
That is how the world goes.
That is why the poet says, "What fools we mortals be!"
How difficult it is to look through each other's eyes, and that is the bane of humanity. That is the basis of hatred and jealousy, of quarrel and of fight.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Address at Victoria Hall Madras,
Lectures From Colombo to Almora
Produce such noble natures by any means you can.
Yet idolatry is condemned!
Why? Nobody knows.
Because some hundreds of years ago some man of Jewish blood happened to condemn it?
That is, he happened to condemn everybody else's idols except his own.
If God is represented in any beautiful form or any symbolic form, said the Jew, it is awfully bad; it is sin.
But if He is represented in the form of a chest, with two angels sitting on each side, and a cloud hanging over it,
it is the holy of holies.
If God comes in the form of a dove, it is holy. But if He comes in the form of a cow, it is heathen superstition;
condemn it!
That is how the world goes.
That is why the poet says, "What fools we mortals be!"
How difficult it is to look through each other's eyes, and that is the bane of humanity. That is the basis of hatred and jealousy, of quarrel and of fight.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Address at Victoria Hall Madras,
Lectures From Colombo to Almora
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