Swami Vivekananda Quotes About Idol Worship
-
Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain.
→ -
The secret of image - worship is that you are trying to develop your vision of Divinity in one thing.
→ -
One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots.
→ -
Too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry, but intense love for the Guru makes rapid growth possible.
→ -
We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshipping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater.
→ -
The idol is the expression of religion.
→ -
The world has not gone one step beyond idolatry yet.
→ -
Despite the many iniquities that have found entrance into the practices of image-worship as it is in vogue now, I do not condemn it. Ay, where would I have been if I had not been blessed with the dust of the holy feet of that orthodox, image-worshipping Brahmin!
→ -
The test of having ceased to be an idolater is: "When you say 'I', does the body come into your thought or not? If it does, then you are still a worshipper of idols."
→ -
As to the so-called Hindu idolatry - first go and learn the forms they are going through, and where it is that the worshippers are really worshipping, whether in the temple, in the image, or in the temple of their own bodies. First know for certain what they are doing - which more than ninety per cent of the revilers are thoroughly ignorant of - and then it will explain itself in the light of the Vedantic philosophy.
→ -
Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.
→ -
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
→ -
We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika.
→ -
Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry - to them I say "Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?"
→ -
This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do.
→
Related Authors
-
Mahatma Gandhi Civil rights leader -
Sri Aurobindo Philosopher -
Lal Bahadur Shastri Former Prime Minister of India -
Narendra Modi Prime Minister of India -
Chanakya Teacher -
Rabindranath Tagore Author -
Vallabhbhai Patel Indian statesman -
Mother Teresa Saint -
Bal Gangadhar Tilak Journalist -
Abdul Kalam Former President of India -
Adi Shankara Philosopher -
Jawaharlal Nehru Former Prime Minister of India -
-
-
Sister Nivedita Author -
Subhas Chandra Bose Freedom fighter -
-
Sarada Devi Biographer -
B. R. Ambedkar Indian Politician -
Sivananda Author