Swami Vivekananda.

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was the foremost disciple of Ramakrishna and a world spokesperson for Vedanta. His lectures, writings, letters, and poems are published as The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. He felt it was best to teach universal principles rather than personalities, so we find little mention of Ramakrishna in the Complete Works.

Swami Vivekananda represented Hinduism at the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 where he was an instant success. Subsequently he was invited to speak all over America and Europe. He was a man with a great spiritual presence and tremendous intellect.

His talks on Universal Religion:
"Suppose we all go with vessels in our hands to draw water from the lake. One has a cup, another a jar, another a bucket, and so forth, and we all fill our vessels. The water in each case takes the form of the vessel carried by each of us, but in every case, water, and nothing but water is in the vessel..... God is like that water filling these different vessels, and in each vessel, the vision of God comes in the form of the vessel.
                                       Yet He is One......."

"Religion is realization, not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes. That is religion

"If I am sure of anything, it is this humanity, which is common to all .... So it is with the universal religion, which runs through all the various religions of the world in the form of God; it must and does exist through eternity. 'I am the thread that runs through all these pearls... ' (Gita) and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof, only the majority of mankind is entirely unconscious of it ....."

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