Religion can be defined as belief in God or Gods or particular faith that supports to mould the destination of human race. It's based on the specific set of beliefs that is usually expressed in conduct and ritual, worship, prayers, etc. It indicates the quality of being non-physical and assumes to be spiritual quality. It's a peculiar force that keeps human in right track to ensure persuit of happiness and bliss in life.
Swami Vivekananda argues that religion is an inevitable necessity to human as it liberates a man from the earthly world providing them highest form of pleasure and satisfaction and leads towards the salvation through spirituality. He highlights thee two existing theories on its origin; the spirit theory and the infinite theory which have gained some acceptance amongst modern scholars.
The spitit theory of religion believes ancestor worship as the beginning of a religion. The infinite theory assumes that religion originates in the personification of the powers of nature. The religion of the Egyptians, Babyloyans, Chinese, Hindu, etc. is based on the ancestor worship. The Egyptians believed on double soul and as long as they kept the dead body intact, the soul remains with the body and built huge pyramids. On the other hand, The Aryans, Greeks, Germans, The Scandinavians, etc. believed in the infinite theory and the religion is originated in nature worship in varied manifestations like fire, wind, air, soil, earth, water, etc. Apart from these two theories, Swami Vivekananda conceives a third theory of origin 'transcendentalism' i.e, going beyond the limitation of the senses.
Vivekananda asserts that man desires to understand the spirit of ancestors after their death or the power working behind the stupendous phenomena of nature. For these any cases, he tries to transcand the limitations of senses. He's not satisfied with his senses and goes beyond it. Human mind works even in sub-conscious state. Dream is an example of it. The physical body is apprently dead but thee mind goes on with all its intricate working. Hence, the human mind rises to higher and higher conceptions.
In all organized religions, their founders, prophets, and messengers are declared to have gone into the state of mind that were neither working nor sleeping in which they come face to face with a new series of fact. Risis of Hindus and Buddha in Buddhism are declared to have gone to the supersensuous state and profounded the absolute truth. People believe in God, or Absolute or Eternal Moral law sensed in a supersensuous state.
We find one characteristic common to all religions. They are all abstractions beyond the discoveries of physics. They take the purest form of Unit Abstraction either in the form of an Abstract Presence, an Omnipresent being, as an Abstract Personality called God, as a Moral law or in the form of Abstract Essence underlying every existence. Modern View focuses on the natural state to achieve the optimum height of mind through idealism. But idealism also leads one from finite to infinite as the creteria of being ideal is eternal and unachievable.
The author opines that ethics always advocates for others not for oneself. Ethics doesn't support the idea of indiviualism. People who seek infinite power, divine revelations and enlightment overcome their personal temptations like greed, selfishness, luxuries, comforts and sensual appetite. Self-abnegation is the basis of getting spirituality in a man. Religious expressions should be judged in mental phenomena. Conquering over the external nature is grand but victory over internal nature is grandeur. Being sensous will limit you to man but being beyond sensuousness will lift you to the honour of superman.
The future religion of the World should be universal. They have to be borodened. The personal ideas of God or the Impersonal, the Infinite, Moral Law or Ideal Man, these all have to come under the definition of religion. It should go beyond the narrowness and limitations made by the particular class. All that good in the past must be preserved and the door must always kept open for future additions to the already existing store. Religions must be inclusive. So long as religion is in the hand of a choosen few or of a body of priests, it is in temples, churches, books, dogmas, ceremonials, forms and rituals. But, when we come to the real spiritual, universal concept, then, religion will come real and living. It will come into our very nature, live in our every moment, penetrate every pore of our society and be infinitely more a power good than it has ever been before.
Some people sometimes say that religions are dying out, spiritual ideas are dying out of the world. But the writer views that they have just begun to grow. He advocates for the more humanitarian and inclusive nature of religion for happiness in human life.
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