Religions of the World

We live in a time of great religious intolerance, wherein one religious faction cannot see the virtues of the other. However, fanaticism, sectarianism and narrow-mindedness are not actually the fundamental messages of the great world religions. If one studies each of the traditions, one finds so many similarities that one cannot doubt that they are pointing to the same final truth, even if their individual viewpoints may vary.

An ancient story tells of several blind men who each touched a different part of an elephant and, ased on where exactly on its body they had felt, came to all sorts of erroneous conclusions as to what shape the elephant was. But a wise man or woman knows the "elephant" in its entirety. In the eyes of a saint, all religions in their highest expression lead eventually to the same goal. "Paths are many, goal is One" is surely the realisation of one who has seen into the deeper implications of the religious search.

Swami Sivananda's life, message and mission were all carried out with the highest respect for other faiths, and he made sure that the various holy days, such as Christmas, Guru Nanak's Birthday and the Moslem holidays were celebrated in his Ashram. He wrote extensively about the saints and spiritual significance of all the different world religions. This section consists primarily of the writings of Swami Sivananda. We are presenting his essays, talks or selections from his books having to do with all the major world religions. This includes an extensive section on his own tradition of Hinduism, but also others on Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism and Shinto.