Excerpts from Swami Vivekananda's lectures on Vedanta

FUNDAMENTALS OF RELIGION
My mind can best grasp the religions of the world, ancient or modern, dead or living, through this fourfold division:
1, Symbology---The employment of various external aids to preserve and develop the religious faculty of man.
2. History---The philosophy of each religion as illustrated in the lives of divine or human teachers acknowledged by each religion. This includes mythology, for what is mythology to one race or period, is, or was, history to other races or periods. Even in cases of human teachers, much of their history is taken as mythology by successive generations
3. Philosophy---The rationale of the whole scope of each religion.
4. Mysticism---The assertion of something superior the sense knowledge and reason, which particular persons or all persons under certain circumstances, possess. This runs through the other divisions also.
All the religions of the world, past or present, embrace one or more of these principles, the highly developed ones having all the four.
From Vedanta: Voice of Freedom
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