Harmony of religions

The harmony of religions is the name usually given to Ramakrishna’s teaching that the religions are different paths to the same God, as many as there are faiths. According to his biographers, he followed in turn the disciplines of Tantra, of Vaiṣṇava devotion and of Advaita Vedānta, practised for a time as a Muslim, and had a vision of Christ, and he concluded that each, followed sincerely, leads to the same realization. He often compared the religions to different names for water, or to the many ghats leading down to one lake.

Swami Vivekananda carried the teaching to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and made it a central idea of the Ramakrishna Mission. In his version, the religions are true at their own levels, as stages that culminate in the Advaita realization of the one self. The idea shaped modern Hindu thought, Gandhi’s teaching of equal respect for all religions, and the wider modern interest in the unity of religions.

It has also been questioned. Critics such as R. C. Zaehner argued that the religions differ in what they hold ultimate, and that a harmony which ranks other faiths as stages toward Advaita is itself one view among others. The question remains central to the comparative study of mysticism.