Swami Vivekananda used this expression to capture the imagination of his western audi-ence and he introduced them to a new taste of freedom hitherto unknown to them and here is a mischievous twist to Swamiji's message.
What follows is an imaginary picture of the world parliament of religions in 1893. On the stage were sitting nearly forty leaders of all religious denominations from different parts of the world$ professing the superiority of their religion$ way of thinking$ of %od and of achieving eternal happiness. To Swamiji they all appeared as so many ird catchers$ each with his own birds varying in colour and eauty. #ne thing that char-acteri(ed them was that they were all in cages.Only the colour of the plume differed as also their capacity to talk. Of course the si(e and shape of the cages differed. Each one of the religious leaders was tightly holding on to their cages for fear of the bird escaping from their captivity.
At 4 pm when Swamiji rose up to speak he saw all these great teachers holding tightly their cages fully conscious of the superior performance of their birds. Then he did a very mis-chievous things which he only could have done. One by one he opened up all the cages of his co religionists and set the birds free to fly into the Infinitude of Freedom of Truth, of Oneness. Birds having flown away all they had to do was carry back the empty cages or wait for the birds to return to their captivity, which they never did!!
