Vivekananda on Vedas. (part 4)

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We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Your comments are welcome. Parts 1, 2, and 3 were posted earlier this is part

4. jay..Vivekananda Centre London

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 4

 

On pondering the problem of the swami’s "inconsistencies" it therefore seemed an

obvious first step to gather up these gems and arrange them in the traditional

patterns of Vedanta which is, after all, the very template of Sri Ramakrishna

and Swami Vivekananda. If, under the heading of the four Vedas and their

subsections, especially the Upanisads, we could gather the scattered treasures

of Swami Vivekananda’s utterances, would we be in a better position to see the

structure and coherency of his thought? It is my hope that the reader of this

compilation is now in a position to answer that question for him- or herself.

Whoever can encompass the sheer volume of this work, amounting to nearly half of

the nine-volume Complete Works, will see how it attests to the central position

of the Vedas and Upanisads in the thought of Swami Vivekananda. Again, the

concentration of the swami’s wide-ranging and intense thought under the rubric

of a commentary on the Vedas and Upanisads puts it, as it were, in a

super-cooled crucible where its powerful internal dynamics can be more readily

studied than in the freewheeling milieu of his spontaneous utterances to an

infinite variety of people and situations. It is as if we have peeled off

several layers from the swami’s work and are laying bare the core form from

which everything else takes its origin.

 

Encountering such "DNA" of Swami Vivekananda’s core thought can be nothing less

than a total experience. As one enters into his "commentaries" as presented in

this work, one find, as it were, terra firma disappearing and the rapid

unfoldment of universe after universe, each expanding infinitely and yet at the

same time as close as one’s jugular vein, to borrow a phrase from the Koran. It

is my belief that such encounters can and will open up new vistas into what

Swami Vivekananda was about, not just in the piecemeal way that tends to result

when we dabble on the surface of his vast and protean works.

 

 

c) Approaching Neo-Vedanta as an Integral Whole

 

Here we are entering into the very paradigm of the Vedanta itself, the deep

matrix from which have emanated the Upanisads, Buddha, Sri Sankaracarya and the

entire galaxy of the Vedantic tradition as we know it. The present work plugs us

into the very heart of Vedantic experience, enabling us to grasp the essence of

all that preceded Neo-Vedanta and at the same time to flow into the endless new

forms that bubble up continuously in Swami Vivekananda’s thought. This material,

selected on the basis of its conformity with the Vedantic archetype is, I

believe, the basis on which a truly critical and authentic evaluation of the

structure of Neo-Vedanta can begin to be made. This is the mode in which the

compilation took form and in which I hope readers will approach it. No doubt

many a familiar or arresting quote will attract recognition or beguile with its

novelty; but my purpose is, in fact, to go beyond individual quotes to a sense

of the whole and an inkling of the total structure. I believe that, if we grasp

the gestalt itself, each quote will then shine, not just in its own radiance,

but in the radiance of the interconnected whole. This is the best way, in my

view, to reach a sense of the consistency and cogency of the Neo-Vedanta of

Ramakrishna-Vivekananda.

 

Approaching the work in this spirit imposes on the compiler a rather different

task than merely providing inspirational texts for the faithful. Seeking the

gestalt inevitably imposes the mandate to be as all-inclusive as possible, even

at the risk of bringing in material, from some standpoints "peripheral". Certain

broad categories, however, should be covered:

 

1. East and West, the two empirical domains of Swami Vivekananda’s work, the

mirror-image needs of which elicited from Swami Vivekananda different, but

complementary responses.

 

2. The integrated four yogas, the platform from which he addressed the task of

self-transformation of contemporary humanity.

 

3. The concrete and the metaphysical, the "this"-world and the "other"-world,

both of which have a valued place in Swami Vivekananda’s Neo-Vedanta and exist

as poles in his scheme of self-transcendence and self-manifestation, the two

aspects of his approach to the issue of maya at the very core of Vedanta and,

for that matter, the human condition anywhere.

 

4. Evolution and involution of consciousness, the twin processes which weave

together all of the phenomena related to the three foregoing categories; the

ascent to and descent from the divine and the infinite relationships which

result along their trajectories.

 

5. Concretizations which encapsulate or are holograms of the Reality from which

all of the above emanate, in which they exist, and to which they return. Some

examples of such holograms would be Swami Vivekananda himself, his poems which

encapsulate truth beyond linear thinking, and some of his more aphoristic,

mahavavya-like statements which defy all logical analysis but overwhelmingly

convey the integrated truth of Vedanta.

 

(to be continued..........)