Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 23)

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We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Parts 1 to 22 were posted earlier. This is part 23. Your comments are

welcome. Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at

http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 23

 

 

4. The Great Body of Eternal Truths Which Is the Vedas Is Revealed by the

Enlightened Ones

 

Every one of the great religions in the world, excepting our own [Vedanta],

is built upon such historical characters; but ours rests upon principles.

There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are

the embodiment of eternal principles; sages discovered them; and now and

then the names of these sages are mentioned - just their names; we do not

even know who or what they were. In many cases we do not know who their

fathers were, and in almost every case we do not know when and where they

were born. But what cared they, these sages, for their names? They were the

preachers of principles; and they themselves, so far as they went, tried to

become illustrations of the principles they preached. At the same time, just

as our God is an impersonal and yet a personal God, so is our religion a

most intensely personal one - a religion based upon principles and yet with

an infinite scope for the play of persons; for what religion gives you more

incarnations, more prophets and seers, and still waits for infinitely more?

The Bhagavata says that incarnations are infinite, leaving ample scope for

as many as you like to come. Therefore, if any one or more of these persons

in India's religious history, any one or more of these incarnations, and any

one or more of our prophets are proved not to have been historical, it does

not injure our religion at all; even then it remains as firm as ever,

because it is based on principles and not upon persons. It is in vain that

we try to gather all the peoples of the world around a single personality.

It is difficult to make them gather together even round eternal and

universal principles. If it ever becomes possible to bring the largest

portion of humanity to one way of thinking in regard to religion, mark you,

it must always be through principles and not through persons. Yet, as I have

said, our religion has ample scope for the authority and influence of

persons. There is that most wonderful theory of ishta which gives you the

fullest and the freest choice possible among these great religious

personalities. You may take up any one of the prophets or teachers as your

guide and the object of your special adoration; you are even allowed to

think that he whom you have chosen is the greatest of the prophets, greatest

of all the avatars - there is no harm in that - but you must keep to a firm

background of eternally true principles. (26)

 

If Sri Krishna and Rama and all the saints are proved to be mythical

characters, the Vedas still remain, not as a source of blind and imperative

faith, not as a rigid and inflexible spiritual possession, but as a great

body of eternal truths, of which more and more is to come in the way of

revelation by the enlightened ones. (27)

 

Vedanta finds veneration for some particular person... difficult to uphold.

those of you who are students of Vedanta (and by Vedanta is always meant the

Upanishads) know that this is the only religion that does not cling to any

person. No one man or woman has ever become the object of worship among the

Vedantins. It cannot be. A man is no more worthy of worship than any bird,

any worm. We are all brothers. The difference is only in degree. I am

exactly the same as the lowest worm. You see how very little room there is

in Vedanta for any man to stand ahead of us and for us to go and worship

him - he is dragging us on and we being saved by him. Vedanta does not give

you that. No book, no man to worship, nothing. (28)

 

 

c) The Vedas Are the Only Exponent of Universal Religion because Their

Sanction Is the Eternal Nature of Man

 

There is no new religious idea preached anywhere which is not found in the

Vedas. (29)

 

The Vedas are the only exponent of the universal religion. (30)

 

You hear claims made by every religion as being the universal religion of

the world. Let me tell you, in the first place, that there will never be

such a thing; but if there is a religion which can lay claim to be that, it

is only our religion [Vedanta] and no other, because every other religion

depends upon some person or persons. All the other religions have been built

around the life of what they think is a historical man; and what they think

is the strength of religion is really the weakness - for, disprove the

historicity of the man, and the whole fabric tumbles to the ground. Half the

lives of these great founders of religions have been broken into pieces, and

the other half doubted very seriously. As such, every truth that had its

sanction only in their words vanishes into the air. but the truths of our

religion, although we have persons by the score, do not depend upon them.

(31)

 

There are these eternal principles which stand upon their own foundations

without depending upon any reasoning even, much less on the authority of

sages, however great, or incarnations, however brilliant they may have been.

We may remark that, as this is the unique position in India, our claim is

that Vedanta only can be the universal religion, that it is already the

existing universal religion in the world, because it teaches principles and

not persons. No religion built upon a person can be taken up as a type by

all the races of mankind. In our own country [india] we find that there have

been so many grand characters; in even a small city many persons are taken

up as types by the different minds in that one city. How is it possible that

one person, such as Muhammad, or Buddha, or Christ can be taken up as the

one type for the whole world; nay, that the whole of morality, ethics,

spirituality and religion can be true from only the sanction of that one

person and one person alone? Now, the Vedantic religion does not require any

such personal sanction. Its sanction is the eternal nature of man. (32)

 

The [Vedic] mantras are neither the property of particular persons, nor the

exclusive property of any man or woman, however great he or she may be; nor

even the exclusive property of the greatest spirits - the Buddhas or

Christ - whom the world has produced. They are as much the property of the

lowest of the low as they are the property of the Buddha, and as much the

property of the smallest worm that crawls as of the Christ, because they are

universal principles. (33)

 

The Vedas are not inspired, but expired; not that they came from anywhere

outside, but they are the eternal laws living in every soul. The Vedas are

in the soul of the ant, in the soul of the god. The ant has only to evolve

and get the body of a sage or rishi, and the Vedas will come out, eternal

laws expressing themselves. (34)

 

Cross reference to:

 

Mand. Up., 2