Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 24)

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Vivekananda on the Vedas:

Parts 1 to 23 were posted earlier. This is part 24. Your comments are

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Earlier postings can be seen at

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SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 24

d) The Poetry of the Vedas Is Supersensuous

 

1. The Vedas Are Words of Power Being Pronounced with the Right Attitude of

Mind

 

The Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus, are written in a sort of meter.

(35)

 

All of you have heard of the power of words, how wonderful they are! Every

book - the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas - is full of the power of words.

(36)

 

[Vedic] hymns are not only words of praise, but words of power, being

pronounced with the right attitude of mind. (37)

 

There are one or two more ideas with regard to the Upanishads which I want

to bring to your notice, for these are an ocean of knowledge, and to talk

about the Upanishads, even for an incompetent person like myself, takes

years and not one lecture only. I want, therefore, to bring to your notice

one or two points in the study of the Upanishads. In the first place, they

are the most wonderful poems in the world. (38)

 

The last Infinite is painted in the spirituality of the Upanishads. Not only

is Vedanta the highest philosophy in the world; it is the greatest poem.

(39)

 

[The ancient Indian philosophers] were of a poetic nature. They go crazy

over poetry. Their philosophy is poetry. This philosophy is a poem.... All

[high thought] in the Sanskrit is written in poetry. (40)

 

In the old Upanishads we find sublime poetry; their authors were poets.

Plato says inspiration comes to people through poetry, and it seems as if

these ancient rishis, seers of Truth, were raised above humanity to show

these truths through poetry. They never preached, nor philosophized, nor

wrote. Music came out of their hearts. (41)

 

When in ancient times...knowledge and feeling ...blossomed forth

simultaneously in the heart of the rishi, then the highest Truth became

poetic, and then the Vedas and other scriptures were composed. It is for

this reason that one finds, in studying them, that the two parallel lines of

bhava [emotion] and jnana [knowledge] have at last met, as it were, in the

plane of the Vedas and combined and become inseparable. (42)

 

Cross reference: Ka. Up., 2.2.15

 

 

2. The Poetry of the Vedas Leads You on beyond the Senses

 

There is no metaphysical sublimity such as is in the Upanishads. They lead

you on beyond the senses, infinitely more sublime than the sun and stars.

First they [the rishis] try to describe God by sense sublimities, that His

feet are the earth, His head the heavens. But that did not express what they

wanted to say, though it was, in a sense, sublime. (43)

 

In the Samhita portion of the Vedas, all these attempts are external. As

everywhere else, the attempts to find the solution to the great problems of

life have been through the external world. Just as the Greek or modern

European mind wants to find the solution of life and of all the sacred

problems of Being by searching into the external world, so also did our

forefathers; and, just as the Europeans failed, they failed also. But the

Western people never made a move more; they remained there, they failed in

the search for the solution of the great problems of life and death in the

external world; and there they remained, stranded. Our forefathers also

found it impossible, but were bolder in declaring the utter helplessness of

the senses in finding the solution. (44)

 

Apart from all its merits as the greatest philosophy, apart from its

wonderful merits as theology, as showing the path of salvation to mankind,

the Upanishadic literature is the most wonderful painting of sublimity that

the world has. Here comes out in full force that individuality of the human

mind, that introspective, intuitive Hindu mind. We have paintings of

sublimity elsewhere in all nations, but almost without exception you will

find that their ideal is to grasp the sublime in the muscles. Take, for

instance, Milton, Dante, Homer, or any of the Western poets. There are

wonderfully sublime passages in them; but there is always a grasping at

Infinity through the senses, the muscles, getting the ideal of infinite

expansion, the infinite of space. We find the same attempts made in the

Samhita portion [of the Vedas]. You know some of those wonderful riks where

creation is described; the very heights of expression of the sublime in

expansion and the infinite in space are attained. But they found out very

soon that the Infinite cannot be reached in that way, that even infinite

space, expansion and infinite nature could not express the ideas that were

struggling to find expression in their minds; and so they fell back upon

other explanations. The language became new in the Upanishads; it is almost

negative, it is sometimes chaotic, sometimes taking you beyond the senses,

pointing out to you something which you cannot grasp, which you cannot

sense; and at the same time you feel certain that it is there. (45)

 

In the Atman they found the solution - the greatest of all atmans, the God,

the Lord of the universe, His relation to the Atman of man, our duty to Him;

and through that, our relation to each other. And herein you find the most

sublime poetry in the world, No more is the attempt made to paint this Atman

in the language of matter. Nay, for It they have given up even all positive

language. No more is there any attempt to come to the senses to give them

the idea of the Infinite, no more is there an external, dull, dead,

material, spacious, sensuous Infinite; but instead of that comes something

which is as fine as even that mentioned in the saying: "There the sun cannot

illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars; a flash of lightning cannot illumine

the place, what to speak of this mortal fire." [Ka. Up.,2.2.15a] What poetry

in the world can be more sublime than that! Such poetry you find nowhere

else. (46)

 

Endless examples can be cited, but we have no time... to do that, or to show

the marvelous poetry of the Upanishads, the painting of the sublime, the

grand conceptions. But one other idea I must note, that the language and the

thought and everything else come direct; they fall upon you like a

sword-blade, strong as the blows of a hammer they come. There is no

mistaking their meanings. Every tone of that music is firm and produces its

full effect - no gyrations, no mad words, no intricacies in which the brain

is lost. There are no signs of degradation, no attempts at too much

allegorizing, too much piling of adjective after adjective, making it more

and more intricate, till the whole of the sense is lost and the brain

becomes giddy, and man does not know his way out from the maze of that

literature. There was none of that yet. If it be human literature, it must

the production of a race which had not yet lost any of its national vigor.

(47)

 

Cross reference to:

 

RV, 10.129

 

Taitt. Up., 2.4

 

Ka. Up., 2.2.15

 

Kena 1.3

 

Mund. Up., 2.2.5

 

Mund. Up., 3.1.2