The Necessity of Religion

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(from Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekanand)

 

On the other hand, there are scholars who from the ancient Aryan

literature show that religion originated in nature worship. Although

in India we find proofs of ancestor worship everywhere, yet in the

oldest records there is no trace of it whatsoever. In the Rig-Veda

Samhita, the most ancient record of the Aryan race, we do not find

any trace of it. Modern scholars think, it is the worship of nature

that they find there. The human mind seems to struggle to get a peep

behind the scenes. The dawn, the evening, the hurricane, the

stupendous and gigantic forces of nature, its beauties, these have

exercised the human mind, and it aspires to go beyond, to understand

something about them. In the struggle they endow these phenomena with

personal attributes, giving them souls and bodies, sometimes

beautiful, sometimes transcendent. Every attempt ends by these

phenomena becoming abstractions whether personalised or not. So also

it is found with the ancient Greeks; their whole mythology is simply

this abstracted nature worship. So also with the ancient Germans, the

Scandinavians, and all the other Aryan races. Thus, on this side,

too, a very strong case has been made out, that religion has its

origin in the personification of the forces of nature.

 

These two views, though they seem to be contradictory, can be

reconciled on a third basis, which, to my mind, is the real germ of

religion, and that I propose to call the struggle to transcend the

limitations of the senses. Either, man goes to seek for the spirits

of his ancestors, the spirits of the dead, that is, he wants to get a

glimpse of what there is after the body is dissolved, or, he desires

to understand the power working behind the stupendous phenomena of

nature. Whichever of these is the case, one thing is certain, that he

tries to transcend the limitations of the senses. He cannot remain

satisfied with his senses; he wants to go beyond them. The

explanation need not be mysterious. To me it seems very natural that

the glimpse of religion should come through dreams. The first idea of

immortality man may well get through dreams. Is that not a most

wonderful state? And we know that children and untutored minds find

very little difference between dreaming and their awakened state.

What can be more natural than that they find, as natural logic, that

even during the sleep state when the body is apparently dead, the

mind goes on with all its intricate workings? What wonder that men

will at once come to the conclusion that when this body is dissolved

for ever, the same working will go on? This, to my mind, would be a

more natural explanation of the supernatural, and through this dream

idea the human mind rises to higher and higher conceptions. Of

course, in time, the vast majority of mankind found out that these

dreams are not verified by their waking states, and that during the

dream state it is not that man has a fresh existence, but simply that

he recapitulates the experiences of the awakened state.

 

But by this time the search had begun, and the search was inward, and

man continued inquiring more deeply into the different stages of the

mind and discovered higher states than either the waking or the

dreaming. This state of things we find in all the organised religions

of the world, called either ecstasy or inspiration. In all organised

religions, their founders, prophets, and messengers are declared to

have gone into states of mind that were neither waking nor sleeping,

in which they came face to face with a new series of facts relating

to what is called the spiritual kingdom. They realised things there

much more intensely than we realise facts around us in our waking

state. Take, for instance, the religions of the Brahmins. The Vedas

are said to be written by Rishis. These Rishis were sages who

realised certain facts. The exact definition of the Sanskrit word

Rishi is a Seer of Mantras--of the thoughts conveyed in the Vedic

hymns. These men declared that they had realised--sensed, if that

word can be used with regard to the supersensuous--certain facts, and

these facts they proceeded to put on record. We find the same truth

declared amongst both the Jews and the Christians.

 

....to be continued