The Absolute and Manifestation

[Guest guest]

If I am immune against all anger, I never feel angry. If I am proof

against all hatred, I never feel hatred.

 

This is, therefore, the process by which to achieve that conquest--

through the subjective, by perfecting the subjective. I may make bold

to say that the only religion which agrees with, and even goes a

little further than modern researches, both on physical and moral

lines is the Advaita, and that is why it appeals to modern scientists

so much. They find that the old dualistic theories are not enough for

them, do not satisfy their necessities. A man must have not only

faith, but intellectual faith too. Now, in this later part of the

nineteenth century, such an idea as that religion coming from any

other source than one's own hereditary religion must be false shows

that there is still weakness left, and such ideas must be given up. I

do not mean that such is the case in this country alone, it is in

every country, and nowhere more than in my own. This Advaita was

never allowed to come to the people. At first some monks got hold of

it and took it to the forests, and so it came to be called

the " Forest Philosophy " . By the mercy of the Lord, the Buddha came

and preached it to the masses, and the whole nation become Buddhists.

Long after that, when atheists and agnostics had destroyed the nation

again, it was found out that Advaita was the only way to save India

from materialism.

 

Thus has Advaita twice saved India from materialism. Before the

Buddha came, materialism had spread to a fearful extent, and it was

of a most hideous kind, not like that of the present day, but of a

far worse nature. I am a materialist in a certain sense, because I

believe that there is only One. That is what the materialist wants

you to believe; only he calls it matter and I call it God. The

materialists admit that out of this matter all hope, and religion,

and everything have come. I say, all these have come out of Brahman.

But the materialism that prevailed before Buddha was that crude sort

of materialism which taught, " Eat, drink, and be merry; there is no

God, soul, or heaven; religion is a concoction of wicked priests. " It

taught the morality that so long as you live, you must try to live

happily; eat, though you have to borrow money for the food, and never

mind about repaying it. That was the old materialism, and that kind

of philosophy spread so much that even today it has got the name

of " popular philosophy " . Buddha brought the Vedanta to light, gave it

to the people, and saved India. A thousand years after his death a

similar state of things again prevailed. The mobs, the masses, and

various races, had been converted to Buddhism; naturally the

teachings of the Buddha became in time degenerated, because most of

the people were very ignorant. Buddhist taught no God, no Ruler of

the universe, so gradually the masses brought their gods, and devils,

and hobgoblins out again, and a tremendous hotchpotch was made of

Buddhism in India. Again materialism came to the fore, taking the

form of licence with the higher classes and superstition with the

lower. Then Shankaracharya arose and once more revived the Vedanta

philosophy. He made it a rationalistic philosophy. In the Upanishads

the arguments are often very obscure. By Buddha the moral side of the

philosophy was laid stress upon, and by Shankaracharya, the

intellectual side. He worked out, rationalised, and placed before men

the wonderful coherent system of Advaita.

 

Materialism prevails in Europe today. You may pray for the salvation

of the modern skeptics, but they do not yield, they want reason. The

salvation of Europe depends on a rationalistic religion, and Advaita--

the non-duality, the Oneness, the idea of the Impersonal God--is the

only religion that can have any hold on any intellectual people. It

comes whenever religion seems to disappear and irreligion seems to

prevail, and that is why it has taken ground in Europe and America.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued