Freedom of the soul

[Guest guest]

The Katha Upanishad, which we have been studying, was written much

later than that to which we now turn--the Chhandogya. The language is

more modern, and the thought more organised. In the older Upanishads

the language is very archaic, like that of the hymn portion of the

Vedas, and one has to wade sometimes through quite a mass of

unnecessary things to get at the essential doctrines. The ritualistic

literature about which I told you, which forms the second division of

the Vedas, has left a good deal of its mark upon this old Upanishad,

so that more than half of it is still ritualistic. There is, however,

one great gain in studying the very old Upanishads. You trace, as it

were, the historical growth of spiritual ideas. In the more recent

Upanishads, the spiritual ideas have been collected and brought into

one place; as in the Bhagavad-Gita, for instance, which we may,

perhaps, look upon as the last of the Upanishads, you do not find any

inkling of these ritualistic ideas. The Gita is like a bouquet

composed of beautiful flowers of spiritual truths collected from the

Upanishads. But in the Gita you cannot study the rise of the

spiritual ideas, you cannot trace them to their source. To do that,

as has been pointed out by many, you must study the Vedas. The great

idea of holiness that has been attached to these books has preserved

them, more than any other book in the world, from mutilation. In

them, thoughts at their highest and at their lowest have all been

preserved, the essential and the non-essential, the most ennobling

teachings and the simplest matters of detail stand side by side; for

nobody has dared to touch them. Commentators came and tried to smooth

them down and to bring out wonderful new ideas from the old things;

they tried to find spiritual ideas in even the most ordinary

statements, but the texts remained, and as such, they are the most

wonderful historical study. We all know that in the scriptures of

every religion changes were made to suit the growing spirituality of

later times; one word was changed here and another put in there, and

so on. This, probably, has not been done with the Vedic literature,

or if ever done, it is almost imperceptible. So we have this great

advantage, we are able to study thoughts in their original

significance, to note how they developed, how from materialistic

ideas finer and finer spiritual ideas are evolved, until they

attained their greatest height in the Vedanta. Descriptions of some

of the old manners and customs are also there, but they do not appear

much in the Upanishads. The language used is peculiar, terse,

mnemonic.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued