Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 20)

November 6, 2000

We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Parts 1 to 19 were posted earlier. This is part 20. 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 20

PART I, SECTION 1: DEFINITION AND EULOGY OF THE VEDAS AND VEDANTA

Chapter 3: The Glory of the Vedas

a) The Vedas Are Eternal

1. The Vedas Are Ever-Existent, Without Beginning or End

Away back, where no recorded history - nay, not even the dim light of tradition - can penetrate, has been steadily shining that light, sometimes dimmed by external circumstances, at others effulgent, but undying and steady, shedding its luster not only over India, but permeating the whole thought-world with its power, silent and unperceived, gently, yet omnipotent, like the dew that falls in the morning, unseen and unnoticed, yet bringing into bloom the fairest of roses: this has been the thought of the Upanishads, the philosophy of the Vedanta. Nobody knows when it first came to flourish on the soil of India. Guesswork has been vain. The guesses, especially of Western writers, have been so conflicting that no certain date can be ascribed to them. But we Hindus, from the spiritual standpoint, do not admit that they had any origin. This Vedanta, the philosophy of the Upanishads, I would make bold to state, has been the first as well as the final thought on the spiritual plane that has ever been vouchsafed to man. (1)

By the word Shastras the Vedas without beginning or end are meant.... The whole body of supersensuous truths, having no beginning or end, and called by the name of the Vedas, is ever-existent.(2)

The date of the Vedas has never been fixed, can never be fixed; and, according to us, the Vedas are eternal. (3)

We [Hindus] believe the Vedas to be the eternal teachings of the secrets of religion. We all believe that this holy literature is without beginning and without end, coeval with nature, which is without beginning and without end; and that all our religious differences, all our religious struggles, must end when we stand in the presence of that holy book; we are all agreed that this is the last court of appeal in all our spiritual differences. (4)

b) It Is the Spiritual Truth Revealed by the Vedas Which Is Eternal and Is Discovered by the Seers

Q: What is the true meaning of the statement that the Vedas are beginningless and eternal? Does it refer to the Vedic utterances or the statements contained in the Vedas? If it refers to the truth involved in such statements, are not the sciences, such as logic, geometry, chemistry, etc., equally beginningless and eternal, for they contain an everlasting truth?

A: There was a time when the Vedas themselves were considered eternal in the sense in which the divine truths contained therein were changeless and permanent and were only revealed to man. At a subsequent time, it appears that the utterances of the Vedic hymns with the knowledge of its meaning was important; and it was held that the hymns themselves must have had a divine origin. At a still later period, the meaning of the hymns showed that many of them could not be of divine origin, because they inculcated upon mankind performance of various unholy acts, such as torturing animals; and we can find many ridiculous stores in the Vedas. The correct meaning of the statement "The Vedas are beginningless and eternal" is that the law or truth revealed by them to man is permanent and changeless. Logic, geometry, chemistry, etc., reveal also a law or truth which is permanent and changeless and in that sense they are also beginningless and eternal. But no truth or law is absent from the Vedas, and I ask any one of you to point out to me any truth which is not treated of in them. (5)

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience [in the West] how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exists if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forget them. (6)

[Vedic] principles have existed throughout time; and they will exist. They are non-create - uncreated by any laws which science teaches us today. They remain covered and become discovered, but are existing through all eternity in nature. If Newton had not been born the law of gravitation would have remained all the same and would have worked all the same. It was Newton's genius which formulated it, discovered it, brought it into consciousness, made it a conscious thing to the human race. So are these religious laws, the grand truths of spirituality. They are working all the time. If all the Vedas and Bibles and Korans did not exist at all, if seers and prophets had never been born, yet these laws would exist. They are only held in abeyance, and slowly but surely will work to raise the human race, to raise human nature. But they are the prophets who see them, discover them; and such prophets are discoverers in the field of spirituality. As Newton and Galileo were prophets of physical science, so are they prophets of spirituality. They can claim no exclusive right to any one of these laws; they are the common property of all nature.

The Vedas, as the Hindus say, are eternal. We now understand what they mean by their being eternal, i.e. that the laws have neither beginning nor end. Earth after earth, system after system, will evolve, run for a certain time, and then dissolve back into chaos; but the universe remains the same. Millions and millions of systems are being born, while millions are being destroyed. The universe remains the same. The beginning and end of time can be told as regards a certain planet; but, as regards the universe, time has no meaning at all. So are the laws of nature, the physical laws, the mental laws, the spiritual laws, without beginning or end; and it is within a few years, comparatively speaking - a few thousand years at best - that man has tried to reveal them. The infinite mass remains before us. Therefore the one great lesson that we learn from the Vedas, at the start, is that religion has just begun. The infinite ocean of spiritual truth lies before us to be worked on, to be discovered, to be brought into our lives. The world has seen thousands of prophets, and the world has yet to see millions. (7)

The Vedas are anadi, eternal. The meaning of the statement is not, as is erroneously supposed by some, that the words of the Vedas are anadi, but that the spiritual laws inculcated by the Vedas are such. These laws, which are immutable and eternal, have been discovered at various times by great men or rishis, though some of them have been forgotten now, while others are preserved. (8)

to be continued.....