Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 23)

November 26, 2000

We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Parts 1 to 22 were posted earlier. This is part 23. 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 23

4. The Great Body of Eternal Truths Which Is the Vedas Is Revealed by the Enlightened Ones

Every one of the great religions in the world, excepting our own [Vedanta], is built upon such historical characters; but ours rests upon principles. There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiment of eternal principles; sages discovered them; and now and then the names of these sages are mentioned - just their names; we do not even know who or what they were. In many cases we do not know who their fathers were, and in almost every case we do not know when and where they were born. But what cared they, these sages, for their names? They were the preachers of principles; and they themselves, so far as they went, tried to become illustrations of the principles they preached. At the same time, just as our God is an impersonal and yet a personal God, so is our religion a most intensely personal one - a religion based upon principles and yet with an infinite scope for the play of persons; for what religion gives you more incarnations, more prophets and seers, and still waits for infinitely more? The Bhagavata says that incarnations are infinite, leaving ample scope for as many as you like to come. Therefore, if any one or more of these persons in India's religious history, any one or more of these incarnations, and any one or more of our prophets are proved not to have been historical, it does not injure our religion at all; even then it remains as firm as ever, because it is based on principles and not upon persons. It is in vain that we try to gather all the peoples of the world around a single personality. It is difficult to make them gather together even round eternal and universal principles. If it ever becomes possible to bring the largest portion of humanity to one way of thinking in regard to religion, mark you, it must always be through principles and not through persons. Yet, as I have said, our religion has ample scope for the authority and influence of persons. There is that most wonderful theory of ishta which gives you the fullest and the freest choice possible among these great religious personalities. You may take up any one of the prophets or teachers as your guide and the object of your special adoration; you are even allowed to think that he whom you have chosen is the greatest of the prophets, greatest of all the avatars - there is no harm in that - but you must keep to a firm background of eternally true principles. (26)

If Sri Krishna and Rama and all the saints are proved to be mythical characters, the Vedas still remain, not as a source of blind and imperative faith, not as a rigid and inflexible spiritual possession, but as a great body of eternal truths, of which more and more is to come in the way of revelation by the enlightened ones. (27)

Vedanta finds veneration for some particular person... difficult to uphold. those of you who are students of Vedanta (and by Vedanta is always meant the Upanishads) know that this is the only religion that does not cling to any person. No one man or woman has ever become the object of worship among the Vedantins. It cannot be. A man is no more worthy of worship than any bird, any worm. We are all brothers. The difference is only in degree. I am exactly the same as the lowest worm. You see how very little room there is in Vedanta for any man to stand ahead of us and for us to go and worship him - he is dragging us on and we being saved by him. Vedanta does not give you that. No book, no man to worship, nothing. (28)

c) The Vedas Are the Only Exponent of Universal Religion because Their Sanction Is the Eternal Nature of Man

There is no new religious idea preached anywhere which is not found in the Vedas. (29)

The Vedas are the only exponent of the universal religion. (30)

You hear claims made by every religion as being the universal religion of the world. Let me tell you, in the first place, that there will never be such a thing; but if there is a religion which can lay claim to be that, it is only our religion [Vedanta] and no other, because every other religion depends upon some person or persons. All the other religions have been built around the life of what they think is a historical man; and what they think is the strength of religion is really the weakness - for, disprove the historicity of the man, and the whole fabric tumbles to the ground. Half the lives of these great founders of religions have been broken into pieces, and the other half doubted very seriously. As such, every truth that had its sanction only in their words vanishes into the air. but the truths of our religion, although we have persons by the score, do not depend upon them. (31)

There are these eternal principles which stand upon their own foundations without depending upon any reasoning even, much less on the authority of sages, however great, or incarnations, however brilliant they may have been. We may remark that, as this is the unique position in India, our claim is that Vedanta only can be the universal religion, that it is already the existing universal religion in the world, because it teaches principles and not persons. No religion built upon a person can be taken up as a type by all the races of mankind. In our own country [india] we find that there have been so many grand characters; in even a small city many persons are taken up as types by the different minds in that one city. How is it possible that one person, such as Muhammad, or Buddha, or Christ can be taken up as the one type for the whole world; nay, that the whole of morality, ethics, spirituality and religion can be true from only the sanction of that one person and one person alone? Now, the Vedantic religion does not require any such personal sanction. Its sanction is the eternal nature of man. (32)

The [Vedic] mantras are neither the property of particular persons, nor the exclusive property of any man or woman, however great he or she may be; nor even the exclusive property of the greatest spirits - the Buddhas or Christ - whom the world has produced. They are as much the property of the lowest of the low as they are the property of the Buddha, and as much the property of the smallest worm that crawls as of the Christ, because they are universal principles. (33)

The Vedas are not inspired, but expired; not that they came from anywhere outside, but they are the eternal laws living in every soul. The Vedas are in the soul of the ant, in the soul of the god. The ant has only to evolve and get the body of a sage or rishi, and the Vedas will come out, eternal laws expressing themselves. (34)Cross reference to:

Mand. Up., 2

to be continued.......