Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 24)

December 8, 2000

Parts 1 to 23 were posted earlier. This is part 24. 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 24

d) The Poetry of the Vedas Is Supersensuous

1. The Vedas Are Words of Power Being Pronounced with the Right Attitude of Mind

The Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus, are written in a sort of meter. (35)

All of you have heard of the power of words, how wonderful they are! Every book - the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas - is full of the power of words. (36)

[Vedic] hymns are not only words of praise, but words of power, being pronounced with the right attitude of mind. (37)

There are one or two more ideas with regard to the Upanishads which I want to bring to your notice, for these are an ocean of knowledge, and to talk about the Upanishads, even for an incompetent person like myself, takes years and not one lecture only. I want, therefore, to bring to your notice one or two points in the study of the Upanishads. In the first place, they are the most wonderful poems in the world. (38)

The last Infinite is painted in the spirituality of the Upanishads. Not only is Vedanta the highest philosophy in the world; it is the greatest poem. (39)

[The ancient Indian philosophers] were of a poetic nature. They go crazy over poetry. Their philosophy is poetry. This philosophy is a poem.... All [high thought] in the Sanskrit is written in poetry. (40)

In the old Upanishads we find sublime poetry; their authors were poets. Plato says inspiration comes to people through poetry, and it seems as if these ancient rishis, seers of Truth, were raised above humanity to show these truths through poetry. They never preached, nor philosophized, nor wrote. Music came out of their hearts. (41)

When in ancient times...knowledge and feeling ...blossomed forth simultaneously in the heart of the rishi, then the highest Truth became poetic, and then the Vedas and other scriptures were composed. It is for this reason that one finds, in studying them, that the two parallel lines of bhava [emotion] and jnana [knowledge] have at last met, as it were, in the plane of the Vedas and combined and become inseparable. (42)

Cross reference: Ka. Up., 2.2.15

2. The Poetry of the Vedas Leads You on beyond the Senses

There is no metaphysical sublimity such as is in the Upanishads. They lead you on beyond the senses, infinitely more sublime than the sun and stars. First they [the rishis] try to describe God by sense sublimities, that His feet are the earth, His head the heavens. But that did not express what they wanted to say, though it was, in a sense, sublime. (43)

In the Samhita portion of the Vedas, all these attempts are external. As everywhere else, the attempts to find the solution to the great problems of life have been through the external world. Just as the Greek or modern European mind wants to find the solution of life and of all the sacred problems of Being by searching into the external world, so also did our forefathers; and, just as the Europeans failed, they failed also. But the Western people never made a move more; they remained there, they failed in the search for the solution of the great problems of life and death in the external world; and there they remained, stranded. Our forefathers also found it impossible, but were bolder in declaring the utter helplessness of the senses in finding the solution. (44)

Apart from all its merits as the greatest philosophy, apart from its wonderful merits as theology, as showing the path of salvation to mankind, the Upanishadic literature is the most wonderful painting of sublimity that the world has. Here comes out in full force that individuality of the human mind, that introspective, intuitive Hindu mind. We have paintings of sublimity elsewhere in all nations, but almost without exception you will find that their ideal is to grasp the sublime in the muscles. Take, for instance, Milton, Dante, Homer, or any of the Western poets. There are wonderfully sublime passages in them; but there is always a grasping at Infinity through the senses, the muscles, getting the ideal of infinite expansion, the infinite of space. We find the same attempts made in the Samhita portion [of the Vedas]. You know some of those wonderful riks where creation is described; the very heights of expression of the sublime in expansion and the infinite in space are attained. But they found out very soon that the Infinite cannot be reached in that way, that even infinite space, expansion and infinite nature could not express the ideas that were struggling to find expression in their minds; and so they fell back upon other explanations. The language became new in the Upanishads; it is almost negative, it is sometimes chaotic, sometimes taking you beyond the senses, pointing out to you something which you cannot grasp, which you cannot sense; and at the same time you feel certain that it is there. (45)

In the Atman they found the solution - the greatest of all atmans, the God, the Lord of the universe, His relation to the Atman of man, our duty to Him; and through that, our relation to each other. And herein you find the most sublime poetry in the world, No more is the attempt made to paint this Atman in the language of matter. Nay, for It they have given up even all positive language. No more is there any attempt to come to the senses to give them the idea of the Infinite, no more is there an external, dull, dead, material, spacious, sensuous Infinite; but instead of that comes something which is as fine as even that mentioned in the saying: "There the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars; a flash of lightning cannot illumine the place, what to speak of this mortal fire." [Ka. Up.,2.2.15a] What poetry in the world can be more sublime than that! Such poetry you find nowhere else. (46)

Endless examples can be cited, but we have no time... to do that, or to show the marvelous poetry of the Upanishads, the painting of the sublime, the grand conceptions. But one other idea I must note, that the language and the thought and everything else come direct; they fall upon you like a sword-blade, strong as the blows of a hammer they come. There is no mistaking their meanings. Every tone of that music is firm and produces its full effect - no gyrations, no mad words, no intricacies in which the brain is lost. There are no signs of degradation, no attempts at too much allegorizing, too much piling of adjective after adjective, making it more and more intricate, till the whole of the sense is lost and the brain becomes giddy, and man does not know his way out from the maze of that literature. There was none of that yet. If it be human literature, it must the production of a race which had not yet lost any of its national vigor. (47)

Cross reference to:

RV, 10.129

Taitt. Up., 2.4

Ka. Up., 2.2.15

Kena 1.3

Mund. Up., 2.2.5

Mund. Up., 3.1.2