Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 49)

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Parts 1 to 48 were posted earlier. This is part 49. 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 49

 

c) The Three Points on Which All Vedantists Agree

All Vedantists agree on three points: they believe in God, in the Vedas as revealed, and in cycles.(17)

On one point all Vedantists agree, and that is that they all believe in God. All these Vedantists also believe ... that the Vedas are an expression of the knowledge of God; and as God is eternal, His or Her knowledge is eternally with Him or Her, and so are the Vedas eternal. There is another common ground of belief: that of creation in cycles. (18)

The three essentials of Hinduism are belief in God, in the Vedas as revelation, in the doctrine of karma and transmigration. (19)

[in the] teachings of the Upanishads there are various texts. Some are perfectly dualistic, while others are monistic. But there are certain doctrines which are agreed to by all the different sects of India. First, there is the doctrine of samsara or reincarnation of the soul. Secondly, they all agree in their psychology... They all also agree in one other most vital point, which alone marks characteristically, most prominently, most vitally, the difference between the Indian and the Western mind, and it is this: that everything is in the soul..... The next point which all the sects in India believe in, is God. (20)

 

d) The Ancient Vedic Search for God

1. The Different Strata of the Search

No savage can be found who does not believe in some kind of a god. Modern science does not say whether it looks upon this as revelation or not. Love among savage nations is not very strong. They live in terror. To their superstitious imaginations is pictured some malignant spirit, before the thought of which they quake in fear and terror. Whatever [savages] like they thinks will please the evil spirit. What will pacify them they think will appease the wrath of the spirit. To this end they labor ever against their fellow savages.... [Historical facts show] that savage humanity went from ancestor worship to the worship of elements and later, to gods, such as the God of Thunder and Storms. Then the religion of the world was polytheism. The beauty of the sunrise, the grandeur of the sunset, the mystifying appearance of the star-bedecked skies and the weirdness of thunder and lightning impressed primitive humanity with a force that it could not explain and suggested the idea of a higher and more powerful being controlling the infinities that flocked before its gaze...

Then came another period - the period of monotheism. All the gods disappeared and blended into one, the God of gods, the ruler of the universe. [Of God the Aryans said], "We live and move in God He or She is motion." Then there came another period known to metaphysics as the "period of pantheism". This race rejected polytheism and monotheism and the idea that God was the universe, and said, "The Soul of my soul is the only true existence. My nature is my existence and will expand to me." (21)

In the Vedas we trace the endeavor of that ancient people to find God. In their search for God they came upon different strata; beginning with ancestor worship, they passed on the worship of Agni, the fire-god, Indra, the god of thunder, and of Varuna, the God of gods.... This anthropomorphic conception, however, did not satisfy the Hindus; it was too human for them who were seeking the Divine. Therefore they finally gave up searching for God in the outer world of sense and matter and turned their attention to the inner world. Is there an inner world? And what is it? It is Atman. It is the Self, it is the only thing an individual can be sure of. If he or she knows him or herself he or she can know the universe, and not otherwise. (22)

 

Cross reference to:

Cha. Up., 7.25.1

 

2. The Worship of Ancestors and Spirits Is the Struggle to Transcend the Senses

[One] theory of spiritualism [is] that religion begins with the worship of ancestors. Ancestor worship was among the Egyptians, among the Babylonians, among many other races - the Hindus, the Christians. There is not one form of religion among which there has not been this ancestor worship in some form or other.

Before that they thought that this body has a double inside it and that when this body dies the double gets out and lives so long as this body exists. The double becomes very hungry or thirsty, wants food or drink and wants to enjoy the good things of this world. So [the double] comes to get food; and if he or she does not get it, he or she will injure even his or her own children. So long as the body is preserved the double will live. Naturally the first attempt, as we see, was to preserve the body, mummify the body, so that the body will live forever.

So with the Babylonians was this sort of spirit worship. Later on as the nations advanced, the cruel forms died out and better forms remained. Some place was given to that which is called heaven, and they placed food here so that it might reach the double there. Even now pious Hindus must, one day a year at least, place food for their ancestors. And the day they leave off [this habit] will be a sorry day for the ancestors. So you also find this ancestor worship to be one cause of religion. There are in modern times philosophers who advance the theory that this has been the root of all religions. (23)

Among the ancient Hindus... we find traces of... ancestor worship. (24)

[However], Professor Max Muller's opinion is that not the least trace of ancestral worship could be found in the Rig Veda. There we do not meet with the horrid sight of mummies staring stark and blank at us. There the gods are friendly to humanity; communion between the worshipper and worshipped is healthy. There is no moroseness, no want of simple joy, no lack of smiles or light in the eyes.... Dwelling on the Vedas, I even seem to hear the laughter of the gods. (25)

A very good position [can] be made out for those who hold the theory of ancestor worship as the beginning of religion.

On the other hand, there are scholars who, from the ancient Aryan literature show that religion originated in nature worship. Although in India we find proofs of ancestor worship everywhere, yet in the oldest record there is no trace of it whatsoever. In the Rig Veda Samhita the most ancient record of the Aryan race, we do not find any trace of it. Modern scholars think it is the worship of nature that they find there. The human mind seems to struggle to get a peep behind the scenes. The dawn, the evening, the hurricane, the stupendous and gigantic forces of nature, its beauties, these have exercised the human mind, and it aspires to go beyond, to understand something about them. In the struggle they endow these phenomena with personal attributes, giving them bodies and souls, sometimes beautiful, sometimes transcendent. Every attempt ended by these phenomena becoming abstractions, whether personalized or not. So also it is found with the ancient Greeks; their whole mythology is simply this abstracted nature worship. So also with the ancient Germans, the Scandinavians, and all the other Aryan races. Thus, on this side, too, a very strong case has been made out, that religion has its origin in the personification of the powers of nature.

These two views, though they seem to be contradictory, can be reconciled on a third basis which, to my mind, is the real germ of religion, and that I propose to call the struggle to transcend the limitations of the senses. Either human beings go to seek for the spirits of their ancestors, the spirits of the dead - that is, they want to get a glimpse of what there is after the body is dissolved; or they desire to understand the power working behind the stupendous phenomena of nature. Whichever of these is the case, one thing is certain - that they try to transcend the limitation of the senses. Human beings cannot remain satisfied with the senses; they want to go beyond them. (26)

All religions are more or less attempts to get beyond nature - the crudest or the most developed, expressed through mythology or symbology, stories of gods, angels or demons, or through stories of saints and seers, great men and women or prophets, or through the abstractions of philosophy - all have that one object, all are trying to get beyond these limitations. In one word, they are all struggling towards freedom. Human beings feel, consciously or unconsciously, that they are bound; they are not what they want to be. It was taught to them the very moment they began to look around. That very instant they learned that they were bound and they also found that there was something in them which wanted to fly beyond, where the body could not follow, but which was as yet chained down by this limitation. Even in the lowest of religious ideas, where departed ancestors and other spirits - mostly violent and cruel, lurking about the houses of their friends, fond of bloodshed and strong drink - are worshipped, even there we find that one common factor, that of freedom. People who want to worship the gods see in them, above all thing, greater freedom than in themselves. If a door is closed, they think the gods can get through it, and that walls have no limitations for them. (27)