Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 50)

May 8, 2001

Parts 1 to 49 were posted earlier. This is part 50. 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 50

3. The Idea of Infinity Underlay the Aryans' Perception of the Growth of God

There have been two theories advanced in modern times with regard to the growth of religions. The one is the spirit theory, the other the tribal theory. The tribal theory is that humanity in its savage state remains divided into many small tribes. Each tribe has a god of its own - or sometimes the same god divided into many forms, as the god of this city came to that city, and so on; Jehovah of this city and of such-and-such a mountain. When the tribes came together, one of them became strong....

[These philosophers] advance the theory that the root of all religions was the tribal assimilation of gods into one. (28)

In the oldest portion of the Vedas there is very little of spiritualism, if anything at all. These Vedic devas were not related to spiritualism - although later on they became so; and this idea of Someone behind them, of whom they were manifestations, is in the oldest parts. (29)

The popular idea that strikes one as making the mythologies of the Samhitas entirely different from other mythologies is that, along with every one of [the Vedic] gods is the idea of an infinity. This infinite is abstracted and sometimes described as Aditya. At other times it is affixed, as it were, to all the other gods....

The peculiar fact that the Vedic gods are taken up, as it were, one after the other, raised and sublimated till each has assumed the proportions of the infinite personal God of the universe - calls for an explanation. Professor Max Muller creates for it a new name, as he thinks it is peculiar to the Hindus; he calls it henotheism. We need not go far for the explanation. It is within the book. A few steps from the very place where we find these gods being raised and sublimated, we find the explanation also..... The Being perceived was one and the same; it was the perceiver who made the difference. It was the hymnist, the sage, the poet, who sang in different languages and different words, the praise of one and the same Being. (30)

There are various other hymns where the same idea comes in about how this all came, just as... when they were trying to find a governor of the universe, a personal God, they were taking up one deva after another, raising it up to that position; so now we shall find that in various hymns one or other idea is taken up and infinitely expanded and made responsible for everything in the universe. One particular idea is taken as the support in which everything rests and exists, and that support has become all this. So on with various ideas. They tried this method with prana, the life principle. They expanded the idea of the life principle until it became universal and infinite. It is the life principle that is supporting everything - not only the human body, but it is the light of the sun and moon, it is the power moving everything, the universal motive energy. (31)

We have seen how the idea of the devas came. At the same time we know that these devas were at first only powerful beings, nothing more. Most of you are horrified when reading the old scriptures, whether of the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Persians, or others, to find that the ancient gods sometimes did things which to us are very repugnant. But when we read these books we entirely forget that we are persons of the nineteenth century and these gods were beings existing thousands of years ago. We also forget that the people who worshipped these gods found nothing incongruous in their characters, found nothing to frighten them, because they were very much like themselves....

The great mistake is in recognizing the evolution of the worshippers, while we do not acknowledge the evolution of the Worshipped. He or She is not credited with the advance that his or her devotees have made. That is to say, you and I, as representing ideas, have grown. This may seem somewhat curious to you - that God can grow. God cannot. God is unchangeable. In the same sense, real human beings never grow. But humanity's ideas of God are constantly changing and expanding. We shall see later on how the real human being behind each one of these human manifestations is immovable, unchangeable, pure, and always perfect; and in the same way the idea that we form of God is a mere manifestation, our own creation. Behind that is the real God who never changes, the ever-pure, the immutable. But the manifestation is always changing, revealing the reality behind more and more. When it reveals more of the fact behind, it is called progression, when it hides more of the fact behind, it is called retrogression. Thus, as we grow, so the gods grow. From the ordinary point of view, just as we reveal ourselves as we evolve, so the gods reveal themselves. (32)

Cross reference to:

Rig Veda, 164.46