Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 88)

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Parts 1 to 87 were posted earlier. This is part 88. 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 88

 

How many of the miserably born struggle towards a higher life, and how many more succumb to the circumstances they are placed under? Should those who grow worse and more wicked by being forced to be born under evil circumstances be rewarded in the future for the wickedness of their lives? In that case, the more wicked someone is here, the better will be his or her desserts hereafter.

There is no other way to vindicate the glory and the liberty of the human soul and to reconcile the inequalities and the horrors of this world than by placing the whole burden on the legitimate cause - our own independent actions, or karma. Not only so, but every theory of the creation of the soul from nothing inevitably leads to fatalism and preordination; and, instead of a merciful Father or Mother, places before us a hideous, cruel, and ever-angry God to worship. And so far as the power of religion for good or evil is concerned, this theory of a created soul, leading to its corollaries of fatalism and predestination, is responsible for the horrible idea prevailing among some Christians and Muslims that the heathens are lawful victims of their swords, and all the horrors that have followed and are following it still.

But an argument which the philosophers of the Nyaya school have advanced in favor of reincarnation and which to us seems conclusive is this: our experiences cannot be annihilated. Our actions (karma), though apparently disappearing, remain still unperceived (adrishta) and reappear again in their effect as tendencies (pravrittis). Even little babies come with certain tendencies - fear of death, for example.

Now, if a tendency is the result of repeated actions, the tendencies with which we are born must be explained on that ground, too. Evidently we could not have got them in this life; therefore we must seek for their genesis in the past. Now, it is also evident that some of our tendencies are the effects of the self-conscious efforts peculiar to human beings; and if it is true that we are born with such tendencies, it rigorously follows that their causes were conscious efforts in the past - that is, we must have been on the same mental plane which we call the human plane, before this present life. (54)