Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 92)

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Parts 1 to 91 were posted earlier. This is part 92. 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 92

 

 

PART II, SECTION 6: THE SPIRITUAL CULTURE OF THE VEDAS AND VEDANTA

 

 

Chapter 15: Spiritual Freedom through Realization and Renunciation

 

a) The Goal of the Soul Is Freedom from the Bondage of Matter

1. In Vedanta Freedom Means Spiritual Independence

The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst; and the word they use for it is, therefore, mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfections, freedom from death and misery. (1)

The Hindu says that political and social independence are well and good, but the real thing is spiritual independence, mukti. This is our national purpose, whether you take the Vaidika, the Jain, or the Buddhist, the Advaita, the Vishishtadvaita, or the Dvaita - there, they are all of one mind. (2)

According to our philosophers, freedom is the goal. Knowledge cannot be the goal, because knowledge is a compound. It is a compound of power and freedom, and it is freedom alone that is desirable. That is what humanity struggles after. Simply the possession of power would not be knowledge. For instance, a scientist can send an electric shock to a distance of some miles; but nature can send it to an unlimited distance. Why do we not build statues to nature, then? It is not law that we want, but an ability to break law. We want to be outlaws. If you are bound by laws, you would be a lump of clay. Whether you are beyond law or not is not the question; but the thought that we are beyond law - upon that is based the whole history of humanity. For instance, a someone lives in the forest and never has had any education or knowledge. He or she sees a stone falling down - a natural phenomenon happening - and he or she thinks it is freedom. He or she thinks it has a soul; and the central idea in that is freedom. But as soon as he or she knows that it must fall, he or she calls it nature - dead, mechanical action. I may or may not go into the street. In that is my glory as a human being. If I am sure that I must go there, I give myself up and become a machine. Nature with its infinite power is only a machine; freedom alone constitutes sentient life.

The Vedanta says that the idea of the person in the forest is the right one; his or her glimpse was right, but the explanation is wrong. He or she holds to nature as freedom and not as governed by law. Only after all this human experience we will come back to think the same, but in a more philosophical sense. For instance, I want to go out into the street. I get the impulse of my will, and then I stop; and in the time that intervenes between the will and going into the street, I am working uniformly. Uniformity of action is what we call law. This uniformity of my action, I find, is broken into very short periods, and so I do not call my actions under law. I work through freedom. I walk for five minutes; but before those five minutes of walking, which are uniform, there was the action of the will, which gave the impulse to walk. Therefore human beings say they are free, because all their actions can be cut up into small periods; and, although there is sameness is the small periods, beyond the period there is not the same sameness. In this perception of non-uniformity is the idea of freedom. In nature we see only very large periods of uniformity, but the beginning and the end must be free impulses. The impulse of freedom was given just at the beginning, and that has rolled on; but this, compared with our periods, is much longer. We find by analysis on philosophic grounds that we are not free. But there will remain this factor, this consciousness that I am free. What we have to explain is how it comes. We will find that we have these two impulsions in us. Our reason tells us that all our actions are caused, and at the same time, with every impulse we are asserting our freedom. The solution of the Vedanta is that there is freedom inside - that the soul is really free - but that the soul's actions are percolating through body and mind, which are not free. (3)