Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 96)

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Parts 1 to 95 were posted earlier. This is part 96. 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 96

 

 

2. Vedanta Dehypnotizes Us from the Law of Habit by Its Conception of Virtue as a Means to Freedom

We are lions in sheep's clothing of habit, we are hypnotized into weakness by our surroundings. And the province of Vedanta is self-dehypnotization. The goal to be reached is freedom. I disagree with the idea that freedom is obedience to the laws of nature. I do not understand what that means. According to the history of human progress, it is disobedience to nature that has constituted that progress. It may be said that the conquest of lower laws was through the higher; but even there the conquering mind was still seeking freedom; as soon as it found the struggle was through law, it wished to conquer that also. So the ideal is always freedom. The trees never disobeyed the law. I never saw a cow steal. An oyster never told a lie. Yet these are not greater than human beings.

Obedience to the law, in the last issue, would make of us simply matter - either in society, or in politics, or religion. This life is a tremendous assertion of freedom; excess of laws means death. No nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus; and the result is national death. But the Hindus had one peculiar idea - they never made any doctrines or dogmas in religion, and the latter has had the greatest growth. Therein we are practical - where the West is impractical - in our religion. (14)

The old Hindu conception of Law [was] as the King of kings who never slept, showing that the Hindus had the true notion of it in the Vedas, while other nations only knew it as regulations. (15)

Doing good to others is virtue (dharma); injuring others is sin. Strength and manliness are virtue; weakness and cowardice are sin. Independence is virtue; dependence is sin. Loving others is virtue; hating others is sin. Faith in God and in one's own self is virtue; doubt is sin. Knowledge of oneness is virtue; seeing diversity is sin. The different scriptures only show the means of attaining virtue. (16)