Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 105)

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Parts 1 to 104 were posted earlier. This is part 105. 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 105

 

2. The Struggle to Go Beyond the Phenomenal Makes Us the Fittest to Survive

Two great problems are being decided by the nations of the world. India has taken up one side and the rest of the world has taken up the other. And the problem is this: who is to survive? What makes one nation survive and the others die? Should love or hatred survive, should enjoyment survive, or renunciation; should matter survive or the Spirit, in the struggle of life? We think as our ancestors did, away back in prehistoric ages. Where even tradition cannot pierce the gloom of the past, there our glorious ancestors have taken up their side of the problem and have thrown the challenge to the world. Our solution is renunciation - giving up - fearlessness, and love; these are the fittest to survive. Giving up the senses makes a nation survive. As a proof of this, here is history today telling us of mushroom nations rising and falling almost every century - starting up from nothingness, making vicious play for a few days, and then melting away. This big, gigantic race which had to grapple with some of the greatest problems of misfortunes, dangers and vicissitudes such as never fell upon the heads of any other nation of the world, survives because it has taken the side of renunciation; for, without renunciation, can there be religion? Europe is trying to solve the other side of the problem as to how much human beings can have, how much more power someone can possess by hook or by crook, by some means or other. Competition - cruel, cold, and heartless - is the law of Europe. Our law is caste - the breaking of competition, checking its forces, mitigating its cruelties, smoothing the passage of the human soul through this mystery of life. (46)

In [india] are, still, religion and spirituality, the fountains of which will have to overflow and flood the world to bring in new life and new vitality to the Western and other nations, which are now almost borne down, half-killed and degraded by political ambitions and social scheming. From out of many voices, consonant and dissentient, from out of the medley of sounds filling the Indian atmosphere, rises up supreme, striking and full, one note - and that is renunciation. Give up! That is the watchword of the Indian religions. The present life is of five minutes. Beyond is the Infinite, beyond this world of delusion; let us seek that. The continent is illumined with brave and gigantic minds and intelligences which even think of this so-called infinite universe as only a mud-puddle; beyond and still beyond they go. Time, even infinite time, is to them but non-existence. Beyond and beyond time they go. Space is nothing to them; beyond that they want to go, and this going beyond the phenomenal is the very soul of religion. (47)

 

Cross reference to Kaivalya Upanisad, 2.