MAYA AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

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Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Thu Dec 27, 2007 1:23 am (PST)

 

MAYA AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPTION OF GOD - 1

(Delivered in London, 20th October 1896)

 

We have seen how the idea of Mâyâ, which forms, as it were, one of the basic

doctrines of the Advaita Vedanta, is, in its germs, found even in the Samhitâs,

and that in reality all the ideas which are developed in the Upanishads are to

be found already in the Samhitas in some form or other. Most of you are by this

time familiar with the idea of Maya, and know that it is sometimes erroneously

explained as illusion, so that when the universe is said to be Maya, that also

has to be explained as being illusion. The translation of the word is neither

happy nor correct. Maya is not a theory; it is simply a statement of facts about

the universe as it exists, and to understand Maya we must go back to the

Samhitas and begin with the conception in the germ.

 

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. I may also remark

that that is the one great lesson we have to learn throughout our lives. In

judging others we always judge them by our own ideals. That is not as it should

be. Everyone must be judged according to his own ideal, and not by that of

anyone else. In our dealings with our fellow-beings we constantly labour under

this mistake, and I am of opinion that the vast majority of our quarrels with

one another arise simply from this one cause that we are always trying to judge

others' gods by our own, others' ideals by our ideals, and others' motives by

our motives. Under certain circumstances I might do a certain thing, and when I

see another person taking the same course I think he has also the same motive

actuating him, little dreaming that although the effect may be the same, yet

many other causes may produce the same thing. He may have performed the action

with quite a different motive from that which impelled me to do it. So in

judging of those ancient religions we must not take the standpoint to which we

incline, but must put ourselves into the position of thought and life of those

early times.

 

The idea of the cruel and ruthless Jehovah in the Old Testament has frightened

many - but why? What right have they to assume that the Jehovah of the ancient

Jews must represent the conventional idea of the God of the present day? And at

the same time, we must not forget that there will come men after us who will

laugh at our ideas of religion and God in the same way that we laugh at those of

the ancients. Yet, through all these various conceptions runs the golden thread

of unity, and it is the purpose of the Vedanta to discover this thread. " I am

the thread that runs through all these various ideas, each one of which is; like

a pearl, " says the Lord Krishna; and it is the duty of Vedanta to establish this

connecting thread, how ever incongruous or disgusting may seem these ideas when

judged according to the conceptions of today. These ideas, in the setting of

past times, were harmonious and not more hideous than our present ideas. It is

only when we try to take them out of their settings and apply to our own present

circumstances that the hideousness becomes obvious. For the old surroundings are

dead and gone. Just as the ancient Jew has developed into the keen, modern,

sharp Jew, and the ancient Aryan into the intellectual Hindu similarly Jehovah

has grown, and Devas have grown.

 

To be continued...

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of

success and failure. Desires must bring misery. The great secret of true

success, of true happiness, is this: the person who asks for no return, the

perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.

- Swami Vivekananda