Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 130)

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Parts 1 to 129 were posted earlier. This is part 130. 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 130

3. Sri Krishna, Who Showed the Validity of the Various Steps in Religion

What do you find in the Gita, and what in modern commentators? One non-dualistic commentator takes up an Upanisad; there are so many dualistic passages which he twists and tortures into some meaning and wants to bring them all into a meaning of his own. If a dualistic commentator comes, there are so many non-dualistic texts which he begins to torture to bring them all round to a dualistic meaning. But you find in the Gita there is no attempt at torturing any one of them. They are all all right, says the Lord; for slowly and gradually the human soul rises up and up, step after step, from the gross to the fine, from the fine to the finer, until it reaches the Absolute, the goal. That is what is in the Gita. Even the Karma-Kanda is taken up and it is shown that, although it cannot give salvation direct, but only indirectly, yet that also is valid; images are valid indirectly, ceremonies, forms, everything is valid, only with one condition - purity of heart. For worship is valid and leads to the goal if the heart is pure and the heart is sincere; and all these various modes of worship are necessary - else why should they be there? Religions and sects are not the work of hypocrites and wicked people who invented all these to get a little money, as some of our modern people want to think. However reasonable that explanation may seem, it is not true and they were not invented that way at all. They are the outcome of the necessity of the human soul. They are all here to satisfy the hankering and thirst of different classes of human minds; and you need not preach against them. The day when that necessity will cease, they will vanish along with the cessation of that necessity; and so long as that necessity remains, they must be there in spite of your preaching, in spite of your criticisms. You may bring the sword or the gun into play, you may deluge the world with human blood; but so long as there is a necessity for idols, they must remain. These forms, and all the various steps in religion will remain; and we understand from Lord Krishna why they should.(47)