Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 186)

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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 186

 

 

2. Over the English Highways Indian Thought Is Again Conquering the World

This most ancient philosophy of Vedanta has, through its influence, directly inspired Buddhism, the first missionary religion of the world; and indirectly, it has also influenced Christianity, through the Alexandrians, the Gnostics, and the European philosophers of the Middle Ages.(20)

One of these cycles [of Indian thought working upon the world] has again arrived. There is the tremendous power of England which has linked the different parts of the world together. English roads are not only no more content, like Roman roads, to run over land; they have ploughed the deep in all directions. From ocean to ocean run the roads of England. Every part of the world has been linked to every other part, and electricity has played a most marvelous part as the new messenger. Under all these circumstances we find India again reviving and ready to give her own quota to the progress and civilization of the world. And that I have been forced by nature, as it were, to go over and preach to America and England is the result. Every one of us Indians ought to have seen that the time has arrived. Everything looks propitious; and Indian thought, philosophical and spiritual, must once more go over and conquer the world.(21)

India’s work is spiritual and cannot be done with blasts of war-trumpets or the march of cohorts. Her influence has always fallen upon the world like that of the gentle dew, unheard and scarcely marked, yet bringing into bloom the fairest flowers of the earth. This influence, being in its nature gentle, would have to wait for a fortunate combination of circumstances to go out of the country to other lands, though it never ceased to work within the limits of its native land. As such, every educated person knows that, whenever the empire-building Tartar, or Persian, or Greek, or Arab brought India into contact with the outside world, a mass of spiritual influence immediately flooded the world from there. The very same circumstances have presented themselves once more before us. The English high roads over land and sea and the wonderful power manifested by the inhabitants of that little island have once more brought India into contact with the rest of the world, and the same work has already begun. Mark my words, this is but the small beginning; big things are to follow.(22)