Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 193)

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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 193

2. Kant Rediscovered the Groundwork of Thought Which Was Long Ago Taught by the

Vedas

 

The philosophy of Vedanta teaches that there are two worlds: the external or

sensory, and the internal or subjective - the thought-world.

 

It posits three fundamental concepts - time, space, and causation. From these is

constituted maya, the essential groundwork of human thought, not the product of

thought. This same conclusion was arrived at a later date by the great German

philosopher, Kant.(35)

 

What is true of the external must also apply to the internal world. Mind also

wants to know itself, but this Self can only be known through the medium of the

mind and is, like the wall, unknown. This Self we may call y, and the statement

would then be: y +mind is the inner self. Kant was the first to arrive at this

analysis of the mind, but it was long ago stated in the Vedas.(36)

 

Kant’s great achievement was the discovery that " time, space and causation are

modes of thought " , but Vedanta taught this ages ago and called it maya.(37)

 

Those of you who are acquainted with Western philosophy will find something very

similar [to the theory of maya] in Kant. But I must warn you, those of you who

have studied Professor Max Muller’s writings on Kant, that there is one idea

most misleading. It was Shankara who first found out the identity of space, time

and causation with maya; and I had the great good fortune to find one or two

passages in Shankara’s commentaries and send them to my friend the professor. So

even that idea was… in India.(38)

 

Kant has proved beyond all doubt that we cannot penetrate beyond the tremendous

dead wall called reason. But that is the very first idea upon which all Indian

thought takes it stand, and dares to seek - and succeeds in finding - something

higher than reason, where alone the explanation of the present state is to be

found. This is the value of the study of something that will take us beyond the

world. " Thou art our Father, and wilt take us to the other shore of this ocean

of ignorance. " [Prash. Up.,6.8] That is the science of religion, nothing

else.(39)