Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 194)

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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 194

3. The Vedantic Ideas Which Have Crept into Philosophy and Literature in the

West Have Been Rationalized and Relativized.

 

There is no book of philosophy written today in which something of… Vedantism is

not touched upon - even the works of Herbert Spencer contain it.(40)

 

What is Spencer’s unknowable? It is the Indian maya. Western philosophers are

afraid of the unknowable, but Indian philosophers have taken a big jump into the

unknown and they have conquered.

 

Western philosophers are like vultures soaring high in the sky, but all the

while with their eyes fixed on the carrion beneath. They cannot cross the

unknown, and they therefore turn back and worship the almighty dollar.(41)

 

Indian Vedantic… ideas have crept into the great French poets, such as Victor

Hugo and Lamartine and others, and the great German poets such as Goethe,

Schiller and the rest. The influence of Vedanta on European poetry and

philosophy is very great. Every good poet is a Vedantin, I find; and whoever

writes some philosophical treatise has to draw upon Vedanta in some shape or

other. Only some of them do not care to admit this indebtedness and want to

establish their complete originality - Herbert Spencer and others, for instance.

But the majority do openly acknowledge it.(42)