Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 200)

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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 200

PART III, SECTION 8: VEDANTA ARRIVES IN THE WEST

 

 

 

Chapter 22: The Acceptability of the Vedanta to the Modern Western Mind

 

 

a) The Need of the Materialistic, Intellectual West for Spiritual Civilization

 

1. The Westerners Never Went beyond the Idea of Monotheism and Engaged in

Fighting for Their Tribal Gods

 

There is at once an irreconcilable difference between all that is Western and

Eastern. The Eastern is looking inward for all that is great and good. When

[Easterners] worship they close their eyes and try to find God within.

Westerners are looking outside for their God. (1)

 

[in the West] the idea of God grew side by side with the idea of materialism,

until you have traced it up to the emperor of Persia. But on the other hand

comes in metaphysics, philosophy. There is another line of thought, the idea of

the non-dual Atman, humanity’s own soul. That also grows. So, outside of India

ideas about God had to remain in that concrete form until India came to help

them out a bit…. The other nations stopped with that old, concrete idea. In

America there are millions who believe that God has a body,… Whole sects say it.

They believe that He rules the world, but there is a place where He has a body.

He sits upon a throne. They light candles and sing songs, just as they do in our

[indian] temples.

 

But in India they are sensible enough never to make their God a physical being.

You never see in India a temple of Brahma. Why? Because the idea of the Soul

always existed. The Hebrew race never questioned about the soul. There is no

soul idea in the Old Testament at all. The first is in the New Testament. The

Persians - they became so practical, a wonderfully practical people, a fighting,

conquering race; they were the English people of the old time, always fighting

and destroying their neighbors - too much engaged in that sort of thing to think

about the soul. (2)

 

In reading books and criticisms of the Vedas written by Europeans, Hindus cannot

help smiling when they read that the writings of our authors are saturated with

[monotheism] alone. Persons who have sucked in as their mother’s milk the idea

that the highest ideal of God is the idea of the personal God, naturally do not

dare to think on the lines of the ancient thinkers of India, when they find

that, just after the Samhita [the hymns of the Vedas], the monotheistic idea

with which the Samhita portion is replete was thought by the Aryans to be

useless and not worthy of philosophers and thinkers, and that they struggled

hard for a more philosophical and transcendental idea….