Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 205)

[Guest guest]

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 205

 

In Indian psychology, first there is the body; behind that, what they call the

sukshma sharira (the mind), and behind even that, is the jiva. That is the great

difference between Western and Indian psychology; in Western psychology, mind is

the soul; [in India], it is not. The antahkarana - the internal instrument, as

the mind is called in India - is only an instrument in the hands of the jiva,

through which the jiva works on the body or on the external world…. All the

different sects in India agree upon this, and they also all agree on one most

vital point which alone marks characteristically, most prominently, most

vitally, the difference between the Indian and the Western mind - and that is

this: that everything is in the soul. (16)

 

The omnipresent, impersonal Being of Vedanta is known by its old mythological

name of Brahma, the four-headed Brahma, and psychologically called mahat. This

is where [prana and akasha] unite. What is called your mind is only a bit of

this mahat caught in the trap of the brain, and the sum total of all minds

caught in the meshes of brains is what you call samashti - the aggregate, the

universal. Analysis had to go further; it was not yet complete. Here we were,

each one of us - as it were, a microcosm - and the world taken all together is

the macrocosm. But whatever is in the vyashti - the particular - we may safely

conjecture that a similar thing is happening outside. If we had the power to

analyze our own minds, we might safely conjecture that a similar thing is

happening in the cosmic mind. What is this mind is the question. In modern

times, in Western countries, as physical science is making rapid progress, as

physiology is step by step conquering stronghold after stronghold of old

religions, the Western people do not know where to stand because, to their great

despair, modern physiology has at every step identified the mind with the brain.

But we in India have always known that. (17)