Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 208)

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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 208

3. The West Must Learn from India the Practical Science of the Soul, beyond the

Body and Mind

 

[The Indian] Atman and the Western soul* are entirely different things. What the

Indians call manas (the mind) the Western people call soul. The West never had

the idea of the Soul until they got it through Sanskrit philosophy some twenty

years ago. Here is the body; beyond that is the mind, yet the mind is not the

Atman - it is the fine body, the sukshma sharira, made of fine particles, which

goes from birth to death, and so on; but behind the mind is the Atman, the Soul,

the Self of humanity. It cannot be translated by the words soul or mind, so we

have to use the word Atman - or, as Western philosophers have designated it, by

the word Self. Whatever word you use, you must keep it clear in your mind that

the Atman is separate from minds, as well as from the body. (25)

 

It was in the old Indian books - and there only - that the grand idea of the

infinite range of time, space and causation and, above all, the infinite glory

of the Spirit of humanity governed all the search for religion. When the modern

tremendous theories of evolution and conservation of energy and so forth are

dealing death blows to all sorts of crude theologies, what can any more hold the

allegiance of cultured humanity any more but the most wonderful, convincing,

broadening and ennobling ideas that can be found only in that marvelous product

of the soul of humanity, the wonderful voice of God - the Vedanta? (26)