Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 209)

August 2, 2004

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 209

c) The West - Nay, the Whole World - Wants from India the Vedic Idea of the

Oneness and Solidarity of the Whole Universe

1. The Modern Religious Ferment in Search of Unity of Being Is Sweeping Away the

Superstitious Western Religions

I fully believe that there are periodic ferments of religion in human society

and that such a period is now sweeping over the educated world. While each

ferment, moreover, appears broken into various little bubbles, these are all

eventually similar, showing the cause or causes behind them to be the same. That

religious ferment which at present is every day gaining a greater hold over

thinking men and women, has this characteristic that all the little

thought-whirlpools in which it has broken itself declare one single aim - a

vision and a search after the unity of Being. On planes physical, ethical and

spiritual, an ever-broadening generalization - leading up to a concept of a

Unity Eternal is in the air - and this being so, all the movements of the time

may be taken to represent, knowingly or unknowingly, the noblest philosophy of

unity humanity ever had - the Advaita Vedanta. (27)

The philosophy of the age is Advaitism. Everybody talks of it, only in Europe

they try to be original. They talk of Hinduism with contempt, but at the same

time swallow the truths given out by the Hindus. (28)

[Westerners] practice in religion either hypocrisy or fanaticism. Sober-minded

people have become disgusted with their superstitious religions and are looking

to India for new light. [You] cannot realize, without seeing it, how eagerly

they take in any little bit of the grand thoughts of the holy Vedas, which

resist and are unharmed by the terrible onslaughts of modern science. Theories

of creation out of nothing, of a created soul, and of a big tyrant of a God

sitting on a throne in a place called heaven, and of eternal hell-fires have

disgusted all the educated; and the noble thoughts of the Vedas about the

eternity of creation and of the Soul, and about the God in our own soul they are

imbibing fast in one shape or another. Within fifty years [from 1894] the

educated of the world will come to believe in the eternity of both the Soul and

creation, and in God as our highest and perfect nature, as taught in our holy

Vedas. Even now their learned priests are interpreting the Bible that way. My

conclusion is that they require more spiritual civilization and the Indians more

material. (29)

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