Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 216)

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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 216

 

We see we must first find the universe which includes all universes; we must

find something which, by itself, must be the material running through all these

various planes of existence, whether we apprehend it through the senses or not.

If we could possibly find something which we could know as the common property

of the lower as well as of the higher worlds, then our problem would be solved.

Even if by the sheer force of logic alone we could understand that there must be

one basis of all existence, then our problem might approach some sort of

solution; but this solution certainly cannot be obtained only through the world

we see and know, because it is only a partial view of the whole.

 

Our only hope, then, lies in penetrating deeper. The early [indo-Aryan] thinkers

discovered that the farther they were from the center, the more marked were the

variations and differentiations; and that the nearer they approached the center,

the nearer they were to Unity. (37)

 

 

3. The " Oneness of Energy " Asserted by the Scientists Meets the " One, Internal

Soul " of Vedanta in Brahman, the Unchanging Reality

 

The discussion between substance and qualities is very old, and you will

sometimes find that the old superstition lives even at the present day. Most of

you have read how, in the Middle Ages - and, I am sorry to say, even much later

- this was one of the subjects of discussion: whether qualities adhered to

substance - whether length, breadth, and thickness adhered to the substance

which we call dead matter; whether, the substance remaining, the qualities are

there or not. To this our Buddhist says, " You have no ground for maintaining the

existence of such a substance. The qualities are all that exist; you do not see

beyond them. " This is just the position of most of our modern agnostics. For it

is this fight of the substance and qualities that, on a higher plane, takes the

form of the fight between noumenon and phenomenon. There is the phenomenal

world, the universe of continuous change; and there is something behind which

does not change; and this duality of existence - noumenon and phenomenon - some

hold is true; others, with better reason, claim that you have no right to admit

the two, for what we see, feel, and think is only the phenomenon. You have no

right to assert there is anything beyond phenomenon; and there is no answer to

this. The only answer we get is from the monistic theory of the Vedanta. (42)

 

In nature there is no such division as internal and external. These are

fictitious limitations that never existed. The externalists and the internalists

are destined to meet at the same point, when both reach the extreme of their

knowledge. Just as a physicist, when he or she pushes his or her knowledge to

its limits, finds it melting away into metaphysics, so a metaphysician will find

that what he or she calls mind and matter are but apparent distinctions, the

reality being One. (43)

 

Do you not see whither science is tending? The Hindu nation proceeded through

the study of the mind, through metaphysics and logic. The European nations start

from external nature, and now they, too, are coming to the same results. We find

that, searching through the mind we at last come to that Oneness, that universal

One, the internal Soul of everything, The Essence and Reality of everything; the

ever free, the ever-blissful, the ever-existing. Through material science we

come to the same Oneness. Science today is telling us that all things are but

the manifestation of one energy which is the sum total of everything which

exists, and the trend of humanity is towards freedom and not towards bondage.

Why should people be moral? Because through morality is the path to freedom, and

immorality leads to bondage. (44)