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Among the profoundest men who adorned the
19th century, and who had a hand in the shaping
of our religious history, three persons stand
foremost as the stalwart defenders of Hinduism
in its purity. The rest were Reformers. Even
among them three, only two stand out as the
preservers and conservers of the ancient Indian
tradition. The Renaissance, according to
Professor D.S. Sarma, began with the call to
purify Hinduism of its ills and maladies, its
accretions and distortions and to return to the
theism inherent in the Upanisads. This version
of Hinduism was called Brahmoism to remind all
that Hinduism is the religion of Brahman, and
that it is a casteless community. The sectarian
cults usually developed an anti-Brahman
attitude, while the brahmins were caste-ridden
and caste-determined men.
The criticisms levelled against Hinduism
was almost entirely by westerners, and rightly
they had pointed out what according to them were
the social ills that blackened it. Many of
these ills were not inherent to religious
experiences and were not sanctioned by original
texts at all, and if the religion of the
Upanisads were to survive and live, drastic
reforms had to be carried out. These great
souls, led by Ram Mohan Roy, undertook to bring
into being a samaj known as the Brahmo Samaj.
The purified or reformed Hinduism which it
preached attracted intellectuals and led to an
earnest study of the indigenous literature of
the Upanisads, and to a newly patterned worship
of God in a simple way of communion in
spirit. But this so much resembled the
Christian pattern, as distinct from the temple
rituals, that it did not really satisfy except
such of those who had absorbed the western ways
but were unconsciously clinging or returning to
Indian traditional beliefs. This movement shows
how mutual religious influences could bring
forth a Christianised Hinduism and be the
fore-runner of a Hinduised Christianity; a gain
indeed for an integrative fusion in the years to
come.
It is
well to remember that this was a kind of
repetition of an earlier century, when Hinduism
was Islamised and Islam was Hinduised in the
Sikhism of Nanak and the Din-i-lahi of Akbar.
This is a historical process inevitable when
different peoples are thrown together. Through
early conflict and because of fear creating
suspicion, men seem to stand against each other.
Later, when the conquerors learn to be civil and
understanding, they all learn to respect the
deep ideas of the conquered and adopt them to
fuse a unity of the divided. This Integrative
process has been going on. So after preliminary
opposition rather defensive in nature on the one
hand and offensive on the other hand, there
takes place a mutual recognition of merits which
leads to fusion through the adoption of the best
elements in both. This is the synthetic nature
of all integrative living religions. Those that
do not adopt this process, through their best
spiritual representatives or the common people,
tend to fade into oblivion. There will, at all
times, remain remnants of the extremists on both
sides whose suspicions and fears cannot be
removed. The psychology of fanaticism thrives on
these, and fanaticism is egoistic in its
expression in faith, and thrives on fear and
defensive offensives. Brahmoism was the first
attempt gallantly made to affirm one’s own
religious integrity.
The
second renaissance effort was that of Dayanand
Sarasvati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, who
tried to instil new forces through the revival
of Vedic studies, which had suffered much and
were suffering from the western materialistic
and naturalistic interpretations of the original
theism of the Vedas. Further, if theism had
to survive it had to pull out the Upanisads from
the hands of the illusionists who claimed their
authority from the Upanisads for the
establishment of the Nirguna Brahman as the one
reality, and the world as a phenomenal entity.
Despite the claims of the Brahmos to be theists,
in so far as they relied on the Upanisads alone,
it was possible for them to affirm Brahman who
was not an Isvara, the latter being only a
phenomenal appearance of Brahman. This was
because of the prevalence of the theory of
Absolute Brahman as contrasted with Isvara who
was the Brahman in relation to the world, its
creator and sustainer and destroyer or
withdrawer. The Veda seems to favour an,
Isvara-concept rather than a monistic concept of
a relationless Absolute. The theistic strain in
Dayanand also made him turn towards
proselytization of non-hindus who had gone over
to other religions or were converted to them.
The suddhi or purification meant that all could
be made fit to study the Veda. Veda was now
thrown open to all those who believed in
Hinduism. Caste barriers were abolished. In fact
caste was no longer to be used to bar anybody
from the study of the Veda. The study of the
Vedas was being pursued by the western scholars
and no one could prevent people of other
religions from studying them; but the danger was
that Vedic texts insisted upon disciplinary
preliminaries such as siksa (training or
education), kalpa (engineering - doing
building), vyakarana (grammar), nirukta
(etymology) and Jyotisa (astronomy) which alone
could help a proper understanding of the Veda:
Lacking these, others could only distort the
Vedic teaching and make it secular and profane,
which in fact occured. Sincere though the
scholars of the West were, the Veda for them was
only a great field for studies in indology,
comparitive philology and religion.
Such
an extension and re-grouping of social patterns
was necessitated because there was no method by
which a Hindu, converted to other religions,
could be enabled to return to his original
religion and participate in the Hindu
community. The flexibility had to be
restored to thought and experience without
Impairing the security of the religious
practices. It is well known that sly
infiltration of alien doctrines could destroy
the religious fabric; and faith could be rudely
shaken. This was therefore a defensive
reform to enable sincere men to return to the
ancient fold. We know well that even though
many have embraced other religions, they
continue to hold on to dogmas which are not
germane to them. However when an attempt was
made to make political device, it was stopped by
this Arya Samajist movement of reconversion. The
renaissance awakened the religious men of
Hinduism to a sense of religious and political
realities and prepared for a revival of
spiritual interest in the Veda not merely as the
oldest spiritual scripture but also as the
living scripture of mankind, and of Hinduism in
particular. It could be the scripture of the
entire humanity. There is no doubt, as Sri
Aurobindo speaking of Dayanand said, that his
great work has cleared the mistakes and
corrected most of them which are the results of
western (Christian-slanted and materialistic)
scholarship,
A
study of the nature of the spiritual climate of
the Vedic-Upanisadic times emerged and as a
result Hinduism could look forward to becoming a
world religion. We could speak about the great
headway being made in the studies on Buddhism
from the point of view of comparitive religion,
and see also how & later busdhism eclipsed the
original teaching of the Buddha, and how instead
of being heretical Hinduism, Buddhism played the
part of refomer and deepener of the mystical
experiences and led men to heights of
self-realisation hardly paralleled later.
Buddhism was found to be in the spiritual
tradition of Hinduism, or rather Upanisadic
thought and conduct; and even as Hinduism became
a ritualistic religion catering to the common
man, it (Buddhism) also was stepping down to the
level of the lay man; and two types of conduct
in spirituality came into being. However the
theosophical writers following closely on the
writings on Buddhism helped to interest its
members in spiritual illumination based on the
study and practice of religions. The idea of a
world religion or a Universal or divine wisdom,
“theosophia” was very much in the air. The
Iheosophical Society tried to speak for the
evolution of a higher man - an idea already
mooted by some of the advanced seers in the west
in the 19th century like Nietaeche, Goethe and
Fichte. Aurobindo showed that this was in fact
the aspiration of the Vedic Rishi Rbhu, and the
Yajna is said to be a means for the evolution or
making of an Immortal Man, as in the
Nachiketa-episode in the Kathopanisad.
A
study of comparitive religion could not but
reveal the insight of world-unity at least in
the lives and teachings of the prophets and
seers, however divergent their social and other
conditions may have been. It is also evident
that the later history of each one of these
religions revealed a falling off from the
standards of realisation, and hence the failure
of vision, growth and transcendence. It is
perhaps true to say that the Iheosophical
Society did not have outstanding scholars in any
field as such, but the profound labour of
inter-relating and cross indexing had provided
the stimulus for the creation of an organized
body of world religious texts. Recently books on
the several Gospels of each religion have been
brought out which continue the Theosophic
tradition.
1. * It is also perhaps quite true that
they hardly helped
Swami Vivekananda in his American tour, or at
the World Congress of Religions at Chicago, as
Swami Vivekananda himself has stated.
* Utopias have invariably been written in a
prophetic vein - whether it is by the Christian
or Marxist or Psychologist or economist or
idealist.
2. It must be remembered that Theosophy
does not aim at presenting Hinduism as a
world-religion, or as the world religion, but
only as a constituent of world religion. The aim
is to promote mutual understanding and
experience of the occult and divine truths of
Reality, evolution and the goal of creation. It
is, in a sense, scientific in outlook but then
all has turned out to be outlooks on occult
experiences.
The
world outlook had come to stay as the goal of
all religions. Parochial religions could hardly
keep up to that purpose and became unsuitable.
It is very necessary to remember that it is
through the spiritual genius ofSri Ram Krishna
Paramahamsa that the Occidental oriented Indians
found a return to their ancient Hindu
tradition. If Ram Mohan Roy hearked back to the
Upanisads, Sri Rama Krishna Paramaharasa
hearkened back to the Agama - the popular
religious experience of the mystic order of
tantra. He was neither an educated person
like the brilliant Rammohan Roy, nor a learned
Pandit like Dayanand Sarasvati, but he was a
soul drinking from the fountain of spiritual
life awakened to the glorious presence of the
deity in the idol of Kali the World Mother, and
its identity with the One Brahman of the
Upanisads - the “Ekam sat” of the Veda.
If
one of the major tenets of Hindu worship is the
worship of God in the iconic form, and if this
is the one tenet that mystics all over the world
(except Hindu) have rejected as materialistic
and gross, then this movement initiated by Sri
Rama Krishna is a return to the
Icon - worship - which is basic to the
traditional worship of the Agama or tantra. It
is of course the most accessible to man with his
sensory perceptions and seeking a sensory visual
representation. It is a call to return to
ancient temple culture from the westernised
pulpits. It is also a return to the icon
detested by Islam, which undertook a massive
idol-breaking sacrifice to the Nirguna Invisible
Godhead - Allah. This is truly a return to
Hinduism.
The
worship of the icon was a legitimate kind of
worship of the Absolute Godhead invoked into the
Icon. The simple priest revealed the Absolute
Godhead in the icon to his disciple Narendra
when he asked him to show him God. His
(Narendra’s) eyes were opened to the presence of
the transcendent in the icon, the gross material
pratika or bimba. This is a great enough vision
- the actual confirmation of the belief that the
Absolute has both form, and indeed many forms,
whilst being One only as the transcendent
Secondly these icons are not just for the
purohit or priesthood, because there are always
genuine knowers of the Ultimate through
realisation of the Ultimate in the finite and
the formed, in and through names. Thus was the
scepticism and logical contradiction removed by
actual vision. Experience, in a sense, makes the
impossible possible. Further, Sri Rama Krishna
revealed that all religions devoted to the
Ultimate Divine are equally valid means to the
realisation of the Ultimate. The Divine has
infinite phases, though One. He is a unit as
multiplex or, to use the phrase of Errol E.
Harris, the Ultimate is a polyphasic unity. The
Monism is poly-phasic and is not a barren
Oneness negating all inner divisions or
differences or wholes. The manyaided experiences
of the One God give rise to infinite forms of
the One Divine all of which are equally true and
real, but all of which are those which point
towards the Oneness of all these. This
exposition of the spiritual nature of Reality is
the insight and guiding light of all
developments in the 20th century. This is the
strongest emphasis that Swami Vivekananda made
in his great talks and speeches during the last
decade of the 19th century. The experience of
the One in the many and through the many is
verily the basis of the Advaita or Ekatva
statement of the Veda and the Upanisada. The
“ekam” refers to the Ultimate Godhead, the One
purusa or One Being (existent); this becomes all
inclusive advaita rather than an all-negating
advaita. The spiritual harmonisation samanvayata
of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is one of the
most significant intuitions that has led to the
unification of all faiths, and one that can
reveal the Universal Religion.
Monotheisms like
Islam refuted all gods or reduced them to
subordination. The puranas and also the
interpreters of the Vedas in earlier phases had
spoken of the dethroning of the gods and the
exaltations of the other gods, and this
obviously in certain mythologies, had turned
oust to be battles for power and position. All
these are due to the rajasic and tamasic ways of
looking at the concept of the supreme power.
Sectarian squabbles or religious fratricides
issue from the non-possession of knowledge or
ignorance of the divine nature. Sri Ramakrishna
showed by his example how all are one being but
the names of the One godhead, or rather all
ultimately refer to the One supreme Godhead
whose embodiments and name they are (nama-rupa
distinctions).
SWAMI
VIVEKANANDA
Two
monumental statues adorn the Madras Beach. They
are near each other. They are of two eminent
sons of India who have changed the direction of
Indian history in respect of its religious
freedom and political emancipation. Both were
under fire from forces which had emasculated
India, and yet in a sense both were necessary to
enable us to gain our freedom through a double
or twofold renaissance in religion and politics.
They are Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi.
Both made religion their total concern, but it
was a religion that sought both here and
hereafter a freedom from all shackles that
prevented every single human being from
recovering that inherent right to be free, and
that meant freedom in an integral sense through
religious dedication. Both these statues are
austere: one is that of a ‘wanderer’ who walked
the length and breadth of India to feel the very
mud and soil of India, sacred to all seers and
seekers alike, and the other who donned the loin
cloth - a naked fakir as one contemptuously
called him -who felt his oneness with all the
downtrodden and the dispossessed. Both have
their staff of service, illumination,
renunciation and dedication to the One supreme
Divine, the One God of all the peoples of the
world. Both spelled out the goal of Humanity
to be what the Ancient Seers of India had
envisioned for eternity - dedication to truth,
and renunciation (anasakti in the language of
Gandhiji). They spoke with the unadulterated
eloquence of the heart. Compassion ruled and
guided their steps. High idealism combined with
that occult practicality which goes with
simplicity and spirituality was their inner
light and motivating force.
India
had a message to deliver and a work to do, a
contribution to make to the welfare and higher
evolution of the world. It was undoubtedly a
great endeavour; no one uttered this inner
message in such clear terms, perhaps none ever
uttered it earlier. The singular call to
Hinduism to become a universal religion had
something of captivating magnetism; it was a
call to awake from slumber - Vivekananda was
ever fond of raising this call Uttistata
Jagrata, arise! awake! It was an eye-opener to
India herself that she had use for God in His
stupendous creation, and for the founding of a
Universal religion.
Vivekananda, the saintly Monk, was the elder and
he stimulated and fired the imagination of world
youth, and of Indian youth in particular to
dedicate themselves as sannyasins to carry the
message to all over the World.
No one escaped his magic and charm; his
high eloquence thrilled and filled the hearts
and heads of one and all. He initiated the whole
nation to a new vision; the whole world to a new
aspiration that would build up an enduring
spiritual unity of the West and East.
Swami Vivekananda, in one of his writings,
said that there should be a college at Madras
for the study of comparitive religion in order
to foster mutual understanding that would help
the realisation of the ideal of one Universal
religion, rather than have competing religions
each trying by mutual criticism to arrive at
universality of helping all humanity. In so far
as that study spelled out the goal and ideal of
universal Religion he had no doubt that Vedanta
would naturally be accepted as the best
candidate for that position. Vedanta, for Swami
Vivekananda, meant only Advaita or Non-dualism
or Monism, the Unity or Universality principle
which is basic to all processes of thought
itself. Though thought everywhere analyses, it
is yet seeking for that which unites all and
integrates all, and as such a rational religion
cannot stay at the stage of division. It is
impelled by the logic of its nature to seek to
become a universal principle as well as a
uniting principle. So when one applies the same
unifying principle, or seeks to discover it as
ever present in all systems and experiences, it
is clearly reasonable to expect that such
principles could be discovered.
The
field of investigation is not the field of
reason, abstract or practical, or even
aesthetic, but the field of religious
experiences themselves. Religious experiences in
the various religions have however developed
certain dogmas or articles of faith not subject
to reason or understanding, and were thus opaque
to intellectual investigation. Therefore one had
to search for the rationale or meaning of these
dogmas - not an easy process as these are said
to come intuitively or through revelation. It is
only the Indian seers who discovered that in the
sphere of revelations the ordinary principles of
non-self-contradiction (badhita) should not be
applied but samanvaya or harmonisation of even
the mutually contradictory revelations or vakyas
should be undertaken. This is the contribution
of Mimamsa as distinguished from tarka or nyaya,
in the field of logic of revelation.
This was the
reason why linguistic and grammatical
interpretations and analysis of the texts became
a serious field of study requisite for
interpreting the vedic texts. But this by itself
takes one nowhere if the experiences or
intuitions are absolutely unverifiable, which
indeed they happen to be to many of the scholars
averse to spiritual awakening, or unfitted for
it. The awakening of man to this intuitive
region or area of experience is to awaken him
also to the harmony of the religious doctrines,
not only on the basis of partial truths which
they tend to represent, but also to affirm that
they are capable of leading to the apprehension
of the Whole truth. Each religion, in its
dynamic condition as a living religion of some
at least of its members, has its nisus to the
One supreme Being or God, and in this sense
wholly becomes sufficient for the purpose of
realisation.
Swami
Vivekananda continued the spiritual insight
sanctified by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa by
formulating the main form of the Universal
Religion, that was to be.
His
own clear statement is that by the study of
comparitive religion two conclusions, both
scientific in nature, could be drawn.
“I would like to draw your attention
to the one that bears upon the universality of
religions, and the other, on the idea of the
oneness of things”.*
He
had a definite idea that religion essentially
belongs to the supersenauous.
* Complete works
of Swami Vivekanand Vol. III
p.185
“Religion belongs to the supersensuous and not to the
sense plane . . . It is beyond all reasoning and
is not on the plane of the intellect . . .It is
a vision, an inspiration, a plunge into
the unknown and unknowable, making the
unknowable more than known.” **
He
avers also that it is wrong to think that this
vision or inspiration could be called such, for
really it is something that comes out of the
individual.
“What is called inspiration by other sects, the Vedantin
begs the liberty to call the expiration of man
(for all energy is really from inside flowing
out)."1
“Religions do not come from without but from within.”
2
It is usual to think that so
far as knowledge of external objects is
concerned it is acquired through the mediation
of the senses and the mind, which are
extroverted in the sense that their objects are
outside themselves, and which they bring to the
soul to experience. These are questioned by
philosophers, for all knowledge so got is
subject to the individual’s sense-organs and
mind, and are distorted and discoloured if not
wholly different from the nature of the objects
outside oneself. They can be false or illusory,
or in one word,
** Complete works of Swami Vivekanand
“ p.1
1 Complete works of Swami Vivekanand
Vol. I p. 388
2 Complete works
of Swami Vivekanand III
p.2
untrustworthy; dubitable. The
religious experience, since it stems from the
self or from within, is true.
“Religion brings to man eternal life”
†
Man
is driven by his external experiences brought to
him by the senses to go beyond or behind them,
and is driven to study that which makes such
experiences possible. This is an inevitable
result of the very nature of man. Since
‘religion permeate a the whole of man’s life’,
one seeks to integrate the two phases of his
experience, the outer and the inner. It is
precisely this integration that has been the
problem of man through the ages, and it is a
problem both for science and religion.
Swami Vivekananda says
“Two theories have gained some
acceptance amongst modern scholars. One is the
spirit-theory of religion, the other the
evolution or the idea of the Infinite. One party
maintains their ancestor worship is the
beginning of religious ideas the other that
religion originates in the personification of
the powers of nature. Man wants to keep the
memory of his dead relatives and thinks they are
living even when the body is dissolved, and he
wants to place food for them and in a certain
sense to worship them. Out of that come the
growth we call religion.” ††
In Egyptian, Babylonian, Ionian, Chinese
and many other religions in America and
elsewhere this ancestor worship prevailed and
formed the content of their religions. Egyptians
believed in the soul being a double, and it is
the double that went out of the body and yet
lived on when one died, (ibid) This is of course
what survives and yet many theories have
originated as to where it abides or wanders, and
as to how it has to be propitiated. Swami
Vivekananda shows that it was even believed that
when the outer body was hurt the double was also
injured. The concept of ghosts and man’s
experiences of the ghosts form some of the most
interesting features of western legend and
history of religion. It is well known that in
Ancient Hindu theory and in popular religions we
have the belief in ancestor worship -
pitr-worship -burial customs and so on. The
belief in paisaca persists in all parts of the
world and there are good and bad varieties of
these deceased spirits which are believed to be
disembodied spirits influencing the lives of
all. The Chinese are said to have this kind of
ancestor worship as the main content of their
religion.
“The only religion that can really be said to
flourish in China is that of ancestor worship”,
says Swami Vivekananda (ibid).
He
goes on to say
“On
the other hand there are scholars who from the
ancient Aryan literature show that religion
originated in nature worship”, and that “though
in India we find proofs of ancestor worship
elsewhere, yet in the oldest records there is no
trace of it whatsoever. In the Rg Veda
sahmhita, the most ancient record of the Aryan
race we do not find any trace of it.” (ibid)
Modern studies do clearly show
that the religion of the Vedic aryan had quite a
strong element of wonder of nature that led to
the ‘personification of the powers of nature’ -
the unmistakable feeling of the presence of the
divine forces that operate through Nature as
their inner, psychological phase.
The theory of religion as ancestor-worship
and as personification of the powers of nature
are apparently contradictory, but they can be
reconciled on a third basis - a theory of
struggle to transcend the limitation of the
senses. This is the view of Swami Vivekananda -
his theory of religion as the struggle to
transcend the limitations of senses, (p.59.
Vol.11). Though science may be objective
knowledge or knowledge of outer objects etc, it
has to be known that all such knowledge is for a
subject. Similarly religion tends to grant inner
knowledge or knowledge of the self, and this has
to be related to the outer world. If the inner
knowledge is of the eternal, that which is outer
knowledge is of the transitory. And these have
to be fused or integrated. Religion therefore
has also to establish the relation between the
eternal soul and transitory nature. Further it
has its primary function of revealing the
‘eternal relation between the eternal soul and
the eternal God’. (Vol III. p.2)
The
important problem therefore is really a triune
one, how is the world related to the man or soul
and Cod, and how is the soul related to the
Divine. We cannot, really speaking, reject any
one of these three knowledges, ie. science,
religion or mysticism. It is one of the most
characteristic signs of the modern Age that
science has made leaps undreamt of in respect of
the knowledge of matter, motion, energy, life,
and mind, and philosophers of science have been
breaking across the frontiers that had
previously separated the several sciences. The
dividing lines between matter energy, life and
mind are getting abolished. Verification of the
ancient intuitions of Samkhya and yoga is to be
had in ample measure. Therefore one of the
challenges to dualistic thought is being posed;
unification of knowledge pertaining to the
external world has to be supported by the
knowledge of the inner being that is living and
growing in it, and this is a province of
philosophy. Swami Vivekananda visualised this
development and welcomed this influence, for the
more one pursues these studies of science the
more clearly it would be evident that all these
are phenomenal,
mere appearance, that is to say, there is only
One Being that appears in manifold ways. (Vol.
IV. p. 188).
Man has an idea, says Swami Vivekananda,
that there can be only one religion and there
can be only one prophet and that there can be
one incarnation. (Vol.IV. p 120) but this is
not true for there are many religions based on
One universal religion.
“It
is a most glorious dispensation of the Lord that
there are so many religions in the world; and
would to God that these would increase every day
until every man had a religion to himself”
(Vol.VI. p.17)
Therefore it follows that each individual should
become a prophet.
“Religion is for the training of the prophets;
schools and colleges should be training grounds
for prophets” (Vol.VI p.10)
And so also each individual should become an incarnation and
temple of God, and thus all could aspire to
become incarnations of the One God. (Vo.I.
p.332)
In speaking about the ideal of
a universal Religion Swami Vivekananda
emphasized the universal aspects of every
religion available to our study. Every religion
has a book, a sacred literature, which comprises
the vision and intuitions of the founder or
founders. This is its revelation. It is beyond
the scope of reasoning, though every attempt at
philosophising or rationalising it for
communication and understanding proceeds within
the limits of these intuitions or body of
intuitions. There is a mythology in every
religion; a religion without mythology is
inconceivable, for a myth is the means by which
the supersensuous truths and history of the
spirit are communicated through symbolic
representations. It is true that many of these
myths get mixed up with superstition and other
lower-order symbols, or symbols of the vamacara
so to speak, that degrades the myth’s utility
for religious and spiritual illumination! Myths
that lead to the intuition or revelation of
highest Oneness are real myths.* Myths must
touch the heart and lead men to the heart of
hearts, The myths of Hinduism have this dynamic
quality. Swami Vivekananda has narrated the
stories of Prahlada and others found in the
Mahabharata, Ramayana, etc., and about the sages
of India, which have a profound interpenetration
of myth and history of spirit. Myths are the
spiritual history of a religious experience and
should not be dealt with in a gross manner. As
plato said it is necessary to review our myths
and communicate the elevating myths whilst
throwing out the myths that tend to degrade the
character of the gods and so on. Indian puranas
had suffered from this, and therefore it is
usual to divide them into three kinds, the
sattvika, (pure and elevating, spiritual), the
rajasic (confusing and passion-provoking) and
tamasic (demoniac and producing ignorance). So
too the care exercised in the communication of
the truths of the puranas and itihasas was left
to disciplined men or teachers.
‘The teacher of religin must be perfectly pure,
and then alone comes the value of his words,
because he is only then the true ‘transmitter’.
What can be transmit if he has not spiritual
power in himself. There must be the worthy
vibration of spirituality in the mind of the
teacher. (Vol. III. P. 51).
All
knowledge flowing through such a mind, whether
it is mystical experience, or philosophy, or
myth, or ritual, is to be true and to lead to
illumination and destruction of ignorance and
doubt.
“Religious
thought should be directed to developing man’s
spiritual side. Science, art, learning and
metaphysical research all have their proper
functions in life, but if you seek to blend
them, you destroy their individual
characteristics until, in time, you eliminate
the spiritual for instance, from the religious
altogether”. This should remind us about this
danger, great indeed today.
After mythology, which is
symbolic and elevating and capable of illumining
and making concrete the spiritual experiences,
come the rituals. Every ritual is a certain
process of worshipping the Divine, or
communicating in terms of the visible the
invisible or connecting them with each other.
“First man
becomes a thinker. When you think upon a problem
there is no sense-enjoyment there but the
exquisite delight of thought... It is that that
makes the man... Concentration comes. You no
longer feel your body. Your senses have stopped.
You are above all physical senses. All that was
manifesting itself through the senses is
concentrated upon that one idea. That moment
you are higher than the animal. You get the
revelation none can take from you - a direct
perception of something higher than the body...
Therein lies the goal of man not upon the plane
of the senses”. (Vol. VI. p. 68)
Ritual is the homage that one pays to the
transcendent experience.
Thus
revelation or mystical experience of the Divine
Oneness expresses itself for rationality in
terms of philosophy, symbolises itself in terms
of myth, and ritualises itself in terms of
visible worship and performance. The element of
history of the spiritual life, and its growth
and expression, is also necessary to make
religious experiences not merely personal to any
one but ultimately available to everybody. It is
one of the great businesses of religious
institutions to preserve all the four. The form
the structure and pattern of all religions.
Similarly it has to be the pattern of the
Universal Religion.
It is
clear also that a study of the several religions
would reveal certain definite differentiations
which might help us to arrange them as equally
beneficial, or otherwise in relative grades.
“Fortunately for me 1 studied the Christian
religion, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist and
others - all of them have the same foundation”.
(Vol.1 p. 300)
Swami Vivekananda however writes elsewhere
(Vol. VIII. p. 122 ff) that where other
religions depend on a book (scriptural writing
by some writer or prophet), inculcate veneration
of some person, and also insist that what he and
that book speak are the whole truth and none
else speaks it, Vedanta does not believe in any
of the above. It does not believe in a book. Not
only that, it affirms, following the great
literature of revelations the Upanisads, that
“not by reading of books can we realise the
self. Nor does it venerate any person - ‘not one
man or woman has ever become an object of
worship among the Vedantins’ since God has
entered into and has become every one and
everything’ - atmaiva abhut vijanatah. Whilst
the structure of religions is as above,
comprising the revelations, philosophy (dogma),
myth, and ritual, which may be suggestive of the
uniform nature of all religions and the
Universal Religion should have all these - it is
yet necessary to enquire as to the goals of
these religions; the purpose or governing
dynamism of these religions in order to find out
what indeed could be the goal of a universal
religion.
Swami Vivekananda puts it
“Vedanta is concerned only with spirituality”
(Vol.VIII p.126)
“It is concerned only with the impersonal
Godhead, and not any person however eminent.”
(Vol.VIII p.127)
“God is the infinite Impersonal Being - the ever
existent”, (ibid.134)
“It is true that he can also be personal but in
a different sense from what person - worshippers
make it out.”
The most prominent idea in religion for India is
Mukti - freedom from all bondage to the cycle of
births and deaths.
“This moksa path is only in India and no where
else”
(Vol.446)
For the western world it is
dharma or justice. It is the most vital concept
in Greek philosophy as well politics, and so it
is perhaps in respect of all worldly life. But
religion is not a handmaid of politics nor is to
be useful to it.
In India too the importance of dharma is not
minimised.
“Dharma is impelling every one day and night to
run after and work for happiness. Spiritual
independence is the real aspiration, purusartha
of India. This is our national purpose: whether
you take the vaidiki, the jaina or the bauddha,
the Advaita, visistad-vaita or the dvaita -
there they are all of one mind.” (Vol.VII.p.458)
The true quality
of moksa is the attainment of liberation and
this is the essence of spirituality. The
history of India reveals that so long as this
purusartha, and so long as every individual is
free from interference in his pursuit of moksa,
India keeps silence: “but if you run foul of him
there, beware you court your ruin.” (ibid). The
most sacred and the highest purusartha is that
alone for the spiritual man. It can be easily
seen that this purusartha is not the most
important for the other religions, for they seek
dharma or kama or artha in terms of this world
and God or religion is only a means for their
realisation. The materialistic note is very
strong in most of them: the happiness of heaven
is but a replica of that courted on earth
through austerity and fasting; the bringing down
of the Kingdom of God on earth is but the search
for a happy kingdom of justice, and the
operation of the Tao is but the harmony of
naturalness in this world. Thus the Universal
Religion must have the power to guide man to his
finest goal, of freedom from all bondage, from
all ignorance and one experiences God.
“Unless religion makes you realise God it is
useless”.
(p.326)
There
are of course many who might accept that
religion must end in the realisation of God
within one’s heart or within oneself. The
realisation itself has to be understood as
liberation by such people. There are of
course others who consider that even this
realisation of God is not the end, but only that
which goes beyond the bondage of God, that
experience which is that of pure unadulterated
freedom - namely Absolute Freedom.
Swami
Vivekananda states that his study of religions
has made him realise that there are three
different stages of ideas in religion:
1. There is a certain thing, that does not
perish but is Immutable - this is the soul.
2. Though
the soul is perfect it has fallen (into
ignorance or sin) and it has to regain its
purity.
3. The eternity of the human soul has to
assert itself in terms of assertion of its
freedom.
These
three ideas, viz., the doctrine of the soul, the
dogma of its perfection and fall, and the dogma
of immortality and freedom, inform all religious
intuitions.
A universal religion would have to accept and
explain these three as integral to one another.
These are intuitions of the seers. No proofs of
reasoning based on sensory experiences could be
useful. Further, the second dogma would insist
on explaining the fall and the return. The fall
is into matter or prakrti, a kind of pravrtti
according to Samkhya, a plunge in inconscience
or acit, and which is due to an original karma
of transgression or beginingless attraction or
desire to experience or know prakrti, the
external reality, the forbidden fruit, or the
fruit that makes life a misery. It is through a
series of lives that one evolves upward towards
release from matter and its products, and
realises one’s Immortal self-nature. Therefore
there is reincarnation and almost all religions
accept it, though the Christians have denied it
owing to mistaking it. There perhaps would be no
rebirth once the Divine has been sought and one
has been accepted through perfect surrender or
conversion. The movement upward is undoubtedly a
struggle and
“the struggle which we observe in the animal
kingdom for the preservation of its gross body
obtains in the human plane of existence for
gaining mastery over the mind or for attaining
the state of balance.”
(Vol. VI I. p. 155)
The
perfection is something there but is manifested
more and more. The perfection that is potent and
eternally therefore within the soul, gets
manifested in evolution through a series of
struggles in the animal level; struggles for the
preservation or rather the perfecting of the
body to be an adequate manifestation of the
hidden Divine within At the level of the
human it is not so much the body that one seeks
to protect but the mind and its growth.
“We have become bodies. That we are souls we
have forgotten entirely. When we think of
ourselves it is the body that comes into our
Imagination. We behave as bodies: we talk as
bodies. We are all body. From this body we have
to separate the soul. Therefore training begins
with the body itself (until) ultimately the
spirit manifests itself... The Central idea in
all this training (yoga) is to attain to that
power of concentration,
the power of meditation.” (Vol. VII .p. 435)
The important idea is also the growth of
this consciousness of the soulnsss of ourselves
and a detachment from the body-ness of
ourselves. This is the ascent through matter,
by bringing it more and more under the control
of the spirit and to be organised by it.
Swami
Vivekananda could visualise the importance of
the diversity for the revelation or
manifestation of the perfection of the Spirit as
spirit. In a letter to Miss Noble, he writes:
“My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and
that is to preach unto mankind their divinity
and how to make it manifest in every movement of
life”.
(Vol. VII. p.189)
As it
is, the religions ‘have become mockeries’ for
they have not cared for this great nisus in all
existence towards the manifestation of the
divinity within; this perfection that is
operating in and through all the descent and
ascent of evolution, in the pravrtti as in the
nivrtti. If the former reveals the divinity
secret in Nature, the latter reveals the
divinity in soul. Thus one is enabled to assert
that the One Spirit has always remained the
spirit. This is something that can be realised
here and now.
“Vedanta teaches that religion is here and now,
because the question of this life and that life,
of life and death, this world and that world, is
merely one of superstition and prejudice...
Religion is to be realised now. For you to
become religious means that you will start
without any religion, work your way up and
realise things. See things for yourself, and
then when you have done that then and then alone
you have religion.” (Vol. VI .p. 13)
Affirming that all religion must lead to
realisation as the means to this glorious end,
the fact remains that these institutions of
religion, such as the reverence for a book, a
person, or its ingredients such as its ritual or
myth or all these could stifle the growth.
Swami
Vivekananda illustrates that worship of these,
or merely holding on to them, is superstition
for they are like the man who wished to produce
rain by crushing the pancanga or the rain
predicting almanac. (Vol.1, p/326). When men
take to the sincere spirit of religion, which is
realisation and growth, into widest experience
of God everywhere, everywhen and in all souls,
then we have realised the truths of the dogmas,
rituals, personalities and myths. Without this
inward light that is most important these would
continue to remain bondages or superstitions.
Gloriously Swami Vivekananda states
“We want to lead mankind to a place where there
is neither the Vedas nor the Bible nor the
Koran: yet this has to be done by harmonizing
the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran.
Mankind has to be taught that religions are but
the varied expressions of the Religion, which is
Oneness, so that each may choose the path which
suits him best.” (Vol.IV.p.415-l6)
Thus the
multiplicity of religions is possibly due to
historical contingencies, or due to requirements
of evolutionary stages. The ancient division of
men into the divine and the titan, the up-goers
and down-goers, the spiritually ascending and
the materialistic explorers of the diversity is
wellknown. There can be another classification
that relates to those who have the quality of
equalleness, equanimity, harmonisation, and
existentiality of the spiritual nature of sattva
in one word; there are those who wish a
passional-emotional approach to all existence
which they seek to secure through force and will
and egoism, this is the rajas, type. A third
type is down-going towards ignorance, sloth and
rest and pleasures of this order, but might
also, in conjunction with rajas, lead to
wickedness, violence and other vices which are
practised with avidity and wantonness. A still
further classification may help us to think of
four kinds of men as workers; as followers of
the path of karma, the followers of love
(bhakti), the followers of dhyana or meditation
(rajayoga), and the followers of ultimate
knowledge (Jnani).
Though in the world we have only mixed types of
these classifications, each individual has to
discover for himself what suite him best.
Further, one may pass from one discipline to
another and in his life evolve an integration
of all these for the Ultimate purpose of
self-realisation or liberation.
It is
possible perhaps to have other types of
classifications based on epistemology, such as
those who are instinct-dependent, those who are
intellect-dependent and those who are
inspiration-dependent for their knowledge of the
world, and their action within it. Attempts have
been made to synthesise these types but it is
clear that many factors are involved and the
arrangement of individuals in any scheme becomes
extremely difficult, for cross-classifications
are always possible. All this makes the study of
psychological types important, and in addition
there is the socio-functional type based on
brahmana (priest-prophet), ksatriaya
(warrior-yogi), vaisya (citizen merchant) and
sudra (the worker). The ancients, in addition,
had both a common usuage and an etymological
usage of the terms they used. All these make
religious classification on the basis of fitness
and heredity very difficult.
Swami
Vivekananda has not classified the religions
into any scheme as such, but he made a profound
suggestion that Vedanta has so fixed its ideal
as to embrace all these four types of worker,
love, meditator (dhyani) and the jnani (knower
of God or Reality).
“The fourfold man is the ideal of Universal
Religion. Tolerance, compassion, diligence, and
skill in work of each, dedication and love,
concentration and union and knowledge of God as
self as one’s self”
These are verily to be possessed by one
who has perfected himself. Such is a perfect
man. In him, as the Samkhya says, there is
aisvarya, virya, jnana and sakti which are
perfections of the buddhi or intelligence of the
liberated one. Such a personality is rare
indeed, but not impossible.
This classification has made for the
discovery of the essential features of each one
of the religions, the dominant note of each one
of them, and the areas of their flourishing and
the decline of each one of them in the lives of
its members, till today most religions are just
denominations or political groupings preventing
the ‘open’ religion operating in the lives of
each one of its members. It is not, therefore,
an accident that Swami Vivekananda was teaching
the ‘openness’ of Universal Religion that
included the most abstract, that sublated and
sublimated the rest - such as he discerned in
the Vedanta. Oneness includes all, and manifests
in all, and realises itself in all and through
all. But in this latter process there is the
invariable fact that certain features,
aspirations and phases get emphasised or
exaggerated, and certain others get thrown into
the background and eclipsed.
We
have explained how Swami Vivekananda arrived at
the principles of Universal Religion, though it
must be clear that he sketched the broad
outlines only. He did not enter into comparitive
mythology and comparitive ritualism, for these
too are constituents. Neither the purely
eschatological conception of the soul and a
religion based on ancestor worship, nor the
purely naturalistic concept or rather divination
of the powers of nature attracted the real
spirituality of religion. As we divinise or
apotheosise the parent, and incidentally all
those who belong to the line of ancestors -a
fact that has occurred from most ancient times
as for example the great scriptural text that
asks us to apotheosise the Father and Mother and
Acarya or Teacher - matr devo bhava pitr-devo
bhava, acarya devo bhava - make thy father, thy
mother and thy teacher thy Gods - similarly the
powers behind Nature were apotheosized.
Indeed, in regard to the state, the King has
been apotheosised. It would be wrong to
regard these as anthropomorphical -humanizing;
they should rather be regarded as divinising or
exalting. Indeed the same tendency can be
seen when great spiritual leaders or those who
have rendered some service to society are raised
to the level of worship. Saint-hood is conferred
on many, even as Godhood is being conferred.
There is undoubtedly a great tendency towards
the goal of transcendence.
as
Swsmi Vivekananda has pointed out, the struggle
to transcend the psychological, relational, and
natural and thus attain to divinity seems to
include both the theories of apotheosization of
the ancestors and the powers of nature. All
beings and things aspire towards divinisation,
and surely it is there because they are in the
germ, or root, or potentiality all that.
Universal religion, then, can be expressed as
the Aspiration of all things conscious,
unconscious, or superconscious towards
divinisation which is One only.
This
aspect of religion as the nisus to transcendence
of the natural and the human and the
psychological is a great intuition.
to
achieve this purpose it becomes inevitable that
one must denaturalise as well as
de-anthropomorphize one’s realities of the
mundane world whilst yet divinising or
apotheosising them. Philosophical necessity for
this process is to de-realise the world by the
concept of Maya or illusive power of human
imagination, which indeed is what is central to
the problem of correction (siksa). We have to
take into consideration our goal, which is
divinisation - becoming divine in all our parts
in essence as in expression - we have to
consider our means - which is the de-realisation
of our experiences at our level so as to awaken
the inner divine illumination steadily present
as the divine within us - and this means the
acceptance of the world as tuccha, as asat, as
unreal, a product of imaginative identity, that
which is not the nisus, the goal, the Divine.
This is the central aspect of the rationale for
the theory of Oneness of the Divine, for the
correlative theory of Maya of the visible
reality of sense and desires other than the
highest. Once this is grasped, it becomes
possible to see that all religions in some
measure evolve when affirming the reality of the
worlds of their experience knowledge, and affirm
their mixedness with delusion, illusion,
passion, puerility, sorrow, pain and continuing
precariousness and bondage.
So
clearly is this seen in the lives of the saints.
Yamunacarya the initiator of the Visistadvaita
philosophy, and who inspired Sri Ramanuja, has
sung that the real mother, father, relative and
friend is all the One Godhead beyond compare.
This transference of the centre of affection
from the human parent to the divine is itself a
significant result of the experiences of man
with his relatives and all. However, this
evolution of the individual towards discovery of
that which is really the source as well as the
worthwhile object of one’s love, service,
dedication and freedom, is a fact that occurs
only after a series of lives lived, and by
living which it has been discovered that no
individual soul can be that Object and that God
alone is that Object. Mankind has worshipped
parents, friends, kings and teachers too, but
all have been found to fall below the standard.
That which is the highest and the source of all
these becomes the One object of worship and love
and all.
Similarly, worshipping powers of nature, man has
through a series of lives come to regard the
absolute Transcendent Para as the Object of his
service, devotion, love and union.
The
ancient method of elimination of the imperfect
as “not this” or “not that” which is sought
after is equally operative in this field of
unconscious, self-conscious, conscious and
super-conscious rejection of the non-ultimate,
or renunciation of the lower. But one seeks to
discover in the higher that which is wanting in
the lower, and yet not wanting in that in which
the imperfect abounds.
Thus
does Jnana become fuller and fuller, perfect and
real.
Thus Swami Vivekananda, in giving the
proper place to maya, reveals its double-edged
condition, its presenting a value that is not
ultimate and indeed diverting one from the
Ultimate, and making enjoyment of its technique
more important than its knowledge. The
renunciation of enjoyment of what is seen or
experienced is the first significant result of
the concept of unreality that makes for the dawn
of the true nature of what one has necessarily
to seek.
As a philosophical or logical proposition
maya is difficult to explain as the principle of
man’s fall, and so has it been shown by the
great acaryas opposed to it as a philosophical
doctrine, though in practice these have not
valued the world any the whit better. Swami
Vivekananda, holding as he does both ends of
knowledge-renunciation and religious experience,
is able to restore to true proportions the play
of logic, psychology and spiritual goal-nisus.
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