--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Vivekananda, Swami collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 2 number: 3 published: 1899-01 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Vivekananda, Swami, "Oriental Religious Faiths III: Hinduism," *Improvement Era* 2, no. 3 (January 1899): 176–186.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera23unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera23unse start_page: 176 end_page: 186 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1899-01) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera23unse publication_year: 1899 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1899, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Oriental Religious Faiths III: Hinduism ORIENTAL RELIGIOUS FAITHS. III. HINDUISM. BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA (From the daily reports of the Parliament of Religions.) The Hindus have received their religion through their revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to speak of a book without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual law discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and souls and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forgot them. The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honor them as perfected beings, and I am glad to know that some of the very best of them were women. Here it may be said that the laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science has proved to us that the sum total of the cosmic energy is the same throughout all. Then if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. But then God is sometimes potential sometimes kinetic, which would make him mutable, and everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. Therefore God would die. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation. If I may be allowed to apply a simile, creation and creator are two lives, without beginning and without end, running parallel to each other, and God is power, an ever-active providence, under whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos—made to run for a time and again destroyed. This is what the Hindu boy repeats every day with his guru: "The sun and the moon, the Lord created after other suns and moons." And this agrees with science. Here I stand, and if I shut my eyes and try to conceive my existence, I, I, I—what is the idea before me ? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of matter and material substances? The Vedas declare "No," I am a spirit living in a body I am not the body. The body will die, but I will not die. Here am I m this body, and when it will fail, still I will go on living, and also I had a past. The soul was not created from nothing, for creation means a combination, and that means a certain future dissolution. If, then, the soul was created it must die. Therefore it was not created. Some are born happy, enjoying perfect health, beautiful body, mental vigor, and with all wants supplied. Others are born miserable; some are without hands or feet, some idiots, and only drag on a miserable existence. Why, if they are all created, does a just and merciful God create one happy and the other unhappy-why is he so partial? Nor would it mend matters m the least by holding that those who are miserable in this life will be perfect in a future. Why should a man be miserable here in the reign of a just and merciful God? In the second place, it does not give us any cause, but simply a cruel act of an all-powerful being, and therefore unscientific. There must have been causes then, to make a man miserable or happy before his birth, and those were his past actions. Are not all the tendencies of the mind and those of the body answered for by inherited aptitude from parents? Here are the two parallel lines of existence-one that of the mind the other that of matter. If matter and its transformation answer ITo spiritual monism is certamly logical ana n neither of these is »—^J^';- .^^^^, certain tendencies from We cannot deny that bodies mne configuration, heredity, but these t^^encies only mean the senlar c g^^ through which a peculiar »•"*/ Isin that sou" have been caused The cause of t^^-e peculiar te—sin that -^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ \"\^tirthra Cot wbI rs'lXt instrument of the dlsand take birtti m a Doay wu .^ ^^ j._ play of that tendency y ^^;^ ^^^fj^Texplaineverything by have come down from past lives. ^ But there is another ^»Sg«=t'°"; **'"'/ ^''^Jffie, This • -J. 4-1, 4- T rin Tint rpmember anything ot my pasL nie. '"",;' aXexP ained iTm nowlpeaking English. It is not my can be easily ^''P'™^^' ' , „{ ^ mother tongue are present Mother tongue, ™ ~J^*^^ f"^^ ^^^g them up, they rush in my consciousness, ^^ !«' J";J^ consciousness is the name 't^f trSro •thlmli^aCel, and within its depths are :tld up aZ™ experiences. Try and struggle and they will come ""' thfsTsIhl iTand^demonstrated evidence. Veriflcation is the very depths of the ocean of memory «^° \^j"P, "^ and you will get a complete reminiscence of your P^^* ^^• '^o then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the swora mets the change of this center from body to body. Nor is he rrbo:": by the condition of matter I» ^^-^^X^ ''^^ free, unbounded, holy, pure and perfect. But somehow Why should the free perfect and pure being be under the thral- dom of matter, IS the next question. How can the perfect be de uded mto the belief that he is imperfect, is the questio w have been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say that no uch question can be there, and some thinkers want to anLlrt byam s" to" filfurhr ™" Tf ""'"* '^"^'' »^ «^ -^ r^ames to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining. The ques- . t>on remams the same. How the perfect becomes the qu^i per fee ; how can the pure, the absolute, change even a micrrcopTc pa t,cIeo ,ts nature? But the Hindu is more sincere. He do ^aceT f"'•*" ™'*" ^"P"^''^- He is brave enough to face the question ,n a manly fashion. And his answer is, I do nol kn w. I do not know how the perfect being, the soul, came to thLk self as .mperfect, as joined to and conditioned by matter But the fact ,s a fact for all that. It is a fact in evervbod/s con sconsness that he thinks himself as the body We do notTtL .' to explain why I am in this body. The answ. tit is thfS God ,sno exi^anation. It is nothing more than what they av themselves: "We do not know." ^ ^ Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal nerfect t:a™ther"te'"*'T^™'^^'''•^"»'«"^-"*-^~ 10 another. The present is determined by our mst ppfinr,o a the future will be by the present; thus it ^il go n voWnT;;: revertmg back from birth to birth and death to death ^ ' But here is another question; is man a tiny boat in a tempest raised one moment on the foaming crest of a billow and dasled down mto a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro iTJhl mercy of good and bad actions-a powLrless, felpLs treckt an eTec^ia mr":fT' "-""'™--^ --nt of cI e and effects a httle moth placed under the wheel causation, which rolls on crushmg everything in its way, and waits not for hel^dol tears or the orphan's cry? The heart sinks at the idea yet thli the law of nature. "Is there no honor' "to *i >""ea, yet this is world and m trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tilings t" the higher spheres. I have *;-* ^^f.'m.ione you shall be saved darkness, all delusion, »d kuowmg h^^^^^^^ ^^.^^_ ^^^^ ^ from death over again, '-n"""" „ brethren, by that what a hopeful name!" *";! " s-yea the fflndu refuses to call •sweet name, heirs of '™™*' ^J„j ^„a fte sharers of immortal you sinners, ^e are the children ot 1.0a, g.^^^^^, bliss, holy and perfect l>-"g^ .f^^;„*^f,« on human nature. It is a sin to call a ">;\^» '''J ^^f/elusfon that you are sheep; Come up! oh, live and f ^^e off the a ^^^^^^^, ^^ ^^^ i::r"n"'S::m:^en^.our servant, not you the --C:i:iXttheVed.P—;otadr.^^^^^^^^^ of unforgiving ^^l^'^^lZ'^^.^Z through every particle of that at the head of all these law ^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^ rr^r-r^erudri: - death st.. upon the earth. And what is his nature? The Almighty He is -77%\tr:ur"at r;:^ art ourmother; thou and AU-merciful. T»iou art our , strength; give us art our beloved friend; thou art the s~' ^^^ „„i,erse; the next life." reached in the Vedas, and let us This is the doctrine of 1°™ P'^^'"=7* " grfshna, whom the see how it is fully developed and preached by K™li HMus believe to have been «» "-^t hjtrld like a lotus He taught that a man ought to live m ^^^^^__^^ ^ leaf, which grows m water but is ™™"»<' ^ y, hands to n,an ought to live in this T^^-f^" reward in this or the work. It is good to love God tej"'^« " ,3 3^;,^, and the next world, but^ 1^ ^^^^ot*: w-^- -^''>*- ™^ T^ prayer goes: Lord do noi w ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ing. If it be thy will I ^^^f^J^.^^^' ,f reward-unselfishly this, that I may love thee without the hope love for love's sake." One of the disciples of Krishna, the then emperor of India, was driven from his throne by his enemies, and had to take shelter in the forest in the Himalayas with his queen, and there one day the queen was asking him how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery; and Yuohistera answered: "Behold, my queen, the Himalayas, how beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me anything, but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, and therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, all sublimity. He is the only object to be loved; my nature is to love him, and therefore I love. I do not pray for anything; I do not ask for anything. Let him place me wherever he likes. I must love him for love's sake. I cannot trade in love." The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held under bondage of matter, and perfection will be reached when the bond shall burst, and the word they use is therefore Mukto—freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery. And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure, so purity is the condition of his mercy. How that mercy acts: he reveals himself to the pure heart, and the pure and stainless man sees God, yea even in this life, and then, and then only, all the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. He is no more the freak of a terrible law of causation. This is the very center, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories—if there are existences beyond ordinary sensual existences, he wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful, universal soul, he will go to him direct. He must see him, and that alone can destroy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God, is, "I have seen the soul; I have seen God." And that is the only condition of perfection. The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing; not in believing, but in being and becoming. So the whole struggle in their system is a constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God; and this reaching God, seeing God, being perfect, even as the father in heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus. And what becomes of man when he becomes perfect? He lives a life of bliss infinite. He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in which man ought to have pleasure, God, and enjoys the bliss with God. So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects of India; but then the question comes, perfection is absolute, and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahma, and he would only realize the Lord as the perfection, the reality, of his OAvn nature and existence, the existence absolute, knowledge absolute, and life absolute. We have often and often read about this being called the losing of individuality, as becoming a stock or a stone. "He jests at scars that never felt a wound." I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must be more happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, so three, four, five; and the aim, the ultimate of happiness would be reached when it would become a universal consciousness. Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little prison individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life; then alone can misery cease when J am one with happiness itself; then alone can all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and it is the necessary scientific conclusion; science has proved that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body, in an unbroken ocean of matter, and the Adwaitan is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, mind. Science is nothing but the finding of unity, and as any science can reach the perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal, thus chemistry cannot progress farther, when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are but the manifestations, and the science of religion became perfect when it discovered Him who is the one life in a universe of death; Him who is the constant basis of an everchanging world; One who is the only soul of which all other souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus was it, through multiplicity and duality, the ultimate unit was reached, and religion can go no farther, and this is the goal of all, again and again, science after science, again and again. And all science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science of to-day, and he is only glad that what he had cherished in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in some forcible language, and with further light by the latest conclusions of science. Descend we now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the ignorant. On the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, he will find the worshipers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence, to these images. It is not polytheism, neither would the name heathenism answer our question. "The rose called by any other name would smell as sweet." Names are not explanations. I remember, when a boy, a Christian man was preaching to a crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling the people that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick what could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, "If I abuse your God what can he do?" "You would be punished," said the preacher, " when you die." "So my idol will punish you when you die," said the villager. The tree is knovm by its fruits; and when I have seen amongst them that are called idolatrous men, the like of whom in morality and spirituality and love, I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, Can sin beget holiness? Superstition is the enemy of man, bigotry worse. Why does a Christian go to church, why is the cross holy, why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic church, why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants, when they pray? My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a material image than it is profitable for us to live without breathing. And by the law of association the material image calls the mental idol up, and vice versa. Omnip- otent to almost the whole world means nothing. Has God superficial area? if not, when we repeat the word we think of the extended earth; that is all. As we find that somehow, by the laws of our constitution, we have got to associate our ideas of infinity with the ideal of a blue sky, or a sea—the omnipresence covering the idea of holiness with an idol of a church or mosque, or a cross—so the Hindus have associated the ideas of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and all other ideas with different images and forms. But with this difference: upon certain actions some are drawn their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them a religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows. The whole religion of the Hindus is centered in realization. Man is to become divine, realizing the divine, and, therefore, idol or temple or church or books, are only the supports, the helps of his spiritual childhood, but on and on he must progress. He must not stop anywhere; "external worship, material worship," says the Vedas "is the lowest stage; struggling to rise higher, mental prayer is the next stage; but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized." Mark the same earnest man who was kneeling before the idol tell you hereafter of struggles, "Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon nor the stars, the lightning cannot express him, nor what we speak of fire; through him they all shine." But with this difference, he does not abuse the images or call it sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of his life. "The child is father of the man." Would it be right for the old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin? Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism. But if a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call it a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage that he should call it an error. To the Hindu man is not traveling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. . To him all the religions from the lowest fetichism to the highest absolutism means so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, determined by the conditions of its birth, and associations, and each of these mark a stage of progress, and every soul is a child-eagle soaring higher and higher; gathering more and more strength till it reaches the glorious sun. Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognized it. Every other religion lays down a certain amount of fixed dogma, and trys to force the whole society through it. They lay down for society one coat which must fit Jack and Job and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry they must go without a coat to cover the body. They have discovered that the absolute can only be realized or thought of or stated through the relative, and the image, cross or crescent are simply so many centers—so many pegs to help the spiritual idea on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but for many, and those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean a horror. It is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand, it is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp higher spiritual truths. The Hindus have their own faults, they sometimes have their exceptions; but mark this: it is always punishing their own bodies and never to cut the throats of their neighbors. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of inquisition; and even this cannot be laid at the door of religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity. To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a traveling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only an effort at evolving a God out of the material man; and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the different circumstances of different natures. It is the same light coming through different colors. And these little variations are necessary for that adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns ; the Lord has declared to the Hindu in his incarnation as Krishna, "I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. And whenever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know ye that I am there." And what was the result? Through the whole order of Sanscrit philosophy, I challenge anybody to find such expression as that the Hindu only will be saved and not others. Says Vyas, "We find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed." One thing more. How can, then, the Hindu whose whole idea centers in God believe in the Buddhist who is agnostic, or the Jain who is atheist? The Buddhists do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father. This, brethren, is a short sketch of the ideas of the Hindus. The Hindu might have failed to carry out all his plans, but if there is to be ever a universal religion, it must be one which would hold no location in place or time, which would be infinite like the God it would preach, whose sun shines upon the followers of Krishna or Christ; saint or sinner alike which would not be the Brahman or Buddhist, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity would embrace in its infinite arms and formulate a place for every human being, from the lowest groveling man who is scarcely removed in intellectuality from the brute, to the highest mind, towering almost above humanity, and who makes society stand in awe and doubt his human nature.