SHRINE
HINDUISM
PAPER ON HINDUISM
Read by Swami Vivekananda
At the Parliament
on 19th September, 1893
The Hindus have received their religion through
revelation, the Vedas.
The Vedas are without beginning and without end.
By the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated
treasury of spiritual laws 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 is it with the laws that
govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical,
and spiritual relations between soul and soul 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.
A MODEL OF CREATION
There never was a time when there was no creation.
If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and
creator are two lines, without beginning and without
end, running parallel to each other. God is the
ever active providence, by whose power systems after
systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to
run for a time and again destroyed.
The Hindu believes he's a spirit. "Him the
sword cannot pierce-him the fire cannot burn-him
the water cannot melt-him the air cannot dry."
"Every soul is a circle whose
circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located
inthe body, and death means the change of this
center from body to body. Nor is the soul bound
by the conditions of matter. In its very essence
it's free, unbounded, holy, pure, and perfect. But
somehow it finds itself tied down to matter, and
thinks of itself as matter. Why should the free,
perfect, and pure being be thus under the thralldom
of matter, is the next question. How can the perfect
soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect?
THE NATURE OF THE SOUL
The human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect
and infinite, and death means only a change of center
from one body to another.
The present is determined by our past actions, and
the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving
up or reverting back from birth to birth and death
to death.
The Vedic sage says: "Hear, ye children of
immortal bliss! Even ye that reside in higher spheres!
I've found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness,
all delusion: knowing Him alone you'll be saved
from death over again." "Children of immortal
bliss" - what a sweet, what a hopeful name!
Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name
- heirs of immortal bliss - yea, the Hindu refuses
to call you sinners. Ye are the Children of God,
the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect
beings. Ye divinities on earth-sinners! It's a sin
to call someone so; it's a standing libel on human
nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion
that you're sheep; you're souls immortal, spirits
free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are
not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the
servant of matter.
GOD TRANSCENDS ALL LAWS
The Vedas proclaim that at the head of all these
laws, in and through every particle of matter and
force, stands One "by whose command the wind
blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain, and death
stalks upon the earth."
He's everywhere, the pure and formless One, the
Almighty and the All-merciful. "Thou art our
father, our mother, our beloved friend, Thou art
the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou
art He that beareth the burdens of the universe;
help me bear the little burden of this life."
Thus sang the Rishis of the Vedas.
And how to worship Him? Through love.
This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas,
fully developed and taught by Krishna. He taught
that a person should live in this world like a lotus
leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened
by water; so people should live in the world - their
hearts to God and their hands to work.
There is no polytheism in India.
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 mental image than we can
live without breathing.
By the law of association, the material image calls
up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the
Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships.
He'll tell you, it helps to keep his mind fixed
on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well
as you do that the image isn't God, is not omnipresent.
THE CENTER OF HINDUISM
The whole religion of the Hindu is centered in realization.
Man is to become divine by realizing the divine.
Idols, temples, churches or books are only the supports,
the helps, of his spiritual childhood: but on and
on he must progress. He shouldn't stop anywhere.
"External worship, material worship,"
say the scriptures, "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. "
. Man is not traveling from error to truth, but
from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth.
All the religions, from the lowest fetishism to
the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of
the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite,
each determined by the conditions of its birth and
association, and each marks a stage of progress.
Every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher,
gathering more and more strength, till it reaches
the Glorious Sun.
Images, crosses, and crescents
are simply so many symbols - so many pegs to hang
the spiritual ideas on.
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 evolving a God out of the
material man, and the same God is the inspirer of
all of them.
VIVEKANANDA’S MODEL FOR A UNIVERSAL RELIGION
If there's ever to be a universal religion, it
must be one which will have no location in place
or time; which will be infinite like the God it
will preach, and whose sun will shine on the followers
of Krishna and Christ, on saints and sinners alike;
which will not be Brahminic or Buddhist, Christian
or Muslim, but the sum total of all these, and still
have infinite space for development; which in its
catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and
find a place for every human being, from the lowest
groveling savage not far removed from the brute,
to the highest man towering by the virtues of his
head and heart almost above humanity, making society
stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature.
It will be a religion which will have no place for
persecution or intolerance in its polity, which
will recognize divinity in every man and woman,
and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be
in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine
nature. Offer such a religion, and all the nations
will follow you.
