Advaita Vedanta

“ But these sects have disappeared. The one sect of Advaitists that you see in modern India is composed of the followers of Shankara. According to Shankara, God is both the material and the efficient cause through Mâyâ, but not in reality. God has not become this universe; but the universe is not, and God is. This is one of the highest points to understand of Advaita Vedanta, this idea of Maya. I am afraid I have no time to discuss this one most difficult point in our philosophy. Those of you who are acquainted with Western philosophy will find something very similar in Kant. ”

“ The Vedanta philosophy, as it is generally called at the present day, really comprises all the various sects that now exist in India. Thus there have been various interpretations, and to my mind they have been progressive, beginning with the dualistic or Dvaita and ending with the non-dualistic or Advaita. The word Vedanta literally means the end of the Vedas — the Vedas being the scriptures of the Hindus. [1] Sometimes in the West by the Vedas are meant only the hymns and rituals of the Vedas. ”

“ There I saw that inside the national hearts of both Europe and America reside the tremendous power of the men's faith in themselves. An English boy will tell you, "I am an Englishman, and I can do anything." The American boy will tell you the same thing, and so will any European boy. Can our boys say the same thing here? No, nor even the boy's fathers. We have lost faith in ourselves. Therefore to preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. ”

“ When a little part of it comes, as it were, into this network of time, space, and causation, it takes forms; take off the network, and it is all one. Therefore in the Advaita philosophy, the whole universe is all one in the Self which is called Brahman. That Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universe, the body, is the soul. This very soul, therefore, is the Self in man. There is only one Purusha, the Brahman of the Vedanta; God and man, analysed, are one in It. The universe is you yourself, the unbroken you ”

“ All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita, Vishishtâdvaita and Advaita; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. This is the essential of religion: the Vedanta, applied to the various ethnic customs and creeds of India, is Hinduism. ”

“ Many scholars, both Indian and European, will demur to the high place here assigned to the Advaita philosophy. I am far from claiming that the doctrine of Śaṅkara is either primitive or unchallenged. Other forms of the Vedânta existed before him and became very strong after him. But so far as a synthesis of opinions which are divergent in details can be just, he gives a just synthesis and elaboration of the Upanishads. ”

“ In this country the king has entered every one of you. You are all kings in this country. So with the religion of Vedanta. You are all Gods. One God is not sufficient. You are all Gods, says the Vedanta.
This makes Vedanta very difficult. It does not teach the old idea of God at all. In place of that God who sat above the clouds and managed the affairs of the world without asking our permission, who created us out of nothing just because He liked it and made us undergo all this misery just because He liked it, Vedanta teaches the God that is in everyone, has become everyone and everything. ”

“ The essence of the knowledge of the Vedas was called by the name of Vedanta, which comprises the Upanishads; and all the sects of India — Dualists, Qualified-Monists, Monists, or the Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Shâktas, Sauras, Gânapatyas, each one that dares to come within the fold of Hinduism — must acknowledge the Upanishads of the Vedas. They can have their own interpretations and can interpret them in their own way, but they must obey the authority. That is why we want to use the word Vedantist instead of Hindu. ”

“ That the explanation of a thing comes from within itself is still more completely satisfied by Vedanta. The Brahman, the God of the Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself; nothing at all. All this indeed is He: He is in the universe: He is the universe Himself. "Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the young man walking in the pride of youth, Thou art the old man tottering in his step." He is here. Him we see and feel: in Him we live, and move, and have our being. ”

“ I came here to represent a philosophy of India, which is called the Vedanta philosophy. This philosophy is very, very ancient; it is the outcome of that mass of ancient Aryan literature known by the name of the Vedas. It is, as it were, the very flower of all the speculations and experiences and analyses, embodied in that mass of literature — collected and culled through centuries. This Vedanta philosophy has certain peculiarities. In the first place, it is perfectly impersonal; it does not owe its origin to any person or prophet: it does not build itself around one man as a centre. ”

“ It seems to have been the duty of the Puranas to stand as illustrations for that great ideal of the beautiful, the ideal of Bhakti, and this, as I have stated, is so much nearer to the ordinary man. Very few indeed are there who can understand end appreciate, far less live and move, in the grandeur of the full blaze of the light of Vedanta, because the first step for the pure Vedantist is to be Abhih, fearless. Weakness has got to go before a man dares to become a Vedantist, and we know how difficult that is. ”

“ The Sâ@nkhya tendency thus would be to show that all those Vedic texts which the Vedântin claims as teaching the existence of Brahman, the intelligent and sole cause of the world, refer either to the pradhâna or some product of the pradhâna, or else to the purusha in the Sânkhya sense, i.e. the individual soul. It consequently became the task of the Vedântin to guard the Upanishads against misinterpretations of the kind, and this he did in the first adhyâya of the Vedânta-sûtras, selecting those passages about whose interpretation doubts were, for some reason or other, likely to arise. ”

“ Max Müller is a Vedantist of Vedantists. He has, indeed, caught the real soul of the melody of the Vedanta, in the midst of all its settings of harmonies and discords — the one light that lightens the sects and creeds of the world, the Vedanta, the one principle of which all religions are only applications. ”

“ Let people speak out their own opinions, why should we object? Without studying Ramakrishna Paramahamsa first, one can never understand the real import of the Vedas, the Vedanta, of the Bhâgavata and the other Purânas. His life is a searchlight of infinite power thrown upon the whole mass of Indian religious thought. He was the living commentary to the Vedas and to their aim. He had lived in one life the whole cycle of the national religious existence in India. ”

“ No philosophy, at least nothing like a definite system, is to be found in the sacred hymns of the Brahmans; and though the Vedânta philosophy does less violence to the passages which it quotes from the Veda, the authors of the Veda would have been as much surprised at the consequences deduced from their words by the Vedântin, as by the strange meaning attributed to them by Kapila. The Vedânta philosopher, like Kapila, would deny the existence of a Creator in the usual sense of the word. ”

“ I have been asked to say something about the practical position of the Vedanta philosophy. As I have told you, theory is very good indeed, but how are we to carry it into practice? If it be absolutely impracticable, no theory is of any value whatever, except as intellectual gymnastics. The Vedanta, therefore, as a religion must be intensely practical. We must be able to carry it out in every part of our lives. And not only this, the fictitious differentiation between religion and the life of the world must vanish, for the Vedanta teaches oneness — one life throughout. ”

“ Comparatively few, even in India, are those who rejoice in the idea of a universal non-personal essence in which their own individuality is to be merged and lost for ever, who think it sweet 'to be wrecked on the ocean of the Infinite.'31 The only forms of Vedântic philosophy which are—and can at any time have been—really popular, are those in which the Brahman of the Upanishads has somehow transformed itself into a being, between which and the devotee there can exist a personal relation, love and faith on the part of man, justice tempered by mercy on the part of the divinity. ”

“ And all such ideas as that we can do this or cannot do that are superstitions. We can do everything. The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first. As certain religions of the world say that a man who does not believe in a Personal God outside of himself is an atheist, so the Vedanta says, a man who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the glory of our own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism. To many this is, no doubt, a terrible idea; and most of us think that this ideal can never be reached; but the Vedanta insists that it can be realised by every one. ”

“ Whatever in my teaching may appeal to the highest intelligence and be accepted by thinking men, the adoption of that will be my reward." "All religions", he continued, "have for their object the teaching either of devotion, knowledge, or Yoga, in a concrete form. Now, the philosophy of Vedanta is the abstract science which embraces all these methods, and this it is that I teach, leaving each one to apply it to his own concrete form. I refer each individual to his own experiences, and where reference is made to books, the latter are procurable, and may be studied by each one for himself. ”

“ Yet it has nothing to say against philosophies which do build themselves around certain persons. In later days in India, other philosophies and systems arose, built around certain persons — such as Buddhism, or many of our present sects. They each have a certain leader to whom they owe allegiance, just as the Christians and Mohammedans have. But the Vedanta philosophy stands at the background of all these various sects, and there is no fight and no antagonism between the Vedanta and any other system in the world. ”

“ Let me consider this question awhile and lay before you my reasons why I think that it is Vedanta, and Vedanta alone that can become the universal religion of man, and that no other is fitted for the role. Excepting our own almost all the other great religions in the world are inevitably connected with the life or lives of one or more of their founders. All their theories, their teachings, their doctrines, and their ethics are built round the life of a personal founder, from whom they get their sanction, their authority, and their power ”

“ It also teaches that all the vast mass of energy that we see displayed in society and in every plane of action is really from inside out; and, therefore, what is called inspiration by other sects, the Vedantist begs the liberty to call the expiration of man. At the same time it does not quarrel with other sects; the Vedanta has no quarrel with those who do not understand this divinity of man. Consciously or unconsciously, every man is trying to unfold that divinity. ”

“ That philosophy seems to have entered into the very life-blood of the nation, but it assumed, of course, very different forms as believed in by men of talent and education, and by the drudging tillers of the soil throughout the land. The number of those who study the Vedânta in the works of such minute philosophers as Bâdarâyana and Samkara is naturally very small, but the number of those who have drunk in the spirit of it, it may be in a few sayings only, is legion. ”

“ India cannot give up his majesty the king of the earth -- that is why Vedanta cannot become the religion of India. There is a chance of Vedanta becoming the religion of your country because of democracy. But it can become so only if you can and do clearly understand it, if you become real men and women, not people with vague ideas and superstitions in your brains, and if you want to be truly spiritual, since Vedanta is concerned only with spirituality. ”

“ He supplied much valuable information to De Laet, which appears in the work entitled, “De Imperio Magni Mongolis, sive India vera. Joannes de Laet. Lugduni Batavorum. 1631.” Indian events are brought down to 1628 in this work.
3 The Vedanta is the second great division of the Mimansa school of Hindu philosophy. The name is from the Sanscrit Veda and anta (end) , meaning that it gives the end or ultimate aim of the Vedas, which is a knowledge of Brahma or the Supreme Spirit; and of the relations in which man’s soul stands towards the Universal Soul. ”

“ There have been cases of true Vedântists, also, who have led useful, active lives as ministers and organisers of states, but he who has grasped the highest truths of the Vedânta, or has been grasped by them, is driven at once into the solitude of the forests, waiting there for the solution of all riddles, for perfect freedom, and in the end for the truest freedom of all, for death—Θανοῦμαι καὶ ἐλευθερήσομαι. ”

“ So the Lord also who is all-present, the Self of all, all-knowing and all-powerful may, although himself unmoving, move the universe.—If it finally be objected that (on the Vedânta doctrine) there is no room for a moving power as in consequence of the oneness (aduality) of Brahman no motion can take place; we reply that such objections have repeatedly been refuted by our pointing to the fact of the Lord being fictitiously connected with Mâyâ, which consists of name and form presented by Nescience.—Hence motion can be reconciled with the doctrine of an all-knowing first cause ”