Vedic Religious Ideals

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Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda - Volume 1 - Lectures and Discourses -

VEDIC RELIGIOUS IDEALS( part of this lecture)

 

Before going into all these speculations of the ancient Vedic sages, we will

 

first refer to one or two very curious instances in the Vedas. The peculiar

fact that these gods are taken up, as it were, one after the other, raised

and

sublimated, till each has assumed the proportions of the infinite Personal

God of the Universe calls for an explanation. Prof. Max Muller creates for

it a

new name, as he thinks it peculiar to the Hindus: he calls it "Henotheism".

We need not go far for the explanation. It is within the book. A few steps

from the very place where we find those gods being raised and sublimated, we

find the explanation also. The question arises how the Hindu mythologies

should be so unique, so different from all others. In Babylonian or Greek

mythologies we find one god struggling upwards, and he assumes a position

and remains there, while the other gods die out. Of all the Molochs, Jehovah

becomes supreme, and the other Molochs are forgotten, lost for ever; he is

the God of gods. So, too, of all the Greek gods, Zeus comes to the front and

assumes big proportions, becomes the God of the Universe, and all the other

gods become degraded into minor angels. This fact was repeated in later

times.

 

The Buddhists and the Jains raised one of their prophets to the Godhead, and

all the other gods they made subservient to Buddha, or to Jina. This is the

world-wide process, but there we find an exception, as it were. One god is

praised, and for the time being it is said that all the other gods obey his

commands, and the very one who is said to be raised up by Varuna, is himself

raised up, in the next book, to the highest position. They occupy the

position of the Personal God in turns. But the explanation is there in the

book, and it is a grand explanation, one that has given the theme to all

subsequent thought in India, and one that will be the theme of the whole

world of religions: "Ekam Sat Vipr� Bahudh� Vadanti � That which exists is

One; sages call It by various names." In all these cases where hymns were

written about all these gods, the Being perceived was one and the same; it

was the perceiver who made the difference. It was the hymnist, the sage, the

poet, who sang in different languages and different words, the praise of one

and the same Being. "That which exists is One; sages call It by various

names." Tremendous results have followed from that one verse.

 

 

 

Group of Goddess and Hinduism:

divyabhakti

 

 

 

--

devishakti_india

( http://spiritualhinduism.blogspot.com )