The Sages Of India - Part 2

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Swami Vivekananda

The Sages Of India - Part 2

 

Our sages have however recognized that the vast majority of mankind requires a personality. So we have got in our religion provision for a personal God. And better than having any imaginary idea of personal God, we have in this world now and then, living and walking in our midst, the living-Gods, the sages and the incarnations.

 

Besdies the incarnations, there are great personages of a secondary character known as Rishi. A Rishi is the seer of spiritual truths. The nature of ultimate truths like the existence of God, the soul, the eternal life etc. cannot be understood by exploring the external Nature. It is to be sought only from within.

 

Men in India found out that soul is not limited by senses or even by consciousness. Consciousness is only an aspect of Being. Those who have gone beyond the senses and the limited consciousness and have come face to face with the spiritual truths, are the Rishis.

 

Coming to incarnations, the Bhagavata Puran says that there are an unlimited number of them. The chief among them that are worshipped in India today are Rama and Krishna. Valmiki has presented Ram in his work of unmatched literary beauty, the Ramayana as the "embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, who has been, the ideal father and, above all, the ideal King." And then there is Sita, the spouse of Rama, who has been the ideal of Indian womanhood and who will continue to be so in future also.

 

Another incarnation worshipped in various forms is Krishna. He was the most wonderful Sanyasin and the most wonderful householder in one. He was the embodiment of his own teachings in the Gita--the most conspicuous illustration of non-attachment. Though the most powerful man of his times, he gave up the throne. Than the Gita there is no better commentary on the Vedas. There is no attempted text-torturing in it as in the writings of the commentators. He accepts all forms of worship as steps that lead that gradually lead man to the Absolute Being. The various religious practices like ritualism, image worship etc. are the outcome of the necessity of the human soul. They all gradually lead to the highest ideal of human perfection--the performance of all work without attachment, as an offering to the Divine.

 

Greater than the ideal of Krishna as the teacher of Gita is the Krishna of Gopi-Jana-Vallabha, the beloved of the Gopis. There are modern reformers who shun this aspect of Krishna's life as immortal. To them must be said that before they study this aspect's of Krishna's life, their minds should be purified of sexuality and greed for gold. "Who can understand the throes of the love of the Gopis?--the very ideal of love, love that wants nothing, love that does not care for heaven, love that does not care for anything in this world or the world to come". In this love of the Gopis, is resolved the conflict between the Personal and Impersonal ideas of God. The theory of the Personal God and the existence of the evil is a problem that the intellect cannot solve. Its solution can be found in what you read about the love of the Gopis. They hated every adjective as applied to Krishna. They did not care to know that he was almighty. They did not care to know that he was omnipotent and so forth. The only thing that they understaood is that he was infinite love. Thus, just as in Gita Krishna was teacher of work without attachment, he, as that darling of the Gopis, is the preacher of love for love's sake.