VEDANTA AND CIVILIZATION-A SOLUTION TO PROBLEMS THE WORLD FACES TODAY

"No doubt it is true that just as the too active Western mind would profit by an admixture of Eastern introspection and the meditative habit, so the Eastern would benefit by a somewhat greater activity and energy."-Swami Vivekananda  

THE ANCIENT RELIGION

Superficially, it may seem that India is just a land of conquered and suffering people but what they fail to realise is that in the spiritual domain it is our great nation which has conquered the world.

To start with we must ask ourselves-what is the basis which keeps two of the most ancient yet most afflicted and oppressed races of the world-the Hindus and the Jewish to survive, when other, apparently much more powerful cultures have perished? What force lies behind the binding of the people who never boasted of aggression? The only logical conclusion that can be drawn is this can nothing other than the Spiritual force.

The Jews today are much more influential and numerous compared to that in erstwhile Palestine, while the Hindus, though silent on many fronts have asserted their spiritual effluence and heralded the development of the nation as they integrate the material and the spiritual realm of human lives.

THE CONCEPT OF THE UNIVERSAL SOUL

The Indian philosophy has, from ancient times spread throughout the civilized world, modifying and evolving itself as it pervaded through the world. It reached the coasts of Africa even before Europe was known thereby opening the routes for the rest of the world. These facts also goes on to prove that Indian trade has rolled out to places way beyond its frontiers and not confined to the mainland of the subcontinent as was promulgated by some European scholars.

While colonization of India has had a definite effect on the culture and civilization of the country it has also been a turning point in the history of the conqueror as well. The triumphant power received wealth, power, dominion, material resources as well as spirituality.

The Eastern philosophy measures how little of material possessions he can get by with as opposed to the Western scale which motivates its followers to possess and enjoy as much of material elements as one can.  

The study of Vedas shows us how the people of this holy land ventured in their search for “the one”-the source of everything -the God. The theories and practice gradually developed. Our ancestors beginning with the worship of plants, animals, their forefathers, the forces of nature-like Indra the God of thunder, Varuna-the god of rain and so on. The evolution of God from multiplicity to monotheism occurred in many religions but it merely depicted a super-powerful entity who ruled over a tribe of Gods and was the most powerful and all-dominating.

The Hindus weren’t satisfied with this human-like depiction of God.  Therefore, they gradually directed their search for the divine from the outer world of senses and matter towards the inner world. And what did they discover? The spirit within, the existence of a whole new world-the Atman. It is the “self”. The one and only thing that the individual can be sure of. The only thing that was there when nothing else existed and that which will be there when everything is destroyed-the universal soul. It is the entity from which everything is manifested and everything will one day merge into this entity.  The Vedanta philosophy found the answer to the question that has been asked from the inception of civilization and in Rig Veda in one for or the other-"Who or what existed from the beginning?"  

The Hindus realised that it is by knowing the self that we can know the universe and not the other way around.

VEDANTA AND ETHICS-WHY WE SHOULD BE “GOOD”?

The Vedanta philosophy also discovered the basis of Ethics. While every religion instructs us on a number of veritable do’s and don’ts none however provides us any reason for why one shouldn’t indulge in things that are considered immoral-like why shouldn’t one kill his neighbours or not steal?

The Hindus who couldn’t just rest upon the set of dogmas found a metaphysical explanation to this very important “why”. The Vedanta says that the Atman is all-pervading and absolute and therefore infinite. It is simple mathematics that there cannot be two infinites-because then one would be limited by the other which is absurd. Each individual soul is a part of that same infinite-so by injuring your neighbour or harming somebody in any perceivable way, one is actually harming himself or herself.

TOLERANCE

Besides, Vedanta also enlightens on another very important aspect of spiritual evolution. The soul does not pass from illusion to truth, it passes from truth to truth-from lower to higher truth. Each stage of its evolution is true. It is like a journey towards the Sun from the Earth. At each stage if one takes a snap of the celestial body it would appear different-but the change is not in the object but in the perception of observe. Each of the images are equally true-only the changing conditions of time and space changes the perception. The journey of the human being towards perfection is quite similar. This realization among the Hindus is one reason why the Hindus were able to perceive the universal truth of all religions. The only people who have never had religious persecutions.  The Hindus are known to worship the shrine of a Mohammedan saint, whom even the Muslims have forgotten. The Hindus worked beyond tolerance, the believe every religion to be equal in the true sense of the term and many instances of the same can be quoted and all rooted in these universal spiritual principles of the ancient knowledge base that forms the very foundation of the religion.

UNITY

Unity-the goal that the entire humanity seeks, be it science or religion. While the material scientists seek unity in subatomic particles and wave-particle duality the yogis or the spiritual truth-seekers in India have sought unity through Atman. Today it has been well proven that everything that we perceive is the manifestation of the one source that is not perceivable by our senses or any instrument that our senses are able to perceive-that one substance which the Hindu calls the Atman. 

At some point the material sciences need to acknowledge the existence of an “unknown” that goes beyond the ideas of dimension, magnitude and perception to prove the hypotheses and explain the observable universe. Quantum Physics have conclusively proven that the mind and our observation is the only reason for the existence of the world as we perceive it thereby pushing us into the Metaphysical realm.  The union of science and religion has been conclusively visualized in the ancient Vedanta philosophy and unifies the entire world and all the philosophies of the civilized way.

The amalgamation of the western materialistic activeness and the eastern spiritual introspection is not only capable of taking the human civilization to its utmost heights but also solve the problems related to tolerance and persecutions that have ailed our beloved country and Mother Earth at large.