The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 4/Writings: Prose/Fundamentals of Religion
FUNDAMENTALS OF RELIGION[1]
My mind can best grasp the religions of the world, ancient or modern, dead
or living, through this fourfold division:
1. Symbology — The employment of various external aids to preserve and
develop the religious faculty of man.
2. History — The philosophy of each religion as illustrated in the lives of divine or human teachers acknowledged by each religion. This includes mythology; for what is mythology to one race, or period, is or was history to other races or periods. Even in cases of human teachers, much of their history is taken as mythology by successive generations.
3. Philosophy — The rationale of the whole scope of each religion.
4. Mysticism — The assertion of something superior to sense-knowledge and reason which particular persons, or all persons under certain circumstances, possess; runs through the other divisions also.
All the religions of the world, past or present, embrace one or more of
these principles, the highly developed ones having all the four.
Of these highly developed religions again, some had no sacred book or books
and they have disappeared; but those which were based on sacred books are
living to the present day. As such, all the great religions of the world
today are founded on sacred books.
The Vedic on the Vedas (misnamed the Hindu or Brahminic).
The Avestic on the Avesta.
The Mosaic on the Old Testament.
The Buddhistic on the Tripitaka.
The Christian on the New Testament.
The Mohammedan on the Koran.
The Taoists and the Confucianists in China, having also books, are so
inextricably mixed up with the Buddhistic form of religion as to be
catalogued with Buddhism.
Again, although strictly speaking there are no absolutely racial religions,
yet it may be said that, of this group, the Vedic, the Mosaic, and the
Avestic religions are confined to the races to which they originally
belonged; while the Buddhistic, the Christian, and the Mohammedan religions
have been from their very beginning spreading religions.
The struggle will be between the Buddhists and Christians and Mohammedans to
conquer the world, and the racial religions also will have unavoidably to
join in the struggle. Each one of these religions, racial or spreading, has
been already split into various branches and has undergone vast changes
consciously or unconsciously to adapt itself to varying circumstances. This
very fact shows that not one of them is fitted alone to be the religion of
the entire human race. Each religion being the effect of certain
peculiarities of the race it sprang from, and being in turn the cause of the
intensification and preservation of those very peculiarities, not one of
them can fit the universal human nature. Not only so, but there is a
negative element in each. Each one helps the growth of a certain part of
human nature, but represses everything else which the race from which it
sprang had not. Thus one religion to become universal would be dangerous and
degenerating to man.
Now the history of the world shows that these two dreams — that of a
universal political Empire and that of a universal religious Empire — have
been long before mankind, but that again and again the plans of the greatest
conquerors had been frustrated by the splitting up of his territories before
he could conquer only a little part of the earth; and similarly every
religion has been split into sects before it was fairly out of its cradle.
Yet it seems to be true, that the solidarity of the human race, social as
well as religious, with a scope for infinite variation, is the plan of
nature; and if the line of least resistance is the true line of action, it
seems to me that this splitting up of each religion into sects is the
preservation of religion by frustrating the tendency to rigid sameness, as
well as the dear indication to us of the line of procedure.
The end seems, therefore, to be not destruction but a multiplication of
sects until each individual is a sect unto himself. Again a background of
unity will come by the fusion of all the existing religions into one grand
philosophy. In the mythologies or the ceremonials there never will be unity,
because we differ more in the concrete than in the abstract. Even while
admitting the same principle, men will differ as to the greatness of each of
his ideal teacher.
So, by this fusion will be found out a union of philosophy as the basis of
union, leaving each at liberty to choose his teacher or his form as
illustrations of that unity. This fusion is what is naturally going on for
thousands of years; only, by mutual antagonism, it has been woefully held
back.
Instead of antagonising, therefore, we must help all such interchange of
ideas between different races, by sending teachers to each other, so as to
educate humanity in all the various religions of the world; but we must
insist as the great Buddhist Emperor of India, Asoka, did, in the second
century before Christ, not to abuse others, or to try to make a living out
of others' faults; but to help, to sympathise, and to enlighten.
There is a great outcry going over the world against metaphysical knowledge
as opposed to what is styled physical knowledge. This crusade against the
metaphysical and the beyond-this-life, to establish the present life and the
present world on a firmer basis, is fast becoming a fashion to which even
the preachers of religion one after the other are fast succumbing. Of
course, the unthinking multitude are always following things which present
to them a pleasing surface; but when those who ought to know better, follow
unmeaning fashions, pseudo-philosophical though they profess to be, it
becomes a mournful fact.
Now, no one denies that our senses, as long as they are normal, are the most
trustworthy guides we have, and the facts they gather in for us form the
very foundation of the structure of human knowledge. But if they mean that
all human knowledge is only sense-perception and nothing but that, we deny
it. If by physical sciences are meant systems of knowledge which are
entirely based and built upon sense-perception, and nothing but that, we
contend that such a science never existed nor will ever exist. Nor will any
system of knowledge, built upon sense-perception alone, ever be a science.
Senses no doubt cull the materials of knowledge and find similarities and
dissimilarities; but there they have to stop. In the first place the
physical gatherings of facts are conditioned by certain metaphysical
conceptions, such as space and time. Secondly, grouping facts, or
generalisation, is impossible without some abstract notion as the
background. The higher the generalization, the more metaphysical is the
abstract background upon which the detached facts are arranged. Now, such
ideas as matter, force, mind, law, causation, time, and space are the
results of very high abstractions, and nobody has ever sensed any one of
them; in other words, they are entirely metaphysical. Yet without these
metaphysical conceptions, no physical fact is possible to be understood.
Thus a certain motion becomes understood when it is referred to a force;
certain sensations, to matter; certain changes outside, to law; certain
changes in thought, to mind; certain order singly, to causation — and joined
to time, to law. Yet nobody has seen or even imagined matter or force, law
or causation, time or space.
It may be urged that these, as abstracted concepts do not exist, and that
these abstractions are nothing separate or separable from the groups of
which they are, so to say, only qualities.
Apart from the question whether abstractions are possible or not, or whether
there is something besides the generalized groups or not, it is plain that
these notions of matter or force, time or space, causation, law, or mind,
are held to be units abstracted and independent (by themselves) of the
groups, and that it is only when they are thought of as such, they furnish
themselves as explanations of the facts in sense-perception. That is to say,
apart from the validity of these notions, we see two facts about them —
first, they are metaphysical; second, that only as metaphysical do they
explain the physical and not otherwise.
Whether the external conforms to the internal, or the internal to the
external, whether matter conforms to mind, or mind to matter, whether the
surroundings mould the mind, or the mind moulds the circumstances, is old,
old question, and is still today as new and vigorous as it ever was. Apart
from the question of precedence or causation — without trying to solve the
problem as to whether the mind is the cause of matter or matter the cause of
mind — it is evident that whether the external was formed by the internal or
not, it must conform itself to the internal for us to be able to know it.
Supposing that the external world is the cause of the internal, yet we shall
of have to admit that the external world, as cause of ours mind, is unknown
and unknowable, because the mind can only know that much or that view of the
external or that view which conforms to or is a reflection of its own
nature. That which is its own reflection could not have been its cause. Now
that view of the whole mass of existence, which is cut off by mind and
known, certainly cannot be the cause of mind, as its very existence is known
in and through the mind.
Thus it is impossible to deduce a mind from matter. Nay, it is absurd.
Because on the very face of it that portion of existence which is bereft of
the qualities of thought and life and endowed with the quality of
externality is called matter, and that portion which is bereft of
externality and endowed with the qualities of thought and life is called
mind. Now to prove matter from mind, or mind from matter, is to deduce from
each the very qualities we have taken away from each; and, therefore, all
the fight about the causality of mind or matter is merely a word puzzle and
nothing more. Again, throughout all these controversies runs, as a rule, the
fallacy of imparting different meanings to the words mind and matter. If
sometimes the word mind is used as something opposed and external to matter,
at others as something which embraces both the mind and matter, i.e. of
which both the external and internal are parts on the materialistic side;
the word matter is sometimes used in is the restricted sense of something
external which we sense, and again it means something which is the cause of
all the phenomena both external and internal. The materialist frightens the
idealist by claiming to derive his mind from the elements of the laboratory,
while all the time he is struggling to express something higher than all
elements and atoms, something of which both the external and the internal
phenomena are results, and which he terms matter. The idealist, on the other
hand, wants to derive all the elements and atoms of the materialist from his
own thought, even while catching glimpses of something which is the cause of
both mind and matter, and which he oft-times calls God. That is to say, one
party wants to explain the whole universe by a portion of it which is
external, the other by another portion which is internal. Both of these
attempts are impossible. Mind and matter cannot explain each other. The only
explanation is to be sought for in something which will embrace both matter
and mind.
It may be argued that thought cannot exist without mind, for supposing there
was a time when there was no thought, matter, as we know it, certainly could
not have existed. On the other hand, it may be said that knowledge being
impossible without experience, and experience presupposing the external
world, the existence of mind, as we know it, is impossible without the
existence of matter.
Nor is it possible that either of them had a beginning. Generalisation is
the essence of knowledge. Generalisation is impossible without a storage of
similarities. Even the fact of comparison is impossible without previous
experience. Knowledge thus is impossible without previous knowledge — and
knowledge necessitating the existence of both thought and matter, both of
them are without beginning.
Again generalization, the essence of sense-knowledge, is impossible without
something upon which the detached facts of perception unite. The whole world
of external perceptions requires something upon which to unite in order to
form a concept of the world, as painting must have its canvas. If thought or
mind be this canvas to the external world, it, in its turn requires another.
Mind being a series of different feelings and willing — and not a unit,
requires something besides itself as its background of unity. Here all
analysis is bound to stop, for a real unity has been found. The analysis of
a compound cannot stop until an indivisible unit has been reached. The fact
that presents us with such a unity for both thought and matter must
necessarily be the last indivisible basis of every phenomenon, for we cannot
conceive any further analysis; nor is any further analysis necessary, as
this includes an analysis of all our external and internal perceptions.
So far then, we see that a totality of mental and material phenomena, and
something beyond, upon which they are both playing, are the results of our
investigation.
Now this something beyond is not in sense-perception; it is a logical
necessity, and a feeling of its indefinable presence runs through all our
sense-perceptions. We see also that to this something we are driven by the
sheer necessity of being true to our reason and generalising faculty.
It may be urged that there is no necessity whatsoever of postulating any
such substance or being beyond the mass of mental and material phenomena.
The totality of phenomena is all that we know or can know, and it requires
nothing beyond itself to explain itself. An analysis beyond the senses is
impossible, and the feeling of a substance in which everything inheres is
simply an illusion.
We see, that from the most ancient times, there has been these two schools
among thinkers. One party claims that the unavoidable necessity of the human
mind to form concepts and abstractions is the natural guide to knowledge,
and that it can stop nowhere until we have transcended all phenomena and
formed a concept which is absolute in all directions, transcending time and
space and causality. Now if this ultimate concept is arrived at by analysing
the whole phenomena of thought and matter, step by step, taking the cruder
first and resolving it into a finer, and still finer, until we arrive at
something which stands as the solution of everything else, it is obvious
that everything else beyond this final result is a momentary modification of
itself, and as such, this final result alone is real and everything else is
but its shadow. The reality, therefore, is not in the senses but beyond
them.
On the other hand, the other party holds that the only reality in the
universe is what our senses bring to us, and although a sense of something
beyond hangs on to all our sense-perceptions, that is only a trick of the
mind, and therefore unreal.
Now a changing something can never be understood, without the idea of
something unchanging; and if it be said that that unchanging something, to
which the changing is referred, is also a changing phenomenon only
relatively unchanging, and is therefore to be referred to something else,
and so on, we say that however infinitely long this series be, the very fact
of our inability to understand a changeable without an unchangeable forces
us to postulate one as the background of all the changeable. And no one has
the right to take one part of a whole as right and reject the other at will.
If one takes the obverse he must take the reverse of the same coin also,
however he may dislike it.
Again, with every movement, man asserts his freedom. From the highest
thinker to the most ignorant man everyone knows that he is free. Now every
man at the same time finds out with a little thinking that every action of
his had motives and conditions, and given those motives and conditions his
particular action can be as rigorously deduced as any other fact in
causation.
Here, again, the same difficulty occurs. Man's will is as rigorously bound
by the law of causation as the growth of any little plant or the falling of
a stone, and yet, through all this bondage runs the indestructible idea of
freedom. Here also the totality side will declare that the idea of freedom
is an illusion and man is wholly a creature of necessity.
Now, on one hand, this denial of freedom as an illusion is no explanation;
on the other hand, why not say that the idea of necessity or bondage or
causation is an illusion of the ignorant? Any theory which can fit itself to
facts which it wants to explain, by first cutting as many of them as
prevents its fitting itself into them, is on the face of it wrong. Therefore
the only way left to us is to admit first that the body is not free, neither
is the will but that there must be something beyond both the mind and body
which is free and
- Notes
- ↑ This incomplete article was found in the papers of Miss S. E. Waldo. The heading is inserted by us — Publisher.