A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

536 THE RELIGION WE ARE BORN IN.Tantras are not so bad, as peoplethem.are inclined to think,ere are many high and sublime Vedantic thought? inIn fact, the Brahmana portions of tha Vedas weremodified a litfaojand incorporated into the* body of theTantras. All th<?vrms of our worship and the ceremonials of the present day, comprising the Karma-kand*.-, areobserved in accordance with the Tantras.^Now let us discuss the principles of our religion alittle.Notwithstanding the differences and controversiesexisting among our various sects, there are in them too,several grounds of unity. First, almost all of them admitthe existence of three things three entities Ishvara, Atman,and the Jagat. Ishvara is He who is eternally creating, preserving and destroying the whole universe. Excepting^t-heSankhyas all the others believe in this. Then the doctrine ofthe Atman, or the re-incarnation of the soul it maintains;that innumerableindividual souls having taken body afterbody again and again, go round and round ia the wheelof birth and death according to their respective Karmas ;this is Samsaragada or, as is commonly called, the doctrineof re-birth. Then there is this Jagat or universe, without beginning and without end. Though some hold theseand some others asthree as different phases of one only,three distinctly different entities, and others again invarious other ways, yet they are all unanimous in believing in these three.Here I should ask you to remember that Hindus, fromtime immemorial, knew the Atman as separate fromManas, mind. But the Occidentals could never soarbeyond the mind. The West knows the universe to befull of happiness, and as such, it is to them a place wherethey can enjoy the most but the East is born with th e;conviction that this Samsara, this ever-changing existence