Practical Vedanta

Practical Vedantathat test. If that God is outside of nature, having nothing to do with nature, and thisnature is the outcome of the command of that God and produced from nothing, itis a very unscientific theory, and this has been the weak point of every Theisticreligion throughout the ages. These two defects we find in what is generally calledthe theory of monotheism, the theory of a Personal God, with all the qualities of ahuman being multiplied very much, who, by His will, created this universe out ofnothing and yet is separate from it. This leads us into two difficulties.As we have seen, it is not a sufficient generalization, and secondly, it is not anexplanation of nature from nature. It holds that the effect is not the cause, that thecause is entirely separate from the effect. Yet all human knowledge shows that theeffect is but the cause in another form. To this idea the discoveries of modernscience are tending every day, and the latest theory that has been accepted on allsides is the theory of evolution, the principle of which is that the effect is but thecause in another form, a readjustment of the cause, and the cause takes the form ofthe effect. The theory of creation out of nothing would be laughed at by modernscientists.Now, can religion stand these tests? If there be any religious theories which canstand these two tests, they will be acceptable to the modern mind, to the thinkingmind. Any other theory which we ask the modern man to believe, on the authorityof priests, or churches, or books, he is unable to accept, and the result is a hideousmass of unbelief. Even in those in whom there is an external display of belief, intheir hearts there is a tremendous amount of unbelief. The rest shrink away fromreligion, as it were, give it up, regarding it as priestcraft only.Religion has been reduced to a sort of national form. It is one of our very bestsocial remnants; let it remain. But the real necessity which the grandfather of themodern man felt for it is gone; he no longer finds it satisfactory to his reason. Theidea of such a Personal God, and such a creation, the idea which is generallyknown as monotheism in every religion, cannot hold its own any longer. In India itcould not hold its own because of the Buddhists, and that was the very point wherethey gained their victory in ancient times. They showed that if we allow thatnature is possessed of infinite power, and that nature can work out all its wants, itis simply unnecessary to insist that there is something besides nature. Even thesoul is unnecessary.The discussion about substance and qualities is very old, and you will sometimesfind that the old superstition lives even at the present day. Most of you have readhow, during the Middle Ages, and, I am sorry to say, even much later, this wasone of the subjects of discussion, whether qualities adhered to substance, whetherlength, breadth, and thickness adhered to the substance which we call dead matter,whether, the substance remaining, the qualities are there or not. To this ourBuddhist says, "You have no ground for maintaining the existence of such asubstance; the qualities are all that exist; you do not see beyond them." This is justthe position of most of our modern agnostics. For it is this fight of the substanceand qualities that, on a higher plane, takes the form of the fight betweenfile:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Chitra%20Selva...oksBySwami/PracticalVedanta/PracticalVedantaPDF.html (24 of 113)2/26/2007 12:24:33 AM