Swami
Vivekananda :- The masses in India cry to sixty million gods, and
still die like dogs. Where are these gods?
Knowing this, stand up and fight! Not one step back that is the idea. ... Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the sphere! Let the whole world stand against us! Death means only a change of garment. What of it? Thus fight! You gain nothing by becoming cowards. ... Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune. You have cried to all the gods in the world. Has misery ceased? The masses in India cry to sixty million gods, and still die like dogs. Where are these gods? ... The gods come to help you when you have succeeded. So what is the use? Die game. ... This bending the knee to superstitions, this selling yourself to your own mind does not befit you, my soul. You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. ... Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are the entire world. Who can help you? - Swami Vivekananda (Delivered In San Francisco, on May 28, 1900) -The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 1/Lectures And Discourses/The Gita II
In Vedas the God has been described as:-
v Sakshi
(Witness)
v Chetan
(conscious)
v Nirguna
(Without form and properties).
v Nitya
(eternal)
v Shuddha
(pure)
v Buddha
(omniscient)
v Mukta
(unattached).
So, it clearly indicates that God
is formless thus there is no scope for form based God. The religion and its
conceptual gods, and its theories of karma, heaven, hell, sin, punya, rebirth, and
reincarnation are based on the false self, within the false experience.
Therefore, they are meant for lower mind-sets, they are of no use for those who
are seeking higher truth as indicated in the scriptures.
There are many schools of thought in
Hinduism based on Vedas. These schools of thoughts are add-ons. Therefore,
these add-ons have to be bifurcated from original Vedic Religion, to get the
pure Vedic essence.
Sri, Sankara said: The world is unreal and
Brahman alone is real. It
means the birth, life and death, which happens within the world, also is
unreal. If birth, life and
death are unreal, then the rebirth and reincarnation and the avatar concept has
to be unreal. Thus, it is for the seeker to find out, on what standpoint the
world becomes unreal, to know the Brahman, which is the ultimate truth.
Causality taught in the
Upanishads is only to enable us to understand the supreme truth of
no-origination. The world is not different from the self and the self is not
different from Atman and Atman is not different from Brahman. That the non-dual
absolute appears as the diverse world is only an illusion. If it really became
diverse then the immortal would become mortal.
The dualists who seek to
prove the origination of the unborn, by that very enterprise try to make the
immortal, mortal. Ultimate nature can never change - the immortal can never
become mortal and vice versa.
Gaudapada quotes from the
Upanishads:- "There's no
plurality here"; "The Soul through its powers appears to be
many"; "those who are attached to the creation or production or
origination go to utter darkness"; "the unborn is never reborn, for
what can produce it?”
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which is
a part of Vedas, Declares that:-Brahman is the form of the Athma, and it is indeed Athma itself.
DVI" means two.
DVI" connotes dual existence and the non-dual. Which of these two is
non-existence? People think that there is God and that the jivas--souls--
like them form the second, other than them. There is no such duality at
all.
"Soul”, which is
present in the form of consciousness,
is the only reality and there is nothing other than this soul or
consciousness, which is the innermost self. On the stand point the formless
soul or consciousness, innermost self, there is no second thing exists other
than consciousness. Because the whole
universe in, which we all exist is created out of consciousness. There is no second thing exist other than
consciousness. Hence it is nondual . The soul or consciousness is
ultimate truth or Brahman or God.
