It was desperately important for the believers of their belief system
for some reason that others shared their beliefs because they assume that their
religious doctrine is literally true, and then justify their beliefs because
"God says so in their doctrine ".
It is no use of arguing with someone who has faith in his belief system
because for him there can be no possible refutation of what he believes, so
rational argument is entirely useless. He clings to his belief so strongly that
he makes no distinction between the truth and his belief. One has to know the
fact that god cannot exist without his existence. The truth does not depend on
gods’ existence but it entirely depends on man’s existence. Thus it is foolish to venture in knowing the
truth of gods existence without verifying the facts about his true existence.
The Seeker has to have courage to
accept the truth and reject the untruth. Most people will not be able to
subscribe to path of truth because they sentimentally and emotionally involved
with their inherited belief system and even if one does he has to overcome all
his doubts confusion and despair. These
are problems for the seekers who are from religious back ground because of
their conditioning and they are made to accept their blind belief as truth and
their interest or insight is not deep.
It becomes difficult for the
orthodox cult to accept anything else as truth other than their accepted
belief, which they hold as truth. Although all religious followers are
participants alike in the spiritual endeavor of the world, overzealous followers of each religion are not prepared
to accord equal status to other faiths and assert the superiority of their own.
Thus universal brother hood is total impossibility because it is difficult to accept
anything other than their inherited belief system.
Intense inner longing to know the ultimate
truth will guide the seeker he needs no other guide. People who think by worshiping their
gurus as God in human form in order to get self-realization are unaware of the
fact that, accepting someone as guru and himself as disciple is greatest
obstacle in the path of truth. The person who accepts himself as guru is not a
Gnani, because he has already accepted self as body whereas the self is not the
body. The person who accepts himself as disciple of some guru also considers
his self as body thus; it becomes a great hindrance in path of truth. Guru is
essential in religious and yogic path but not for Self-Realization
If God exists, as he does for
religionists and yogis, and exists separately from them, then there is duality,
which always implies contradiction. On ultimate point of view God is an mere
belief or an idea, a thought, an object, therefore the self or witness,
contradict God.
When there are two, one thought contradicts
another for one thought comes at one moment, and the other at another moment,
both moments contradict; one cannot say they are identical. He cannot find
non-contradiction in this universe.
One the ultimate point of view the
individualized God does not exist, because his existence implies that one is
different from Him. Any kind of difference means contradiction. Nothing
whatsoever other than the consciousness exists thus for non-dualists the
consciousness itself is ultimate truth and ultimate truth is god. Non-duality
means the negation of all thought.
Truth is not only that which is beyond
contradiction, but also that in which is no possibility of contradiction. Such
a state can only be realized as non-duality, where there is no second thing
other than consciousness. The illustration for that is deep sleep but sleep is
not the ultimate reality. It is merely an analogy.
Brihad Upanishads declares:~, "If you
think there is another entity whether man or God there is no truth." This
is the teaching since time immemorial of those who have inquired into truth.
Consciousness alone which is permanent
and eternal, unchanging in the changing world is reality. People hear of
Brahman or ultimate truth. People can only imagine it. One requires words only
to distinguish between is there and not there, but he can’t posit either of
Reality, because his saying so is only an idea, not reality. Ultimate truth is
beyond words. Words are of use, however, as a thorn to pull out the thorn of
other words that hinder knowledge.
Intellectually knowing the truth is only
an imagination, whereas realizing the truth is knowing it as such.
Thus orthodoxy
which misleads the seekers of truth, therefore seeker of truth has to verify
the truth on his own by reason based on the consciousness[Atman] as self and only
accept the uncontradictable truth.
And also in Yajurved says:~
Translation 1.
They enter
darkness, those who worship natural things (for example air, water, sun, moon,
animals, fire, stone, etc).
They sink deeper
in darkness those who worship sambhuti. (Sambhuti means created things, for
example table, chair, idol etc.)
[Yajurved 40:9]
Translation 2.
"Deep into
shade of blinding gloom fall asambhuti's worshippers. They sink to darkness
deeper yet who on sambhuti are intent." (Yajurveda Samhita
by Ralph T. H. Giffith pg 538)
Translation 3.
"They are
enveloped in darkness, in other words, are steeped in ignorance and sunk in the
greatest depths of misery who worship the uncreated, eternal prakrti -- the
material cause of the world -- in place of the All-pervading God, But those who
worship visible things born of the prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies
(human and the like) in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness,
in other words, they are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and
sorrow, and suffer terribly for a long time." (Yajur Veda
40:9.)
So, Yajur Veda
indicates that:~
They sink deeper
in darkness those who worship sambhuti. (Sambhuti means created things, for
example table, chair, idol etc (Yajurved 40:9)
Those who worship
visible things born of the prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies (human and
the like) in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness, in other
words, they are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow,
and suffer terribly for a long time." (Yajur Veda
40:9.)
When Yajur Veda declares that they are
extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow, and suffer
terribly for a long time."
When the religion of the Veda knows no idols
then why so many gods and goddesses with different form and name are being
propagated as Vedic gods. Why these conceptual gods are introduced when Vedic
concept of god is free from form and attributes.
Who introduced
concept of god with attributes and attributeless gods, when Yajur Veda says:
- those who worship visible things,
born of the prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies (human and the like), in
place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness. Therefore, all these
add-ons proves that the form and attribute based concepts are introduced by
some sages of the past with new belief system and code of conducts in the name
of Vedas.
The Sruti is made the final or exclusive authority
in apara Vidya and that for supporting the tenet of the CAUSAL relation or creatorship
of Brahman, Nirguna Brahman = the "Absolute beyond qualities," which
can be defined only in a negative way. For the Shankarian school = the Ultimate
Reality, higher than the Lord. i.e. of Saguna or apara Brahman ... The support
of Scriptural Revelation is, therefore, absolutely necessary for this
hypothesis of cosmology, this Saguna or apara (= inferior) Brahman, but not for
the absolute truth of Nirguna Brahman.
The Sruti itself says: "This Atma is NOT
to be attained by a study of the Vedas. (Katha Upanishad
I, 2, 23)
Therefore, all
the non- Vedic add-ons and attribute based knowledge, which are inferior, have
to be bifurcated and excluded to know the ultimate truth. The seeker of truth has to drop all the
inferior knowledge based on the attributes and go beyond Vedas to understand
assimilate and realize the ultimate truth or Brahman.
One has to go
beyond Vedas means go beyond religion. Go beyond religion means, go beyond
concept of god. Thus, going beyond Veda,
religion and conceptual god means going beyond illusion. That is end of Vedas [Veda –antha]
When one goes
into the annals of the history it looks like the true Advaita expounded by Sage Sri
Sankara and his param guru, Sage Sri, Goudpada was lost or mutilated by the orthodox
cult, because their preaching is based on non-duality and practices are based on
duality.
Sage Sri, Sankara says
in Brahma Sutras: that Brahman is the cause of the world, whereas in Manduka
he denies it. This is because he says that at the lower stage of understanding,
the former teaching must be given, for people will get frightened as they
cannot understand how the world can be without a cause, but to those in a
higher stage, the truth of non-causality can be revealed.
Sage Sri, Sankara himself has warned us not to use ambiguous words,
and to practice semantic analysis in his book "Definition of one's own
Self. (" Page
199, v.24 of "Sankara's Selected Works)
Buddha found
religion in such a worthless state, with so many vile animal sacrifices, that
he attacked religion. Sri, Sankara did not seek to destroy religion like Buddha
but he advocated reforming it for better. He did this because he saw that the
masses had to have some form of religion as they were not ripe intellectually
for truth.
