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EDITOR'S BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

 

Editing the Swami's Lectures;

The Necessity of Religion 1902 Compared with present...

 
 
 

 

'The Necessity of Religion' was a lecture delivered by Swami Vivekananda in England in June 1896. While we have no intention of making any judgement on the editing of Swami Vivekananda's works, we feel it is important to point out that his lectures were edited. Much was done with his permission - in fact at his instruction, since generally people speak differently than how they would write, and some editing was done after his death.

We have taken the above lecture as it appeared in the 1902 edition of Jnana Yoga and compared it with the version that currently appears in the Complete Works. The words in red are those which appear only in the 1902 edition. Those in blue appear in the Complete works (present) edition. Those in black of course are the words that are unchanged from 1902….

No sentences were changed in their order, but a few sentences found in the original were removed. Otherwise most of the changes were words within a sentence….

If nothing else, the older version might give a greater sense of what the Swami actually said to his audience on this occasion.

 

The NECESSITY OF RELIGION

Of all the forces that have worked and are still working to mould the destinies of the human race, none, certainly, is more potent than that, the manifestation of which we call religion. All social organisations have as a background, somewhere, the workings of that peculiar force, and the greatest cohesive impulse ever brought into play amongst human units has been derived from this power of religion. It is obvious to all of us that in very many cases the bonds of religion have proved stronger than the bonds of race, (or) of climate, or even of descent. It is a well-known fact that persons worshipping the same God, believing in the same religion, have stood by each other, with much greater strength and constancy, than people of merely the same descent, or even brothers. Various attempts have been made to trace the beginnings of religion. In all the ancient religions which have come down to us at the present day, we find one claim made--that they are all supernatural, that their genesis is not, as it were, in the human brain, but that they have originated somewhere outside of it.

Two theories have gained some acceptance amongst modern scholars. One is the spirit theory of religion, the other the evolution (of the idea) of the Infinite. One party maintains that ancestor worship is the beginning of religious ideas; the other, that religion originates in the personification of the powers of nature. Man wants to keep up the memory of his dead relatives and thinks they are living even when the body has been (is) dissolved, and he wants to place food for them and, in a certain sense, to worship them. Out of that came the growth we call religion.

Studying the ancient religions of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, and many other races in America and elsewhere, we find very clear traces of this ancestor worship being the beginning of religion. With the ancient Egyptians, the first idea of the soul was that of a double. This physical man (Every human body) contained in it another being very similar to it; and when a man died, this double went out of the body and yet lived on. But the life of the double lasted only so long as the dead body remained intact, and that is why we find among the Egyptians so much solicitude to keep the body intact (uninjured). (And) that is why they built those huge pyramids in which they preserved the bodies. For, if any portion of the external body was hurt, just so would the double be hurt would be correspondingly injured. This is clearly ancestor worship. With the ancient Babylonians we find the same idea of the double, but with a variation. The double lost all sense of love; it frightened the living to give it food and drink, and to help it in various ways. It even lost all affection for its own children (and) its own wife or daughter. Among the ancient Hindus also, we find traces of this ancestor worship. Among the Chinese, the basis of their religion may also be said to be clearly ancestor worship, and it still permeates the length and breadth of that vast country. In fact, the only religion that can really be said to flourish in China is that of ancestor worship. Thus it seems, on the one hand, a very good position is made out for those who hold to the theory of ancestor worship as the beginning of religion.

On the other hand, there are scholars who go back to (from the) ancient Aryan literature (show that religion originated in nature worship.) Although in India we find proofs of ancestor worship everywhere, yet in the oldest records there is no trace of it whatsoever. In the Rig-Veda Samhita, the most ancient record of the Aryan race, we do not find any trace of it at all. Modern scholars think it is the worship of nature that they find there. The human mind seems to struggle to get a peep behind the scenes. The dawn, the evening, the hurricane, the stupendous and gigantic forces of nature, its beauties, these have exercised the human mind, and it aspires to go beyond, to understand something about them. In the struggle they endow these phenomena with personal attributes, giving them souls and bodies, sometimes beautiful, sometimes transcendent. Every attempt ends by these phenomena becoming abstractions whether personalised or not. So also it is found with the ancient Greeks; their whole mythology is simply this abstracted nature worship. So also with the ancient Germans, the Scandinavians, and all the other Aryan races. Thus, on this side, too, a very strong case has been made out, that religion has its origin in the personification of the powers (forces) of nature.

These two views, though they seem to be contradictory, can be reconciled on a third basis, which, to my mind, is the real germ of religion, and that I propose to call the struggle to transcend the limitations of the senses. Either, man goes to seek for the spirits of his ancestors, or the spirits of the dead, or (that is,) he wants to get a glimpse of what there is after the body is dissolved, or, he desires to understand the power working behind the stupendous phenomena of nature. Whichever of these is the case, one thing is certain, that he is trying (tries) to transcend the limitations of the senses. He cannot remain satisfied with his senses; he wants to go beyond them. The explanation need not be mysterious. To me it seems very natural that the first glimpse of religion should come through dreams. The first idea of immortality man must (may well) get through dreams. Is (that) not the dream state a most wonderful state? (And) we know that children and untutored minds find very little difference between dreaming and their waking (awakened) state. What can be more natural than that they find, as natural logic, that even during the sleep state when the body is apparently dead, the mind goes on with all its intricate workings? What wonder that men will at once come to the conclusion that when this body is dissolved for ever, the same working will go on? This, to my mind, would be a more natural explanation of the supernatural, and through this dream idea the human mind rises to higher and higher concepts (conceptions). Of course, in time, the vast majority of mankind found out that these dreams were (are) not verified by their waking (awakened) states, and that during the dream state it is not that man has a fresh existence, but simply that he recapitulates the experiences of the awakened state.

But by this time the search had begun, and the search was inward, and they (man) continued to inquire (inquiring) more deeply into the different stages of the mind and discovered higher states than either the waking or the dreaming. This state of things we find in all the organised religions of the world, called either a state of ecstasy or inspiration. In all organised religions, their founders, prophets, and messengers are declared to have gone into states of mind which (that) were neither waking nor sleeping, but states in which they came face to face with a new series of facts, those relating to what is called the spiritual kingdom. They realised things there in a much more intense sense (intensely) than we realise facts around us in our waking state. Take, for instance, the religions of the Brahmins. The Vedas are said to be written by Rishis. These Rishis were sages who realised certain facts. The exact definition of the Sanskrit word (Rishi) is (a) “The Seer of the Mantrams (Mantras) --of the thoughts conveyed in the Vedic hymns. These men declared that they had realised--sensed, if that word can be used with regard to the supersensuous--certain facts, and these facts they proceeded to put on record. We find the same thing (truth) declared among (amongst) both the Jews and the Christians.

Some exceptions may be taken in the case of the Buddhists as represented by the Southern sect. It may be asked--if the Buddhists do not believe in any God or a soul, how can their religion be derived from this (the) supersensuous state of existence? The answer to this is that even the Buddhists find an eternal moral law, and that moral law was not reasoned out in our sense of the word. But Buddha found it, discovered it, in a supersensuous state. Those of you who have studied the life of Buddha, even as shortly (briefly) given in that beautiful poem, “The Light of Asia,” may remember that Buddha is represented as sitting under the Bo-tree until he reached that supersensuous state of mind. All his teachings came through this, and not through intellectual cogitations.

Thus, here is a tremendous statement (is) made by all religions; that this (the) human mind, at certain moments, transcends not only the limitations of the senses, but also the power of reasoning. It then comes face to face with facts which it could never have sensed, could never have reasoned out. These facts are the basis of all the religions of the world. Of course we have the right to challenge these facts, to put them to the test of reason. Nevertheless, all the existing religions of the world claim for the human mind this peculiar power of transcending the limits of the senses and the limits of reason; and this power they put forward as a statement of fact.

Apart from the consideration of the question how far these facts claimed by religions are true, we find one characteristic common to them all. They are all abstractions as contrasted with the concrete discoveries of physics, for instance; and in all the highly organised religions they take the purest form of Unit Abstraction, either in the form of an Abstracted Presence, as an Omnipresent Being, as an Abstract Personality called God, as a Moral Law, or in the form of an Abstract Essence underlying every existence. In modern times, too, the attempts made to preach religions without appealing to the supersensuous state of the mind have had to take up the old abstractions of the Ancients and put (give) different names to them as "Moral Law", the "Ideal Unity", and so forth, thus showing that these abstractions are not in the senses. None of us have yet seen an "Ideal Human Being", and yet we are told to believe in (it) an ideal human being. None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress. Thus, this one fact stands out from all these different religions, that there is an Ideal Unit Abstraction, and this is either (which is) put before us, (either) in the form of a Person or as an Impersonal Being, or as (a) Law, or a Presence, or an Essence. We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal. Every human being, whosoever and wheresoever he may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human being has an ideal of infinite pleasure. Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed everywhere, are due to the struggle for this infinite power or this infinite pleasure. But a few quickly discover that although they are struggling for infinite power, it is not through the senses that it can be reached. They find out very soon that that infinite pleasure is not to be got through the senses, or, in other words, the senses are too limited, and the body is too limited, to express the Infinite. To manifest the Infinite through the finite is impossible, and sooner or later, man learns to give up the attempt to express the Infinite through the finite. This giving up, this renunciation of the attempt, is the background of ethics. Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.

Ethics always says, "Not I, but thou." Its motto is, "Not self, but non-self." The vain ideas of individualism, to which man clings when he is trying to find that Infinite Power or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up--say the laws of ethics. You have to put yourself last, and others before you. The senses say, "Myself first." Ethics says, "I must hold myself last." Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane. That Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable.

So, man had (has) to give up the plane of matter and rise to other spheres to seek a deeper expression of that Infinite. In this way the various ethical laws are being moulded, but all have that one central idea, eternal self-abnegation. Perfect self-annihilation is the ideal of ethics. People are startled if they are asked not to think of their individualities. Everybody seems (They seem) so very much afraid of losing what he calls his (they call their) individuality. At the same time, the same men would declare the highest ideals of ethics to be right, never for a moment thinking that the scope, the goal, the idea of all ethics is the destruction, and not the building up, of the individual.

Utilitarian standards cannot explain the ethical relations of men, for, in the first place, we cannot derive any ethical laws from considerations of utility. Without the supernatural sanction as it is called, or the perception of the superconscious as I prefer to term it, there can be no ethics. Without the struggle towards the Infinite there can be no ideal. Any system that wants to bind men down within (to) the limits of their own societies would not (is not) able to find an explanation for the ethical laws of mankind. The Utilitarian wants us to give up all this (the) struggle after the Infinite, all this going to (the reaching-out for) the Super-sensuous, as impracticable and absurd, and, in the same breath, asks us to take up ethics and do good to society. Why should we do good? Doing good is a secondary consideration. We must have an ideal. Ethics itself is not the end, but the means to the end. If the end is not there, why should we be ethical? Why should I do good to other men, and not injure them? If happiness be (is) the goal of mankind, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What prevents me? In the second place, the basis of utility is too narrow. All these (the current social) forms and methods are derived from society as it exists, but what right has the Utilitarian to assume that society is eternal? Society did not exist ages ago, possibly will not exist ages hence. Most probably it is one of the passing stages through which we are going towards a higher evolution, and any law that is derived from society alone cannot be eternal, cannot cover the whole ground of man's nature. At best, therefore, Utilitarian theories can only work under present social conditions. Beyond that they have no value. But a morality, an ethical code, derived from religion and spirituality, has the whole of infinite man for its scope. It takes up the individual, but its relations are to the Infinite, and it takes up society also--because society is nothing but numbers of these individuals grouped together; and applying (as it applies) to the individual and his eternal relations, it must necessarily apply to the whole of society, in whatever condition it may be at any given time. Thus we see that there is always the necessity of spiritual religion for mankind. Man cannot always think of matter, however pleasurable it may be.

It has been said that too much attention to things spiritual disturbs our practical relations in this world. As long ago (far back) as (in) the days of the Chinese sage Confucius, it was said, "Let us take care of this world: and then, when we have finished with this world, we will take care of other worlds (world)." It is all very well that we should take care of this world and let the other go. But though (if) too much attention to the spirit (spiritual) may hurt (affect) a little our practical relations, yet too much attention to the so-called practical hurts us here and hereafter. It makes us materialistic. For man is not to regard nature as his goal, but something higher than nature.

Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external. Not only does nature (it) comprise the laws that govern the particles of matter outside us and in our bodies, but there is (also) the more subtle nature inside us (within), which is, in fact, the motive power which is governing the external and the internal nature. It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer the internal nature of man (our internal nature). It is grand and good to know the laws that govern the stars and planets; it is infinitely grander and better to know the laws that govern the passions, the feelings, the will, of mankind. This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion. Human nature--the ordinary human nature, I mean--wants to see big material facts. Ordinary mankind (The ordinary man) cannot understand anything that is subtle. Well has it been said that mobs would run after (the masses admire the) a lion that could kill (kills) a thousand lambs, and never for a moment think (thinking) that it is death unto (to) the lambs, although it may be a momentary triumph for the lion; because in that the mob finds (they find pleasure only in manifestations) the greatest manifestation of physical strength. Thus (it is) with the ordinary run of mankind,(.) (T)they understand and find pleasure in everything that is external. But in every society there is a section whose pleasures are not in the senses, but beyond, and who now and then catch glimpses of something higher than matter and want to struggle thither (to reach it.) And if we read the history of nations between the lines, we shall always find that the rise of a nation comes with an increase in the number of such men in soiciety; and the fall begins when this pursuit after the Infinite, however vain Utilitarians may call it, has ceased. That is to say, the mainspring of the strength of every race lies in the spirituality manifested in religion (its spirituality), and the death of that race begins the day that spirituality wanes and materialism begins (gains ground.)

Thus, apart from the solid facts and truths that we may learn from religion, apart from the comforts that we may gain therefrom (from it,) religion itself, as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have. This pursuit of the Infinite, this struggle to grasp the Infinite, this effort to get beyond the limitations of the senses--out of matter, as it were--and to evolve the spiritual man—instead of filling the mind with low, narrow and little ideals; this striving day and night to make the Infinite one with our being--this struggle itself is the grandest and most glorious that man can make. Some persons find the greatest pleasure in eating. We have no right to say that they should not. Others find the greatest pleasure in possessing certain things. We have no right to say (that) they should not. But they also have no right to say "no" to the man who finds his highest pleasure in spiritual thought. The lower the organisation, the more is (greater) the pleasure in the senses. Very few men can eat a meal with the same gusto that (as) a dog or a wolf can. But all the pleasures of the dog or the wolf have gone, as it were, into the senses, into that eating. The lower types of humanity in all nations find pleasure in the senses, while the cultured and the educated find it in thought, in philosophy, in the arts and sciences. Spiritual thought (Spirituality) is a still higher plane. The subject being infinite, that plane is the highest, and the pleasure there is the highest for those who (can) appreciate it. So, even on the utilitarian ground that man is to seek for pleasure, he should cultivate religious thought, for that (it) is the highest pleasure that exists. Thus religion, as a study, seems to me to be absolutely necessary.

We can see it in its effects. It is the greatest motive power that moves the human mind. No other ideal can put into us the same mass of energy as the spiritual. So far as human history goes, it is obvious to all of us that this has been the case and (that) its powers are not dead. I do not deny that men, on simply utilitarian grounds, can be very good and moral. There have been many great men in this world perfectly sound, and moral, and good, simply on utilitarian grounds. But the world-movers, men who bring, as it were, a mass of magnetism into the world, whose spirit works in hundreds and in thousands, whose life produces a halo around them wherever they go, igniting (ignites) others with a spiritual fire--such men, we always find, had (have) that spiritual background. The (Their) motive power of their energy came from religion. Religion is the greatest motive power to realise (for realizing) that infinite energy which is the birthright and nature of every man. Nothing can compare with religion there. In building up character, in making for everything that is good and great, in bringing peace to others and peace to one's own self, religion is the highest motive power and, religion (therefore), ought to be studied therefore from that standpoint. Religion must be studied on a broader basis than formerly. All narrow, limited, fighting ideas of religion have to go. All sect ideas and tribal or national ideas of religion have to go (must be given up.) All sect ideas and tribal or national ideas of religion must be given up. (That) each tribe or nation having (should have) its own particular God and thinking (think) that every other is wrong is (a) superstition that should belong to the past. All such ideas must be abandoned.

As the human mind broadens, its spiritual steps broaden (too). The time has already come when a man cannot record a thought without its reaching to all corners of the earth; by merely physical means, we have come into touch with the whole world; so the future religions of the world have to become as universal, as wide.

The religious ideals of the future must embrace all that exists in the world that (and) is good and great, and, at the same time, have infinite scope for future development. All that was good in the past must be preserved and kept; and yet the doors must be (kept) open for future addition (additions) to this (the) already existing store. Religions must also be inclusive.(,) Religions must (and) not look down with contempt upon people who have not the particular ideal (one another, because their particular ideals) of God (are different) which governs their special sect. In my life I have seen a great many spiritual men, a great many sensible persons, who did not believe in God at all, that is to say, not in our sense of the word. Perhaps they understood God better than we can ever do. The Personal idea of God or the Impersonal, the Infinite, the Moral Law, or the Ideal Man--these all have to come under the definition of religion. And when religions have become thus broadened, their power for good will have increased a hundred times beyond the present (hundredfold). Religions, having tremendous power in them, have often done more injury to the world than good, simply on account of their narrowness and limitations.

Even at the present time we find many sects and societies, with almost the same ideas, fighting each other, because one does not want to set forth those ideas in precisely the same way as the other (another). Therefore, religions will have to broaden. Religious ideas will have to become universal, vast, and infinite; and then alone we shall have the fullest play of religion, for the power of religion has only just begun to manifest in the world. It is sometimes said that religions are dying out, that spiritual ideas are dying out of the world. To me it seems that they have just begun (to grow). The power of religion, broadened and purified, is going to penetrate every part of human life. So long as religion was in the hands of a chosen few or of a body of priests, it was in the temples, it was in the churches, it was in the books, in dogmas, in ceremonials, forms, and rituals. (But when we) When men have come to the real, universal, spiritual, (universal) concept, then, and then alone, religion will become real and living; it will come into our very nature, live in (our) every movement of the human being, it will penetrate every pore of (our) society, and be infinitely more a power for good than it has ever been before.

What is needed is a fellow-feeling between the different types of religion, seeing that they all stand or fall together, a fellow-feeling which springs from mutual esteem and mutual respect, and not the condescending, patronising, niggardly expression of goodwill, unfortunately in vogue at the present time with many. And above all, this is needed between types of religious expression coming from the study of mental phenomena--unfortunately, even now laying exclusive claim to the name of religion--and those expressions of religion whose heads, (as it were), are penetrating more into the secrets of heaven though their feet are clinging to the earth, (I mean), the so-called materialistic sciences.

To bring about this harmony, both will have to make concessions, sometimes very large, nay more, sometimes painful, but after all each will find itself (the) better for the sacrifice and more advanced in truth. And in the end, the knowledge which has its basis in changes in time, and that which is founded on changes in space both (is confined within the domain of time and space) will meet and become one where there is neither space nor time, (with that which is beyond them both), where the mind cannot reach nor the senses (and senses cannot reach)--the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- www.vivekananda.net edited by Frank Parlato Jr.

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