The Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India
by Ramacharaka (Yogi)
- Login or register to forward title to your Kindle or delivery email
- download the converted book to your desktop.
- Enter rr2.mobi/bC0 in your Kindle browser to download
- Click on cover to see Google Books preview
- There is a used print copy of this title at alibris.com
Excerpt:
Then again, to the Hindu mind, a mortal thing can never become immortal by any means. An immortal thing must always have been immortal, or else it never can become so. And therefore everything that is born must die sometime—and everything that dies has been born sometime. To him Eternity must exist on both sides of the Now, in fact the Now is but a point in Eternity. Thus the Hindu is unable to accept the teachings of immortality for the soul, unless previous immortality be conceded to it. He cannot conceive of any power "creating" a soul from nothing, and then bestowing immortality upon it for eternity. And while the Western philosopher, likewise, is unable to think of "aught coming from naught," the subject presents no difficulty whatever to the Western theologian who readily conceives the thing being done by Divine fiat.
And, so you see how little the missionary writer is apt to grasp the fundamental Hindu conceptions, or point of view—his training and life-work prevents it. And what is true of the missionary is also true of the average Western investigator of the Eastern philosophies and religions. As the Hindus say, he who would grasp the Inner Teaching of the Hindu Philosophy must have an "Hindu Soul," no matter what may be his race, or country. There are many Western people who have these "Hindu Souls," as the increasing number of Western people who are interested in, and who intelligently and sympathetically understand the Hindu Teachings, may testify to. The Hindus, when they find such, explain it upon the theory of Reincarnation, saying "Once a Hindu, always a Hindu," no matter in what race the Hindu Soul may incarnate—the concentrated force of the ancient teachings are indelibly impressed upon the soul, and give it a tendency toward the Hindu thought in future lives. In fact, the Hindus hold that the souls of the ancient Hindu teachers, or rather of certain of them, are now incarnating in the West to lead the newer races toward a conception of the Truth, and their first disciples are the reincarnated Hindu souls abiding in the Western lands.
There is another difficulty attending the attempts of the Western writer who wishes to grasp the true meaning of the Hindu Philosophies, but who has failed to catch the spirit of the Hindu thought. We allude to the Inner Teachings which are to be found in all of the Oriental thought. The Oriental mind works upon entirely different psychological lines from the mind of the Western man. In the Western lands the impulse is to publish and proclaim every detail of the thought on any subject, sometimes in advance of its actual acceptance by the leading minds working along the lines of the particular subject. But in the Orient the tendency is precisely the opposite, and the sage is apt to reserve for himself and his close circle of personal students and followers the cream of the idea, deeming it too important to be spread broadcast to the unthinking and unappreciative public. Moreover, in the West the philosophy of a man is regarded as a purely intellectual matter, and he is not expected to live up to the philosophy that he has enunciated—while in the East the philosopher takes his teachings very much in earnest, and so does his public, and he is expected to live out his teachings in his everyday life or else be considered a hypocrite. This being the case, the Oriental holds back his Inner Teachings for himself, until he is able to live out and manifest them in his life. And what is true of the individual is true of the great body of thinkers, who instinctively reserve for the few the Inner Teachings of their philosophies, deeming it almost a sacrilege to divulge the inner truths to anyone who has not proven his worthiness and right motives.
O
Moreover there is always the great body of the Inner Teachings of the Hindu Philosophies which are tacitly accepted and recognized by the students of the philosophies, but which are not openly taught. These basic truths are deeply impressed upon the Hindu consciousness, and are absorbed almost with their mother's milk. Consequently, the English investigator, finding no clear and detailed statement of these fundamental truths mentioned in the books, is apt to ignore them, and consequently is unable to understand the true meaning of certain secondary truths and ideas based upon the fundamental conceptions. This is apparent to anyone who has grasped the inner meaning of the Hindu philosophies, and who is able to see the common basis for the apparently contradictory theories and opposing schools, when he reads the essays and books written by Westerners who treat the different schools as diametrically opposed to each other and having no common basis of agreement. The truth is that all the various Hindu philosophies and religions are but various off-shoots
from a common trunk and root. If one discovers this root-thought, he is then able to follow out the subtle differences of interpretation and doctrine, and to reconcile their differences, whereas to the Western man who fails to perceive the common trunk and root the whole system of Hindu Philosophy is a tangled mass of contradictions, lacking relationship and harmony. In these lessons we hope to be able to so present the subject that the student may be able to see the common trunk and root, and then to follow out the diverging branches to the end, from the point of apparent separation; or on the other hand, to follow a line of thought back from its extreme point to the point where it diverges from the common trunk.
If the above statements regarding the difficulty of a correct understanding and interpretation of the Hindu Philosophies be true, what must be said of an attempt of the Western mind to understand and interpret the Hindu Religious systems, in all of their branches, denominations and division down to the finest hair-splitting degree. To the average Western mind the subject of the Hindu Religions is one of extreme perplexity and confusion, seemingly based upon an unstable foundation, and lacking coherence or any reasonable common basis or foundation. The Western mind sees and hears on one hand the highest spiritual teachings, and the most refined and subtle almost a form of devil worship and fetishism. He is justified in asking whether there can be any common root and origin for these opposing conceptions and practices. It is no wonder that the Western world, hearing some of the reports of the missionaries and travellers, and then reading the high doctrines of the Vedas and Upanishads, fails to understand, and gives up the matter with a shake of the head and the thought that India must be a very nightmare of theological, religious and philosophical vagaries and conceptions. And, when to this he adds the reports of the "Wonder Workings" or "Magic" of some of the Hindu fakirs or magicians, it is still more perplexed; the difficulty not growing less when he hears the Hindu teachers declaring that these "miracles" and "wonder-workings" are not performed by high spiritual people, or by spiritual methods, but that on the contrary they are the result of methods along the lines of the "psychic," understandable by everyone who cares to investigate the subject, and often performed by men most unspiritual and lacking morality or religious merit and often ignorant of even the rudiments of the higher philosophies. All this is most confusing to the Western mind, and we hope to be able to throw some light on the dark corners of this subject, also.
