Vedanta

Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by moment, of our existence.

The first two Hebrew words in the Book of Psalms are: Ashre ha-ish—“Happy is the man;” then there follow the conditions to be fulfilled for a person to achieve true happiness. These two words set the tone of the entire book, for in effect they announce the two main characteristics that predominate in almost all the one-hundred and fifty psalms found in this book.

Another agent of transformation of ego-consciousness is the ideal. An ideal is a psychological phenomenon, which serves as a model of perfection and stimulates goal-oriented activity in the soul. Ideals are of two types, subjective and objective.

Abraham Maslow, a pioneer in humanistic psychology, has narrated a beautiful anecdote about a small American-Indian boy:

The removal of the distinction between the sacred and the secular does not at all mean the removal of the distinction between morality and immorality, between virtue and vice, between truth and falsehood. There is a universal moral law known as dharma governing both the sacred and secular aspects of human life. The compelling power of yajna itself is derived from this law, and any violation of it will destroy the sacrificial nature of life and will bring its own retribution sooner or later.

If we want to succeed in any enterprise we must give undivided attention to it. Undivided attention means an undivided life, the consecration of one’s whole life. The goal we aim at may be immediately attainable or it may take several years; in either case, as long as the goal remains unrealized we have to give our whole life to it.

“These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full,” Christ said as recorded in the Gospel of St. John. “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” The teachings of Christ are imbued with this feeling of joy and love for God and all humankind.

The expression “word-symbol” is a loose translation of the Sanskrit term “mantra,” a full understanding of which calls for the knowledge of quite a number of metaphysical and mystical concepts. In the present article I have preferred to treat the subject from a common-sense point of view, avoiding as far as possible philosophical subtleties.

We catch the Godhead much as we catch light. The very structures that enable us to experience both limit how much of each we can experience. Since we catch God with our human hearts and intellect and will, since we reach out to the Godhead because of our human need and desire, it is not surprising that what we catch—our visions of God—have both points of similarity and points of difference.

Years before Swami Vivekananda came to America for the Parliament of Religions, literate Americans had been made familiar with Indian thought by such writers as Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Among these the most thoroughgoing by far was Thoreau. He was a profound reader who went to sources and explored them carefully, not satisfied with extracts and quotations as Emerson often was, and not bluffing his way as Whitman so often did.