1.#Opinion : Monday, 18 Sep 2023 05:30 3263// 1.# Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of India ( Bharatham ) - 22. Swami Krishnananda.///

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1.#Opinion : Monday, 18 Sep 2023 05:30  3263//

1.# Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of India ( Bharatham ) - 22. Swami Krishnananda.///

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"Upanishads , Bhagavad Gita & Sanathana Dharmam"

Chapter 8: India's Concept of Totality-5.

Post-22.

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If we read the Yoga Vasishtha, we will find that the style, the language and the method of writing is similar to the Valmiki Ramayana. Mostly, the thirty-two lettered anushtup chanda metre is used in the whole of the Ramayana, but every chapter ends with a little longer verse. Similar is the style of the Yoga Vasishtha. The whole thing is in thirty-two-lettered anushtup metre, but every chapter ends with another metre altogether; and the mellifluous movement, the sweetness, as it were, of a musical way of writing, we find both in the Ramayana of Valmiki, the story of Rama, and in the Yoga Vasishtha. Therefore, many people think the Yoga Vasishtha should also be included in the category of the epics. Thus, if all these aspects are taken into consideration, we have four epics: the Ramayana, the story of Rama; the Yoga Vasishtha, an appendix to it; the Mahabharata; and the Harivamsa. This is the large literature of Hinduism.

We will find, if we travel from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari, all people who are called Hindus follow the religion of the epics and the Puranas only. We will not find any Hindu anywhere who lives according to the Vedas and the Upanishads, or even the Bhagavadgita. These are all beyond them. They read the Bhagavadgita, they chant the Vedas and study the Upanishads, but in practical life the outlook of the religion of Hindus today is not of the type of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita. Everybody is a worshipper of some god or the other who is not mentioned in the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita. Our gods are epic gods only. We have Ganesha, Devi, Durga, Narayana, Vishnu, Surya, Kumara, etc., who do not find a place in the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita. We worship our own epic gods and Purana gods. Historians of religion may be interested in finding out how the religion of Hindus today has become an epic religion, a Purana religion, rather than a Veda religion or an Upanishad or a Bhagavadgita religion. Why it has become like that is something for scholars to investigate. Anyway, the fact stands as it is.

"Now we have a brief outline of the content of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Smritis, as I mentioned, and also the epics and the Puranas."

To recapitulate, the culture of India is based on a spiritual outlook of life. This spiritual outlook, on which we have been bestowing thought, is to be known in its proper spirit. What do we actually mean by 'a spiritual outlook of life'? Generally, all people in the world, learned or unlearned, have a wrong notion that to live a spiritual life is not to live according to the norms of the social and physical life of the world. One becomes a little funny, queer, when becoming a spiritual person. This is what people think. This is far from the fact. One does not become uncommon, queer or fantastic when one becomes a spiritual person. On the other hand, a spiritually-oriented person is an integrated individuality. A mighty superman-like individual is the spiritual person. The world and God are not to be segregated. The wrong notion that spirituality concerns some reality that is outside or beyond the world, and that what is called secularism is a matter-of-fact existence in the physical world, is a total misconstruing of the facts.

Spirituality is the way of living according to that structure which blends together the here and the hereafter, the secular and the transcendent, the visible and the invisible, matter and spirit, the inward and the outward, the here and the hereafter. The word 'integration' may perhaps bring out the true meaning of it. To be religious is not to be leaning oneself away from contact with things in the world; it is to be in the world as a spirit that pervades the whole cosmos. To be a human being, healthy and wise, is not to be concerned only with the soul inside and to cast out the body. The body and the soul have to be kept together in a state of union, in a blend, and in an integrated completeness. The health of a person is not merely in the soul or the body, but is the putting together of these two phases into a comprehensiveness so that one permeates the other. Spiritual life is, therefore, the permeation of a transcendent outlook of life which takes into consideration the transcendence or the superphysical reality of the cosmos, but at the same time takes the whole world as the footstool on which it stands. The world is like a footstool on which we are standing, and the legs are not unimportant. In the Cosmic Form of the Universal Reality described to us in the epics and the Puranas, the whole physical universe is pictured, portrayed, as the feet of the Virat Purusha. The higher realms are the thighs, the trunk, the neck, the head, etc. Hence, the relationship between the world and God is something like the relationship between the lower extremities of the body and the higher part. We cannot say that the lower is not at all necessary, and to be a spiritual person is only to concern oneself with the head.

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To be continued

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JAI HIND

JAI BHARATHAM

VANDHE MADHARAM

BHARAT MATHA KI JAI.

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