The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.47

c11.47

Now it is time to remember once more that the conception of the One True Being—let us now call it Brahma—had risen to a considerable height, apparently long before the doctrine of transmigration had taken hold of the Hindu mind, and established in it the theory of despair of the world. Even aside from such a theory it is natural for the mind of man in every clime and time to evolve some great power that is behind the phenomena of the world, to establish to its own satisfaction some sort of perfect principle that is underneath this obviously imperfect world, and then to long for some kind of association with that power or principle. So teach us all higher religions and religious philosophies. Without doubt the Hindus did this before pessimism and independently of pessimism. But when pessimism began to taint the Hindu view of life, then the eternal all-force, the root of all, the One True and Perfect Thing offered the only logical escape terms the existence of evil. We Westerners have learned one way or another to endure this naughty world fairly well. But when it becomes too bad we are apt to remember that the refuge is with the Omnipotent Power. That is the silver lining to the cloud of human existence. The Hindu mind turns this the other way; the silvery sheen of Brahma has a cloud lining. The conception of this One True Being, out of which flow all visible things, might have been an anchor of strength and a head-spring of hope and joy for the Hindus. A palpably possible consequence of their thought is, that all men have the divine or Brahmic spark, that all are microcosms, flung off—for some reason—by that superb macrocosm, the Brahma. If so, then individual human existence must be based upon truth and wholesomeness, no less than the Universal Brahma. Not so did the Hindus proceed. They lavish upon the Brahma all imaginable attributes of perfection, and then proceed to apply the same standard to this world: of course they find it by contrast a very sorry affair. The world ceases to be a desirable home in which one may live, sustained perhaps by the hope of better things to come, because it is measured by the standard of Brahma and found wanting. When the Brahma is praised, that Brahma which is lifted above hunger and thirst, above grief and worry, above old age, decay, and death, the persistent personal application is, that this world of creatures is full of hunger, thirst, grief, worry, old age, decay, and death.