The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.93

c11.93

Not so the Hindu. Over this pigmy religion which is engaged only with the needs of the ponderable, perishable man, towers as a giant the grandiose conception, than which, in its way, no higher is possible, that the True in man is in fact the One True in all the Universe. There is one eternal truth: of this we ourselves are part. The distracting, misleading, adhesion, cemented by every sense, to a divided individual existence in a world of illusory phenomena, come no one knows whence, but none the less certainly false, requires time and patience to undo. The Hindu theory assumes four stages or *āçramas* (literally, "hermitages") in the life of man after his rebirth at the investiture. The first two stages, as we have seen, are disciplehood and householdership. Then come the two stages of Forest-dweller, or Hermit, and Wandering Ascetic. In the hermit stage he simply lives in the forest, and may yet keep up some connection with wife and children, and continue his sacred practices. But in the last stage all worldly interest is abandoned, every fetter of affection, desire, passion is sundered. There is no fixed abode, he lives as it happens, subsists as he may, indifferent to all but the realisation that he is the *brahma*. This realisation of itself means the destruction of nescience: with it the phantom world of sorrow and joy sinks out of sight. The soul knowing at last that it is *brahma*, namely truth, sunders the chain that holds it captive through transmigration to the world, namely illusion. This is the salvation of the Hindu, namely the perfect knowledge that the soul of man that dwells in him is the unpolluted, not to be polluted, serene, holy, eternal, blissful, divine self—the *ātman*, or *brahma*. The realisation of this truth, unhindered by any other desire, that is all that is needed; than it nothing else whatsoever can have anything more than temporary importance.