Kitabı oku: «The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul», sayfa 7

SECTION TWO
THE NEW AVATAR OF NATURAL SCIENCE

CHAPTER VIII
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO ANCIENT INDIA

It is more than thirty years since in Southern Europe, England, and America, a genuine Renaissance of Vedic literature, philosophy, and religion began to assume a popular form and to become accessible to the general reading public.

Scholars, like Sir William Jones, had for the past century been familiar with the ancient civilization and the Vedic literature and the study of Sanscrit had made some progress in the Universities.

The idea, however, that these antiquities had any vital interest to us, beyond curious myths and obsolete superstitions, had not been perceived, much less admitted.

The antiquity of man, and the Philosophy of Evolution, had opened new fields for thought, and necessitated a revision of all previous concepts of man and nature.

Old records and interpretations were everywhere revised, and the interpretations of the Mosaic records were challenged at every point.

Popular religions were up in arms and were compelled to adjust themselves to the new régime.

But even after this century of progress and enlightenment, it has scarcely yet dawned on the mind of theologians that the challenge of science was, after all, insignificant, compared with that which was to come, and for which modern science had paved the way.

The whole realm of theology, and the foundations of religion, were to undergo revision.

Facts incontestable were being gathered and proofs established beyond all possible denial, or controversy, that all modern theologies and religions were copied and adapted from Vedic and ante-Vedic sources, antedating our present era by more than two thousand years.

The superficial and devout churchman, whose faith is fortified on the one hand by superstition, and on the other at least borders on fanaticism, is apt to be resentful in the presence of these facts, and, falling back on the infallibility and plenary inspiration of the Bible, to declare that if his own superficial interpretations are questioned or denied, Religion will be done for and mankind left in utter darkness.

He does not perceive that the facts of nature and the essentials of religion are one thing, and man’s interpretation of them another thing entirely.

He does not perceive how these ignorant and superstitious interpretations of men have set at naught the real life of Jesus and the teachings of the Christ.

He does not realize how doctrine has usurped the place of duty, and dogmatism has hardened the soul of man.

One thing, however, is inevitable. Facts and evidence as to origin, analogies, and adaptation of the Christian Mysteries from ancient India, are widely known, and the time has come when these mysteries are being examined as to their intrinsic meaning and their bearing on the daily life of man and the progress of the human race.

The author of this little book has only attempted a bare outline of these great facts, and to put them in such shape that the reader may perceive their general bearing, and the sources whence they are derived.

The following extracts made almost at random, the quantity of evidence being so redundant, from Jacolliot’s “Bible in India,” a translation of which was made in this country as early as 1873, and Prof. Max Müller’s Lectures, “India, What Can It Teach Us?” printed here more than a quarter of a century ago, will give the reader the evidence and the assurance that these ancient sources of wisdom are scarcely yet known in outline to the Western World.

Jacolliot spent many years in India, studying its present civilization and its ancient lore, while Prof. Max Müller derived his knowledge largely from study of Sanscrit and the Vedanta.

“Soil of Ancient India, cradle of humanity, hail! Hail, venerable and efficient nurse, whom centuries of brutal invasion have not yet buried under the dust of oblivion! Hail, fatherland of faith, of love, of poetry, and of science. May we hail a revival of thy past in our Western future.

“I have dwelt ’midst the depths of your mysterious forests, seeking to comprehend the language of your lofty nature, and the evening airs that murmured ’midst the foliage of banyans and tamarinds whispered to my spirit these three magic words: Zeus, Jehovah, Brahma.

“I have inquired of Brahmins and priests under the porches of temples and ancient pagodas, and they have replied:

“‘To live is to think, and to think is to study God, who is all, and in all…

“‘To live is to learn, to learn is to examine and to fathom in all their perceptible forms the innumerable manifestations of celestial power.

“‘To live is to be useful; to live is to be just; and we learn to be useful and just in studying this book of the Vedas, which is the word of eternal wisdom, the principle of principles as revealed to our fathers.’” (“The Bible in India,” p. 15.)

Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, said: “God is not the principal of beings, but the principle of principles.”

This was the Hindoo concept of Para Brahm two thousand years before.

“In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life – it will be the solace of my death. [Schopenhauer, quoted by Max Müller.] … If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow – in some parts a very paradise on earth – I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind had most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant – I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life – again I should point to India.”

The reader should remember that this is not the opinion of an ignorant enthusiast, but the mature judgment of one of the most profound scholars and Sanscritists in Europe in his day – Prof. Max Müller.

“The study of Mythology has assumed an entirely new character, chiefly owing to the light that has been thrown on it by the ancient Vedic Mythology of India.

“Buddhism is now known to have been the principal source of our legends and parables.”

The story of the two women who claimed each to be the mother of the same child is found literally in the Kanjur, translated from the Buddhist Tripitake, and the “Judgment of Solomon” is only a copy of the older story.

“The history of all histories, and yet the mystery of all mysteries – take religion, and where can you study its true origin, its natural growth and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the refuge of Zoroastrianism.

“Take any of the burning questions of the day – popular education, higher education, parliamentary representation, codification of laws, finance, emigration, poor-law, and whether you have anything to teach and to try, or anything to observe and to learn, India will supply you with a laboratory such as exists nowhere else.

“And in the study of the history of the human mind, and the study of ourselves, of our true selves, India occupies a place second to no other country. Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.

“Sleeman tells us men (in India) adhere habitually and religiously to the truth, and ‘I have had before me hundreds of cases,’ he says, ‘in which a man’s property, liberty, and life have depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it.’ Could many an English judge say the same?” (Remarks by Prof. Müller.)

Prof. Müller quotes from an Arabian writer of the thirteenth century, “The Indians are innumerable, like grains of sand, free from all deceit and violence. They fear neither death nor life.”

And again, from Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, “You must know, Marco Polo says, that these Abralaman (Hindoos) are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth.”

“In the sixteenth century Abu Fazl, the minister of the Emperor Akbar, says in his ‘Ayin Akbari,’ ‘The Hindus are religious, affable, cheerful, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity, and their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battle.’”

(How badly these “poor heathen” were in need of the Jesuit missionary, and the British government and civilization!)

Prof. Müller quotes Warren Hastings regarding the Hindus in general, as follows, “They are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, than any people on the face of the earth – faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority.”

Bishop Heber said, “The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement, sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.”

Elphinstone said, “No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns.” (It might have been wiser to have employed English missionaries at home.)

Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. He writes, “If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing-skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality, and charity among each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people – then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe – and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo.

“Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in India, than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.

“There are thousands of Brahmans, even now, when so little inducement exists for Vedic studies, who know the whole of the Rig-Veda by heart, and can repeat it, and what applies to the Rig-Veda, applies to many other books.” (Ten thousand and seventeen hymns.)

Speaking of other and later literature, Prof. Müller says, “It is different with the ancient literature of India, the literature dominated by the Vedic and Buddhistic religions. That literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the Education OF THE HUMAN RACE, TO WHICH WE CAN FIND NO PARALLEL anywhere else. Whoever cares for the historical growth of our language, that is, of our thoughts; whoever cares for the intelligible development of religion and mythology, whoever cares for the first foundation of what in later times we call the sciences of astronomy, metronomy, grammar and etymology; whoever cares for the first intimations of philosophical thought; for the first attempts at regulating family life, village life, and state life, as founded on religion, ceremonial, tradition and contact (Samaya), must in future pay the same attention to the literature of the Vedic period as to the literature of Greece and Rome and Germany.

“I maintain then that for a study of man, or, if you like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with the Veda.

“The aristocracy of those who know —di color che sanno– or try to know, is open to all who are willing to enter, to all who have a feeling for the past; an interest in the genealogy of our thoughts, and a reverence for the ancestry of our intellect, who are, in fact, historians in the true sense of the word, i.e. inquirers into that which is past, but not lost.

“But if we mean by primitive the people who have been the first of the Aryan race to leave behind literary relics of their existence on earth, then I say the Vedic poets are primitive; the Vedic language is primitive; the Vedic religion is primitive, and, taken as a whole, more primitive than anything else that we are ever likely to recover in the whole history of our race…

“For this reason, because the religion of the Veda was so completely guarded from all strange infection, it is full of lessons which the student of religion could learn nowhere else.”

The foregoing quotations have been made from a little volume, “India: What Can It Teach Us?” published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1883, and sold at 25 cents, so that these statements of Prof. Max Müller have been accessible for more than a quarter of a century.

Since 1883, however, we have heard more and more of the “Wisdom of Old India.”

The whole Theosophical movement, degenerate as it may have become in some directions, and much as it has been misinterpreted, and ridiculed and exploited in others, was primarily a sincere and earnest attempt “to bring the Secret Doctrine of ancient India within reach of Western students,” to promote the brotherhood of man; the study of ancient philosophy and the psychical powers latent in man. There are thousands of intelligent and earnest students all over the world who have been uplifted, illuminated, and encouraged by these studies. When the true history of the present epoch comes to be written, there can be no shadow of doubt as to the recognition that will be accorded to H. P. Blavatsky and her aims, her life, and her work.

But such movements as are going on in the world, continually change their base, their methods, and their prospective. While the new awakening unmistakably goes back to old India, and compels a review and a readjustment of all our knowledge, and all our hopes and aims, another spirit has entered our intellectual realm, and compelled attention and recognition.

It has made for itself a habitation and a name, and nothing less than a cataclysm can altogether overthrow it.

It is the Genius of Scientific Criticism, Research, and Demonstration.

The “Mistakes of Moses” may indeed be paralleled by those of modern physical science, and these are being revealed side by side with those of theology and dogmatic assertion.

It has hardly yet dawned upon the mind of the physical scientist that the concept of the psychical and spiritual life and nature of man comprises, with the world of matter and form, a complete theorem of human life. He is often as incredulous, resentful, and contemptuous as the creed-bound religionist at the approach of more light, and the suggestion that all these essential problems were included and solved ages ago in ancient Aryavarta; and that “the few who know,” the ancient order of the Illuminati, now designated the “School of Natural Science,” has treasured this knowledge for ages.

The Vedas are not only ancient, but complicated and diffuse, and the busy life of the modern student will hardly suffice for the mastery of their wisdom, or the understanding of their secrets.

When, however, this ancient wisdom is condensed and epitomized, in perfect harmony with the concepts, the methods, and the demonstrations of Natural Science, the “Jewel in the Lotus,” – to use a Vedic synonym, – will appear in all its beauty and glory, to all who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, with determination to “honor every truth by use,” and loyal service.

In the foregoing quotations it may be seen what this real knowledge did for the people of ancient India in building character on constructive lines, promoting justice, equity, charity, and kindness among the common people, and the teeming millions of India, when our Saxon and Norman ancestors were still barbarians, and before the Jew or the Christian were even dreamed of.

In the following quotations from Jacolliot’s “Bible in India,” an outline will be given as to the source of some of our myths, pantheons, and religions.

These brief and imperfect outlines from two small and generally forgotten books, ought to satisfy any intelligent and unbiased student how completely the general thesis may be demonstrated from the ancient records themselves.

The books from which these quotations are made are like kindergarten primers for the use of beginners.

The present writer’s interest in and study of Theosophy and the Secret Doctrine were instigated by Schopenhauer’s “World as Will and Idea.” He found how largely Schopenhauer had drawn from the Upanishads (see previous quotation), and how little, after all, his “Philosophy” had utilized the ancient Wisdom. Hence he resolved to seek the ancient sources of knowledge, and has been trying his best to apprehend and utilize them, the hoarded wisdom of the ages.

He is not in the least anxious to gain recognition for, or to seek to rehabilitate old India, for its own sake. She speaks for herself, through the centuries of the past, and will continue to speak and to influence all coming time.

Jacolliot shows, however, a little irritation at this point over the suppression of facts, the brutality of marauding invaders, and the wholesale and brazen appropriation without the least credit to India’s store of wisdom.

The present writer is, however, exceedingly desirous that his fellow-students in the West should discover, recognize, and utilize this ancient mine of wisdom for themselves.

Its day of recognition is just now at the dawn, and the most pressing problems concerning the real nature, the spiritual possibilities, and the eternal destiny of the soul of man, are pressing and burning questions to-day.

That these problems do not wait solution by modern physical science and physio-psychology, but await only the understanding and acceptance of every earnest and intelligent student, is easily demonstrated. It challenges the world to-day, as it has not done before for many millenniums, and the issues are to be tried out to a scientific demonstration.

The preferences and prejudices of partisans will not be consulted, nor will they in the least interrupt the progress, nor interfere with the solution.

The question is no longer, “What think ye of Jesus?” but “What know ye of your own soul?” A new faith will supersede the old superstitions.

Faith, from the viewpoint of Natural Science, is “the soul’s intuitive conviction of that which both reason and conscience approve.” Blind faith, or belief, is ever the handmaid of superstition. The new faith is the harbinger, the promise, and the potency of knowledge, the anchor of the soul, and the armor of righteousness.

This is indeed the language of confidence, and it should be put to the test of science and experience.

The scornful and the contemptuous are not even invited! They are left alone with their Idols.

Coming now more directly to the splendid work of Jacolliot, one thing I think ought to be apparent to every honest and intelligent reader of “The Bible in India,” and that is, that its author is in no sense a partisan of Hinduism, but a searcher and witness for the simple Truth as he finds and apprehends it.

He puts aside mystery, miracle, and Divine Revelation, as dispassionately in the Vedic, Brahmanical, and Buddhistic cults, as in the Mosaic and Christian. Belief in God, and reverence for Truth in the light of reason and conscience, shine from every page of his work.

To flippantly call him an “atheist,” or a “destroyer of holy things,” as though that were in any sense an answer to his thesis, and which formerly was the rule, and may even now be attempted in certain quarters, will simply brand the bigot as by no means intelligent – if indeed honest – who attempts it. The majority of such sectarians have grown wise or prudent enough to ignore all such issues.

There has been a great change in public sentiment since Jacolliot went to India as an earnest student of these subjects, and in the nearly forty years since he wrote this book.

The saying that “Truth passes through three phases before being accepted,” specially applies here. First, people say, “It is not true.” Second, “It contradicts Scripture,” and when it at last is triumphant, that “Everybody knew it before.”

The truths of which Jacolliot writes have already reached at least the beginning of the third stage. Of course, “Everybody” here means those who read, and think, and dare to use conscience and reason.

In referring to a religious debate between a missionary and a Brahman, and the universal interest manifested among all classes as to the outcome of the encounter, “hooting the vanquished in either case with strict impartiality,” Jacolliot adds, “We shall be less surprised at this when it is known that there is not a Hindoo, whatever his rank or caste, who does not know the principles of the Holy Scripture, that is, the Vedas, and who does not perfectly know how to read and write.”

Three hundred and forty millions of people, thousands of them pariahs and outcasts, sharing refuse with the dogs, with no rights that any one else is bound to respect, bowing their faces in the dust when a Brahman passes ten paces away – and yet everyone can read and write!

Max Müller said he had had in his study at Oxford a young Hindoo who could repeat the whole of the Mahabharata without missing a word or an inflection from beginning to end.

These are some of the remnants in the decline of old India after thousands of years of Brahman rule and slavish domination of the people to preserve their own exclusive caste and exploitation. Western people have yet to learn the inevitable tendency, and the invariable rule of exploitation of the people, by a dominant priesthood, and the poverty and degradation of the masses that always results. It has never once failed in this result in three thousand years.

The whole of Southern Europe is already awakening to a realization of this result to-day. It is accomplished in the name of “Religion” by those who call themselves “Viceregents of God,” and who arrogantly trample on the rights of conscience, and the freedom of man.

Brahmanism first set the example as originators of this slavish abomination.

The studies and investigations of Jacolliot in India, go back to the Vedic or pre-Brahmanic age; then to the rise, development, and slow decline of Brahmanism; then the epoch of Christna; the influence of Buddha, and his being driven out of India by the powerful Brahmans; and finally, to the present poverty and degradation of the millions through foreign invasion and domination.

The ruling Brahmans had neither thought nor desire for Constructive Nationality. In their pride and lust for power and gold, even in their just pride over their inheritance from Vedic ancestors, and wisdom, Patriotism was unknown to them. Invaders contended with them in robbing and enslaving the people.

The people who despised and hated the foreign invader dare not, even yet, to rise against their real despoilers – the Brahmans – or defy or break their power.

It is the Vedic literature, and the earliest, or pre-Brahmanic time that Jacolliot lauds so highly, and in which he finds and demonstrates, the existence of the sources of all human knowledge.

It will be ignorant folly, therefore, for the bigot and the sectarian to attempt to answer or oppose him, by referring to the condition of the people of India as it is to-day.

Jacolliot simply shows the causes that have led to the present degradation.

It is priestcraft, despite the Vedic wisdom, and the missions and teaching of Christna and Buddha.

All this Jacolliot demonstrates beyond all controversy.

The bulk of his work consists in demonstrating the source of Greek and Roman Mythology, Language, Law, Philosophy, etc., and equally of every Jewish and Christian doctrine and tradition.

Jacolliot shows that as the French code is copied or adapted from the Justinian, so equally the Justinian was derived from that of Manu, many centuries previously. And what is true of Law is equally true of philosophy, theology, morals, and the principles of science, art, architecture, and all the rest.

The Hindoos were demoralized by the priests, but the moral degradation extended even to them, and the arms they employed were turned against themselves.

“The first result of the baneful domination of priests in India was the abasement and moral degradation of woman, so respected and honored during the Vedic period.

“If you would reign over the persons of slaves, over brutalized intelligence, the history of these infamous epochs presents a means of unequaled simplicity. Degrade and demoralize the woman, and you will soon have made of man a debased creature, without energy to struggle against the darkest despotisms; for, according to the fine expression of the Vedas, ‘the woman is the soul of humanity.’”

As did the Brahman priesthood, when through greed and ambition they forsook the ancient wisdom, so do the priesthood of Rome, with their celibacy added to the abominations and opportunities of the confessional.

Search the records of all time, and the traditions and customs of every people, and you will find nowhere else such recognition and reverence paid to woman as in the early Vedic days.

“Let it be well understood,” says Jacolliot, “that it was but sacerdotal influence and Brahminical decay that, in changing the primitive condition of the East, reduced woman to a state of subordination which has not yet disappeared from our social system.

“Let us read these maxims taken at hazard from the sacred books of India.” (I quote only a few.) “Man is strength – woman is beauty; he is the reason that governs, but she is the wisdom that moderates; the one cannot exist without the other, and hence the Lord created them two, for the one purpose.

“He who despises woman, despises his mother.

“Who is cursed by a woman, is cursed by God.

“The tears of woman call down the fire of heaven on those who make them flow.

“The songs of women are sweet in the ears of the Lord; men should not, if they wish to be heard, sing the praise of God without women.

“Women should be protected with tenderness, and gratified with gifts, by all who wish for length of days.

“It was at the prayer of a woman that the Creator pardoned man; cursed be he who forgets it.” (See the Vedic “Garden of Eden.”)

Moses, trained only in the decay of the old religion by the degenerate priests of Egypt, while drawing his legend of creation from the ancient Vedic source, reverses all this and places the blame of the “Fall” on woman, and the women of the Bible are more often concubines and prostitutes than Love’s pure evangels as in the ancient days. Jacolliot proves this from many citations, as witness also the following: (Numbers, Chapter XXI.)

“And Moses was enraged against the chief officers of the army, against the tribunes, and the centurions who returned from battle.

“And he said unto them, Why have you saved the women and the children?

“Slay therefore all the males amongst the children, and the women who have been married.

“But reserve for yourselves all the young girls who are still virgins.”

Moses spoke “in the name of God,” as does his Holiness at Rome to-day. Comment is hardly necessary. A few more quotations from the Vedas:

“A virtuous woman needs no purification, for she is never defiled, even by contact with impurity.

“Women should be shielded by fostering solicitude by their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and the brothers of their husbands, if they hope for great prosperity.

“When women are honored, the divinities are content, but where they are not honored, all undertakings fail.”

The sacerdotal caste in Egypt followed the inspiration of the Brahmans, and took care to make no change in that situation.

And Moses followed the example of the priests of Egypt, where woman was a slave or a prostitute in the temples as out.

The degeneracy of a people, the decay of religion, and the degradation of woman are inseparable, and it is so-called “religion” that institutes the change, and sets the pace, “down the steep descent.”

The Brahmans “forgot God” and instituted the worship of saints and holy men, and mythological characters, just as Rome does to-day. The women of America to-day by a consensus of public opinion should make auricular confession disreputable.

Excommunication, which is such a power in the hands of Rome, is merely a subterfuge and substitute for the degradation of “outcasts,” and pariahs, instituted by the Brahman priests to terrify the disobedient and retain their power.

If the reader cares to know the danger and the degradation to woman fostered and protected through the Confessional by the Celibate Roman priesthood, he should read “The History of Auricular Confession,” by De Lasteyrie, translated into English and printed in London in 1848. Now and then a Pope or a council undertook to institute reform, but found, as in Spain, prostitution of women by priests through the confessional so widespread and universal that they more often gave up the attempt through fear of scandal and contempt for the Church itself.

Lecky, in his “History of European Morals,” records the case of “the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, who in 1171 was found on investigation to have seventeen illegitimate children in a single village; or, an abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, who in 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines; or Henry III, Bishop of Liège, who was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children.” (History of European Morals. P. 350.)