Gods, God, Unity, Unit

“India hurtles from the bicameral Veda into the ultra-subjective Upanishads, neither of which are as authentic to their times…While the Old Testament, even as it is hedged with great historical problems of accuracy, still remains the richest source for our knowledge of what the transition period was like. It is essentially the story of the loss of the bicameral mind, the slow retreat into silence of the remaining elohim, the confusion and tragic violence which ensue, and the search for them again in vain among its prophets until a substitute is found in right action.”

“Groups of bicameral men certainly persisted until the downfall of the Judean monarchy, but whether in association with other tribes or with any organization to their hallucinated voices in the form of gods, we don’t know…What happened to them? From time to time, they were hunted down and exterminated like unwanted animals. Such a massacre in the ninth century BC seems to be referred to in I Kings 18:4, where out of some unknown, much larger number, Obadiah took a hundred nabiim and hid them in caves, and brought them bread and water until the massacre was over. Another such massacre is organized by Elijah a few years later (I Kings 18:40).”

“We notice that the main object of the ceremony, namely, the worship of the gods, is lost sight of. Solemn, pompous performance, garnished with lip service, now occupies the stage. The performance is supposed to have a magic or mystic power of its own, so that every detail of it is all-important. Mechanically, by its own intrinsic power, it regulates the relation of man to the divine powers.”

“…During Vedic days while they lasted, Gods were a living presence. The worshippers established a sense of deep intimacy, trust and affinity with them. Everything around was astir with divinity, instinct with life. The Fire was no ordinary fire, just to cook one’s food and warm one’s cold nights. He was a messenger between the worshipper and his Gods…The Earth was not just sand, clod and mud. She was a veritable Mother on whose breast we all fed. She was a psychic Reality…But this kind of approach is possible only when man is in a state of innocence as it seems he was during the ancient Vedic days.…The Gods are still in their handiwork and have not withdrawn…But something snaps and that stage passes away…Vedic Gods suffer deflation. And strangely enough, it is first at the hands of the Upanishadic sages through the teachings of brahmavada and āatmavada. “

“But in reality it was not real deflation. Rather it was an attempt to bring out the unity of spiritual life which in the Vedas was being expressed in a different way but the sense of which was getting lost…The old Vedic approach was possible so long as the soul did not lose its primeval innocence, its childlike quality, its intuitive way of feeling and living the world. But when the soul put on another attribute, when the intuitive heart receded and the thinking mind came to the fore, the old approach was bound to lose its effectiveness.

“…Upanishadic atmavada was an attempt to recover the old sense of intimacy with Gods but under new conditions when they had withdrawn from before the eyes of man behind a veil…Later on, Yoga came. It was an attempt to discover methods and processes by which to enter the depths of the heart where Gods had retired under increasingly more difficult conditions. In the Mahabharata we have a great, inner balance between all these forces. All aspects are equally and fully stressed and brought out. We have here the Vedic intimacy with Gods; we have the highest form of atmavada without Gods being interiorized; we have brahmavada with Gods retaining their fullest status.

“When I became king, there was among the provinces (a land where there was) confusion. Then Ahura Mazda brought me aid: by the favour of Ahura Mazda I smote that land and put it down in its place. And among the countries there was (one) where previously the daevas were worshipped. Then by the favour of Ahura Mazda I destroyed that temple of the daevas and proclaimed: ‘The daevas shall not be revered.’ Where the daevas were previously revered, I piously worshipped Ahura Mazda and the Arta.”

“As the doctrine of Christ’s bodily resurrection establishes the initial framework for clerical authority, so the doctrine of the ‘one God’ confirms, for orthodox Christians, the emerging institution of the ‘one bishop’ as monarch (‘sole ruler’) of the church.”

“Our age-old tradition is samanvaya or samavaya…That is the unique glory of India, Hinduism, and of the Hindu spirit and attitude, the pulse of its mother-heart, with an impressive continuity of nearly 5,000 years. But, alas, this is not only not understood or appreciated by other religions, but even considered as a weakness to be exploited! The welcome that the Hindus gave to the Jews, who came to settle in Kerala when their temple in Jerusalem was shattered by Roman tyranny in 70 AD, is well known; so also the welcome given to Zoroastrians, or the Parsis from Iran, who had a glorious history and civilization for over 1,000 years, and who came as refugees in the eighth century AD when their home country was conquered by aggressive Arab Muslim armies and their religion destroyed and people massacred.”