Now comes the question, can religion really accomplish anything? It can. It brings to man eternal life. It has made man what he is and will make of this human animal a god. That is what religion can do. Take religion from human society and what will remain? Nothing but a forest of brutes. Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity; wisdom (Jnânam) is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses, and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than his rational nature. So the highest wisdom must be this spiritual knowledge. With this knowledge will come bliss. All these things of this world are but the shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree of the real Knowledge and Bliss.
One question more: What is the goal? Nowadays it is asserted that man is infinitely progressing, forward and forward, and there is no goal of perfection to attain to. Ever approaching, never attaining, whatever that may mean and however wonderful it may be, it is absurd on the face of it. Is there any motion in a straight line? A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle, it returns to the starting point. You must end where you begin, and as you began in God, you must go back to God. What remains? Detail work. Through eternity you have to do the detail work.
Yet another question. Are we to discover new truths of religion as we go on? Yea and nay. In the first place we cannot know anything more of religion, it has all been known. In all the religions of the world you will find it claimed that there is a unity within us. Being one with divinity, there cannot be any further progress in that sense. Knowledge means finding this unity. I see you as men and women, and this is variety. It becomes scientific knowledge when I group you together and call you human beings. Take the science of chemistry, for instance. Chemists are seeking to resolve all known substances into their original elements and if possible to find the one element from which all these were derived. The time may come when they will find one element that is the source of all other elements. Reaching that, they can go no farther; the science of chemistry will have become perfect. So it is with the science of religion. If we can discover this perfect unity, there cannot be any farther progress.
The next question is can such a unity be found? In India the attempt has been made from the earliest times to reach a science of religion and philosophy, for the Hindus do not separate these as is customary in Western countries. We regard religion and philosophy as but two aspects of one thing which must equally be grounded in reason and scientific truth. In the lectures that are to follow I shall try to explain to you first the system of the Sânkhya philosophy, one of the most ancient in India, or in fact in the world. Its great exponent Kapila is the father of all Hindu psychology and the ancient system that he taught is still the foundation of all accepted systems of philosophy in India to-day,—which are known as the Dârsanas. They all adopt his psychology, however widely they differ in other respects.
Next I shall endeavor to show you how Vedânta, as the logical outcome of the Sânkhya, pushes its conclusions yet farther. While its cosmology agrees with that taught by Kapila, the Vedânta is not satisfied to end in dualism, but continues its search for the final unity which is alike the goal of science and religion. To make clear the manner in which the task is accomplished will be the effort of the later lectures in this course.
I
THE SÂNKHYA COSMOLOGY
Here are two words, the microcosm and the macrocosm, the internal and the external. We get truths from both of these by means of experience; there is internal experience and external experience. The truths gathered from internal experience are psychology, metaphysics and religion; from external experience the physical sciences. Now a perfect truth should be in harmony with experience in both these worlds. The microcosm must bear testimony to the macrocosm, and the macrocosm to the microcosm; physical truth must have its counterpart in the internal world, and the internal world must have its verification in the outside. Yet as a rule we find that many of these truths are constantly conflicting. At one period of the world’s history the “internals” became supreme, and they began to fight the “externals;” at the present time the “externals,” the physicists, have become supreme, and they have put down many claims of the psychologists and metaphysicians. So far as my little knowledge goes, I find that the really essential parts of psychology are in perfect accordance with the essential parts of modern physical knowledge.
It is not given to every individual to be great in every respect; it is not given to the same race, or nation, to be equally strong in the research of all the fields of knowledge. The modern European nations are very strong in their researches into external physical knowledge, but the ancient Europeans were weak in their researches into the internal part of man. On the other hand, the Orientals have not been very strong in their researches in the external physical world, but have excelled in their researches into the internal, and therefore we find that some of the Oriental theories are not in accordance with Occidental physics, neither is Occidental psychology in harmony with Oriental teachings on this subject. The Oriental physicists have been criticised by Occidental scientists. At the same time each rests on truth, and, as we stated before, real truth in any field of knowledge will not contradict itself, the truths internal are in harmony with the truths external.
We know the present theories of the Cosmos according to the modern astronomers and physicists, and at the same time we know how wofully they hurt the old school of theologians, and how every new scientific discovery that is made is as a bomb thrown into their house, and how they have attempted in every age to put down all these researches. In the first place, let us go over the psychological and scientific ideas of the Orientals as to cosmology and all that pertains to it, and you will find how wonderfully it is in accordance with all the latest discoveries of modern science, and when there is anything lacking you will find that it is on the side of modern science. We all use the word Nature, and the old Hindu philosophers called it by two different names, Prakriti, which is almost the same as the English word “nature,” and by the more scientific name, Avyaktam (“undifferentiated”), from which everything proceeds, out of which come atoms and molecules, matter and force, and mind and intellect. It is startling to find that the philosophers and metaphysicians of India ages ago stated that mind is but matter in a finer form, for what are our present materialists striving to do but to show that mind is as much a product of nature as the body? And so is thought; and we shall find by and by that the intellect also comes from the same nature which is called avyaktam, the undifferentiated.