A LATTER DAY RESPONSE TO SWAMIJI'S 'PAPER ON HINDUISM' READ OUT BY HIM ON 19 SEPTEMBER, 1893 AT THE CHICAGO WORLD PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS ... 2

A LATTER DAY RESPONSE TO SWAMIJI'S 'PAPER ON HINDUISM' READ OUT BY HIM ON 19 SEPTEMBER, 1893 AT THE CHICAGO WORLD PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS ... 2

🕉 Very deep message. Polychromatic white light dispersing in a prism into its monochromatic components. Each observer sees it as bearing a different colour, depending on his location and line of observation. But it is still the same white light streaming through. The fracturing is in the prism owing to its structural character and high refractive index. But the observer is allowed only a partial view of the light source for he cannot in his finite physical frame be omnipresent to be able to simultaneously see all seven coloured components and resolve them by superimposition in his eye into the original white. At best he can get to the source to find out the essential character and colour of the light. He can then proceed to investigate the nature of the dispersing medium, the prism. Once he has made such experiential and investigative moves, he will have known the source truth in monochromatic essence and polychromatic possibility, and also the truth in transit through the intervening optical medium whose refraction makes for the multiplicity. Then his delusions will have been dispelled, his doubts resolved and with clarified vision and understanding he will rest content or be intent on furthering his knowledge about the subject. But his method of garnering facts and comprehending them will ever be rational, evidence-based and amenable to alteration subject to further discovery of contradicting data. This is the scientific method and it ought to apply in religion as well.

Most of the religions of the world including the two major ones, Christianity ✝️ and Islam ☪️, will flounder and fail this test miserably and will grope in foreign philosophy such as the Hindu philosophy or ancient Greek philosophy or even modern European philosophy to seek self-sustenance and support, but like floating straws in the sea, like flying leaves in a cyclone, like spinning sand in a desert storm, they will be blown off by the tidal wave of reason. Only the grand dharma traditions of Indian origin will be able to weather the storm and emerge triumphant in the laboratory of reason. Therein lies the truth of the Sanatan Dharma, therein lies the fearless exhortation of the Rishis to all of humanity to experiment in the laboratory of the mind the principles of the Vedic tradition and find out for themselves the truth or falsity of these.

Hinduism 🕉 stands not on the shifting sand dunes of faith but on the adamantine foundation of reason and realisation. It understands the irrational imperatives of Christianity ✝️ and Islam ☪️ and their doctrinaire impositions in the name of the Divine thereof, and it laughs it all off as so much childish gibberish, so much pretence in toxic truth-thrust and yet so much superficial froth covering the deeper, nobler, essential truths that lie beneath, obscured by obscurantist thinking. 

Hinduism 🕉 comprehends truth both in its relative aspects and in its absolute transcendence. So, it makes allowances for these flawed, fractional religions as paths for certain classes of men who may be temperamentally suited to observing them and gradually advancing to the absolute truth en route to reaching which they will reject the frothy surface and dive deeper to behold the Atman which is the endpoint of all spiritual evolution and is the prime promise of the Vedas to the advancing aspirant. Hinduism 🕉, thus, does not decry any religion but in the larger Vedantic light -- about which these Semitic cults are blissfully and so often painfully unaware of -- declares all religions as imperfect paths to the same end of spiritual perfection. 🕉 

Written by Sugata Bose