VIVEKANANDA---ANALYSIS AND INFERENCE ... 1

VIVEKANANDA---ANALYSIS AND INFERENCE ... 1

When Swamiji in his inaugural Chicago address said, "We believe not only in universal toleration but we accept all religions as true.", by 'truth' he must have meant relative truth with all its imperfections but tending to the perfect Absolute Truth in the final analysis. 

Elsewhere in his Complete Works there are references galore of his absolute repudiation of Islam and Christianity's historical intolerance towards other religions on doctrinal basis with especial emphasis on what the Islamic invaders and rulers, inspired by the violent injunctions of the Qur'an, did to the Hindus who, he pointed out, were only fit to be slaughtered if they refused to convert. 

So, simplifying Swamiji's affirmations on the Hindu's acceptance of the truth of all religions to mean that all religions are equally valid ways to God-realisation is puerile, flawed and untrue. 

Swamiji's works are replete with apparently contradictory but really coherent observations when viewed in totality with depth of understanding. Hence, to infer that Vivekananda viewed all religions as true in equal measure just because he had said that they all were true would be fallacious. 

Vivekananda held Advaita Vedānta to be the pinnacle of representative truth, that is, the representative of the transcendental Absolute Truth, and the nameless, formless, attributeless Brahman as the ultimate non-dual Truth. In his view Allah was the state of divine dual truth two stages beneath Brahman, the dual, the qualified non-dual and the non-dual being the three stages of divine perception in the ascending order of spiritual refinement. 

The dual and the qualified non-dual are relative truths while the non-dual is the Absolute Truth (Brahman/Ātman) which only the Hindus have discovered and which finds singular reference only in Hindu scriptures. Islam has no idea of this highest non-dual reality, Brahman, which alone is the Absolute and not the relative dual reality, Allah, which it in philosophical error takes to be the Absolute. 

Vivekananda needs depth of understanding and interpretation by profound philosophers and not casual commenting by ordinary minds presupposing their fitness to frame the message of the sage as per their political or organisational interests.

🕉 Hindu!

Written by Sugata Bose