Originally Posted by
Swamy Prabhavananda
The preceding brief survey of the varying conceptions of God in the Samhitas quite naturally raise two questions. The first is this: Why is it that now one god, now another, is lifted to the loftiest position and celebrated as the supreme divinity? Professor Max Muller has observed this phenomenon, and named it henotheism, but has done little to fathom its mystery. Its true explanation is to be found in the hymns themselves; `and it is a grand explanation,' declares Swami Vivekananda, `one that has given the theme to all subsequent thought in India and one that will be the theme of the whole world of religions: Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti===>"that which exists is One: sages call it by various names".'
The subject is worth pausing with, for in the quoted words lies the secret not only of an aspect of the Vedic hymns but also—as Swami Vivekananda suggest—of an aspect of the religious life of India throughout her long history. Casual visitors to this ancient land carry away with them the impressions of an elaborate polytheism. True it is that India has always many gods—but in appearance only. In reality she has had but one god, though with prodigal inventiveness she has called him `by various names'. Indra, Varuna, Hiranyagarbha—Rama, Krsna, Siva: What does it matter? Whichever of these or of many others the Hindu chooses for his adoration, that one becomes for him God himself, in whom exists all things, including, for the time being, all other gods. It is because India has been so permeated with the spirit of Ekam sat vipra bahuda vedanti that she has known relatively little of religious fanaticism, of religious persecution, of religious wars. Characteristically she has sought the truth in every faith—even in faiths not her own.
But there was a second question: Why is it that in the Vedic hymns we find elementary ideas of God as well as the most advanced? To the Western scholar there is no mystery, for he is accustomed to think of all things in terms of evolution, as he conceives evolution, and in the simpler anthropomorphic notions he sees the first stages of growth which slowly ripens to abstraction. But not so the orthodox Hindu. What he sees in the graduated scale of Vedic conceptions is a beneficent correspondence to varied stages of religious attainment. Some men are but barbarians in spiritual things; others are seers and sages. The Vedas (and this, say the orthodox, was a clear purpose of the exalted rsis) minister to all according to their needs. Some they teach to fly; some they must first teach to walk. To those at a low stage they offer polytheism, even at times materialism; to those at a higher stage monotheism; and to those at the top of the scale a notion of God so utterly impersonal, so devoid of anything describable in human terms, as to be suited only to the greatest saints, and to these only in their most strenuous moments.
For it would appear, in general, that even the greatest of Hindu saints have found the conception of God an abstract reality too rarefied for constant use. Occasionally they rise to it, but not for long. Like more ordinary mortals they too have yearned for a notion of divinity close to their minds and hearts, something they could readily love, and meditate upon, and worship."
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