Condensed and retold

“The Nationalistic and Religious Lectures of Swami Vivekananda” is a somewhat problematic book, since the lectures have been “condensed and retold” by Swami Tapasyananda, a leading member of the Ramakrishna Mission (Vivekananda´s ministry). We are never told exactly what this means. Condensed, how? What does “retold” even mean? Tapasyananda wasn´t a contemporary of Vivekananda. The book seems to be a teaser trailer to Vivekananda´s Collected Works – let´s hope they are unabridged! With the risk of sounding disrespectful, I have to say that these lectures (at least as retold) are also incredibly boring. But then, Vivekananda wasn´t a crazy saint in contrast to his peculiar master Sri Ramakrishna.

Vivekananda (1863-1902) became famous after giving a highly acclaimed speech at the Chicago World Parliament of Religions in 1893. In it, he painted Hinduism as a tolerant religion able to embrace or encompass all the others. Vivekananda was one of the first Hindu gurus who disseminated his message in the West, but there are also suspicions that his message really *was* Occidental in character, Vivekananda essentially being a liberal Protestant in Hindu garb, whose esoteric practice was a highly revised version of Yoga. For more on this, see “A History of Modern Yoga” by Elizabeth de Michelis.

Be that as it may, Vivekananda was a reformer exoterically, too. In his lectures, he makes a distinction between the ritual Vedic scriptures, which he regards as having fallen into abeyance, and the Upanishads, which are still normative. All other Hindu scriptures, such as the Puranas, must be interpreted according to the Vedas, which (of course) means mostly according to the Upanishads. Apart from the Upanishads, with their mystical and pantheistic message far removed from caste and purity laws, Vivekananda really only recognizes the Bhagavad-Gita. It is this core Hinduism, to coin a term, which is the religion Vivekananda wants India to adopt. Somebody might consider it a bowdlerized version. While calling for modernization and attacking really existing Hinduism as “a kitchen religion” (obsessed with purity laws), Vivekananda fears complete secularization. It would destroy India, since India´s only raison d´être is its unique form of spirituality. He seems to be calling for a new India based on tolerant reform Hinduism. Caste privileges are also attacked, Vivekananda saying that only people who actually live like ascetic and learned priests are true Brahmins. Presumably, most “Brahmins” in Bharata have other pastimes…

Vivekananda´s main theological selling point is the tolerance or pluralism of his reform Hinduism, with its “scientific” nature perhaps being second. Since everything is Brahman (the impersonal world-spirit), all religions are in some sense “true”, their gods and holy men all being manifestations of this Brahman. God reveals himself according to the culture and spiritual development of each nation. At the highest level of spiritual accomplishment, however, Advaita Vedanta (pantheist monism) is true. All other systems are lower stepping stones to this absolute truth. Vivekananda tries to harmonize the two main strands within Hinduism: worship of a personal god and the mystical quest for Brahman. He also attempts a harmonization of the different “yogas”, such as karma-yoga, jnana-yoga and bhakti-yoga. In this, he is of course harking back to the Bhagavad-Gita and also to his master Ramakrishna (for more on this, see my review of “Sri Ramakrishna: Life and Teachings”, also by Swami Tapasyananda).

Vivekananda at no point attacks “idolatry”, rather defending it from its Christian and secular detractors, simply giving it a more philosophically sophisticated justification. Although Brahman alone is real, humans can´t approach the Divine in this way. Humans need personified deities. Even better are the avatars, actual living persons who perfectly reflect the Divine in all their actions and words. Indeed, most humans can´t move closer to Brahman without first worshipping an earthly master. Jesus, Buddha and Ramakrishna are examples of such. Here, the reformer sounds distinctly old fashioned! He also has a problem with Buddhism, perhaps because it (or its modernized versions) are so similar to his own brand of Advaita. At the same time, he is close to what I presume is the orthodox Hindu and Indian nationalist take on Buddhism: that it was a heresy adopted by foreign barbarian tribes invading and weakening India.

I get the impression that Vivekananda sometimes indulges in a kind of “reverse Orientalism”. He depicts the Hindus as gentle, peaceful, long suffering and immensely spiritual – apparently a common stereotype at the time (presumably a colonialist one). Rather than seeing this as proof of the effete nature of Hindus, Vivekananda turns it into something positive. It means that the new India won´t become an aggressive great power, just as India never invaded anyone else in the past. Today, these words – perhaps directed at Western or Westernized audiences – sound idealist in the extreme, and they probably sounded strange even at the time they were uttered, except maybe for hopeless dreamers in California or Chicago…

As for science, Vivekananda´s strategy is to simply bypass the breakthroughs of 19^th century science, which strongly suggested that religion was simply wrong, Darwinian evolution being a case in point. Christian missionaries often argued that the historical character of their religion proved it was true, at which Vivekananda shrewdly responded that the non-historical character of his religion proved *it* true. Christianity is dependent on Jesus and the Bible actually being historically accurate, and that veracity was challenged by modern Western science. Advaita Vedanta by contrast isn´t dependent on the Vedas or the Puranas being historically accurate, since Advaita deals with phenomena transcending history, such as the relationship between the Atman (the spirit in each human) and Brahman (the world-spirit). This relationship can be proven by yogic practice here and now. Vivekananda therefore believed – quite rightly – that only an ahistorical religion would be able to withstand the challenges of secularism and scientism. As a complete side point, I noticed that the swami doesn´t believe in the Indo-European invasions. Presumably, this is a common position not just among Hindutva nationalists, but among Indians in general. They are wrong of course: get over it, the Urheimat was a kurgan north of the Black Sea…

It´s intriguing to reflect on the heritage of Vivekananda. Today, even Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Modi pretends to worship images of Vivekananda, yet something tells me Modi doesn´t see Islam or Christianity as legitimate avatars of the Dharma. Meanwhile, Vivekananda´s disciples at YouTube claim that he was Shiva! In a weird way, they therefore proved Swami´s point: yes, it seems most humans really do need to genuflect in front of an anthropomorphic savior figure. If that drives them closer to Brahman is perhaps another matter entirely…