A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 1.6 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday 27, May 2025, 10:30
Books
Srimad Bhagavad Gita
A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 1.6.
Chapter 1: The Vedas
The Vedas and Their Classification
Swami Krishnananda.

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"The Concept of Law and Sacrifice in the Vedas":

The Rig-Veda gives two code words: satya and rita, signifying the spiritual law as such and the law in its working process in the cosmos. While satya is the principle of integration rooted in the Absolute, rita is its application and function as the rule and order operating in the universe. Sometimes rita is interpreted as the original principle of being and satya its manifestation. The world is sustained by a just and inexorable law which is the decree of God for the well-being of all. Conformity with this law tends to material and spiritual progress and advancement, leading to higher forms of integration in life, while its violation is punished with a series of transmigratory lives in the different planes of manifestation.  

In the Purusha Sukta we observe the concept of sacrifice carried to the degree of perfection where the whole universe is regarded as an act of sacrifice on the part of God. God becomes in the form of creation the field and opportunity for individual sacrifice. The universe is a sacrifice (yajna), and all actions, properly performed, in so far as they involve an element of self-abnegation for self-transcendence, are forms of sacrifice of one's individuality or whatever belongs to it as its appendage. The Supreme Being Himself is a transcendent sacrifice when viewed in the form of this manifestation, when the relative is construed as a self-alienation of the Divine Being. The essence of sacrifice is existence for others' sake, not necessarily in the form of social activity, but in a wider perspective of consciousness which gets engulfed gradually in a series of its higher reaches, pointing to a final absoluteness of being. This is the concept of supreme sacrifice in the Purusha Sukta.  

From the point of view of such lofty thoughts as embodied in the Purusha Sukta and the Rudra Adhyaya, the adoration and contemplation of God is possible in any place and at any time, for God is here, just before us, and He can be worshipped through anything in the universe. In this worship and contemplation, which is the highest sacrifice, God is the articles of worship, He is the worship, the worshipper and also the worshipped. His existence and manifestation mean one and the same thing. His being and activity constitute a single whole. Immortality and death, life and non-life are both His modes. The Supreme Being is here and now. He can be realised by this mighty act of universal self-sacrifice.

To the seers of the Vedas, life is a joy of sacrifice, and a daily visualisation of Divinity in all Nature.

Karma and Reincarnation:

The principles of rita and satya imply a strict adherence to law and rule in conformity with the aim and purpose of the processes of the universe. Any action which originates in a sense of personal individuality set in opposition to or incongruous with the universal order of rita and satya should obviously mean the work of a nemesis, as a natural reaction to such action, endeavouring to set right the balance of cosmic equilibrium which has been disturbed by it. This principle of the redounding of the effect of action upon the doer of it is the metaphysical, ethical and psychological regulative force called karma, which requires the doer of such action to pass through a series of experiential processes called metempsychosis or rebirth in other conditions and environments than that in which the action has been done. Thus it would be clear that the law of karma and reincarnation is a scientific law of the integrality of the cosmos. The Vedas accept the operation of this principle and recognise the fact that one's future life depends on the way one lives the present one. We shall have occasion to revert to this famous doctrine of karma and samsara in our studies of its further development.

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Next

The Vedas as Fountainhead of Development

Continued

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