Swami Vivekananda: Reason and Religion (England, 1896)

1.06 Swami Vivekananda: Reason and Religion (England, 1896) Introduction Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) was the most famous Hindu leader of the late nineteenth century and he did more than anybody at the time to make Hinduism a global religion. Born into a privileged Kayastha family of colonial Calcutta, he received an excellent education in the liberal arts with emphasis on Western philosophy and history of ideas. Vivekananda was able to mould a new form of Hinduism and present this to a global audience by drawing on his British-style college education, a grasp of classical Indian religious knowledge, and a strong spiritual impulse from the mystic Ramakrishna. The essay “Reason and Religion” is probably not among Swami Vivekananda’s best-known pieces of writing, but it is highly instructive if we want to under- stand some of the key ideas and forces that were shaping religion at the very end of the nineteenth century. If we look broadly at Vivekananda’s statements about the relationship between human reason, revealed religion and religious realisation (moksha) it is impossible not to note some ambivalence and perhaps some uncertainty. His famous predecessor Shankara (late eighth century) is regarded as the founder of the Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta claiming that the atman (i.e. the self or the soul) is ultimately identical with Brahman (the supreme totality, or God). However, Shankara relied on revealed truth (shruti) as the ultimate valid means of knowledge, the classic texts of Hinduism formed the basis for his understanding of Vedanta, and he saw reason as a necessary means for the correct interpretation of texts. Vivekananda, on the other hand, played down his reliance on the classical texts of Hinduism for the formulation of his own version of Advaita Vedanta. Perhaps the reason for this was that he was conscious of constructing a global and modern Hinduism in which ‘blind faith’ in texts would be problematic. After all, in Vivekananda’s times textual scholars at Western universities had undermined faith in religious texts by the application of new methods and approaches, often summed up by the label ‘Higher Criticism,’ and this had caused strong reactions from conservative Christians. Certainly, Vivekananda would often mention Hindu texts, but he could not plausibly claim that they were true in a radically different sense from the Bible or the Quran. That would © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/97890043�9003_009 78 1. Religion and the Order of Knowledge not rhyme with his historicist and comparative view of religions. In the place of revealed texts and religious faith the modern Hindu leader offered some- thing else as the bedrock for religious insight. He claimed that reason had to be transcended and make room for a supra-rational experience. Reason had a role to play to sort out bad arguments and interpret sense-perception, but in order to gain salvation by realising the oneness of atman and Brahman only individual transcendent consciousness would suffice. In Vivekananda’s world view, reason was one of three fundamental states of mind, the other two being instinct and transcendental consciousness. Instinct can develop into reason, and reason into transcendental consciousness, with the right kind of practice and awareness. According to Vivekananda, his sys- tem of Rajayoga was a science because it relied solely on observation. Whereas the physicist or chemist observed the external world and applied reason in building arguments and theories from observations, so the person engaged in Rajayoga was simply observing the world of the mind and making statements about inner realities by applying the same reason to his or her observations. In both cases, in the world of science and in the world of religion, reason was fundamental in making progress and reaching insight into the nature of reality.1 Vivekananda’s discussion of the place of reason in relation to religion points to a number of important characteristics of religion in the period. Firstly, the essay demonstrates the immense status and importance achieved by the sci- ences during the second half of the nineteenth century. Vivekananda’s ideas were to a large extent based on classical Hindu concepts, but he felt compelled to defend these ideas by reformulating them in scientific terms as the way towards direct perception of inner reality resulting in knowledge of the self (atman). His writings are scattered with references to the scientific method as simply one version of a general rational approach to getting knowledge, which religion, too, had to follow in order to be valid. Vivekananda wanted to use reason to destroy those religions, or those elements of religions, that cannot withstand its test. Religions and their claims should be subjected to scientific scrutiny and all the ideas and practices that are destroyed by such tests should be discarded, he claims in this essay. Vivekananda insisted that he did not see science as a threat to the Hindu world view because he believed that Western science was in fact encompassed by ancient Hindu philosophy. Modern scientific insights could be found in 1 Anantanand Rambachan, “The Place of Reason in the Quest for Moksha: Problems in Vivekananda’s Conceptualization of Jñānayoga,” Religious Studies 23 (1987): 277–288; Anantanand Rambachan, “Swāmī Vivekānanda’s Use of Science as an Analogy for the Attainment of mokṣa,” Philosophy East and West 40, 3 (1990): 331–342..

Load more