Lord Top Level Hindu Philosophy: Advaita Vedanta or Non- Dualism

Continue from vishishtadvaita..
The last are non-dualists. They also raise the question that God must be both the material and efficient cause of this universe. As such, God has become the whole of the universe and there is no going against it.
And when these people ( vishishtadvaita) say that God is the soul and the universe is the body, and the body is changing but God is changeless, the Non-Dualists say all this is nonsense.
In that case what is the use of calling God the material cause of this universe? The material cause is the cause become effect; the effect is nothing but the cause in another form. Wherever you see an effect it is the cause reproduced. If the universe is the effect and God the cause, it must be the reproduction of God. If you say that the universe is the body of God, and that the body becomes contracted and fine and become the cause, and out of that the universe is evolved, the non dualists say that it is God himself who has become this universe.
Now comes a very fine question, if this God has become this universe, you and all things are God. Certainly, this book is God, everything is God. My body is God, and my mind is God, and my soul is God. Then why are there so many Jivas? Has God become divided into millions of Jivas? Does that one God turn into millions of Jivas? Then how did it become so? How can that infinite power and substance, the one being of this universe divided? It is impossible to divide infinity. How can that pure being become this universe? If he has become the universe he is changeful; and if he is changeful he is part of nature, and whatever is nature, and changeful, is born and dies, if our God is changeful, He must die some day. Take note of that. Again how much of God has become this universe? If you say X (the unknown algebraical quantity), then God is God minus X now, and therefore, not the same God as before this creation, because so much has become this universe.
So the non Dualists say, “This universe does not exist at all; it is all illusion. The whole of this universe, these Devas, angels and other beings born and dying, all this infinite number of souls are coming up and going down are all dreams.” There is no Jiva at all. How can there be many? It is the one infinity. As the one sun reflected on various sheets of water appears to be many, and millions of globules of water reflect as many millions of sun, and in each Globule will be a perfect image of sun, yet there is only one sun, so are all these Jivas but reflections in different minds. These different minds are like so many different globules reflecting this one being. God is being reflected in all these different Jivas. But a dream cannot be without a reality without a reality, and that reality is that one infinite existence. You as body, mind, or soul are a dream, what you really are, is existence-knowledge-bliss. You are the God of this universe. You are creating the whole universe and drawing it in. thus says the Advaitist. So all these births and rebirths, coming and going, are the figments of Maya. You are infinite. Where can you go? The sun, the moon, and the whole universe are but drops in your transcendent nature.
How can you be born or die? I never was born. I never had father or mother, friends or foes, for I am Existence, knowledge, Bliss Absolute. I am He, I am He. So, what is the goal, according to the Philosophy? That those who receive this knowledge are one with the universe. For them, all heavens even Brahmaloka are destroyed, the whole dream vanishes, and they find themselves the eternal God of the universe. They attain their real individuality with its infinite knowledge and bliss and become free. Pleasures in little things cease. We are finding pleasure in this little body, in this little individuality. How much greater the pleasure when this whole universe is my body!! If there is pleasure in one body, how much more when all bodies are mine! Then is freedom attained. And this is called Advaita, the non Dualistic Vedanta Philosophy.
These are the three steps which Vedanta philosophy has taken, and we cannot go further, because we cannot go beyond unity. When a science reaches a unity it cannot by any manner of means go any further. You cannot go beyond this idea of Absolute.
All people cannot take up this Advaita philosophy; it is hard. First of all it is very hard to understand it intellectually. It requires the sharpest of intellects, a bold understanding. Secondly it does not suit the vast majority of people. So there are these three steps. Begin with the first one. Then by thinking of that and understanding it, the second will open itself. Just as a race advances, so individuals have to advance. The steps which human race has taken to reach the highest pinnacles of religious thought, every individual will have to take. Only, while the human race took millions of years to reach from one step to another, individuals may live the whole life of the human race in a much shorter duration. But each one of us will have to go through these steps. Those of you who are non dualists, look back to the period of your lives when you were strong dualists. As soon as you think you are a body and a mind, you will have to take the whole of this dream. If you take one portion, you must take the whole. The man who says, here is the world, and there is no God (personal), is a fool; because if there is a world, there will have to be a cause, and that is what is called God. You cannot have an effect without knowing that there is a cause. God will vanishes when this world vanishes; then yoy will become God(Absolute) and this world will be no longer for you. So long as the dream that you are a body exist, you are bound to see yourself as being born and dying; but as soon as that dream vanishes, so will the dream vanishes that you are being born and dying, and so will the other dream that there is a universe vanish. That very thing which we now see as the universe will appear to us God (Absolute), and that very God who has so long been external will appear to be internal, as our own self. Read the full topic 
Humble Pranams to Swami vivekananda
A lecture of Swami Vivekananda delivered in the west.

Lord Hindu Philosophy: Vishishtadvaita or Qualified Monism

continue from Dualism..
Vishishtadvaita or Qualified Monism
Next comes the higher Vedandic Philosophy than Dvaitha.Which says god is both the material and efficient cause of this Universe. if you (dvaita philosophers) say there is god who is an infinite being, a soul which is also infinite, and a nature which is also infinite, you cant go on multiplying infinities without limit, which is simply absurd; you smash all logic. So God is both the material and efficient cause of the universe; he projects this universe out of himself. Then how is it that god has become these walls and this table, that god has become the pig and the murderer, and all the evil things in the world? We say that god is pure. How can he become all these degenerate things? Our answer is just as I am a soul and have a body, and, in a sense, this body is not different from me, yet I, the real I, in fact, am not the body. For instance, I say I am a child, a young man or an old man, but my soul has not changed. It remains the same soul. Similarly, the whole universe comprising all nature, and an infinite number of soul, is as it were, the infinite body of god. He is interpenetrating the whoe of it. He alone is unchangeable, but nature changes and soul changes. He is unaffected by changes in soul and nature. In what way does nature change? In its forms; it takes fresh forms.
But the soul cannot change that way. The soul contracts and expands in knowledge. It contract by evil deeds. Those deeds which contracts the real natural knowledge and purity of the soul are called evil deeds. Those deeds, again, which bring out the natural glory of the soul, are called good deeds. All these were pure, but they have become contracted; through the mercy of God, and by doing good deeds, they will expand and recover their natural purity. Every one has the same chance, and in the long run, must get out. But this universe will not cease, because it is Eternal. This is the second theory of Vedanta. The first one is called Dualism or Dvaita. The second one holds that there are god, soul and nature, and souls and nature from the body of God, and therefore these three form one Unit. It represents a higher stage of religious development and goes by the names of Qualified Monism or Vishishtadvaita.
In dualism, the universe is conceived as a large machine set going by God, while in Qualified monism, it is conceived as an organism inter-penetrated by the Divine self.
Next came the Super most Philosophy of Vedanta Advaita Vedanta or Non Dualism..

Lord Hindu Philosophy: Dualism

What is the Dualist philosophy?

Continuation from Hindu philosophy of nature.. 
All the vedanta philosophers whether Dvaitha(dualism) or Vishishtadvaitha(Qualified monism) accept that The JIVA or Soul or The real man is Pure in its nature. 

According to dualists, the jiva or the real man, is very fine, minute. So far we see that man is a being who has first a gross body which dissolves very quickly, then a fine body which remains through aeons and then a JIVA. This jiva according to the vedantic philosophy, is eternal just as God is eternal. Nature is also eternal, but changefully eternal. The material of nature, prana and akasha is eternal, but it is changing into different forms eternally. But the jiva is not manufactured, either of akasha or prana; it is immaterial and therefore will remain forever. It is not the result of any combination of prana and akasha, and whatever is not the result of combination will never be destroyed, because destruction is going back to causes. The gross body is a compound of akasha and prana and therefore will be decomposed.
The fine body will also be decomposed, after a long time, but the jiva is simple and will never be destroyed. It was never born for the same reason. Nothing simple can be born. The same argument applies. That which is a compound only can be born. The whole of nature comprising millions and millions of souls under the will of GOD. God is all pervading, omniscient, formless, everywhere, and he is working through nature day and night. The whole of it is under his control. He is the eternal ruler so say the DUALISTs. Then the question comes, if god is the ruler of this universe, why did he create such a wicked universe, why must we suffer so much? They say it is not gods fault. It is our fault that we suffer. Whatever we sow we reap. He did not do anything to punish us. Man is born poor, or blind, or some other way. What is the reason? He had done something before he was born that way. The jiva has been existing for all the time, was never created. It has been doing all sorts of things all the time. Whatever we do reacts upon us. If we do good, we shall have happiness, and if evil unhappiness. So the jiva goes on enjoying and suffering, and doing all sorts of things.
What comes after death? All these vedanda philosophers accept that this jiva is by its own nature pure. But the ignorance covers its real nature, they say. As by evil deeds, it has covered itself with ignorance, so by good deeds it becomes conscious of its own nature again. Just a it is eternal, so its nature is pure. The nature of every being is pure.

When through good deeds all its sins and misdeeds have been washed away, then the jiva becomes pure again and, when it becomes pure, it goes to what is called Devayana. Its organ of speech enters the mind. You cannot think without words. Whatever there is thought, there must be words. As words enter the mind, so the mind is resolved into the prana and the prana into the jiva. Then the jiva gets quickly out of the body, and goes to the solar regions, this universe has sphere after sphere. This earth is the world sphere, in which are moons suns and stars. Beyond that there is the solar sphere, and beyond that another which they call the lunar sphere. Beyond that there is the sphere which they call the sphere of lightning, the electric sphere, and when the Jiva goes there, there comes another Jiva, already perfect to receive it, and takes it to another world, the highest heaven, the Brahmaloka, where the Jiva lives eternally, no more to be born or die. It enjoys through eternity and gets all sorts of powers, except the power of creation. There is only one ruler of the universe and that is GOD. No one can become god; the DUALISTs maintain that if you say you are God, it is Blasphemy. All the powers except the creative come to Jiva, and if it likes to have different bodies and work in different parts of the world, it can do so. 
If it orders all gods (here god means deva or angel and not The Supreme GOD) to come before it, if it wants its forefathers to come, they will all appear at its command. Such are its powers that it never feels any more pain, and if it wants it can live in the Brahmaloka through all eternity. This is the highest man, who has attained the love of God, who has become perfectly unselfish, perfectly purified, who has given up all desires, and who does not want to do anything except worship and love God. There are others that are not so high, who do works but want some reward. They say they will give so much to the poor, but want to go to heaven in return. When they die what becomes of them? The speech enters the mind, the mind enters the prana, the prana enters the Jiva, and the Jiva gets out, and goes to the lunar sphere, where it has a very good time for a long time. There it enjoys happiness, so long as the effect of its good deeds endures. When the same is exhausted it descents, and once again enters the life on earth according to its desire. In the lunar sphere, the Jiva becomes what we call a Deva or what the Christians or Mohommedans call an Angel. These gods are the names of certain positions; for instance, Indra the king of Devas, is the name of a position; thousands of men get to that position. When a virtuous man who has performed the highest of vedic rites dies, he becomes a king of devas; by that time the old king has gone down and again and become man. Just as kings change here, so the Devas, king of devas, angels also have to die. In heaven they will all die. The only deathless place is Brahmaloka, where alone there is no birth and death.
So the Jivas go to heaven, and have very good time except now and then when the demons give them chase. In our mythology it is said there are demons who sometimes trouble the Devas. In all mythologies you read how these demons and Devas fought, and the demons sometimes conquered the Devas, although many times, it seems, the demons did not do so many wicked things as the devas. In all mythologies, for instance you found the devas fond of women. So after their reward is finished, they fall down again, come through the clouds, through the rains, and thus gets into some grain or plant is eaten by men. The father gives them the material out of which to get a fitting body. When the material suits them no longer, they have to manufacture other bodies. Now there are the very wicked fellows, who do all sorts of diabolical things; they are born again as animals, and if they are very bad, they are born as very low animals, or become plants, or stones.
In the deva form they make no Karma at all; only man makes karma. Karma means work which will produce effect. When a man dies and becomes a deva he has only a period of pleasure, and during that time makes no fresh karma; it is simply a reward of his past good karma. When the good karma is worked out, then the remaining karma begins to take effect, and he comes down to earth. He becomes man again, and if he does very good works and purifies himself, he goes to Brahmaloka and comes back no more.
The animal is a state of sojourn for the Jiva evolving from lower forms. In course of time the animals becomes man. It is a significant fact that the human population is increasing and animal population is decreasing. The animal souls are all becoming men. So many species of animals have become men already where else have they gone?
In the Vedas there is no mention of hell. But our Puranas, the later books of our scriptures, thought that no religion could be complete unless hells were attached to it, and so they invented all sorts of hells. In some of these men, are sawed in half and continually tortured, but do not die. They are continually feeling intense pain, but the books are merciful enough to say that it is only for a period. Bad karma is worked out in that state and then they come back to earth, and get another chance, so this human form is the great chance. It is called the karma body, in which we decide our fate. We are running in a huge circle, and this is the point in the circle which determines the future. So this considered the most important form that there is; man is greater than DEVAS.

So far discussed is DUALISM, its pure and simple..

Lord Vedantists Philosophy On Nature

Continuation from Where did Hindu Philosophy starts.. Read the full Topic

This body is made of particles which we call matter, ant it is dull and insentient. So is what the Vedanta call the fine body. The fine body, according to them, is a material but transparent body, made of fine particles, so fine that no microscope can see them. What is the use of that? It is the receptacle of the fine forces. Just as this gross body is the receptacle of gross forces, so the fine body is the receptacle of the fine forces, which we call thought, in its various modifications. First is the body, which is gross matter, with gross force. Force cannot exist without matter. It must require some matter to exist, so the gross forces work in the body; and those very forces become finer; the very force which is working in a gross form works in a finer form and becomes thought. There is no distinction between them, simply one is the gross and the other the fine manifestation of the same thing. Neither is there any distinction between this fine body and the gross body. The fine body is also material, only very fine matter; and just as the gross body is the instrument that works the gross forces, so the fine body is the instrument that works the fine forces.

From where do all these forces come? According to Vedanta philosophy there are two things in nature, one of which they call akasha, which is the substance, infinitely fine, and the other they call prana, which is the force. Whatever you see, or feel, or hear, as air, earth, or anything, is material,--the product of akasha. It goes on and becomes finer and finer, or gross and grosser, changing under the action of prana. Like akasha, prana is omnipresent, and interpenetrating everything. Akasha is like water and everything else in the universe is like blocks of ice, made out of that water, and floating in the water, and prana is the power that changes this akasha into all these various forms. The gross body is the instrument made out of akasha, for the manifestation of prana in gross forms, as muscular motion, or walking, sitting, talking, and so forth. That fine body is also made of akasha, a very fine form of akasha, for the manifestation of same prana in finer form of thought. So first there is this gross body. Beyond that is this fine body, and beyond that is the JIVA, the real man.just as the nails can be pared off many times and yet are still part of our bodies, not different, so is our gross body related to fine. It is not that a man has a fine and also a gross body; it is the one body only the part which endures the longer is the fine body, and that which dissolves sooner is the gross. Just as I can cut this nail any number of times, so millions of times I can shed this gross body, but the fine body will remain.

Lord Where did Hindu Philosophy starts

What are the Recognized Religious Ideas of India. 
Param poojyaneya Swami vivekananda, a world wide accepted guru of Sanathan dharma had conducted many lectures in india and the west.The concept of Hindu philosophy is difficult to explain and understand! unlike other philosophies .We think it is more explored and more cleared in swamiji's words..
The first group of religious ideas that we see coming up- I mean recognized religious ideas, and not the very low ideas, which don’t deserve the name of religion- all include the idea of inspiration and revealed books and so forth. The first book of religious ideas starts with the idea of god. Here is the universe, and this universe is created by a certain being. Everything that is in the universe has been created by him. Along with that, at a later stage, comes the idea of soul,-that there is this body, and something inside this body which is not the body. This is the most primitive idea of religion that we know. We can find new followers of that in India, but it was given up very early. The Indian religions take a peculiar start. It is only by strict analysis, and much calculation and conjecture, that we can ever think that, that stage existed in Indian religions. The tangible sate in which we find them is the next step, not the first one.at the earliest step the ideas of creation is very peculiar, and it is that the whole universe is created out of zero, at the will of god; that all this universe did not exist, and out of this nothingness all this has come. In the next stage we found this conclusion is questioned. How can existence be produced out of non-existence? At the first step in the vedantha this question is asked. If the universe is existence then it must have come out of something, because it was very easy to see that nothing comes out of nothing, anywhere. All work that is done by human hands requires materials. If a house is built, the material was existing before; if a boat is made the material existed before; if any implements are made the materials were existed before.
So the effect is produced. Naturally, therefore the first idea that this world was created out of nothing was rejected, and some material out of which this world was created was wanted. The whole history of religion, in fact, is this search after material. Out of what has all this been produced? Apart from the question of the efficient cause, or god, apart from the question that god created the universe, the great question of all questions is, out of what did he create it? All the philosophies are turning, as it were, on this question. One solution is that nature, god and soul are eternal existence, as if three lines are running parallel eternally, of which nature and soul comprises what they call the dependent and god the independent reality. 
Every soul, like every particle of matter is perfectly dependent on the will of god. Before going to the other steps, we will take up the idea of soul, and then find that with all the vedandic philosophies, there is one tremendous departure from all western philosophy. All of them have a common psychology. Whatever their philosophy may have been, their psychology is the same in india, the old sankhya psychology. According to this perception occurs by the transmission of the vibrations which first comes to the external sense-organs, from the external to the internal organs to the mind, from the mind to the budhi or intellect to something which is a unit, which they call the atman. Coming to modern physiology, we know that it has found centers for all the different sensations, first it finds the lower centers and then a higher grade of centers and these two centers exactly correspond with the internal organs and the mind, but not one center has been found which controls all the other centers. So physiology cannot tell what unifies all these centers. Where do the centers get united??
The centers in the brain are all different, there is not one center which controls all the other centers; therefore, so far as it goes, the Indian psychology stands unchallenged upon this point. We must have this unification, something upon which the sensations will be reflected, to form a complete whole. Until there is that something, I cannot have any idea of you, or a picture or anything else. If we had not that unifying something, we would only see, then after a while breathe, then hear and so on, and while I heard a man talking I would not see him at all because all the centers are different.continue reading at  
Vedandists philosophy of nature

Lord The four Yoga’s of Hinduism: an Introduction

Hinduism: The Universal Religion
The four Yoga’s of Hinduism: an Introduction

A Religion to satisfy the largest proportion of mankind must be able to supply food for all various types of minds and where this capability is wanting, the existing sects all become one-sided. Suppose you go to a sector which preaches love and emotion. They sing and weep, and preach love. But as soon as you say, ‘My friend, that is all right, but I want something stronger than this, a little reason and philosophy; I want to understand things step by step and more rationally’. ‘Get out’, they say and they not only ask you to get out, but would send you to the other place, if they could. The result is that sect can only help people with emotional turn of mind; they not only do not help others but try to destroy them; and the most wicked part of whole thing is that they will not only not help others but do not believe in their sincerity. Again, there are philosophers, who talk of the wisdom of India and the west and use big psychological terms, fifty syllables long, but if an ordinary man like me, goes to them and says, “Can you tell me anything to make me spiritual?” the first thing they would do would be smile and say, “oh, you are too far below us in your reason. What can you understand about spirituality?” these are high up philosophers. They simply show you the door. Then there are the mystical sects, who speak all sorts of things about different planes of existence, different states of mind, and what the power of mind can do, and so on; and if you are an ordinary man and say, “show me anything good that I can do; I am not much given to speculation; can you give me anything that will suit me?” they smile and say, “Listen to that fool; he knows nothing, his existence is for nothing.” And this is going on everywhere in the world. I would like to get extreme exponents of all these different sects, and shut them up in a room and photograph their beautiful derisive smiles.

This is the existing condition of religion, the existing condition of things. What I want to propagate is a religion that will be equally acceptable to all minds; it must be equally philosophic, equally emotional, equally mystic and equally conductive to action. If professors from the colleges come, scientific men and physicists, they will court reason. Let them have it as much as they want. There will be a point beyond which they will think they cannot go, without breaking with reason. They will say this ideas of god and salvation are superstitious, give them up!” say, “Mr. Philosopher, this body of yours is a bigger superstition. Give it up don’t go home to dinner or to your philosophical chair. Give up the body, and if you cannot, cry quarter and sit down.” For, religion must be able to show how to realize the philosophy that teaches us that this world is one, that there is but one existence in the universe.

Similarly, if the mystic comes, we must welcome him, be ready to give him the science of mental analysis, and practically demonstrate it before him. And if emotional people come, we must sit, laugh and weep with them in the name of the lord; we must “drink the cup of love and become mad.” If the energetic worker comes we must work with him, with all the energy that we have. And this combination will be the ideal of the nearest approach to a universal religion.

Would to god that all men were so constituted, that in their minds, all these elements of philosophy, mysticism, emotion, and work were equally present in full. That is the ideal, my ideal of a perfect man. Everyone who has only one or two of these elements of character I consider “one-sided” and this world is almost full of such “one-sided” men, with knowledge of that one road only, in which they move; and anything else is dangerous and horrible to them. To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion. And this religion is attained by what we, in India, call YOGA-Union. To the worker, its union between men and the whole of humanity; to the mystic, between himself and the god of love; and to the philosopher, it is the union of all existence. This is what is meant by yoga. This is Sanskrit term, and these four divisions of yoga have, in Sanskrit, different names. The man who seeks after this kind of union is called a Yogi. The worker is called karma- yogi. He who seeks union through mysticism is called the Raja- yogi. And he who seeks it through love is called Bhakti yogi. He who seeks it through philosophy is called the jnana- yogi. So this word Yogi comprises them all.

Humble pranams to the Great Yogi India has ever seen swamy vivekanand.
Speech by Srimad Swami Vivekananda delivered in the west.
The four yoga types will be explained in the future posts