[ p. 150 ]
BUT despite the rising of Jainism and Buddhism in India, the old priestly religion rooted in the Vedas was never completely ousted. Even though for a while it lost the favor of the rulers, never for a moment did it lose its attractiveness to the ruled. Of course, inwardly it changed from century to century, taking on new gods and forgetting old ones, acquiring strange rites and neglecting native ones; but at least in its caste structure and priestly character the old religion of the Hindus never wavered from first to last. At the present time well over two hundred million souls in India — more [ p. 151 ] than the number of Protestant Christians in all the world — still call themselves Hinduists!
To define Hinduism Is very nearly impossible. Actually it is not so much a religion (in the narrower sense of the word) as a religio-social system. Although Hinduism contains a whole farrago of theologies, philosophies, and sacrificial systems, nevertheless its one dominant note is that of caste. An elaborate tissue of ancient religio-social laws has hardened until by now it seems altogether indestructible. That tissue was first built up by a series of law codes, most prominently the Code of Manu, which were compiled about the time the Buddhist heresy was at its height. These codes set out to do for Hinduism what the Talmud in a later day did for Judaism. They tried to build a wall of law around the faith so that none could stray from it. Of course, the stoutest buttresses of the Hindu wall were naturally the caste distinctions, and these therefore received the most careful attention of the law-makers. The superiority of the brahmins and the inferiority of the laborers were declared to be ordered in heaven according to a divine plan “for the prosperity of the world.” A man’s caste, like his breath, was with him incessantly from birth to death; indeed, unlike his breath, it was even supposed to follow him into the grave.
But save for these laws regulating caste there is no other unifying element in all Hinduism. There are two major sects in the religion, and at least fifty-seven sub-sects, each seeking to attain salvation with the aid of its own gods and ceremonies. Christianity, which is even more intensively divided, is at least united by its [ p. 152 ] unanimous recognition of the uniqueness of Jesus. Hinduism has no such common doctrine. It is true that about 300 A. D. an attempt was made to create such a doctrine by combining the three main Hindu gods into a universally acceptable trinity; but the attempt failed dismally. Brahma, the chief god in that trinity, never became popular save with the priests and philosophers. He was not nearly concrete enough a deity for the plain folk to grasp and believe in, and there are now only two temples in all India that are devoted to his worship. And Vishnu and Shiva, the two other gods in the trinity, always remained distinct and separate, continuing to attract distinct and separate followings… . . But though Hinduism has never been united on any creed or rite, its divisiveness has rarely if ever led to bloodshed. Unlike the Christians, who again and again have resorted even to wholesale slaughter in order to extirpate all heresy, the Hindus have rarely persecuted divergence of faith. They have been wise enough to see that each man has a right to worship as he himself sees fit, and that no man is justified in seeking to force his doctrine on his neighbor. Therefore the worshippers of Vishnu and those of Shiva have dwelt side by side for centuries without bitterness, and countless sub-sects have arisen and disappeared in India with very little violence or acrimony. No matter how many evils may be debited against Hinduism, at least this one virtue must be listed to its credit; it is tolerant. . .
¶ 2
ONE of the two most popular gods in India today is Vishnu. Originally a minor Vedic sun-god, lie has [ p. 153 ] since risen to superlative importance largely because he has been credited with the power of incarnating himself occasionally in human form. One can easily understand why that propensity should have made Vishnu attractive to the people. Through those periodic incarnations — those “avatars” as they are called — Vishnu became real, tangible, almost human to all sorts of Hindu people. The trouble with a god like Brahma, for instance, was that he was no more than a cold, impersonal, philosophical deduction — a blank. But there was no such chill impersonality about Vishnu. On the contrary, he was believed to share in every joy and sorrow of his followers, and their distress and sin were supposed to be his incessant concerns. It was said, indeed, that whenever the people became wayward Vishnu was so solicitous that he actually came down to earth in human form and himself led the way to reformation. Many epics were written to tell how the god had thus incarnated himself as a man and worked great wonders. Indeed, two of those epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, form the final and most popular chapter in all of Hindu sacred literature.
The Mahabharata tells the adventures of Vishnu incarnated in the body of a great hero named Krishna, and in it is to be found that famous tractate called the Bhagavad-Gita, the “Song of the Adorable.” This little tractate, which has often been called the New Testament of Hinduism, has been translated and distributed by societies with just the same missionary zeal wherewith tract associations distribute the Bible. Actually the Bhagavad-Gita is an exceedingly confused and repetitious little work, and one greatly marred by bewildering [ p. 154 ] inconsistencies. Perhaps that is why it has been so popular, for in its frequent stretches of vagueness and confusion one can find confirmation of almost any belief on earth. One can say of it as the Rabbis said of the Bible: “Turn it over and over, for in it is everything.” But, despite all that, the Bhagavad-Gita is a work of rare grandeur. In spiritual tone and exalted ethical import it is hardly inferior to any other scripture in the world. Nowhere is a nobler note struck than this one which rings out in the “Song of the Adorable”: “He who does all his work for my (Vishnu’s) sake, who is wholly devoted to me, who loves me, who is free from attachment to earthly things, and without hate to any being, he enters into me.” . . .
Krishna, the god-man, whose adventures are celebrated in the Mahabharata and whose wisdom is set down in the Bhagavad-Gita, is considered the most important of Vishnu’s avatars. Indeed, in the hearts of millions of Hindus today he has actually come to occupy the place of Vishnu himself. Just as many Christians turn to Christ much more frequently than to God, so do many Hindus bow to Krishna rather than Vishnu. And it has been suggested that Krishna — whose name in some of the northern dialects is pronounced Krishto — may bear some significant relationship to Christ. That theory, however, cannot be substantiated by facts. In all probability Krishna and Christ are akin only to the extent that both arose out of a similar passion of the human race: the passion that sublimates its hero until it has made him more than mortal and has exalted him to the skies. It may be that originally Krishna was a beloved tribal chieftain and religious reformer who during [ p. 155 ] his lifetime taught his people to worship a god called Bhagavata, “Adorable.” So wondrous a character may he have been that after he died his followers were not able to resist thinking he had actually been the god himself. Therewith arose the cult of Krishna, the man-god; and as soon as it grew powerful the priests of the old order shrewdly threw a cloak of Brahman orthodoxy over it by saying Krishna was none other than an incarnation of their old god Vishnu. . . .
That, however, is mere speculation. All we know for certain is that somehow the people did begin to believe that the god Vishnu from time to time came to earth in the form of avatars. Krishna was only one of these. Rama, whose exploits are detailed in the epic called the Ramayana, was almost as great; and innumerable chieftains, milk-men, even elephants and tigers, are included in the long list of lesser avatars. And because the people thus humanized Vishnu, they could believe in him with great intensity. They could look upon him as a spirit enshrined in their own human hearts, one that guided their own souls and ultimately snatched them out of the cycle of life in order to carry them up to heaven. At least, so could and did the people consider Vishnu — before the theologians appeared. Once the latter came on the scene, however, the nude innocence of the popular doctrine was immediately hidden beneath thick folds of words. Terms were defined and redefined, and at once schisms resulted. Acute controversies were started over the very idlest questions. To this day all followers of Vishnu are divided into two denominations because of a dispute as to whether man is saved by Vishnu as a new-born kitten or a new [ p. 156 ] born monkey is saved by its mother. The new-born kitten acts helpless and its mother has to grasp it by the nape of its neck to carry it off to safety; but the newborn monkey lends a hand in its own rescue, clinging to its mother with all the strength of its little arms. (In essence we have here those old antagonists. Predestination and Free-Will.) Even now that theological conflict rages, dividing the Vishnuites into two camps: those who believe in the “cat-hold” theory, and those who are strong for the “monkey-grip” belief! . . .
¶ 3
BUT Vishnu, even with the aid of all his avatars, never managed to attract so vast a following as did the third god of the trinity: Shiva. Originally this Shiva may have been one of those gruesome demons that had been conjured up in the fear- fevered heads of the black aborigines, and that were still worshipped even after the coming of the Aryans. He was (and sometimes still is) conceived to be a wild, morose deity, malevolent and destructive, causing pestilence, storms, and all manner of other horrors; and he is commonly depicted as a monster bearing a trident and rosary. (Christians did not learn of the rosary until they observed its use during the Crusades among the Moslems; but the Moslems themselves had only a little earlier first taken to it as a sacred symbol in imitation of the followers of this god Shiva.) In the trinity by which the theologians tried to unite the Hindu sects, Brahma stood for the principle of Creation, Vishnu for that of Preservation, and Shiva for that of Destruction. Of the three, Shiva became and remained the most popular. [ p. 157 ] The masses loved him because he was very much theii own kind: passionate, violent, and licentious. And with him they loved his sluttish wife, Parvata the Terrible. To her glory the Thugs, a secret sect of pious murderers, used to commit unspeakable outrages; and in her name the Tantrists, a secret sect of pious perverts, still indulge in indescribable sex orgies.
There is hardly a village in all of India today where there is not at least one shrine sheltering the emblem of Shiva: an upright cylindrical block usually resting on a circular slab with a hole in its center. Curiously, the people do not seem to realize the crude symbolism of that emblem, and do not even remotely associate it with sex. Many of them even wear it as an emblem around their necks for good luck, or as a sign of their religious devotion. Of course, sex does play a very real part in the worship of Shiva and his female counterparts. One denomination called Tantra is built around the alluring theory that only by riotous indulgence in passion can man ever cross the region of darkness which keeps him from utter union with Shiva. Passion, it is admitted, [ p. 158 ] is poison; but the only antidote for this poison is more poison. Therefore it is reasoned that only indulgence in the five vices that poison the soul of man — wine, meat, fish, mystical gesticulation with the fingers, and sex looseness — only veritable orgies of those five vices, can drive their poison out of the system and really purify the soul! . . .
Now, scholars are not lacking who maintain that all religion is merely a form of sex expression; and they have not a little plausible argument to sustain their theory. It would be strange indeed if religion, which reaches down to the very depths of human consciousness, should not be greatly influenced by so pervading an impulse as sex. Indeed, it must be freely admitted that even the most advanced and civilized of religious practices are colored by sex. (But for that matter, so also are the most advanced and civilized of art forms and social systems. )
The religious practices of India, however, are, for the most part, far from being advanced and civilized, and it is therefore the more natural that sex should obtrude itself in them. Indulgence in erotic practices is part of the worship not alone of Shiva, but also of Vishnu. It is said that many of the minor sects adoring Krishna really adore his wife or mistress, or draw their inspiration from the wild tales that the Mahabharata tells of Krishna’s dissipated youth. One must remember that the average worshipper of Vishnu, like his fellow in the Shivaite sect, is still a relatively primitive man. He is still hungry for those animalic delights which alone seem to make his wretched life livable. . . .
[ p. 159 ]
¶ 4
BUT though Hinduism among the low-caste folk has remained revoltingly primitive, among the high-caste philosophers it has advanced until certain of its teachings are almost beyond comprehension. The Hindus as a people seem to be equipped with a deep and definite tendency to think rather than to act. Perhaps because of the enervating climate in their land they are much more given to hard labor in contemplation and meditation than to hard labor in conquering and creating with tools and machines. As a result their highest achievements have been in the realm of ideas rather than of concrete things. And the Western world, weary now of things and the frantic struggle to get them, has in recent decades come to take an inordinate interest in those mental achievements of the Hindus. Many Western souls too weak or too fine to stand the grind of our machine civilization have flung themselves with great — and often uncritical — enthusiasm into the pursuit of various systems of Indian metaphysics. They have joined New Thought churches, Theosophical Societies, Leagues for the Contemplation of the Over-Soul; or at least they have sat in fashionable drawing-rooms and listened entranced to the praise of one and another method of contemplation by turbaned yogi, swami, and other Hindu lecturers.
But for all that, it is hardly possible that Indian thought will ever be able to take deep root in the Western world. At its heart there is a hunger quite incomprehensible to the Western mind, the hunger for final death, for extinction, for utter release from the dread cycle of transmigrating life. To the Hindu thinker the [ p. 160 ] bitterest woe in this woe-begotten life has always been the dread that there is no way out of life. Practically all of Hindu philosophy has been one protracted attempt to prove that there is indeed a way out. According to Mahavira the Jina, the way out is through physical self-denial; according to Gautama the Buddha, it is through spiritual temperance and moral rectitude. But according to the orthodox Hindu philosophers, the way out is rather through various physical and psychic exercises.
Most of these philosophers belong to the school known as “Yoga.” The Sanskrit word yoga is said to be related to the Latin jugum, and the English “yoke”; and it means “union.” Yoga aims to unite the individual soul with Brahma, the Universal Over-Soul, by the persistent suppression of all disturbing sense-activity. Various exercises which it provides enable a man to restrain even the slightest unnecessary action of his body, leaving him immobile, transfixed, almost breathless. There he is to sit like a stone image, no tremor in his flesh, no lustre in his eyes, with his mind riveted in concentration on the Over-Soul. And then of a sudden the mystic marriage is consummated. The little soul of the individual becomes suddenly at one with the great Over-Soul of the Universe. An ineffable bliss suffuses the devotee, a peace and rest such as he knew only in the womb of his mother. He feels himself somehow exquisitely exalted, deliciously carried out of himself, divinely disembodied. He becomes for a moment entirely a spirit, an ethereal floating part of the All, a yogi. . . . And then the trance snaps. With a sickening horror in his slow-beating heart, the devotee [ p. 161 ] comes sinking down to earth again. And there he awakes to find himself earth-bound once more — but with a memory he cannot obliterate. From then on he is a changed man, for having once tasted of Nirvana his one consuming passion is to taste again. From then on he is lost completely to the world, caring neither for its virtues nor its vices. From then on he goes wandering lonely as a cloud, not worrying whether he does good or evil, not thinking whether he builds or destroys. For he is no longer an ordinary man — he is a yogi!
This is not the place for a detailed discussion of mysticism. No one can say with indisputable certainty just what it is, or whence it comes. Theologians and most of the older psychologists insist that the mystic ecstasy experienced by the yogi or the saint is a veritable glimpse into eternity, and that it is a gift from God; the newer psychologists are inclined to believe it is no more than a sublimation of sex desire. But though we . may not know what the mystic esetasy is or whence it comes, no one can deny that it is a valid and genuine phenomenon. The fact that ninety-nine out of every hundred people who read this paragraph may never have experienced such an ecstasy does not in the least militate against its reality. Evidently there do exist in the world, especially in India, certain persons whose minds are peculiarly sensitive to what is loosely termed the spiritual. And when such persons heighten their sensitiveness by means of exercises like that of Yoga, it is no real cause for wonder if they experience the transcendent ecstasies whereof they tell. We ordinary mortals have hardly more right to challenge their testimony [ p. 162 ] than we have right to challenge the testimony of astronomers who, with the increased sight afforded them by their telescopes, tell us of stars which our naked eyes have never seen.
Besides, even if the mystic experience be indeed a delusion and a lie, all that matters is that to the mystic it seems the only indubitable truth. All of life’s earthly phenomena seem to him entirely illusory and unreal; only those fleeting moments of unearthly ecstasy seem to him to be valid and genuine. And in that faith he lives. Firm in the conviction that all the torments and hazards of earthly life are mere lies and fantasies, he can go through the world without fear. He can have no I dread of this material universe because he tells himself it simply isn’t there — and means it. Matter does not exist for him. Only Brahma, the Over-Soul, the “It,” the Infinite Spirit — only that exists. His only concern is how to break jail out of this illusory world, and his whole religion is directed toward that release. In essence the mystic’s religion is the technique by which j he strives to rise to union with Brahma. It is, of course, in no wise like the ordinary religious technique. It lays no emphasis on prayer or sacrifice, for the Over-Soul is purely impersonal and cannot be moved by cajolery or petition. Nor does it lay any emphasis on morality, for since the Over-Soul is not concerned with this illusory material world, necessarily it cannot be interested in the goodness or badness of the illusory deeds performed in it. No, the religion, the technique of salvation, practiced by the Hindu mystic, lays emphasis only on certain psychic exercises. It demands only concentration, suppression of all sense activity, breathless meditation [ p. 163 ] — and then it guarantees Nirvana. It demands that all action be put to death, and then promises everlasting inaction. And millions of souls in India have been “saved” by that belief. …
¶ 5
BUT though many Hindus may have found comfort in Yoga and the other philosophical systems, the vast majority of the people have always taken refuge in less abstruse beliefs. To this day the religion of the Hindu serfs and peasants, especially in the south, is still almost the primitive animism of the aboriginal blacks. It is said that four-fifths of the people of India still worship local spirits, usually female demons, with the most revolting of animal sacrifices. The orthodox Hinduism of the brahmins is opposed to animal slaughter, and especially reveres the cow. But the naked masses out in the jungles pay little heed to that taboo, and on occasion they even manage to engage fallen brahmins to officiate at their animal sacrifices. Those wretched halfstarved peasants worship godlings, demons, and ghosts, and carry on in the jungles much as did their black ancestors thousands of years ago. For they are still afraid. They are not tired of life, as are so many of the highercaste Hindus. Actually those serfs have never really lived enough even to know life, let alone be tired of it. They’ve merely existed; they’ve been growing, spawning, and dying, generation after generation, like so many jungle rodents. And therefore they’ve never been able to understand the philosopher’s world-weary appetite for annihilation. Those masses still hunger [ p. 164 ] for life — but life enriched and made brahmimcally luxuriant.
That is why the peasants flock to the temples wife offerings of meat or flowers, and pray fearfully to the idols of wood and stone. They imagine that thus they can win for themselves an easier life in a higher caste when they are born again. Or if they dream at .all of escape from the cycle of reincarnating life, it is never of escape into passivity and nothingness. Nirvana to them is not a mental state of utter imperturbability in this world, but a physical riot of joy in some other world. And the attainment of that lusty Nirvana is of course their highest hope. To win it they will go banks of the Ganges, contains over two thousand temples and uncounted lesser shrines, all of them supported by such credulous Hindu pilgrims.
Benares, however, is not the only holy city in the [ p. 165 ] land, nor the Ganges the only holy river. Every corner of India has its own temples and shrines. Idols grotesque beyond description are to be found everywhere; elephant-headed bodies, three-eyed gargoyles, monsters with many heads, and all manner of other such fearinspiring creations. And to these idols, which increase yearly in number and monstrosity, the millions of India give adoration. The priests, who are supposed to wake and wash and feed the idols, are still the aristocrats. Many a serf in India today refuses to break his fast in the morning save with water in which the toe of a brahmin has been dipped. Caste still has hold of the people with an iron grip. Its original four divisions have multiplied many fold, and the population is now broken up into hundreds of little sub-castes. And there are said to be fifty million men and women in the land who are considered too low to belong even to the lowest sub-caste. They are the outcasts, the “Untouchables,” whose very crossing of the shadow of a brahmin is supposed to render him ritually unclean!
One wonders what will come of it all. Fear, organized and intensified by priestcraft, has led poor India into a quicksand whence there seems no escape. Century after century brave attempts have been made to reform the religion; but invariably they have met with failure. No matter how many prophets come to the masses to tell them to destroy their idols and cast out their priests, those masses will not obey. They simply must have their reeds to cling to, their spirits to believe in. For they are still afraid . . . afraid. . . .