United States or Palestine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Those, however, who understand the Vedanta, teach as follows: There is a highest Brahman which is the sole cause of the entire universe, which is antagonistic to all evil, whose essential nature is infinite knowledge and blessedness, which comprises within itself numberless auspicious qualities of supreme excellence, which is different in nature from all other beings, and which constitutes the inner Self of all.
Rebirth means the manifestation of the latent powers which exist in the germ of life or in the individual soul. These germs of life are called by different names. Leibnitz called them monads and modern scientists call them bioplasms or some such name, but the Vedanta philosophers describe them as subtle bodies.
However holy, the life of a soul had its beginning and its end, and, consequently, no sins and no good actions can be punished or rewarded in the eternity of Parabrahm. This would be contrary to justice, disproportionate, to use an expression of Vedanta philosophy. Spirit alone lives in eternity, and has neither beginning nor end, neither limits nor central point.
For Pantheism, although repeatedly revived and exhibited in new forms, has made no real progress since the time when it was first taught in the Vedanta system, and sublimed in the schools of Alexandria.
In many points the Yogi Philosophy resembles the Vedanta, and in others it agrees with Theosophy, although it departs from the latter in some of the details of doctrine regarding the process of Reincarnation, and particularly in its conception of the meaning and operation of the Law of Karma.
They are stored up, pigeon-holed there, in the Chitta, as it is called in Vedanta. "Chitta" means the same subconscious mind or subliminal self which is the storehouse of all impressions and experiences. And these impressions remain latent until favorable conditions rouse them and bring them out on the plane of consciousness.
Similarly the Vedânta philosophy, though it has no term corresponding to âlaya-vijñâna, is familiar with the idea that Brahman is in one aspect immeasurable and all-embracing but in another is infinitesimal and dwells in the human heart: or that Brahman after creating the world entered into it.
The Vedanta philosophy is based on this fundamental principle, and it has been well described as "the most rigorous system of Pantheism which has ever appeared."
Sri Ramakrishna, who passed from this earth life at Cossipore, in 1886, was a disciple of the Vedanta system, as founded by Vyasa, or by Badarayana, authorities failing to agree as to which of these traditional sages of India founded the Vedantic system of religion or philosophy.
If I compare the hermetic teachings on the one hand with the vedanta, and on the other with the Samkhya-Yoga, I do not lose sight of the fundamental antagonism of both—Vedanta is monistic, Samkhya is dualistic—but in appreciation of the doctrine of salvation which is common to both. That the mystic finds the same germ in both systems is shown by the Bhagavad-Gita.