The Vedic Culture and Vedas are complete in themselves, but Hinduism which is a non-Vedic belief system with all the ritual and conduct-oriented practices has been contributed largely by the orthodox priests to suit their convenience!
The Vedas are in the Vedic language, which was a high-class language. Rig Veda (excluding chapters II and X) was written in the Vedic language before the Christian Era. The Vedic language is not Sanskrit. It is the same language in which the Zoroastrian Scripture Zend Avesta is written—a form of Persian. All the other scriptures of India are written in Sanskrit.
These include Rig Veda Chapter -II and X and the Upanishads, Brahmanas, Puranas, and the Vedanta. These were written during the Christian Era after the Thomas ministry. As the use of this language diminished, it became a tough language for the commoners. The priests, who were supposed to be experts in this language, translated it into Sanskrit language and manipulated the meanings in time, and gradually, all the practices changed.
The DaVita, Vedanta borrows the concept from Abrahamic religions, such as Eternal Damnation [of certain souls destined to hell forever] which goes against the belief of most Vedanta schools, which state that Soul attains liberation.
It looks like the creator, creation theory is also borrowed from the Abrahamic religion, and on the base, a new belief system has been introduced giving it a Vedic outlook and propagating all non-Vedic rituals and worships by someone in the past.
Remember:~
St. Thomas is said to have come to India to spread Christianity in the first century AD. It first spread among the people of the Malabar coast and in areas near present-day Madras.
There is a total discontinuity in the concept of God before and after the entry of St, Thomas. As one goes deeper into the annals of religious history then we become aware of the fact that the Vedic Gods were personifications of Nature and their worship essentially sacrifices to these Natural Forces to appease them. All of a sudden by the first century, we encounter Vedantas. Vedanta literally means “End of the Vedas,” though it is today interpreted as "the essence of Vedas."
Vedantas, which appeared as theological discourses, present a supreme Godhead, “Para Brahman’. Such an idea was not even remotely conceivable in the Vedic context.
New Gods like Maheshwar and Vishnu appeared. The concept of Maheshwar. Vishnu means Sky or Heavens. Vishnu simply means God of the Heaven lies or the one who pervades everything. Then we have the concept of incarnation – God taking flesh in human form to save humanity. All these suddenly appeared after the entry of St, Thomas.
This was also the time when most of the Vedic gods passed into oblivion. Their place was taken by the trinity of gods, with Brahma as the creator, Vishnu, as the preserver, and Shiva, as the destroyer. It is believed that when evil is rampant, various incarnations of Vishnu enter the world of men to save them. Krishna is one such 'avatar'.
There are many contradictions, Brahma Vishnu and Maheshwar are the three main Gods but they are one. Brahma is the creator of this universe (Generator), Vishnu is responsible for the smooth conduct of the same (sustainer), & Maheshwar is the Destroyer! But if you go, and read Vishnu Purana, he is characterized as the supreme power.
Further, due to many castes and sub-castes prevailing in the society, some more rules and principles were added for the benefit of these priests. Can you imagine how would you get rid of the sin you committed by killing a cat? You will have to make a golden cat weighing equal to the dead cat and hand over this golden cat to the priest chanting for the purification of the individual soul! Hinduism is different from the Vedic religion.
Vedic religion was modified and reintroduced with new add-ons by Sage Sankara a great Advaitic Sage to uplift the Vedic culture, and Santana Dharma (Hinduism), which was in ruins in the clutches of Buddhism. 18 Puranas are introduced in the name of Veda Vyasa.
As one goes deeper into the annals of history, it indicates that somewhere someone has added the Puranas in the name of Veda Vyasa the grandmaster of Vedas. It is impossible to accept and believe that Veda Vyasa authored and introduced Puranas which have all conceptual Gods because ~
Bhagavad Gita: ~ Brahmano hi pratisthaham ~ Brahman (God in truth) is considered the all-pervading consciousness, which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material. (14.27).
When Bhagavad Gita says, God is considered the all-pervading consciousness (Spirit) which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material then nothing has to be accepted as God other than consciousness.
Lord Krishna says Ch ~V: ~ “Those who know the Self in truth.". The last two words (tattvataha) are usually ignored by pundits, but they make all the difference between the ordinary concept of God and the truth about God.
The dualistic worship of "God” is only for the ignorant populace. God in truth is only Atman, the Self. In reality, there is no duality, no differentiation. Only Atman exists.
The Vedas confirm God is Atman (Spirit), the Self.
Rig Veda: ~ The Atman (Soul or Spirit) is the cause; Atman is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Atman, the Self. May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman?" (10:48, 5)
Rig-Veda 1-164-46 and Y.V 32-1 clearly mention that God is “One”.
Rig Veda declares God is ‘ONE’ and God is Atman, then why believe and worship in place of the real God.
Whereas Vedas reveals ONE GOD, Hinduism is filled with 33crores of gods Vedas reveals God as Spirit (Atman or Brahman ) and no form whereas Hinduism worships god in the form of various non-Vedic idols of gods and goddesses are barred by Vedas.
Vedas say that God does not have any form and exists as light, but in Hinduism, people idol-worship their inherited personal god.
It indicates clearly all the gods with form and attributes are mere imaginations based on the false self. The ideas of conceptual gods are a reality on the base of the false self within the false experience. Thus, all belief systems are based on the false self.
Thus, the idea of God is merely a blind belief based on their religious doctrine. In Advaita Lord means Atman and Atman means Brahman.
If people who indulge in god or guru glorification are not Advaitins because they have accepted the belief of God as a true god and they forget the true God is Atman their true identity, which exists without the body and the experience of the world.
If God exists, as he does for religious believers and yogis, and exists separately from them, then there is duality, which always implies a contradiction. From the ultimate point of, God is a mere belief or an idea or a thought, or an object, therefore the Self or witness, contradicts God.
When there are two, one thought contradicts another for one thought comes at one moment, and the other at another moment, both moments contradict; one cannot say they are identical. He cannot find non-contradiction in this universe.
From the ultimate standpoint, the individualized God does not exist, because his existence implies that one is different from Him. Any kind of difference means contradiction. Nothing whatsoever other than consciousness exists thus for non-dualists consciousness itself is the ultimate truth and the ultimate truth is God in truth. Non-duality means the negation of ignorance.
Truth is not only that which is beyond contradiction but also that in which there is no possibility of contradiction. Such a state can only be realized as non-duality, where there is no second thing other than consciousness. The illustration for that is deep sleep but sleep is not the ultimate reality. It is merely an analogy.
Brihad Upanishad says:~ "if you think there is another entity whether man or God there is no truth." This is the teaching since time immemorial of those who have inquired into the truth.
The Soul or the consciousness alone which is permanent and eternal, unchanging in the changing world is a reality.
People hear of Brahman or the ultimate truth. People can only imagine it. One requires words only to distinguish between is there and not there, but he can’t posit either of Reality because his saying so is only an idea, not reality.
The ultimate truth is beyond words. The words are of use, however, as a thorn to pull out the thorn of other words that hinder knowledge. Intellectually knowing the truth is only an imagination, whereas realizing the truth is knowing it as such.
Thus, the orthodoxy misleads the seekers of truth, therefore seeker of truth has to verify the truth on his own by reason based on the Soul as the Self then only accepts the uncontradictable truth.
And also Yajurved says:~
Translation 1.
They enter darkness, those who worship natural things (for example air, water, sun, moon, animals, fire, stone, etc).
They sink deeper into the darkness than those who worship sambhuti. (Sambhuti means created things, for example, table, chair, idol, etc.) (Yajurved 40:9)
Translation 2.
"Deep into the shade of blinding gloom fall asambhuti's worshippers. They sink to darkness deeper yet who on sambhuti are intent."(Yajurveda Samhita by Ralph T. H. Giffith pg 538)
Translation 3.
"They are enveloped in darkness, in other words, are steeped in ignorance and sunk in the greatest depths of misery who worship the uncreated, eternal prakrti -- the material cause of the world -- in place of the All-pervading God, But those who worship visible things born of the prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies (human and the like) in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness, in other words, they are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow, and suffer terribly for a long time." (Yajur Veda 40:9.)
So, Yajur Veda indicates that:~
They sink deeper into darkness those who worship sambhuti. (Sambhuti means created things, for example, table, chair, idol, etc (Yajurved 40:9)
Those who worship visible things born of the prakrti, such as the earth, trees, and bodies (human and the like) in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness, in other words, they are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow, and suffer terribly for a long time."(Yajur Veda 40:9.)
WhenYajur Veda says:~ 'They are extremely foolish, fall into an awful hell of pain and sorrow, and suffer terribly for a long time."
When the religion of the Veda knows no idols then why so many gods and goddesses with different forms and names are being propagated as Vedic gods. Why these conceptual gods are introduced when the Vedic concept of God is free from form and attributes.
Who introduced the concept of God with attributes and attributeless gods, when Yajur Veda says: ~ those who worship visible things, born of the prakrti, such as the earth, trees, bodies (human and the like), in place of God are enveloped in still greater darkness. Therefore, all these add-ons prove that the form and the attribute-based concepts are introduced by some sages of the past with a new belief system and code of conduct in the name of Vedas.
Sruti is made the final or exclusive authority in apara Vidya and for supporting the tenet of the CAUSAL relation or creatorship of Brahman, Nirguna Brahman = the "Absolute beyond qualities," which can be defined only in a negative way. For the Sankarian school = the Ultimate Reality, is higher than the Lord. i.e. of Saguna or apara Brahman ... The support of Scriptural Revelation is, therefore, absolutely necessary for this hypothesis of cosmology, this Saguna or apara (= inferior) Brahman, but not for the absolute truth of Nirguna Brahman.
The Sruti itself says: "This Atma is NOT to be attained by a study of the Vedas. (Katha Upanishad I, 2, 23.)
Therefore, all the non-Vedic add-ons and the attribute-based knowledge, which is inferior, have to be bifurcated and excluded to know the ultimate truth. The seeker of truth has to drop all the inferior knowledge based on the attributes and go beyond Vedas to understand assimilate and realize the ultimate truth or Brahman.
One has to go beyond Vedas means to go beyond religion. Going beyond religion means, going beyond the concept of God. Thus, going beyond Veda, religion and conceptual God means going beyond illusion. That is the end of Vedas (Veda –antha)
When one goes into the annals of history it looks like the true Advaita expounded by Sage Sankara and Sage Goudpada was lost or mutilated by the orthodox cult because their preaching is based on nonduality and practices are based on duality.
Sage Sankara says in Brahma Sutras: that Brahman is the cause of the world, whereas in Manduka he denies it. This is because he says that at the lower stage of understanding, the former teaching must be given, for people will get frightened as they cannot understand how the world can be without a cause, but to those in a higher stage, the truth of non-causality can be revealed.
Sage Sankara himself has warned us not to use ambiguous words and to practice semantic analysis in his book "Definition of one's own Self. ( Page 199, v.24 of "Sankara's Selected Works)
Bhagavan Buddha found religion in such a worthless state, with so many vile animal sacrifices, that he attacked religion. Sage Sankara did not seek to destroy religion like Bhagavan Buddha, but he advocated reforming it for the better. He did this because he saw that the masses had to have some form of religion as they were not ripe intellectually for truth.
Sage Sankara's sex experience in Benares and occupying the body of another man and then having sexual intercourse with his wife, is a story created by the pundits hiding the real fact. Sage Sankara had a scientific spirit and when told by Saraswathi the woman that he was talking freely about sex, being a Sanyasi, he wanted to know the truth by having actual intercourse himself and thus learning by experiment and observation.
Thus, this has to be viewed by the seeker from a rational standpoint because, from the ultimate standpoint, sex is part of the illusion. Sage Sankara stressed the great importance of freeing our use of words from all ambiguity.
Buddhists and Jains did not believe in the Vedic positions and did not accept the scriptures. Hence, Sage Sankara had to meet their objections also. Biographical anecdotes about his persecution of Jains and Buddhists or of his challenges to self-immolation for the loser of a debate are all foolish tales fabricated after his lifetime either by his own followers who took him to be a religious propagator but not as a philosopher or by the dualistic cult.
The religious pundits of the Advaitic sect relate boastfully pseudo-historic stories of how Sage Sankara's school put down, persecuted, and exterminated the Buddhists, as though this was something to be proud of. However, these stories are either exaggerations or false stories fabricated by the pundits or the priestcraft.
The religious pundits are mere followers of the religion, never having understood the depth of the Advaitic wisdom of Sage Sankara. Sage Sankara gave religion scholasticism and yoga no less than philosophy, to the seeking world.
His commentary on Manduka is pure philosophy, but many of his other books are presented from a religious standpoint to help those who cannot rise up to the philosophy. North India is the home of mysticism and deification and South India is not keen on rational truth.
Sage Sankara had only four fully trained disciples, although he advised some kings. His doctrines spread after his lifetime. His books were dictated to secretaries as he traveled. So, only a few were capable of understanding his philosophy.
Sage Sankara always traveled and he never lived in a monastery. He simply instructed his disciples to build one here and there " and then left because he was busy spreading his doctrines.
Some who followed Sage Sankara are mere followers of the religion. They never understood the Advaitic wisdom. Religious scholars, not Gnanis, are unable to grasp the non-dualistic truth hidden by the Maya. :~Santthosh Kumaar
