The author A Parthasarthy is considered to be an authority in the subject of Vedas. I must say I had never heard his name but perhaps that may have been due to the fact that I had never done this kind of reading or attended any of his discourses. I am not sure he is an authority for the rich gullible junta desperate for an answer for their seemingly illusionary miseries stemming more out of boredom and nothing better to do syndrome than actual problems. Anyways I had attended a discourse on the Chapter no. 17 of the Sri Bhagwad Gita in
So at the onset I must admit that I bought the book because the Swami brought in the concept of “reason” in his discourse on Gita. And as I keep writing in my blogs about the problems I have with people applying reason to those facets of life which are based on faith and belief, I thought this book may be something of an anti thought for me. Hence I bought it and finished it in a reasonable time as I was afraid I may lose the connection or may become bored.
The book turned out to be largely what I had thought. The importance of reason given in Vedanta does not hold most of the times as finally all reason based principles including the Vedanta imply that “when you are pursuing truth or God you cannot just go by reason you must make assumptions have some belief and take that leap of faith”. Therefore as the premise itself weakens the whole subject it becomes redundant to read the book. Still I read it and I must say apart from a few knowledge points about scriptures and some technicalities I did not really gained much.
It seems amusing that Vedantis call the world in which we breathe, we grow and develop experience as “illusionary” whereas the seemingly abstract concept of “Self” “Atman” “Brahman” is put across as the “Reality”. Moreover there is lot of condescension and preemption of argument. Therefore if a seemingly rich guy comes up to Vedantis and tell them that “Sir I am really happy in my life” they would comfortably reply “it’s an illusion that you are happy. You are not happy as you are not connected to your Self, your Atman”. Therefore it becomes a self winning argument that Vendatis would never accept anyone saying he is happy and would put that as an “illusion”.
Now whether people who are materially successful and happy are under illusion or Vedantis who believe in the concept of “Self, Atman, Brahman” are under illusion is difficult to state. However one thing is for sure that there are many more numbers of people who are rich and happy in the so called illusionary and ephemeral world than people who have realized “Self”. But then Vedantis also have a reason for this too. The miniscule number of people connected to their Self is testimony to the fact that how difficult it is to get aligned with the Self, the Atman the eternal Brahman.
So the underlying assumption is that people in this world are not happy, they are foolishly running behind material gains which do not give them anything but pathos and they are mesmerized by the illusion and hence are disconnected from their Self. One major issue I found with the book apart from the fact that it was Vedanta based, which means reason based faith is the fact that it used too many analogies to prove its point. It seems the Swami forgot a fundamental principle that we can disprove something by example but we cannot prove it.
Therefore if we say that if something is thrown up it would come down due to gravitation, we just need one thing which if thrown up does not come down to defy this law. However throwing up thousand of objects and their coming down does not prove that ALL the objects would do that. It would only demonstrate that unless an object which breaks this law is found this law holds good. We can never be sure of the fact that there is no object which does not follow this law.
But then I believe there is no point in finding out issues in the book if one does not believe in the underlying philosophy of the book. I was hoping the book to explain how Vedantis go about the concept of God, but then like the Plato doctrine, the Falsafa doctrine of Islam it also reverts to faith and belief.
Vedanta says not to apply things based on their purported merit, but analyze them yourself before applying. Then as expected it talks about the fact that religion has been merely reduced to mindless rituals and hence left the youth baffled. Reading the book you would realize that the target reader is the youth as it’s bemoaned time and again that how today’s youth is dejected with the ritualistic tendency of religion. The usual teaching which are pervasive in almost all religious literature were perhaps stated at the earliest in Vedas like look inside for happiness, do not run behind materialistic wealth, do not be jealous of people, love each one as if they are you etc.
Vedantis would always attempt to have an upper hand in this argument as I had earlier said that they would never accept anyone as happy in this “materialistic” world. Therefore they would conveniently ridicule people who do not believe in the concept of Self as “ignorant” without realizing that perhaps they are ignorant and have this illusion of “Brahman, Atman, Self” as Reality rather than taking the world which is there as the Reality.
But I indeed gained some browny points which I hope are genuine as I do not want to get a false knowledge of certain facts that we have in Vedanta. Like explanation of Om, explanation of God, three schools of thoughts explaining the relation between the God and the human being. Dwaita means God and Human are two and can never be one, a thought popularized by Manjucharya, Advaita which proclaims oneness of human and God, founded by Adi Sankracharya and Vashista Advaita which was founded by Ramanujacharya.
One more peculiarity I found in Vedanta (I hope this is true) is it’s over reliance on dreams. In a nutshell we can make a statement that had there been no dreams there perhaps would not have been Vedanta. The concept of illusion, the ephemeral nature of world etc are explained just because we dream. So Vedanta attempts to explain many dimensions of our lives based on its theory of Waker Dreamer and Deep Sleeper.
However a larger issue which is more philosophical appeared that Vedanta can actually be applied to be really happy and in a blissful state. Not because it has something amazing to offer but it makes the concept of “Self Atman and Brahman” so elevated that people can just delude themselves without doing much in their lives that they have found the Self which means their Godhood and hence now all is them and they are all. Therefore if someone is succeeding that delusion would make the “Self” getter believe that it’s him who has achieved the success and hence there would not be any jealousy or any attempt for the Self getter to improve his own life. As Self becomes everything pursuit of material things end and hence one can practically do not work.
However I must admit that people contributing to Vedanta would have been a bunch of smart guys. They realized this plausible loophole in their argument and hence said that do your action, your obligatory duties but with a sense of “detachment”. Now I would not get into this topic as it is abstract and may actually be an amazing topic in the Vedanta books but as the Swami was summarizing his own understanding in his book he could not have possibly done justice to the whole concept in a few pages.
Overall the book was not much of a value add though I believe it would appeal to its “young target audience” who is reasonably rich, has many materialistic pleasure at its disposal and hence perhaps has become bored of it. And it should appeal to foreigners as well, as most of them it appears are in awe of these kinds of English speaking Swamis and generally take anything from the “mysterious East” as something divine which can give them salvation.
