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The Hindu philosophy is essentially monistic. It holds that All is One, and One is All—that the One is all that is, ever has been, ever will be, or ever can be. Beyond the One there is held to be but Nothing—illusion, maya , “mortal mind.” It is more than monistic—it is ultra -monistic.

Swami Vivekananda, the apostle of the Vedanta Philosophy of India, who visited this country several years ago, attracting marked attention from many of the best minds of our land, brings out this fundamental idea of the Hindu philosophy in the following extracts from his lectures. He said:

“Where is there any more misery for him who sees this Oneness in the universe, this Oneness of life, Oneness of everything?…This separation between man and man, man and woman, man and child, nation from nation, earth from moon, moon from sun, this separation between atom and atom is the cause really of all the misery, and the Vedanta says this separation does not exist, it is not real. It is merely apparent, on the surface. In the heart of things there is unity still. If you go inside you will find that unity between man and man, women and children, races and races, high and low, rich and poor, the gods and men; all are One, and animals, too, if you go deep enough, and he who has attained to that has no more delusion. Where is there any more delusion for him? What can delude him? He knows the reality of everything, the secret of everything. Where is there any more misery for him? What does he desire? He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord, that center, that Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Bliss, Eternal Knowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor disease nor sorrow nor discontent is there.…In the Center, the reality, there is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodyless, the Stainless. He is the Knower, He is the great Poet, the Self-Existent. He who is giving to everyone what he deserves.…When man has seen himself as One with the infinite Being of the universe, when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all women, all angels, all gods, all animals, all plants, the whole universe has been melted into that oneness, then all fear disappears. Whom to fear? Can I hurt myself? Can I kill myself? Can I injure myself? Do you fear yourself? Then will all sorrow disappear. What can cause me sorrow? I am the One Existence of the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear; of whom to be jealous? Of myself? Then all bad feelings disappear. Against whom shall I have this bad feeling? Against myself? There is none in the universe but me…kill out this differentiation, kill out this superstition that there are many. ‘He who, in this world of many, sees that One; he who, in this mass of insentiency, sees that One Sentient Being; he who in this world of shadow catches that Reality, unto him belongs eternal peace, unto none else, unto none else.’”

We find in the above expression of Hindu Monism the keynote that is predominant in the modern Western philosophical, metaphysical and theological thought. All that modern Western Monistic Idealism is asserting so strongly has been asserted, centuries before, and even more strongly, by the Hindu sages. Compare the above utterances of the world-old truths of the Vedanta, as voiced by Vivekananda, with the latter-day utterances. In the Christian Science text-book, “Science and Health,” by Mary Baker G. Eddy, on the page preceding the table of contents, we find several quotations, one of which is as follows:

“I, I, I, I, itself, I,

The inside and outside, the what and the why,

The when and the where, the low and the high,

All I, I, I, I, itself, I.”

In the same book we find the following given as “The Scientific Statement of Being”:

“There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal; Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness; hence man is spiritual and not material.”

Emerson says of the “OverSoul”:

“Truth, goodness and beauty are but different faces of the same All.… God is, and all things are but shadows of him.…The True doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all His parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universal contrives to throw itself into every point.”

Do not these ideas breathe the very spirit of the inner Hindu thought?

This idea of the Immanent God, or the Higher Pantheism, is permeating the thought of to-day, as we have shown in our first paper of the series. In that paper we quoted the following from the articles of Harold Bolce, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine :

“Not only in religious rhetoric, but in reality, the school men say, is man the avatar of God.…They say that…this is not an atheistic banishment of God and his holy angels, but is, on the contrary, the enthronement of a new Jehovah—a God that has become conscious and potent in the human mind.”

Among some of the “New Thought” cults we hear of teachers boldly asserting and teaching their pupils to assert, that:

“I am God! There is None other than God! Therefore, as I am, I must be God! Otherwise, I am not at all.”

One of the widely printed bits of “advanced thought” verse is the following, which brings out very plainly the essence of the higher pantheism in modern thought:

“Thou great, eternal Infinite, the great unbounded Whole,

Thy body is the universe—thy spirit is the soul.

If thou dost fill immensity; if thou art all in all;

If thou wert here before I was, I am not here at all.

How could I live outside of thee? Dost thou fill earth and air?

There surely is no place for me, outside of everywhere.

If thou art God, and thou dost fill immensity of space,

Then I am God, think as you will, or else I have no place.

And if I have no place at all, or if I am not here,

‘Banished’ I surely cannot be, for then I’d be somewhere.

Then I must be a part of God, no matter if I’m small;

And if I’m not a part of him, there’s no such God at all.”

Is not the spirit of the Hindu thought manifested throughout this Western expression? Prof. William James says:

“We may fairly suppose that the authority which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses, and probably always will possess over some persons, draws its strength far less from the intellectual than from mystical grounds. To interpret absolute monism worthily, be a mystic.… Observe how radical the theory of the monism here is. Separation is not simply overcome by the One, it is denied to exist. There is no many. We are not parts of the One; It has no parts, and since in a sense we undeniably are , it must be that each of us is the One, indivisibly and totally. An Absolute One, and I that One , surely we have here a religion which, emotionally considered, has a high pragmatic value; it imparts a perfect sumptuosity of security.”

Table of Content

WHILE THERE are many great schools, and still more minor-schools, of Oriental religio-philosophical thought, still our purpose may be realized by a brief consideration of the four great schools of the thought of the Orient which have had the greatest influence upon modern Western thought and speculation. These schools are, respectively, (1) Vedantism, that great philosophic school of India, the conceptions of which transcend even the most daring speculations of the Western philosophers; (2) Buddhism, that great school which has now almost passed away from India, its birthplace, but which has many millions of followers in China, Japan, and other countries, and whose influence has had a very marked effect upon Western thought; (3) Zoroastrianism, that once famous school of Persia, which has now almost entirely passed from the scene, but which has exerted a great influence upon schools of thought of other countries and later times; and (4) Sufiism, that strange mystical inner-teaching of the Mohammedan religion, upon which it was grafted by some ancient teachers in order to protect it from destruction by the new religion of Islam. Let us take a brief glance at each of these four important schools of thought.