Jnana-Yoga : - 1-6.

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CHAPTER  : I - THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION-6.


Some exceptions may be taken in the case of the Buddhists as represented by the Southern sect. It may be asked — if the Buddhists do not believe in any God or soul, how can their religion be derived from the supersensuous state of existence?

The answer to this is that even the Buddhists find an eternal moral law, and that moral law was not reasoned out in our sense of the word But Buddha found it, discovered it, in a supersensuous state.

Those of you who have studied the life of Buddha even as briefly given in that beautiful poem, The Light of Asia, may remember that Buddha is represented as sitting under the Bo-tree until he reached that supersensuous state of mind.

All his teachings came through this, and not through intellectual cogitations.


Thus, a tremendous statement is made by all religions; that the human mind, at certain moments, transcends not only the limitations of the senses, but also the power of reasoning.

It then comes face to face with facts which it could never have sensed, could never hive reasoned out.

These facts are the basis of all the religions of the world.

Of course we have the right to challenge these facts, to put them to the test of reason.

Nevertheless, all the existing religions of the world claim for the human mind this peculiar power of transcending the limits of the senses and the limits of reason; and this power they put forward as a statement of fact.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued  ...


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