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The Ninth Lesson: The Religions of India. Part I.1297
Pantheism—that is, the belief that there is but One all in All, still there
was always the outer teaching of a something like Nature-Worship, with
its countless personifications and polytheism. While there was ever the
influence of an overshadowing one brooding over All, still there was at the
same time the mythology of the nature-gods and entities that always mark
a certain stage in the religious development of a race. The careful student
deduces from this that while the knowledge of the Inner Teachings was with
the race, having been inherited from the former civilization from which the
Aryan Race sprung, still that Inner Teaching was in the hands of the Few,
and that the Many were not as yet ready to receive the teachings in their
purity. And so the masses were indulged in their Nature-Worship, and their
minor deities and mythology, the Few endeavoring to get a knowledge
of the Truth into the minds of the people through kindergarten methods,
symbols,—by reflection, as it were. But still there was always noticeable a
gradual and steady inclination toward the Teachings regarding the one.
Even in the early hymns of the Rig Veda, there are to be found numerous
references to a Something that is above even the gods—a God of gods, as
it were, without any attempt at explanation or speculation, but merely the
beginning of a suggestion to the people that there was something beyond
their mythology—some Universal Something from which all things, even
their gods, proceeded.
The ancient Aryans were a joyful, happy, playful lot of Pagans, in their
everyday life, resembling the early Greeks. They reveled in the joy of
living, “eating, drinking, and making merry,” and endeavoring to extract the
greatest joy from each passing moment—not as the result of Hedonistic
reasoning, but out of the sheer animal joy of living. Their gods were like the
mythological deities of the early Greeks, very much like themselves, and not
requiring very much thought on the part of their worshipers, nor a special
code of conduct or ethical hair-splittings—a little matter of sacrifices settling
the matter and fulfilling the requirements. This coupled with the usual