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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1300
afresh, to be then again run-down, and again re-wound, until all eternity. All
this unto all eternity—unless there appears the Wisdom and Knowledge,
which does not depend upon merit, but which breaks into consciousness
with connection with it. This Wisdom or Knowledge dissolves Samsara or
Life into its innermost elements, and burns up the seeds of works, and thus
makes impossible for all future time a recurrence of the re-birth in Samsara.”
* * *
It is no wonder that this one-sided statement of Truth affected the Hindu
race and colored its religious conceptions for centuries to come, until the
higher philosophical reasoning was able to separate the grain from the chaff
of the teachings. Never has the race had a doctrine so compelling of Fear
and Despair as this crude idea of Samsara, unrelieved by philosophical
explanation. To the minds of these primitive people, it must have indeed
appeared that a Devil, stronger than all their gods, has appeared from the
clear sky. For even their gods were held to come under the Law, and to act
as its administrators and instruments. And from that period, which shows
its distinctive marks in the Vedas, the nature of the religious conceptions
of the Hindus changed—Paganism vanished and the Life under Samsara
succeeded it.
* * *
But other influences were at work. Among the scattered mythological
teachings of India there began to be manifested an insistence upon the
fundamental truth of the one, over All, and in All, and which was all. No
longer a shadowy, indefinite idea, the teaching of tho Brahman began to
assert its supremacy among the people. It did not do away with the gods,
for they continued to be worshiped, and new ones still appeared—but
Brahman was the Source of gods and people alike—the Universe coming
from his Being. Brahman was regarded as the World-Soul, or Universal
Spirit. Brahman had returned to the Aryans, who had lost sight of It during
their years of wandering from the land of the Former Civilization—and
nevermore has its Conception of the one-all, infinite, eternal, absolute