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The Tenth Lesson: The Religions of India. Part II1333
established in America by the late and respected Swami Vivekananda, who
was one of his disciples and ardent admirers, and who brought forth his
teachings in America at the occasion of the World’s Parliament of Religions
in 1893. Ramakrishna was a Bhakti Yogi, as well as a teacher of philosophical
religion, and his theme was ever “Love, love, love!” By many Western people
he is regarded as the Modern Hindu Saint, equalling the teachers, sages and
founders of cults of early days.
Hindu Religious Images.
We wish to add a word here regarding the Western misconception of
the use of Images in the Hindu religious worship. According to the Western
travelers, particularly the missionaries, the Hindus are a race of Idolaters.
This is an erroneous idea. While it is true that many of the ignorant and
uneducated Hindus worship images without a high conception of the
symbology, still there is always “the god above the image” in the mind of the
worshiper, and the image is used in order to fix the mind of the worshiper
upon the object of his adoration. And the higher, and educated use of the
images merely as a symbol and “outward appearance of an inward reality.”
The Hindu mind is poetical, and tends toward imagery in expressing thought
and worship—just as does the Latin mind of the West, as evidenced by
the Italians, Spaniards, and French, and the Spanish-American peoples.
Consequently the Hindus naturally turn toward imagery in their worship,
in a manner incomprehensible to the average Anglo-Saxon mind. And this
imagery has its low as well as its high aspects. The key to the whole matter is
the thought and idea that the Image is always the Symbol of an Underlying
and Overshadowing Being. A stone, a stick, a bit of earth—or the sun itself—
it matters not. It is always the God back of, underneath, yes IN the object to
which the worship and adoration goes out. This is the key to the Mystery—
the Indwelling, Underlying, and Overshadowing God—symbolized by the
material form, name or object. It is Symbology carried to its extreme.