SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS
bhattathiri | 28 June 2004, 4:23am
The ancient Egyptians and the Chaldeans had peculiar beliefs of their own about the soul; but their ideas about a living part after death must not be confused with those of the ancient Hindu, the Persian, the Greek or any other Aryan race. There was, from the earliest times, a broad distinction between the Aryan and the non-Sanskrit speaking mlechchhas in the conception of the soul. Externally it was typified by their disposal of the dead, the mlechchhas mostly trying their best to preserve the dead bodies by careful burial or by the more elaborate process of mummifying, and the Aryans generally burning their dead.
Herein lies the key to a great secret - the fact that no mlechchha race, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, or Babylonian, ever attained to the idea of the soul as a separate entity which can live independent of the body, without the help of the Aryans, especially of the Hindus. (8)
Two people have given all the religions to the world - the Hindus and the Jews. But it is only with the Hindus that the idea of soul comes at first, and that was shared by the Aryan races. (9)
3. Any Ideas of a Pre-Existent, Non-Material Soul Came into Early Western Culture from India
It was in India and among the Aryans that the doctrine of the pre-existence, the immortality, and the individuality of the soul first arose. Recent researches in Egypt [as of 1895] have failed to show any trace of the doctrine of and independent and individual soul existing before and after the earthly phase of existence. Some of the mysteries were no doubt in possession of this idea, but in those it has been traced back to India.
"I am convinced", says Karl Heckel, "that the deeper we enter into the study of the Egyptian religion, the clearer it is shown that the doctrine of metempsychosis was entirely foreign to the popular Egyptian religion; and that even that which single mysteries possessed of it was not inherent to the Osiris teachings, but derived from Hindu sources." (10)
It never occurred to the Greeks to pry into the secrets after death, but [in India] from the beginning was asked again and again, "What am I? What will become of me after death?" There the Greek thought that people died and went to heaven. What was meant by going to heaven? It meant going outside of everything; there was nothing inside, everything was outside; this search was all directed outside - nay, they themselves were, as it were, outside themselves. And when they went to a place which was very much like this world, minus all its sorrows, they thought they had got everything that was desirable and were satisfied - and there all ideas of religion stopped. But it did not satisfy the Hindu mind. In its analysis, these heavens were all included within the material universe. (11)
Later on we find the Alexandrian Jews imbued with the doctrine of an individual soul, and the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. not only had faith in an individual soul, but believed in its wandering through various bodies; and thus it is easy to find how Christ was recognized as the incarnation of an older prophet, and Jesus himself directly asserted that John the Baptist was the prophet Elias come back again: "If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come." [Matt. 11.14]
The ideas of a soul and of its individuality among the Hebrews evidently came through the higher mystical teachings of the Egyptians who, in their turn, derived it from India. And that it should come through Alexandria is significant, as the Buddhist records clearly show Buddhist missionary activity in Alexandria and Asia Minor. (12)
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