What is Religion?
The Religion Which Is Oneness
January 2020
I
The Vedanta Kesari
42
n the Jan-Nov 2019 issues, we have tried to present Swami Vivekananda’s conception of religion under this series: ‘What is Religion?’ There are at least 60 different ‘definitions’ of religion peppered across Swamiji’s lectures and writing! Each month, we took up one such definitive statement and tried to explain it using his own utterances, as far as possible. This month we will wrap up the series. While some people say that religion is losing its relevance in our lives, at least in our daily lives, there are others who say that religion is growing stronger in its relevance in our daily lives. Some say that religion is an historic relic, a sad remnant of the dark past, completely out of sync with the modern world. Many others say that never before in human history did religion have as much significance or relevance than it has at present. Some people say that religion will be phased out from daily life, since it has outlived its utility for mankind. Many contend that we need to urgently factor religion into our lives if we need to maintain our sanity and grow as individuals. Caught in this crossfire of opinions, man looks askance at anyone who can resolve this dilemma for him. Swami Vivekananda provides the much needed resolution. Hidden in his lectures and writing, we find four predictions he makes about religion. We shall attempt to explain each of these in this article.
Religion will be scientific Science rests on two principles1; Occam’s razor applied to all knowledge; and the principle of perception-generalizationuniversalization of all knowledge. If we have multiple explanations for a phenomenon, that explanation will be chosen which is the simplest. In other words, the explanation must proceed from within the nature of the things involved and newer entities must not be unnecessarily brought in to explain them. This is Occam’s razor. All that we perceive can be categorized under two groups – things outside us, things within us. Religion has attempted to explain these two groups of perceptions. Religion has always recognized a third category – the perceiver. Science is a much better way of explaining the former two categories of perception, which are the external world and the internal world. For centuries, Religion was the only means of answering any questions that naturally arose in our minds, be it regarding the external world or internal world, or about the perceiver itself. Religion now ought to relinquish its interference, nay, hegemony on these two categories. Religion will confine itself to explaining the perceiver alone, for Science is unable to enter that area with the tools presently in its armory. All religions speak of a divine being, God. All religions have a unique theory of how God created this universe. Now, no one in any of
