Bible Stories

Hinduism is a shoreless sea. It has a continuous history of more than 3,000 years. During that time it has gathered into itself so many streams and currents of belief and practice that it is very hard to say just what it is. Hindus say this is a good thing, because it makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world.

Professor Radhakrishnan has distinguished between four different levels of religious experience. His analysis takes us to the heart of the Hindu outlook:

• There are idolaters — those who cannot worship without some visible form of the divine to help them. We may regret this; we may help them to rise to a higher level of religious consciousness; but we must not blame them. Let them use whatever means of approaching God are most suitable to them.
• Next on the scale are the religions of incarnation, among which of course Christianity is to be numbered. Here the worshipper has a mental picture of the one whom he worships, whether it be Christ, or Krishna, or some other. This is a step forward, but it means that the worshipper is still to some extent making God in his own image.
• Then we find those who know that God cannot be in any way represented. But they still have an idea of God as one who is personal, one to whom they can talk and who will hear them when they pray. This means that they believe in a limited God.
• Finally we come to the higher wisdom of classical Hinduism. To think of God as person is to set limits to him. But the true God is the unlimited, the one who never changes, the one who is always there. About him we can say nothing positive, because no human words can express what he really is.

The unseen is real

All these forms of approach to God are found in Hinduism. Village Hinduism is a matter of shrines, images and sacrifices. In the great temples hymns are sung to the great gods, to whom the bhakti, the loving adoring worship, of the believer is directed. The thinker needs no temple; he lets his thoughts go out to God in devout meditation. The seer tries to realize the great truth tat tvam asi, that art thou — the soul in you is identical with Brahman, the great Reality, the One; separate existence is illusion. When a believer is set totally free from illusion, he returns to identity with Brahman. This is deliverance, the highest goal for man.

Hinduism has a profound sense that the great realities are not the visible things; it is the unseen which is real. At best this gives a deeply spiritual view of the world and of human life in it. And Hinduism is basically an optimistic religion. All human beings have the capacity to seek after God. All are on their way towards him. The way may be very long and arduous; it may lead through many successive births into this world. But in the end the way will lead all people to the goal; in the end the soul will be reunited with that one supreme Reality, from which it ought never to have been separated.

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