(...Contd)

The path of enlightenment therefore runs through stages in which the self gets more and more purified, more and more truly freed from the longings that often seem to disappear but hide themselves only to reappear in other forms. The mantras or verses of the Upanishads may appear in some places to conflict with one another, but these contradictions disappear when it is remembered that the whole is a process of teaching by stages. All education was through oral teaching in those days.The disciples lived in intimate companionship with the teacher and the scripture was little more than an economic guide to the teacher, and not a textbook to be kept in the student’s library.
To the teacher as well as to the pupil, it was a help to memory, not a comprehensive treatise. The system of education when the Upanishads were composed was a highly evolved process, but the medium was not, as now, the reading of books bought at bookshops or taken out of libraries. This made a difference as to the content of books and what was left for oral guidance.
Separate cults based on the worship of Siva or Vishnu are of no consequence in Vedanta. Whatever may be the significance of the later controversies as to who represents the Supreme Being, the Siva or Vishnu of our mythology, these controversies do not find a place in the Upanishads. Vedanta has indeed no place for such disputes.
Vedanta is not mere philosophy. It is both philosophy and religion. Yet there is no controversy in it about forms of worship. Vedanta is the common heritage of the people of India. In this treatises, Sankara the great Vedantin, uses the word Narayana to indicate the Supreme Being.
Others in their books give to the Supreme Being the name of Siva. Names and images, whether mental or sculptured, even the sacred and mystic syllable “Om” itself, are but crutches to help the faltering fleet of infirm faith on the way to realization—mere aids to concentration, and protection against doubts and distractions. Indeed, Jehovah, Allah and the God of the New Testament might well be made the central name-piece of the teaching of the Upanishads and the sense of it would remain unaltered. Pious men of all religions should indeed study the Upanishads and the Gita in that very manner, to whatever faith they may belong, only substituting their accustomed name wherever the Supreme Being is referred to. This really means that the Upanishads contain the quintessence of all faiths in which the divine thirst of the soul for the nectar of immortality has found expression. They contain the answer to the yearning appeal:
From appearance lead me to Reality,
From darkness lead me to Light,
From death lead me to Immortality Brihadaranyakopanishad, I, III-28.
The tradition in Hinduism is that it is not open to any Hindu, whatever be the name and mental image of the Supreme Being he uses for his devotional exercises, to deny the existence of the God that others worship. He can raise the name of his choice to that of the highest, but he cannot deny the divinity or the truth of the God of other denominations. The fervour of his own piety just gives predominance to the name and form he keeps for his own worship and contemplation, and he treats the others as Gods deriving divinity therefrom. This reduces all controversy to a devotional technique of concentration on a particular name and mental form or concrete symbol as representing the Supreme Being. It makes no difference in the content of Vedanta to which all devotees equally subscribe.
Devotees of other Gods who worship them with true sincerity really ‘worship Me, though not in the regular way,’ says Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.
Just as all water raining from the skies goes to the ocean worship of all Gods goes to Kesava, explained Bhishmacharya in the Mahabharata.