Upanishads ridicule the worshipper of deities as a dim-witted person no better than a beast.+

The rituals mentioned in the karmakanda of the Vedas are sought to be negated in the jnanakanda, which is also part of the same scripture. While the karmakanda enjoins upon you the worship of various deities and lays down rules for the same, the jnanakanda, constituted by the Upanishads, ridicules the worshipper of deities as a dim-witted person no better than a beast.

This seems strange, the latter part of the Vedas contradicting the former part. The first part deals throughout with karma, while the second or concluding part is all about jnana. Owing to this difference, people have gone so far as to divide our scripture into two sections: the Vedas (that is, the first part) to mean the karmakanda, and the Upanishads (Vedanta) to mean the jnanakanda.

Vedanta is what the Lord teaches us in the Gita, and in it, he lashes out against the karmakanda. It is generally believed that the Buddha and Mahavira were the first to attack the Vedas.

It is not so. Lord Krishna himself spoke against them long before these two religious leaders. At one place in the Gita, he says to Arjuna:~ "The Vedas are associated with the three qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas.

You must transcend these three qualities. Full of desire, they (the practitioners of Vedic rituals) long for paradise and keep thinking of pleasures and material prosperity. They are born again and again, and their minds are never fixed in Samadhi; these men cling to Vedic rituals. “In another passage, Lord Krishna declares: "Not by the Vedas am I to be realised, nor by sacrifices nor by much study. . .

Does not such talk contradict all that I have spoken so far about the Vedas, that they are the source of all our dharma?

With some thinking, we will realise that there is, in fact, no contradiction. Would it be possible for us, in our present condition, to go beyond the three Gunas even to the slightest extent and realise the true state of the Self spoken of in the Upanishads?

The purpose of the Vedic rituals is to take us, by degrees, to this state. So long as we believe that the world is real, we worship the deities so as to be vouchsafed happiness. And this world, which we think is real, also benefits from such worship.

Thinking the deities to be real, we help them, and in return, we are helped by them. Living happily on this earth, we long to go to the world of the celestials and enjoy the pleasures of paradise. So far so good. But if we stopped at this stage, would it not mean losing sight of our supreme objective? Is not this objective, this goal, our becoming one with the Paramatman? Would it not be foolish to ignore this great ideal of ours and still cling to mundane happiness?

In our present state of immaturity, it is not possible to think of the world being unreal. Recognising this, the Vedas provide us with the rituals to be performed for happiness in this world. Because of our inadequacies, we are unable to devote ourselves to a formless Paramatman from whom we are not different.

So the Vedas have devised a system in which a number of deities are worshipped. But, in the course of time, as we perform the rituals and worship the deities, we must make efforts to advance to the state of wisdom and enlightenment in which the world will be seen to be unreal and the rites will become unnecessary. Instead of worshipping many deities, we must reach the state in which we will recognise that we have no existence other than that of our being dissolved in the Paramatman. We must perform Vedic sacraments with the knowledge that they prepare us to go to this state by making our mind pure and one-pointed.

If we perform rituals with the sole idea of worldly happiness and carry on trade with the celestials by conducting sacrifices (offering them oblations and receiving benefits from them in return), we will never come face to face with the Truth. Even if we go to the world of the celestials, we will not be blessed with Self-realisation. Our residence in paradise is commensurate with the merit we earn here and is not permanent.

Sooner or later, we will have to return to this world and be in the womb of a mother. The ritual worship and other sacraments of the Vedas are, to some extent, the result of making an adjustment to our present immature state of mind. But their real purpose is to take us forward gradually from this very immature state and illumine us within. It would be wrong to refuse to go beyond the stage of ritual worship.

If, to begin with, it is not right to refuse all at once to perform Vedic rites, it would be equally not right, subsequently, to refuse to give them up. Nowadays, people are averse to ritual to start with itself. "What?” they exclaim. "Who wants to perform sacrifices? Why should we chant the Vedas? Let us go directly to the Upanishads.

Some of them can speak eloquently about the Upanishads from a mere intellectual understanding of them. But none has the inward experience of the truths propounded in them, and we do not see them emerging as men of detachment with a true awareness of the Self. The reason for this is that they have not prepared themselves for this higher state of perception through the performance of rituals. If this is wrong in one sense, refusal to take the path of jnana from that of karma is equally not justifiable.

Till one has the conviction that he is an individual, separate from the world, and the world existed prior to him, and he is born with it, he will remain in ignorance of the reality of his true existence. Till this conviction is there, it is impossible to grasp the Advaitic truth, because his views and judgments are based on the physical Self (ego) with the physical world (waking).

The individuality is a reality within the waking experience, but the waking experience itSelf is a falsehood. Thus, holding the view as an individual within the false experience leads to a hallucination. The waking experience is a parallel dream, and the dream is a parallel waking experience. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar