Material and Spiritual Progress – Both Are Important
कलौ वेदान्तिनः सर्वे
Everybody talks Vedanta in Kaliyuga.
Spirituality and Vedanta have become synonyms.
I am not talking about the real Vedanta.
I am talking about the half-cooked Vedanta which is being propagated.
Can we completely do away with the material world, saying that it is all an illusion?
Veda doesn’t say so.
Veda considers the world as a reality.
There are thousands of prayers in the Vedic corpus asking for health, wealth, enjoyments, progeny.
If the world is an illusion, these prayers would not have been there in the Veda itself.
In fact, Veda has got two kinds of knowledge:
Brahma Vidya and Yajna Vidya.
Brahma Vidya is about the single unmanifest Brahman, and Yajna Vidya is about the manifested world with trillions of trillions of objects, beings, and processes.
World is not an illusion.
World is a limitation — that's all.
Brahman limits himself to certain shapes, sizes, weights, and certain duration to become the trillions and trillions of entities that we see around us.
This is creation.
The creative process is called Yajna.
This is how the Devas created.
Beings and objects are created through the process of Yajna — that's what Prajapati does.
This is Yajna Vidya, the knowledge with which he creates.
That's why, even today, we can also manifest effects through Yajnas.
Somebody doesn’t have progeny — do Putreshti.
He is blessed with a progeny.
Brahma Vidya is just the reverse of this.
Yajna Vidya is from unity to diversity.
Brahma Vidya is from diversity to unity — going back.
But if you want to know what the world is all about, you should know the principles of both — both Yajna Vidya and Brahma Vidya.
Then only you will be able to see unity in diversity.
If you know only Brahma Vidya, then you will think that the world is an illusion or worthless.
This is not desirable.
Then why would the Creator have created the world?
If it is worthless, useless — why should someone as wise and intelligent and efficient as Prajapati have even created it?
If you know only Yajna Vidya, then your outlook will be more materialistic — health, wealth, progress.
The balanced approach is to know both — both Brahma Vidya and Yajna Vidya.
Not only at an individual level —
Even as a nation, we will flourish if we give equal importance both to material progress and spiritual progress.
English
Mystique
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