Raj Narain Bose on Adi Brahmoism

[Rahul Dev Sharma]

Dear Friends,

Raj Narain Bose was a formidable exponent of Adi Brahmoism. In this 1883
article (text below) he clarifies many issues (as per him) including
Brahmoim's differences with Theosophy, occultism, conception of God, and
Brahmic Yoga. A must read for all True Brahmos. I will email a PDF version
of this document to Mr.Roy for the Adi Brahmo
Samaj<http://adibrahmosamaj.org/>website

There are also some very illuminating ripostes from the Theosophists in the
footnotes.

Rahul

*THE GOD-IDEA*

Babu Raj Narain Bose



[The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 3(51), December, 1883, pp. 75-76]



I deem it necessary to reply to some of your remarks on my letter published
in The Theosophist for the current month.



You say, "Since few of us have identical beliefs and every religionist of
whatever faith is firmly impressed with the truth and superiority of his own
creed. . . ., the result is, sectarianism is ever kept alive."

To this my reply is: Let every religionist preach his own religion, and that
which is the truest religion is sure to prevail. If religion be preached
according to my plan, there would be different sects but no sectarian
animosity. As different men have got different countenances, so there must
always be different religious sects in this world. That cannot be helped.



You say: "Would our Atheists be welcome in the Brahma Mandirs?"

I say no, because Atheism is no religion. It is the negation of belief. Any
religionist who would discourse upon general religion would certainly be
welcome.



You say that you do not propagate your religious opinions, and that you give
out your views on the subject of religion only when challenged to do so.

Granted. But do you not endeavor to prevail upon people to believe in
Occultism and the existence of Spirit? If you do not do so, what is the use
of these Theosophical Societies? Is not this a kind of religious
propagation?*[1] Does it not lead sometimes to angry discussion like other
kinds of religious propagation? I have not the returns of the last census of
Bombay at hand, nor is it easy to lay hold of them in this out-of-the-way
place. Will you therefore kindly inform me of the number only of Theists in
that city whom, poor men! you have put in the same category with Christians,
and the percentage of crime committed by them as compared with orthodox
Hindus.



You believe in a "living God in man himself," a "divine indweller," a
"divine Presence" and not a God outside of man himself.

This, as far as I understand, means that you believe in the Eternal and
All-pervading Principle manifesting itself in a personal and therefore a
worshipable form in the human soul. You charge us, Theists, with believing
in Existence and not Presence, and represent that you, believers in the
human soul as God, are real believers in the Presence. To this I answer that
we go further than you in believing in Presence. We believe in a soul of the
soul, in a being in whom the soul or spirit lives, moves and has its
being,†[2] in a Sarvabhutântarâtma, or Inner Soul of all things as preached
by our venerable Upanishads.*[3] This we call God. He is as much the life of
the soul or spirit as of the physical world. He is the life of life and the
soul of the soul and is immanent to all things. He is the Spirit of Spirit,
the Perfect Spirit on whom this imperfect spirit of ours always depends for
its existence. That the imperfect depends always on the perfect is an
axiomatic truth.



You say that Theosophy is the informing life of every religion.

How can it be so when its principal article of belief is that God is
impersonal and has no gunas or attributes?*[4] The belief in one Personal
God or Theism is the informing soul of every religion. Every religion
recognizes a Personal Divinity—I observe that men, who do not believe in
God, are led as it were by a curse of Nature to substitute infinitely less
worthy objects of reverence or adoration in His place such as Humanity—as is
the case with Positivists, departed Spirits—as is the case with some
Spiritualists, or Human Reason or Logos†[5]—as is the case with you,
Theosophists.



You say that the Adi Brahmo Samaj movement has not succeeded, because the
principal members of the Samaj have not the Yoga power.

I need tell you that these members believe that the highest Yoga is the
concentration of mind upon God even amidst the transaction of worldly
affairs. This Yoga has been illustrated by a sloka given in my "Superiority
of Hinduism," containing the beautiful comparison of the real yogi to a
female dancer with a pitcher full of water upon her head, singing and
dancing according to the strictest rules of music, but still preventing the
pitcher from falling down. This best of all yogas, the real Raj yoga, is to
be attained by long practice requiring constant and tremendous exercise of
will-power as was done by Rajah Janaka. But do not think, therefore, that I
do not believe in theosophic yoga apart from its, what I think, unnatural
alliance with Agnosticism or Buddhism. Theosophic yoga has its use.*[6] It
enables us to show that the people of Asia are possessed of scientific
knowledge to which European science is as nothing. I cannot disbelieve in
the marvellous effects of such yoga. I cannot discredit the testimony on
this point of such honest and intelligent individuals as yourself, Messrs.
Hume, Sinnett and Olcott, Captain Osborne and Col. Wade who lived in the
Court of Runjeet Sing and my personal friend, Babu Akshaya Kumar Datta,
former Editor of the Tatvabodhini Patrika, who collected with so much care
the evidence about the Sunderban yogi. I admit the importance of theosophic
yoga, but it would prove a calamity to India if it lead to a general exodus
of most of our best men to the jungles. It would be adding another serious
evil to those under which India is already groaning. I think the highest
yoga is best practised at home.



With reference to your allusion to the supposed future of the Adi Brahmo
Samaj†[7] movement, allow me to inform you that the Adi Brahmo Samaj is no
organized church like the Brahmo Samaj of India or the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
and has no muster roll of members. All educated men, who believe in a
formless God, but yet do not think it proper to wound the feelings of
parents and other dear relatives by diverging widely from prevailing customs
and usages, are members of the Adi Brahmo Samaj.*[8] They form a very
considerable section of the community. The orthodox Hari Sabhas of Bengal
have been evidently affected by the influence of the Adi Brahmo Samaj. Their
proceedings are now-a-days held according to its model, and the discourses
delivered in them are gradually becoming more and more theistic than before.



My health does not unfortunately permit me to continue this very interesting
discussion further. I therefore conclude it on my part with this letter.



DEOGARH, August 10th, 1883.



Babu Raj Narain Bose



Footnotes:-

––––––––––

*[1]  We join issue with our respected friend here; followers of all
religions can be and have always counted among their numbers students of the
subject in question, namely:—Occultism.—Ed.



† [2] We are forced to reply to our venerable friend that if the Theists
claim to go "further," the Theosophists (of that school, at any rate, to
which the writer belongs) claim to go deeper. Rejecting all Externals as
true guides, they accept but the Internal, the invisible, the never to be
described by any adjective or human qualification. And going deeper they
reject the idea of "the soul of the soul"  anima; from which the word animal
is derived. For us there is no over-soul or under-soul; but only
ONE—substance: the last word being used in the sense Spinoza attached to it;
calling it the ONE Existence, we cannot limit its significance and dwarf it
to the qualification "over"; but we apply it to the universal, ubiquitous
Presence, rejecting the word 'Being,' and replacing it with "All-Being." Our
Deity as the "God" of Spinoza and of the true Adwaitee—neither thinks, nor
creates, for it is All-thought and All-creation. We say with Spinoza—who
repeated in another key but what the Esoteric doctrine of the Upanishads
teaches: 'Extension is visible Thought; Thought is invisible Extension.' For
Theosophists of our school the Deity is a UNITY in which all other units in
their infinite variety merge and from which they are indistinguishable—
except in the prism of theistic Maya. The individual drops of the curling
waves of the universal Ocean have no independent existence. In short, while
the Theist proclaims his God a gigantic universal BEING, the Theosophist
declares with Heraclitus, as quoted by a modern author, that the ONE
Absolute is not Being—but becoming: the ever-developing, cyclic evolution,
the Perpetual Motion of Nature visible and invisible—moving, and breathing
even during its long Pralayic Sleep.—Ed.



*[3] It is easy to prove that the Upanishads do not teach belief in a
personal God—with humanly conceived attributes, etc. Iswar is not mentioned
in the Upanishads as a personal noun. On the other hand we see Guhya Adeśa,
the strictest preservation of the secrecy of the doctrines, constantly
urged, the Upanishads, showing in their very name that the doctrines taught
were never revealed but to the Initiates. At the very outset the seeker
after knowledge of Brahma is enjoined to repair to a guru (tad
vijijñâsartham sa guru mevâvigachchet), which is simply unmeaning if a
literal interpretation of the text was capable of conveying the intended
sense. This quotation from the Upanishad, we may add, is adopted by the
Brahmos of the Adi Samaj and finds a place in their Brahma Dharma Grantha,
compiled by the Pradhanacharya.—Ed.



*[4] We may be allowed to point out that we do not maintain that Parabrahm
is absolutely without any guna, for Presence itself is a guna, but that it
is beyond the three gunas—Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.—Ed.



†[5] When the term Logos, Verbum, Vach, the mystic divine voice of every
nation and philosophy comes to be better understood, then only will come the
first glimmering of the Dawn of one Universal Religion. Logos was never
human reason with us.—Ed.



*[6] We are afraid some misapprehension exists in our correspondent's mind
as to what "Theosophic Yoga" is. Rajah Janaka was a Theosophic Yogi. See in
this connection Sankara's Commentaries on Bhagavad-Gîtâ.—Ed.



†[7] Our esteemed correspondent misunderstands us. We never spoke of the
"Adi Brahmo Samaj," of which we know next to nothing, but of the spurious
Brahmo Samaj calling itself New Dispensation where all is to be taken on
faith and the Universal Infallibility is claimed to have taken its
Headquarters in the person of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen who has now come to
comparing himself publicly—nay with identifying himself—with Jesus Christ.
Again—the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, a body whose members—all those we have met,
at any rate—scoff at the idea of yoga powers and laugh at the word
phenomenon.—Ed.



*[8] Are we to understand that when the "parents and other dear relations"
of the present generation will drop off the scene, the Adi Brahmo Samaj will
itself drop off the sphere of activity as an effete anachronism?—Ed.