Revered sir,
In your last letter you were a little abashed at my giving you that form of address. But that is not my fault; it is the fault of your own virtues. I wrote to you once before that I am so drawn by your virtues that I think there must have been some bond between us in a former birth. I know nothing of householder or sannyāsin; wherever there is true goodness and largeness of heart and greatness, there may my head be bowed for ever. Śāntiḥ, Śāntiḥ, Śāntiḥ. I pray that among the sannyāsins of today, beggars for honour, renouncers for the belly, fallen from both worlds, there may be even one great soul like you in a hundred thousand. Hearing of your virtues, all my brother disciples of brahmin birth, too, send you their full-length prostrations.
… Honey does not drip unless you poke the hive, so I shall ask you a few more questions. Take me for a boy who knows nothing, answer me as the matter truly stands, and do not be angry.
1. Is the mukti the Vedānta Sūtras speak of the same as the nirvāṇa in the Avadhūta Gītā and such books, or not?
2. By the sūtra ‘except creation’, no one becomes fully God in this sense. Then what is nirvāṇa?
3. Chaitanya told Sarvabhauma at Puri, ‘Vyāsa’s Sūtras I understand: they are Dvaita. But the commentator is making them Advaita, and that I do not understand.’ Is this true? The story goes that Chaitanya had many debates on this with Prakashananda Saraswati, and that Chaitanya won. A commentary by Chaitanya is said to have been kept in that same Prakashananda’s Math.
4. The Tantras have called the Ācārya a Buddhist in disguise. The doctrine of the Mahāyāna Buddhists’ book called the Prajñāpāramitā is altogether like the Vedānta the Ācārya preached. The author of the Pañcadaśī also says that the Buddhist śūnya and our Brahman are one and the same thing. What does this mean?
5. Why is no proof of the Vedas given in the Vedānta Sūtras? At the very start it is said that the Vedas are the proof of Īśvara, and that the Vedas are authority because they are ‘the breath of the Puruṣa’. Is this not open to the fault that Western logic calls an argument in a circle?
6. The Vedānta has said: you must believe; argument settles nothing. Then why, wherever it found the least crack in the Nyāya or the Sāṅkhya and the rest, has it at once smothered them in a net of argument? And whom am I to believe, anyway? Each one is mad to set up his own doctrine. If Kapila himself, so great that it is said ‘among the siddhas, the sage Kapila’, is utterly mistaken in Vyāsa’s view, who says that Vyāsa is not still more mistaken? Did Kapila not understand the Vedas and the rest?
7. In the Nyāya view, ‘the word of one who can be trusted is testimony’, and the ṛṣis can be trusted and know all things. Why then are they being charged, on the strength of the Sūrya Siddhānta, with not knowing small matters of astronomy? Those who say the earth is triangular, that Vasuki holds up the earth, and the like: how can I call their buddhi the one refuge for crossing the ocean of becoming?
8. If Īśvara, in His work of creation, goes by our good and bad karma, then what do I gain by His upāsanā? Nareshchandra has a beautiful song:
‘If what is written on my forehead, Kali, must come to pass, Mā, then why call out “Jai Durga, Sri Durga”?’
9. True, it is wrong for many texts to be struck down by one or two. Then why have age-old customs such as the madhuparka been struck down by one or two texts like ‘the aśvamedha, the slaughter of a cow, sannyāsa, meat for the ancestors’? If the Veda is eternal, then what is the meaning and what is the use of sayings like ‘this is the dharma of the Dvāpara age, this of the Kali’?
10. The Īśvara who spoke the Vedas has become the Buddha and is forbidding the Vedas. Which word should one listen to? Does the later injunction prevail, or the earlier?
11. The Tantras say that in the Kali age the mantras of the Vedas bear no fruit. Which word of Maheshvara, then, am I to accept?
12. In the Vedānta Sūtras Vyāsa says that the upāsanā of the fourfold vyūha, Vasudeva, Sankarshana and the rest, is not right; and then that same Vyāsa, in the Bhāgavata and other books, sets forth at length the glory of that very upāsanā. Is Vyāsa mad?
I have many more doubts of this kind; I shall write them later, in the hope that by your grace they will be cut away. Not all of this can be said unless we meet, nor does one find the satisfaction one hopes for. By the Guru’s kṛpā I hope soon to come to your feet and lay it all before you.
I have heard that on these matters no conclusion can be reached by reasoning alone, without sādhana; but some measure of assurance, I think, is needed at the very start. What more?
Your servant,
Narendra.