Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/89

regarding the nature of god and the desirable attitude towards him, what a teacher does is to ask the student what his favourite god or goddess is. After learning it from the student as to his favourite god, the teacher explains to him that the idea which he has of that god is not correct. The teacher then teaches him some verses regarding that particular deity which describe the deity not according to the idea which the student may have by listening to many stories from "history and antiquity," but give him a Vedantic idea where that particular deity may be identified with Brahma. The teacher then tries to get out of the pupil's mind the popular idea of god, and tries as far as possible to make him feel his union with the Absolute. This process of instruction is called Brahma-bodhana.

After this Brahma-bodhana has been attained by the student, the student continues to worship the same god as the ignorant does, but his attitude in the worship is entirely different. He simply conforms to the custom, though the ceremonies and the idols are meaningless to him. He does not have hatred for the idols as the ignorant monotheist has; for the idols and everything else in the world are but one entity, Brahma. The student very often repeats the same hymns and same verses as the unintelligent, but he sees a different meaning. In Hindu literature, Sanskrit as well as vernacular, there are a large number of poems descriptive of various gods. Apparently these descriptions conform to the idea of the finite gods of "the history and antiquity" (Epics and Purāņas) but to a man who has received what is called "the key of the teacher" (Guru-Killī) the meaning would seem entirely different. There are some verses which are called "riddles" which give absurd and inconsistent, descriptions regarding the