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Why would an American dedicate his life to studying the ancient
Vedas of India? And how could an American, coming from such a
different background, find a deep affinity with the Vedic
teachings, which most Hindus today themselves don't even relate to?
How did such a person get started in studying the Vedas? In the
modern world everyone, including Hindus, appears to be trying to
adopt Western culture with its scientific and technological
advances and economic affluence. Why would a person go the other
direction and look to the East, particularly when it was not a
matter of academic study, nor does it promise any material reward?
As I have written many books and articles on the Vedas and
travelled through America and India over the past few years
promoting Vedic knowledge, I am often asked such questions,
particularly by Indo-Americans, who usually do not have the time
and are lacking in the motivation to examine their own tradition.
Confronted with an American dedicated to the Vedas, Hindus find me
not only an anomaly but also a question mark on what they
themselves may be doing. Sometimes they find it an inspiration to
re-examine their own roots.
This is a difficult query to try to answer. I will begin by
relating something of my life. There is really nothing in my
family or educational background that might explain my connection
with the Vedas or even India. I was the second of a family of ten
children, born in a small city in Wisconsin in the Midwest in 1950.
Both my parents came from strict Catholic backgrounds and were
raised on dairy farms. One of my uncles in fact was a priest and
missionary to South America (which example my mother wanted me
personally to follow).
My parents, education was minimal. My mother did not even go to
high school. My father went to college only briefly, and served in
the army for several years. Though they were both open minded
people they never oriented me in the direction of India or anything
mystical.
I myself went to Catholic school until the fifth grade (age ten).
We were taught to look on Protestants with suspicion. Asia was like
another world, a land of backward, primititive people needing
conversion. After much moving about, as my father was a realtor,
we finally settled down in Denver, Colorado. There, owing to the
financial burden of so many children, we switched to public school
which brought us out of the shell of Catholic beliefs. Yet public
schools had no real mention of India either, except as a big
country in Asia suffering from poverty and overpopulation.
I had an inquisitive mind as a child and began developing my own
studies outside of school, perhaps because my mother encouraged me
in such things. I had an interest in geography since seven or eight
years of age and became aware that there was much more to the world
than America. Foreign lands of all types fascinated me. I began
reading various books starting with science and history, which
broadened my view of life and caused me to question my Catholic
upbringing and its dogma. I found the ideas of modern astronomy
with the vastness of the universe and the relativity of time and
space to be much more intriguing than Catholic views of creation.
I left the Catholic church at the age of fourteen. This came not
only from the clash between the church and modem science, but from
having read history and discovered that the church often stood for
political oppression and social exploitation, not anything truly
holy I felt that if there was a God, it was an impersonal reality,
not a personal God with his own whims, judgements and partialities.
Yet though I left the church, I still felt that there was a
spiritual reality in life, which I found in nature, particularly in
the mountains which I loved, This spiritual reality was an inner
experience quite divorced from churches and creeds.
By the time of high school my own studies were of more interest
than classes in school. I had a kind of intellectual awakening when
about the age of sixteen which caused me to study European
literature and philosophy, particularly symbolic poets and
existential philosophers. I felt that American culture was very
superficial compared to the European. Yet examining the mystical
and poetic sides of the European mind, I also eventually found them
to be lacking. I saw that the great intellectuals and artists of
the West, the geniuses who were regarded as the highest human
types, were still plagued with doubt, depression and uncertainty.
They obviously had not found any lasting peace or ultimate truth.
About the same time, as a secondary interest I began examining the
Eastern spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Some
of this came as part of the sixties counterculture movement, which
included a fascination with Eastern gurus and teachings, but much
of it was the product of my own independent and generally more
philosophical search. Between these teachings I found a common
truth-consciousness as the supreme reality and meditation as the
way to realize that. Yet it was among the teachings of Yoga and
Vedanta that I found the views which most resonated with my inner
being, particular the sense of the supreme Self (Atman) and pure
Existence (Brahman) as the highest truth. For example, I remember
walking home from high school one day and looking up at the blue
sky and realizing that it was the presence of Krishna, who
represented the cosmic power of bliss. This was before
encountering the Hare Krishna movement and was not produced by any
outer influences.
After high school I attended a local college briefly, in which I
found little to interest me. I remember taking a class on
Cosmology and Metaphysics, which was actually in the graduate
studies department. I thought the class might have something
mystical in it. Instead it was mainly a science class, with a few
cosmological speculations thrown in, generally of a materialistic
nature. The teacher could not even decide whether there was any
spiritual reality or not. This caused me to feel that the academic
world had no capacity to answer the real questions of life. Hence
I abandoned college after less than a semester.
About this time I also came into contact with local spiritual
teachers and yoga groups in Denver, through which I learned of
various gurus and practices, including yoga and meditation, which I
began to do on a regular basis. A couple of years later I
travelled to California and visited many of the spiritual groups
based in America. I had more interest in India itself and teachings
that were more traditional. I had a serious bent of mind and did
not feel satisfied with these groups which were largely social
movements or cults centered around one person, in which one's
personal relationship with the teacher generally outweighed any
real interest in spiritual studies. I have always distrusted mass
movements and fads of all types, including the pop spirituality
that has developed in the West.
I came to learn of the teachings of great modem Hindu gurus of
India most notably Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and
Sri Aurobindo, Their I felt something truly solid and real. As
several of these figures had already passed away, I wrote to their
centres in India and developed contact with some of their living
disciples. Most notably I corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for
several years, who was still alive at the time. But more so than
any particular teacher the Vedantic teaching interested me,
particularly the Upanishads, which appeared as the ideal
combination of spiritual philosophy and poetry. I felt in them the
core teaching that I was looking for in all spiritual teachings.
This led me to the works of Shankaracharya, the great commentator
on the Upanishads according to the system of Advaita Vedanta. The
Advaitic view of the pure unity of truth and the illusory nature of
the world, agreed with my experience of life through the political
and social turbulence of the late sixties and early seventies. Yet
I was also drawn towards the earlier Vedas and their Mysterious
mantras, with which most Vedantic teachers have little concern. I
had a sense of things ancient and wanted to know the earliest
teachings of humanity. The idea of things ancient rishis and seers
appealed to me and I wanted to know who they were.
I also had a poetic bent of mind and wrote poetry of a mystical and
symbolic type since I was sixteen. I used images of the dawn and
the night, fire, the wind, and the sun, along with gods and
goddesses, with the forces of nature appearing as powers of both
the human and cosmic mind in their interplay. Later I found that
these same images predominated in the Vedas themselves.
Of the great modern yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the greatest poet, and
so naturally his work had a certain appeal to me on this level. The
beginning of the chapters in his book the Life Divine contained
various Vedic quotes, particularly from the Rig Veda, which I found
to be particularly inspiring. I noted in a list of his books that
he had several on the Vedas themselves. This aroused my interest
in the Vedas and I ordered these books and studied them with great
interest, meditating carefully upon them.
My encounters with the Vedas through these books were not mere
intellectual experiences. They represented a contact with the
Divine Word, Vak or the Divine Speech, the Goddess Sarasvati. I
felt the presence of the Vedic Dawn, like the Dawn of humanity, the
beginning. of creation, and the building of a new world for the
Divine. This began my study of the Vedas, which was rooted in
poetry with a background of Vedanta.
Yet I was not satisfied in simply following Sri Aurobindo's
interpretation. I wanted to know what the Vedic rishis themselves
saw and felt. A few years later when I was twenty-seven, having
gone through most of what was available in English on the Vedas, I
decided to look at the Vedas and Upanishads in the original
Sanskrit. As there were no teachers available to me, as I was then
living in a remote town in Northern California, I started with the
Sanskrit. texts and a Sanskrit grammar book and began trying to
figure out the language myself, starting with the oldest Rig Veda
itself. It was a rather unusual and haphazard way to learn
Sanskrit, starting with the most difficult and oldest part of the
language, but somehow it worked.
The Vedic language gradually unfolded its meaning through a study
of the images, sounds and roots upon which the language was based.
I felt an inner affinity with the teaching so that I did not find
the texts to be difficult, though the grammar was often cumbersome.
I soon discovered that the interpretations generally accepted for
the older Vedas-not only those done by modern Western scholars but
the traditional school of Sayana-as Aurobindo had noted, were
indeed erroneous. The result of this research was that I produced a
small volume on the Upanishads and the Vedas. It traced back the
Vendantic teaching of the universal Self found in the Upanishads to
an origin in an earlier and more powerful Vedic vision. This was
opposite the way it is usually explained, which is to view the
Upanishads as exalted philosophy developing from a crude Vedic
ritualistic base.
A friend of mine, who had recently become a disciple of M.P. Pandit
of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, recommended me to visit him during an
upcoming trip of his to America. I knew that if anyone would
understand what I was doing it would be him, as Pandit had done
many books on the Vedas and Upanishads, with similar ideas.
I explained my views to him that the Vedas contained a science of
Self realization hidden in their teaching, from their very first
mantra to the Divine Fire (Agni). He was happy to know of my work
and told me that he would help publish it in India. He encouraged
me to follow out my studies, which he explained was a kind of
Divine mission given to me.
I told him that I was not academically trained, nor had I yet
studied in India, and that my work was merely personal and never
intended for publication. I said that I did not feel qualified to
comment on the Vedas in a public way He replied that it was good
that I Wasn't academically trained, that it gave me a direct and
independent insight, so that I would not just merely repeat the
same errors as other scholars. He told me to trust my vision. If
I had such insights and had produced such work it was for a purpose
and should not be limited to my own private study
Naturally this moved me to continue my Vedic work with more effort
and dedication. I worked on the Rig Veda itself and in four months
had produced a five hundred page book on the Vedas, which I mailed
to Pandit and he began serializing in World Union and other
publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
I began sending articles out to other publications in India as
well, including to the ashram publications of Ramana Maharshi and
Anandamayi Ma, as well as to Motilal Banarsidass, the main
publisher of Indological books and these articles were almost
invariably published, which additionally encouraged me to go
further. Thus my Vedic work began spontaneously and independently I
sort of naturally fell into it. I never had a plan to do so. And
in retrospect it would appear to be a ludicrous thing to attempt,
particularly by someone at my age and background working largely on
his own.
After developing this foundation I gained many contacts and much
support for my work throughout the world, though it took over ten
years to get it recognized in a broader way. I have since taken
many trips to India and studied and discussed the Vedas with many
teachers, which would require separate stories to relate. I have
worked with Ayurveda and Vedic astrology as well, expanding the
range of my original Vedic research. But the basic core of my
Vedic views has not changed.
What was it that I discovered in the Vedas? What made the Vedas
more important to me than other spiritual or intellectual
teachings? It was not just philosophy or poetry of an exalted
nature. Nor was it the later portion of the Vedas alone, the
Upanishads that drew my interest. It was the most ancient Rig Veda
itself and its wealth of mantras and symbols. The Rig Veda for me
is the doorway to mind of the rishis, to the cosmic mind itself,
the heart of creation. The Vedic vision is a universal mantric
knowledge that integrates all aspects of human knowledge including
yoga, philosophy, poetry, psychology, mythology and ritual. The
Vedas are like an ongoing explosion of insights, with every sort of
color and form, merging ultimately into a pure lightning
illumination that has no end.
For me the Vedas are a living teaching and the Vedic rishis are
living teachers. There is no gap of time or culture between us and
the Vedas. The Vedas transcend time. Nor do I see the Vedas as
merely Indian; they are the heritage of the greater spiritual
humanity from which we have fallen and to which we must return.
The Vedas are part of us or, to be more accurate, we are part of
the Vedas. They are the very fabric of the cosmic intelligence
that works inside us and in all the universe upholding the great
beauty and harmony of life. The Vedas exist at the core of all
real seeking to connect with truth through the great forces of
nature and consciousness, whether it is in the form of Native
American, Ancient Creek, Egyptian, or even modem scientific
approaches. In that connecting to the universal being and its
powers lies the Vedas, and there the Vedas must eventually be
found. The Vedas are not merely particular books-though the Vedic
texts we do have are authentic-but are the very vibrations of the
Divine Word, the Primal Sound, the voice of original reality.
I don't find the Vedic mantras to be hard to understand. What
could be more obvious than the dawn and the sun that rises every
day? Yet the dawn and the sun are not outer realities, they are
outer symbols, intimations of an inner reality of enlightenment and
illumination that is our true home. The Vedas are the language of
nature not as outer phenomena but as a poetry of the spirit, which
is the real meaning and beauty of creation. To me what is hard to
understand is not the Vedas but the modern world with its
technology that alienates us from nature, its commercialism that
warps our minds, its endless desires and sensations, its artificial
dogmas and ideologies, compared to which the Vedic world is indeed
paradise.
The final answer as to my connection with the Vedas perhaps goes
back to the truth of karma and rebirth. There is really no reason
why someone of my background would take to this Vedic work and be
able to go anywhere with it. The only answer is the samskaras, the
impressions from previous births. This was a knowledge that came
with me, that I was born with, the result of a previous life which
I have since come to remember in various aspects. For example,
when I received my first copies the Vedas in Sanskrit it was not
something ancient or foreign that I saw but an old friend and
companion.
Nor do I approach the Vedas from an academic or even personal
perspective. To approach the Vedas I first put my mind into a
silent state and let the teaching unfold itself without the
interference's of my own though there is not done through a mental
effort, though there is the effort of concentration. It is like
opening an irrigation channel to great river.
It is the great beauty of the Hindu religion that the impressions
it creates in us remain with us life after life. It is not a
religion limited to one life only, and its benefit carries through
all of our lives to the final liberation. In this regard the
impressions of the Vedas can be found in each one of us, if we know
how to look deeply for them. While unusual, I don't think what I
have experienced with the Vedas is unique. I think that many more
people, East and West, will come to it in the future. The Vedas
are not only. our most ancient past but the key to our global
future as well.
The message of my encounter with the Vedas to modem Hindus is this:
Your spiritual tradition is perhaps the greatest treasure of all
humanity. Please cherish it, sustain it, practise it and share it
with all. Whatever deficiencies may be in India or Hindu culture
economically or politically, should not get a person to forget the
power of the Vedas. The Vedas are like the sun. In them is the
key to all light, life and love for all the world, through which
all problems, individual or collective, can be solved. Let us not
forget our Vedic heritage.
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is the author of various books on
Vedic knowledge including Gods, Sages and Kings, From the River of
Heaven, and Mantras of the Ancient Seers. He can be reached
through the American Institute of Vedic Studies, PO Box 8357, Santa
Fe NM 87504 (505) 983-9385. His books can be ordered from Passage
Press 800-873-0075.
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