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 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY 
 
 LECTURE BY 
 
 V 
 
 SWAMI ABHEDANANDA 
 
 ON 
 
 The Word and me Cross in Ancient India 
 
 DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPTCES OF THE VEDANTA SOCIETY, « 
 
 AT TUXEDO HALL, NEW YORK, SUNDAY, 'W 
 
 MARCH 4th, I9OO. 
 
 Published by the Vedanta Society 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 t 
 
 Copyright, 1900, by Swami Abhedananda, new york 
 
 Price 10 Cents. 
 
 
32683 
 
 Library of Congress 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 AUG 9 1900 
 
 Copyright entry 
 
 I Out ft if** 
 
 SECOND COFT. 
 
 Delivered to 
 
 ORDER DIVISION, 
 
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 VI 4? 
 
 " The Word was Brahman " (or The Absolute.)— Bri. Upaniskad. 
 
 14 He who exists by Himself let first stream forth the Word, the Eternal, 
 without beginning or end, the Divine Word which we read in the Veda, whence 
 proceeded the evolution of the world."— Mah&bh&rata. 
 
 THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT 
 
 INDIA. 
 
 Since the beginning of the Christian era the fol- 
 lowers of Christ have popularised the two great sacred 
 symbols of the ancient Aryans — the Word or the 
 Son of God, and the Cross. Although these two 
 symbols were unknown amongst the Semitic races, 
 especially the ancient Hebrews, yet they were known 
 to the pre-Christian Greek philosophers as well as to 
 the Aryan philosophers and thinkers who lived in an- 
 cient India. 
 
 The conception that the Word was the only be- 
 gotten Son of the Father, the first-born, or the Son of 
 God, was rooted deep in the abstruse philosophical 
 speculations of the Aryan minds who tried to bridge 
 over the gulf that exists between the visible and the 
 invisible, between the phenomenal and the noumenal, 
 between the individual soul of man and God the Crea- 
 tor of all. The Aryan seekers after the ultimate cause 
 of the universe and the true relation of soul to God 
 advanced many theories to explain the apparent sepa- 
 ration between the Creator and the created, between 
 God and the soul of man; and made various attempts 
 
VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 to discover the means by vtfiich the two can be 
 brought together in closer union and by which the 
 soul of man will return to its Creator. 
 
 In ancient Judaism, however, the conception of 
 Jehovah was so objective, so far from the universe, so 
 majestic and so high that the idea of union between 
 the individual soul and Jehovah or even its approach 
 to His throne was considered to be blasphemous, and 
 insulting to Jehovah the Supreme Deity. The result 
 of this conception was that the idea of the sonship of 
 man, or of the Word, never took any hold upon the 
 ancient Semitic minds. The superficial readers of the 
 Old Testament may find some vague expressions of 
 the idea of sonship of man in such passages as : " Ye 
 are the children of the Lord your God " — Deut 
 xiv. i ; or in the passage where Moses says : " Of the 
 Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful and hast 
 forgotten God that formed thee" — Deut. xxxii. 18; 
 or when he asks : " Is not he thy father that hath 
 bought thee? Hath he not made thee and established 
 thee?" — Deut. xxxii. 6. In whatever manner the 
 Christian theologians might interpret such passages 
 they never meant the same idea of the fatherhood of 
 God, or the sonship of man, or of the Word or of the 
 Christ which pervades the Fourth Gospel. Moses 
 meant nothing more than the fatherly goodness of the 
 Creator. Through the paternal goodness of Elohim 
 Yahveh, Abraham became the friend of God. A simi- 
 lar meaning lies behind the passage where Adam is 
 described, once only in the New Testament, as the 
 Son of God. 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 3 
 
 The deep philosophical meaning which is con- 
 nected with the first verse of the Fourth Gospel : " In 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God and the Word was God," was never expressed 
 before by any of the writers either of the New or of 
 the Old Testaments. Some of the Christian theolo- 
 gians have tried to trace the origin of the meaning of 
 the Divine Word as given in the Fourth Gospel to 
 certain expressions of some Hebrew prophets of the 
 Old Testament. For instance, they refer to the pas- 
 sage, " By the Word of the Lord were the heavens 
 made and all the host of them by the breath of his 
 mouth " — Psalm xxxiii. 6. Some again refer to 
 another passage : " He sent his word and healed 
 them " — Psalm cvii. 20. In these and similar other 
 passages " word " does not stand for any other mean- 
 ing than simple commandment, as we find in the 
 verse : " He sendeth forth his commandment upon 
 earth; his word runneth very swiftly" — Psalm cxlvii. 
 15. Thus we can understand that in the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures there is no historical antecedent of the idea of 
 the Divine Word as the Son of God which is described 
 by the writer of the Fourth Gospel in the first verse 
 of the first chapter. 
 
 The Oriental scholars are unanimous in their opin- 
 ion that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was a fol- 
 lower of Philo, the reformed Jewish philosopher, who 
 was a contemporary of Jesus and who lived in Alex- 
 andria from 20 B.C. to 60 A.D., but never heard of 
 Jesus. The writings of Philo Judeas abound in pas- 
 sages which show that he was a student of Greek 
 
VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 philosophy and that he adopted the Greek conception 
 of the Word, or the only begotten Son of God, as ex- 
 l 'ained by the Stoic philosophers of the pre-Christian 
 era. It was through Philo that the Greek conception 
 of the Divine Word was introduced amongst the 
 thoughtful class of the Jews then living in Alexandria, 
 and was afterwards identified with Jesus the Christ by 
 the writer of the Fourth Gospel, and was later ac- 
 cepted by Christians generally. Alexandria was in 
 those days the principal centre of education and cul- 
 ture, where Jewish, Greek, Hindu, and Buddhist phil- 
 osophers met and interchanged thoughts and religious 
 ideas. The Greek philosophers called the Divine 
 Word Logos. Logos is a Greek word which meant at 
 first simply word, not as a mere sound, but as thought 
 embodied in sound. The theory of the Logos first 
 originated with Heraclitus, one of the earliest Greek 
 philosophers who lived about 460 B.C. Although he 
 believed that fire was the primitive element of the 
 phenomenal universe, still he postulated some power, 
 force, or law which controlled the material element 
 fire. He called that power Logos, that is, reason or 
 order. Though the theory of the Logos, — that reason, 
 or order, was the primal cause of the Cosmos, origi- 
 nated in Greece with Heraclitus, yet it did not 
 develop in meaning until the time of the Stoics. The 
 Stoic philosophers believed that Logos, or Supreme 
 Reason, or God, pervaded all matter. It was not only 
 the Creator of all things but controller and ruler also. 
 The Stoic philosophers held that the Logos was uni- 
 versal and eternal and that the human soul possessed 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 5 
 
 a portion of the universal Logos and therefore man 
 had a share of intelligence and reason. They believed 
 that word, or speech, was the manifestation of Reason, 
 or thought, which would remain as non-existent for 
 us, without the power of speech. This Logos became 
 the medium through which the transcendent Cause 
 of the universe was related to the phenomenal world. 
 It was like the bridge between God and the world. 
 Philo's mind, which was seeking some explanation 
 for the relation between Jehovah and the world, 
 adopted the Stoic explanation and the theory of the 
 Logos. 
 
 In Philo's hands the theory of the Logos gradually 
 developed in its meaning. By Logos he wished to 
 express not merely word, but the thought, or idea of 
 which word or speech is but the manifestation. As 
 the audible or perceptible sound of a word is the ex- 
 pression of an imperceptible thought or idea, so the 
 visible universe is the expression of the ideal universe, 
 or the universe in a thought form existing in the 
 Divine mind. This ideal creation, or concept of the 
 universe, or type of the universe in the Divine mind 
 was the Logos, and it was called by Philo the only 
 begotten Son, or unique Son. Philo always used the 
 only begotten Son in its philosophical sense, that is, 
 as the Thought of God, made visible in the world 
 either by creation or projection, but there is nothing 
 in his writings to show that he ever personified the 
 Logos. These terms, more or less poetical with Philo, 
 became afterwards most technical when the Logos 
 was identified with Christ by the writer of the Fourth 
 
6 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Gospel. The author of this gospel did not identify 
 the Logos with Jesus of Nazareth, who was son of 
 Mary, but with Christ the incarnation of the ideal 
 man, the perfect type of man which existed in the 
 Divine mind from the beginning. As the Logos was 
 the only begotten son of God according to Philo, who 
 never heard of Jesus the Christ, so it was with his dis- 
 ciples. The author of the Fourth Gospel, believing 
 in Jesus as the perfect type of man, gave him all the 
 predicates of the Logos and described him as the Son 
 of God. 
 
 Some scholars are of opinion that this meaning 
 which was given to the Logos or word by Philo and 
 the Neo Platonists of later date was the result of the 
 influence of the Hindu philosophers who lived in Al- 
 exandria and Greece about the time of Alexander 
 the Great, 333 B.C. This has been supported by the 
 writings of Eusebius, who quotes a work on Platonic 
 philosophy by Aristocles, who states therein on the 
 authority of Aristoxenes, a pupil of Aristotle, that an 
 Indian philosopher came to Athens and had a discus- 
 sion with Socrates. When Socrates told him that his 
 philosophy consisted in inquiries about the life of 
 man, the Indian philosopher is said to have smiled, 
 and to have replied that no one could understand 
 things human who did not understand things divine.* 
 
 In the most ancient writings of the Hindus, the 
 Vedas, we find the idea of Logos most clearly ex- 
 pressed. There are many Sanskrit words used in the 
 Vedas which signify that Divinity is the Lord of 
 
 * See Max Muller's " Theosophy or Psychological Religion," pp. 83-84. 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 7 
 
 Speech, or word, the Lord of thought and reason, or 
 Logos. For instance, Brihaspati is a Sanskrit com- 
 pound word which we read often in the Vedas. Brihas 
 comes from the Sanskrit root verb Brih or Barh, 
 meaning to break forth or drive forth; from the same 
 root Latin Verbum and English Word can be derived; 
 and Pati means lord or father. Therefore Brihaspati 
 means the Lord or Father of word. A synonym of 
 Brihaspati is the Sanskrit Vachaspati — Vdchas or Vak 
 (the same as Vox) means word. So Vachaspati also 
 means the Lord or Father of word, or speech. In 
 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad we read Vak vai Brahma, 
 " The word was Brahman," or the Absolute." Again, 
 it is stated that " That, of which these things are 
 born, by which when born they live, and into which 
 they return and enter after death, or dissolution, is 
 Brahman." " He with his mind united himself with 
 his word." * " In the beginning, Divine Vak, or Word 
 eternal, without beginning or end, consisting of wis- 
 dom, was uttered by the Self-existent One from 
 which all activities proceeded." " In the beginning 
 the Lord of the universe shaped from the words the 
 names and forms of all beings, and the procedure of 
 all activities." f In one of the ancient writings of the 
 Hindus we read : " I know that great Self-effulgent 
 Being who thought all forms and made their 
 names." J "He desired let a second body be born 
 of me and embraced word with his mind." § " All 
 
 * Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 
 
 + Smriti. 
 
 X Taittiriya Aranyaka III., 12, 17. 
 
 § Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I., i, 24. 
 
8 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 things that can be thought of had beginning in word, 
 or the eternal concept in the Divine mind." Again, 
 in the Mahabharata we read: " He who exists by 
 himself let first stream forth the Word, the eternal 
 without beginning or end, the Divine Word which 
 we read in the Veda, whence proceeded the evolution 
 of the world." The Hindus believe that the phe- 
 nomena of the world exist because they are in the 
 Veda. The word Veda does not stand for any book or 
 writing but for Logos, or Sophia, or Wisdom, and 
 comprehends all named concepts necessary for the 
 creation of all created things. In the Veda it is said: 
 " When the Lord projected the concept of the earth 
 from His Divine mind, the earth was formed," etc. 
 By Word the Vedic sages did not mean mere sound, 
 but thought or concept in the Divine mind; there- 
 fore, the Divine mind was the Father, and Word or 
 concept or ideal type was the Son, like the Greek 
 Logos, as explained by Philo. 
 
 The later Hindu philosophers took up this idea, dis- 
 cussed it, and wrote volumes after volumes on the 
 Logos theory. Whenever any man or woman reached 
 perfection and manifested divinity, he or she was wor- 
 shipped as the incarnation of the Word, the first-born, 
 or the manifestation of the ideal man or woman as 
 existing in the Divine mind. Krisna, Siva, Rama, 
 Buddha, and others are worshipped in India as the 
 ideal types of men, or incarnations of the Word. 
 
 As the doctrine of the Logos, the very life-blood 
 of Christianity was purely of Aryan origin, most 
 probably of Hindu origin, so the symbol of the Cross, 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 9 
 
 which is the corner-stone of the structure of Chris- 
 tianity, originated not amongst the Hebrews but 
 amongst the Aryans. 
 
 Well has it been said by St. Augustine : " What is 
 now called the Christian religion has existed among 
 the ancients and was not absent from the beginning of 
 the human race until Christ came in the flesh, from 
 which time the true religion, which existed already, 
 began to be called ' Christian.' " Whatever import- 
 ance the followers of Christ may attach to the worship 
 of the Cross by connecting it with the crucifixion of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, it existed as a religious symbol for 
 centuries before the birth of Christ, and was largely 
 used as a sacred symbol by the Egyptians, Persians, 
 Hindus, Buddhists, Tibetans, Chinese, and other an- 
 cient nations of almost all parts of the world. The 
 Cross is the oldest religious symbol that has ever been 
 invented by human mind. Traces of the worship of 
 the Cross as a religious symbol can be found amongst 
 the most ancient pre-historic aboriginal tribes of the 
 old and new worlds. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians used the Tau Cross, which 
 is like the English letter T. In the Egyptian hier- 
 oglyphics, the Cross has been interpreted variously; 
 for instance, a Cross with four equal arms has been 
 assumed to have meant four elements. When the 
 form of the Cross was composed of two or four scep- 
 tres with a circle at the point of interception it is said 
 to indicate " divine potentiality." It stood sometimes 
 for " protective power," sometimes " for life to come," 
 etc. Some of the Egyptian deities, as Ra 9 Ammon-Ra, 
 
IO VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and Ammon had the sacred " Tau Cross " in their 
 hands. The Cross was used by the Egyptians in tat- 
 tooing the body, in the paintings on the walls and 
 tombs at Thebes. A long Cross surmounting a heart, 
 meaning good or goodness, was fixed upon the fronts 
 of houses in Thebes and Memphis, intimating " This 
 is the abode of the good." The Egyptian symbols of 
 five planets had a Cross connected with each. The 
 natives of Abyssinia used to observe certain religious 
 rites by plunging a Cross in the river Gitche. In an- 
 cient India the Cross was used as a sign of prosperity, 
 good luck, longevity and happiness, a protector from 
 evil, and was used largely in connection with religious 
 rites and ceremonies. The most ancient form of Cross 
 which has been used in India from prehistoric times 
 is called Swastika. It is like a Greek Cross, but its 
 arms are bent at right angles. It literally means in 
 Sanskrit Su, well, and Asti, being, that is, well being, 
 welfare. Originally the form of Swastika was two 
 lines crossing each other, but afterwards it was shaped 
 like ffi . The word Swastika had been in existence in 
 the Sanskrit language long before Buddha was born. 
 In the Rig Veda we read, " Swasti me Indra," " Do 
 thou, O Indra, grant me welfare." Swastika Cross 
 appears in the hands of Visnu, the Preserver of the 
 world, and represents the world-sustaining power 
 which Visnu possesses. It was found in the foot- 
 prints of Buddha in Buddhistic temples. In the 
 Buddhistic inscriptions and coins, the Swastika or 
 Cross very often occurs. In the Ramayana we read, 
 " Bharata selects a ship marked with the sign of the 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. II 
 
 Cross or Swastika." The Buddhistic Stupas (tombs) 
 were built in the form of a Swastika or Cross. When 
 a woman covers her breast with crossed arms it is 
 called Swastika posture, that is, the sign of good luck, 
 prosperity and protection. It is supposed that a 
 woman with Swastika posture is free from all dangers. 
 When a person sits cross-legged, it is called Swastika 
 posture, which is the best of all the sitting postures. 
 In ancient times houses were built in the form of a 
 Swastika Cross. 
 
 When the Cross became the religious symbol of 
 the Buddhists, wherever Buddhism went the symbol 
 of the Cross travelled with it. In Tibet, China, 
 Korea, Japan, Burma, Ceylon, Java, and in other 
 places the Cross as a religious symbol was introduced 
 from India. In China, Japan, and in other countries 
 the statues of Buddha were usually marked with a 
 Swastika or Cross. In Tibet the Cross is to be found 
 as the royal emblem of the Bonpa deities. The 
 Lamas, or Buddhist priests, carry a Cross and use 
 it at the time of benediction. 
 
 Sir Stamford Raffles, after living in Java for twenty 
 years, writes: "Java received her civilization and art 
 directly from India. Out of the six steps of the most 
 ancient prehistoric temples in Java, three are in the 
 form of a Cross." 
 
 In the most ancient paintings of the Hindus, 
 Krisna has a Cross in his hand. Yama, the ruler of 
 the departed ones, is painted as holding a Cross in 
 one hand. Some of the Christian missionaries say 
 that the Cross was introduced into India by the early 
 
 LofC. 
 
12 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Christians who visited the country. Such statements 
 are not correct. Among the most interesting ancient 
 relics that have been recently excavated in the forests 
 of Central India which were never visited by any 
 Christian missionary, two rude stone Crosses have 
 been discovered. The archeologists think that those 
 Crosses must have existed in good shape at least three 
 thousand years before the advent of Jesus the Christ. 
 Moreover, the ancient rock-cut cave of Elepanta is 
 nearly in the form of a Greek Cross; its dimensions 
 being longitudinally 130 feet and transversely 123 
 feet, and height is about 17 feet. In this cave, which 
 was cut before the Buddhistic period, there is a figure 
 of Hindu Trinity -holding a huge Cross in one hand. 
 Tavernier, who visited Benares in the end of the 
 seventeenth century, seeing the temple of Visnu, said 
 that the body of this edifice was built in the form of 
 an immense Cross. This temple was destroyed by 
 Aurungzebe, the Mogul emperor, who built a huge 
 mosque in its place. 
 
 The Cross is to be found in almost all the ancient 
 temples of India. Amongst the Jains, the Swastika 
 or Cross is the oldest religious symbol. In the San- 
 skrit grammar of Panini, written at least 400 B.C., 
 Swastika or Cross is described as one of the ancient 
 signs for marking cattle, and even to-day cattle and 
 sheep are marked with a Cross by the illiterate classes 
 of India. Swastika is mentioned in the Atharva Veda. 
 Even to-day the Hindus paint a Swastika or Cross on 
 the walls of the room which the newly married couple 
 enter immediately after the wedding. 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 13 
 
 The " Y "-shaped Cross is drawn on the foreheads 
 of the Vaisnavas, the dualistic worshippers of Vis nu. 
 The Cross was used in the Hindu coins of prehistoric 
 period. It was also used as decoration on walls, 
 furniture, earthenware, rugs, and on garments worn 
 by the priests and priestesses. 
 
 This Swastika or peculiar form of the Cross is the 
 oldest of all forms of this symbol that are found in 
 the West. It originated in prehistoric times amongst 
 the Aryans who inhabited India, and from there it 
 travelled all over the world. The same sign was found 
 in hundreds of places on the Christians' tombs in the 
 Catacombs at Rome. 
 
 There was a time when a great discussion arose 
 amongst the early Christians as to the selection of the 
 Cross which should be representative, and history tells 
 us that the Swastika was one of those which were sug- 
 gested. It is for this reason we find it on the tombs 
 in the Catacombs at Rome. The latest use of Swas- 
 tika mentioned in the literature on this subject is in 
 the Archiepiscopal chair in the cathedral at Milan. 
 
 Prehistoric archeologists maintain that the Swas- 
 tika or Cross travelled into Western countries from 
 the East during the Bronze age. They claim that 
 long before the tin mines of Spain, Britain or Ger- 
 many were discovered, bronze came to Europe from 
 the East — Burma, Siam, and other places where cop- 
 per and tin were first made into bronze. When 
 bronze was introduced into Western Asia, Egypt, and 
 Europe, the sign of the Cross was also introduced in 
 those countries, as the most ancient relic is found on 
 
14 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bronze. Professor Wilson, in his celebrated essay on 
 Swastika, which was read before the Smithsonian In- 
 stitute, not only supports this theory of migration of 
 the symbol of Cross from the East to the West, but 
 believes that it migrated from Asia to America. Re- 
 garding the same symbol which has been discovered 
 in North and South America, Professor Wilson says: 
 " Adopting the theory of migration of the Swastika, 
 we may therefore conclude that if the Swastika came 
 from India or Eastern Asia (to America) it came 
 earlier than the sixth century B.C." 
 
 Thus we can understand how the Word, or the Son 
 of God, was known in ancient India and that the 
 Cross was the most ancient religious symbol of the 
 Hindus. Not only this, but the earliest record of the 
 sacrifice of a divine man in space is to be found in 
 the Rig Veda described in mythological language. 
 John P. Lundy, in his " Monumental Christianity/' 
 says : " At any rate, the religion of India had its 
 mythical crucified victim long anterior to Christianity. 
 ... I am disposed to believe this to be the victim 
 described in the Vedas themselves. We read in the 
 Rig Veda: 'The first-born being, before the begin- 
 ning of the material phenomena, became a victim of 
 sacrifice. The Devas, gods, and angels who came 
 later took the first-born being for the animal of sacri- 
 fice, fastened him to a sacrificial post, sanctified him, 
 and afterwards sacrificed him, stretching his limbs in 
 the eternal space. From that sacrifice arose all that 
 exists on earth and in the heavens/ " Here you will 
 notice the metaphor that the first-born being was the 
 
THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 15 
 
 only begotten son of God, the absolute Being; that 
 he was fastened to a post and was sacrificed by the 
 Devas for the good of the universe. The students of 
 the Vedic literature are well aware of the fact that the 
 most ancient sacrificial post was in the form of a 
 Cross. On such a post the first-born was fastened, 
 like an animal of sacrifice. 
 
 John P. Lundy quotes from Colebrooke in his 
 " Monumental Christianity " : " When that ancient 
 sacrifice was completed, sages and men and our pro- 
 genitors were by him formed. Viewing with an ob- 
 servant mind this oblation, which primeval Devas 
 offered, I venerate." Mr. Lundy says : " This looks 
 like the lamb slain from the foundation of the world 
 and whom all the angels of God worship." 
 
 Thus the vital points of Christianity, in whatever 
 manner they might have been explained by priests and 
 theologians, were of Aryan origin. Whenever we 
 worship the Cross, or the Son of God, we uncon- 
 sciously worship the Aryan symbols of prehistoric 
 times. Whenever we think of the sacrifice of Calvary, 
 we unknowingly think of the mythological sacrifice 
 of the first-born being which is described in the Vedas. 
 
 Although these and other similar religious symbols 
 have certain value in helping human minds in the path 
 of spiritual progress as objects of concentration and 
 meditation, still they are of slight consequence if those 
 abstract truths, for which all religious symbols stand, 
 are forgotten or are not properly understood. Many 
 symbols are used in India, each of which represents 
 an abstract truth which ordinary minds cannot easily 
 
1 6 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 grasp. They are used largely by the dualistic and 
 qualified non-dualistic worshippers of God. Most of 
 them, however, like the orthodox Christians, do not 
 understand the true meanings of the mythological 
 symbols of the Word, Cross, etc., and are the easy 
 victims of superstition and errors. 
 
 The object of Vedanta philosophy is to free human 
 minds from ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and 
 errors, as well as to lead them to the realization of 
 those abstract truths which give foundation to the 
 names and forms of all symbols. Therefore Vedanta 
 insists that salvation cannot be obtained by the mere 
 worship of the Cross, or the Son of God, or the Word 
 in flesh and blood, and maintains that it can only 
 be reached by going beyond all symbols, by realizing 
 the sonship of the soul and its oneness with the Uni- 
 versal Spirit. 
 
 Vedanta declares that each individual soul is in 
 reality the Word, the Christ or Son of God, which 
 dwells eternally in the bosom of the Father, — nay, 
 which is one with Him ; that there is no gulf between 
 the Father and His children, and that the realization 
 of this Supreme Unity depends upon the sacrifice of 
 the lower self upon the Cross made by the traversing 
 of the Divine will by the human will. Such a sacrifice 
 obliterates the Cross and leaves only the Word, 
 which is the Father, the Absolute Brahman. 
 
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