In the vibrant salons of Voltaire’s Paris they phrased it right: ‘The First Divine was the First Rogue who met the First Fool’.
‘The Veda is tainted by the three faults of Untruth, Self-Contradiction and Tautology..[it is] the incoherent rhapsody of knaves..‘
So began the Carvaka Philosopher [around 100 BCE]. Building steam the Carvaka texts continue:
‘Only the perceived exists..there is no world other than this..no heaven and no hell..happiness and misery arise in the laws of Nature; who paints the peacocks? [Why is] water cold, fire hot?..From its own nature was it born..
Charity is ordinanced by the indigent, Chastity by the impotent..‘
The Carvaka Philosophers were of course right. The Vedas are nothing if not in-your-face Contradictions and subversive Tautologies.
The Dharmic texts are verses to be heard by Man and written by Men. They are not revelations and injunctions from Prophets with a special relationship with, God.
Siddhartha Gautama, later The Buddha, famously insisted that that he was very much a man no different from his listener. The Vedic Brahman was an abstract Principle before it’s meaning degenerated to a Man-Made ‘God’.
Upanishad is Rahasya: a ‘Secret Transmission’, not to be passed-on to the unprepared. Sanskrit sacred text expands from a center of ferociously absurd verse in concentric circles of increasing sensibility.
The center is unsaid and ambiguous; the interpreted periphery, explicit and sensible. The core texts are Sruti, unfiltered; at the periphery are the Smritis, Slokas and Sastras, the qualifiers and footnotes, the rules and rituals of orthopraxy.
At the peak of Vedic intent, Brahman is Nirguna Brahman (without attributes). As Sahguna Brahman, (with attributes) all names are in absurd phrase: Being-Becoming; Sonant-Silent; Eternal-Temporal; Explicit-Implicit.
Lower still and in increasing familiarity are the Myths, the Epics, the Folk-Tales, the Proverbs, the learned Bon-Mots. You can drop the bar as low as you like. It is up to you.
Not-Two 