Page 263 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

the conflicts within the mind of man, tethered to his past, are greatly disturbing. This is one of the main difficulties in the modern man's search for his soul, and we are finding it difficult to gauge the depths of this reaction.
The polytheistic worship was a difficult enough experience to those whose goal was the One Reality. They had either to deny the many by accepting the one, or deny the one by accepting the many. The dilemma posed by Advaita had brought out one kind of difficulty whilst solving another, namely the possibility of one pointed devotion. The dilemma posed by Dvaita had brought out another kind of difficulty, as to how one could simultaneously worship or adore many gods or manifold existence. The difficulty is similar to that which is found in polygamous existence. There is of course one way of resolving this difficulty and that is to consider that all gods are indeed the One God in His manyness, and similarly the One God it is who has become the many for the sake of His devotees who are indeed many. All this is very difficult for persons who have been shattered in their traditional faiths, though the vasanas or tendencies had been mutilated but not completely served.
Thus lovers of Siva find it difficult to shift over to the love of Vishnu, and would like to interpret all divine forces in terms of Siva. Similar is the case with the lovers of Vishnu. So too with Sakti and Brahma. We have a subtle attempt at bringing about, or building up, hierarchies with our pet idol or God as the highest. Some have sought to go behind these attempts which are so well elaborated in the different kinds of puranas - which is traditional lore - by recourse to connotative meanings of the names of Gods and established to their own inner satisfaction that all names, and therefore all works and activities and births or incarnations of Gods or the One God, refer to the One ultimate Being spoken of as the Reality - Sat: "Sat eva somya idam agra asit" - "Ekam Sat;" But all these rationalizations, or even highly sophisticated experiences, do not go far. Men have a strange but compelling pull back to their sectarianisms, even as in social life men revert back to their communalisms or casteisms to explain away their failures, or their sense of humiliation. This atavism - social or religious - is no less part and parcel of the inner life of man, as it is in biological survival or conflict complexes. This reversion is one of the most significant facts in racial and