IDOLATRY AND DOGMATISM: THE VEILS OF MAYA

Belief as Idolatry

Idolatry and the Book

One may confuse Truth which is unlimited with any number of limited things, not merely graven images. Books, names, personalities, and institutions can be invested with the illusion that they are the Truth. To identify any statement with Truth is idolatry. Truth is more a matter of how something is said than simply what is said. To insist that any statement is literally true does not even work in ordinary communication, much less deeper levels of poetic and religious discourse. In fact literalism itself is nothing but idolatry, the identification of Truth with a limited object.

The written word itself is the first of all idols because as the most evident form used in human communication, it is the foundation of all other dogmatic constructs. To make any statement literally true is to invest words, which are inherently limited and capable of a number of interpretations, with Absolute Truth. The idolatry of the word, idea, name or book, is perhaps the worst of all idolatries. It confuses reality with the most empty of things, a mere verbal representation.

Verbal constructs are less real than ordinary realities. For example, the word tree is far less real than an actual tree. So too, the word God is not only less real than God, but less real than any actual object. It is certainly far less real than even one human being. To sacrifice even one living human being for such a mere concept is not only a sin against God, it is a sin against life.

To identify God or Truth with a particular name or statement is to fall not only from spiritual reality but to alienate ourselves from the world of Nature. For this reason Vedic texts emphasize that Truth is found where all speech turns back, and that it is different than anything in this world which people can perceive as an object.

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