Opera Omnia: Vol. 4: Hinduism: Part One: The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjari

This anthology aims at presenting the Vedas as a human experience that is still valid and capable of enriching and challenging modern Man, as he seeks to fulfill his responsibility in an age in which, for better or for worse, he is inseparably linked with his fellows and can no longer afford to live in isolation. Experiences cannot be transmitted but they can be described, and they can thus serve as stimuli to trigger our own experiences. An experience, as the word itself suggests, is something we go through, a threshold we cross, an enclosure into which we trespass, a nonrefundable outlay, an irreversible process. This anthology is also an invitation to appropriate for ourselves the basic experience of Vedic Man, not because it is interesting or ancient, but because it is human and thus belongs to us all. Indeed, among the many experiences of mankind, the Vedic experience is one that will evoke a responsive movement in that part of us that is numbed by the heavy pressures of modern life. Also an invitation to appropriate for ourselves the basic experience of Vedic Man, not because. We do not claim that what we have termed the "Vedic Experience" is precisely identical to that of Vedic Man. We may not be in a position to appropriate the intimate personal experience of a past generation. Our main concern is to make possible the Vedic experience of modern Man may usefully understand and assimilate by reenacting an experience that, because it is part of the total human experience, has left behind it clues and traces that may be important to follow. Thus it is our own own personal Vedic experience that "happens".