Parables of Rama
by Swami Rama Tirtha | 102,836 words
Stories in English used by Swami Rama to illustrate the highest teaching of Vedanta. The most difficult and intricate problems of philosophy and abstract truths, which may very well tax the brains of the most intellectual, are thus made not only simple and easy to understand but also brought home to us in a concrete form in such an interesting and ...
There was a body, the son of a wine merchant, in India. He was put to school, and began to learn English.
In India, specially in the Missionary Schools, it is the Bible that is taught first. The English reading was concerned with the Bible. Well, when the boy came to this passage "The Spirit of God brooded over the waters," he was puzzled. The boy knew the word Spirit, and he knew the word brooded and the word water, but he did not know the word of God; and he said. "The Spirit of God brooded." Does God mean barley, corn, or grapes? I know spirits come from barley and corn, or grapes &c, and he thought here was a queer kind of wine put in the ocean. His father used to mix alcoholic spirits with water, and he was acquainted with, that kind of spirits, but here was a queer kind of mixture.
This is the way people misinterpret the Scriptures, because they live in wine shops too much, because they live in materiality too much, and those sublime and sacred Scriptures are taken in the gross sense and materialized.
MORAL: Scriptures are very often misinterpreted, because the people do not raise themselves to the level of the author.