Note 145 — Chapter XLII · VISHNU'S APPEARANCE.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and end. It may sound ludicrous how a book can be, without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery land would exist if all humanity forgot it, so with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relation between souls and souls and between individual spirits and the Father all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them. The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis and they are honored by the Hindus.