APPENDIX
This appendix contains a number of Swami Vivekananda's important statements on religion and philosophy. T
hey have been selected from two volumes: Swami Vivekarianda on Religion and Philosophy, published by the Ramakrishna Mission Students' Home, Calcutta, and Teachings of Swami Vivekananda, published by the Advaita Mrama, Mayavati, Himalayas. We wish to express our indebtedness to the publishers.
RELIGION
EACH SOUL is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy—by one, or more, or all of these—and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.
Religion is its own end. That religion which is only a means to worldly well¬being is not religion, whatever else it may be.
True religion is entirely transcendental. Every being that is in the universe has the potentiality of transcending the senses; even the little worm will one day transcend the senses and reach God. No life will be a failure; there is no such thing as failure in the universe.
He alone can be religious who dares to say, as the mighty Buddha once said under the Bo-tree: "Death is better than a vegetating, ignorant life; it is better to die on the battlefield than to live a life of defeat." This is the basis of religion. When a man takes this stand, he is on the way to finding the truth, he is on the way to God. That determination is the first impulse towards becoming religious.
Man must realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion. All the ancient books and scriptures are the writings of persons who came into direct contact with spiritual facts. They say that there is such a thing as realization even in this life, and that it is open to everyone; and religion begins with the opening of this faculty, if I may call it so.
That is religion which makes us realize the Unchangeable One; and that is the religion for everyone. He who realizes transcendental truths, he who realizes the Atman in his own nature, he who comes face to face with God, sees God in everything, has become a rishi. And there is no religious life for you until you
have become a rishi. Then alone does religion begin for you; now is only the preparation.
No man is born into any religion; he has religion in his own soul.
Now, in my little experience I have collected this knowledge: In spite of all the devilry that religion is blamed with, religion is not at all at fault; no religion ever persecuted men, no religion ever burnt witches, no religion ever did any of these things. What then incited people to do these things? Politics, but never religion. And if such politics takes the name of religion, whose fault is it?
To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth—from lower truth to higher truth. To him all religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association; and each of these attempts marks a stage of progress.
Religious quarrels are always over the husks. When purity, when spirituality, goes, leaving the soul dry, then quarrels begin, and not before.
Man has an idea that there can be only one religion, that there can be only one Prophet, that there can be only one Incarnation; but that idea is not true. By studying the lives of all these great Messengers, we find that each was des¬tined to play a part, as it were, and a part only; that the harmony consists in the sum total, and not in one note.
There never was my religion or yours, my national religion or your national religion. There never existed many religions; there is only one Religion. One infinite Religion has existed all through eternity and will ever exist, and this Religion is expressing itself in various countries in different ways.
There is one principle which underlies all the various manifestations of religion and which has already been mapped out for us. Every science must end where it finds a unity, because we cannot go any farther. When a perfect unity is reached, then science has nothing more of principles to tell us. So with religion. The gigantic principle, the scope, the plan, of religion was already discovered ages ago, when man found the last words, as they are called in the Vedas, "I am He"—that there is One in whom this whole universe of matter and mind finds its unity, whom they call God, or Brahman, or Allah, or Jehovah, or by any other name. We cannot go beyond that.
The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul. If there is one universal truth in all religions, I place it here, in realizing God. Ideals and methods may differ, but that is the central point. There may be a thousand different radii, but they all converge upon the one centre, and that is the realization of God—something behind this world of the senses, this world of eternal eating and drinking and talking nonsense, this world of false shadows and selfishness.
I accept all the religions that were in the past, and worship them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the Mohammedan; I shall enter the Christian church and kneel before the Crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhist temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and his Law. I shall go into the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the hearts of everyone. Not only shall I do these things, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future.
If there is ever to be a Universal Religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite as the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and Christ, on saints and sinners, alike; which will not be Brãhmanical or Buddhist, Christian or Moham¬medan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for develop¬ment; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being, from the lowest, grovelling savage, not far removed from the brute, to the highest man, towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.
GOD
THE SUM TOTAL of this whole universe is God Himself. Is God then matter? No, certainly not; for matter is God perceived by the five senses. God perceived through the inner organ is mind; and seen through the Spirit, He is Spirit. He is not matter, but whatever is real in matter is He.
The Universal Intelligence is what we call God. Call It by any other name, it is absolutely certain that in the beginning there was that infinite Cosmic Intelligence.
The highest ideal of every man is called God. Ignorant or wise, saint or sinner, man or woman, educated or uneducated, cultivated or uncultivated—to every human being the highest ideals of beauty, of sublimity, and of power give us the complete conception of the loving and lovable God. These ideals exist, in some shape or other, in every mind naturally; they form part and parcel of all our minds. All the active manifestations of human nature are the struggles of these ideals to become realized in practical life.
The child rebels against law as soon as it is born. Its first utterance is a cry, a protest against the bondage in which it finds itself. This longing for freedom
184 Vivekananda
produces the idea of a Being who is absolutely free. The concept of God is a fundamental element in the human constitution. Satchidãnanda (Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute) is, in Vedãnta, the highest concept of God possible to the mind. It is by Its nature the Essence of Knowledge and the Essence of Bliss.
The religions of the unthinking masses all over the world teach, and have always taught, of a God who is outside the universe, who lives in heaven, who governs from that place, who is the punisher of the bad and the rewarder of the good, and so on. As man advances spiritually, he begins to feel that that God is omnipresent, that He is not a distant God, but clearly the Soul of all souls. And a few individuals, who have developed enough and are pure enough, go still farther and find at last that they and the Father are one.
No man can really see God except through human manifestations. Whenever we try to think of God as He is, in His absolute perfection, we invariably meet with the most miserable failure, because as long as we are men, we cannot conceive Him as anything higher than man. The time will come when we shall transcend our human nature and know Him as He is.
There are two ideas of God in our scriptures: the one, the Personal, and the other, the Impersonal. The idea of the Personal God is that He is the omni¬present Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of everything, the eternal Father and Mother of the universe, but One who is eternally separate from us and from all souls. Liberation consists in coming near to Him and living in Him. Then there is the other idea, that of the Impersonal, where all these adjectives are taken away as superfluous, as illogical, and there remains an impersonal, omnipresent Being. He cannot be called a knowing being, because knowledge belongs only to the human mind. He cannot be called a thinking being, because thinking is a process of the weak only. He cannot be called a reasoning being, because reasoning too is a sign of weakness. He cannot be called a creating being, because none creates except in bondage. What bondage has He? None works except it be to supply some wants; what wants has He? In the Vedas it is not the word He that is used, but It, for He would make an invidious distinction, as if God were a man.
A generalization ending in the Personal God can never be universal, for to conceive of a Personal God we must say that He is all merciful, all good. But this world is a mixed thing—some good, some bad. And you will always find that the idea of a Personal God has to carry with it the idea of a Personal Devil. That is how we clearly see that the idea of a Personal God is not a true gen-eralization. We have to go beyond, to the Impersonal. In That the universe exists with all its joys and miseries; for whatever exists in it has all come from the Impersonal.
Brahman is One, but is at the same time appearing to us as many on the relative plane. Name and form are at the root of this relativity.
For instance,
what do you find when you abstract name and form from a jar? Only earth, which is its essence. Similarly, through delusion you are thinking of and seeing a cloth, a monastery, and so on. The phenomenal world depends on this nescience, which obstructs knowledge and has no real existence. One sees variety—such as wife, children, body, mind—only in the world created by nescience, by means of name and form. As soon as this nescience is removed, there takes place the realization of Brahman, which eternally exists.
You are also that undivided Brahman. This very moment you can realize It, if you think yourself truly and absolutely to be so. It is all mere want of direct perception. . . . Being again and again entangled in the intricate maze of delusion and hard hit by sorrows and afflictions, the eye will turn of itself to one's own real nature, the Inner Self. It is owing to the presence of the desire for bliss, in the heart, that man, getting hard shocks one after another, turns his eye inward—to his own Self. A time is sure to come to everyone, without exception, when he will do so; to one it may be in this life, to another, after thousands of incarnations.
Suppose we all go with vessels in our hands to fetch water from a lake. One has a cup, another a jar, another a bucket, and so forth, and we all fill our vessels. The water in each case naturally takes the form of the vessel carried by each of us. So it is with religion. Our minds are like those vessels. God is like the water filling the different vessels. And in each vessel the vision of God comes in the form of the vessel. Yet He is One; He is God in every case.
The Personal God is as much an entity for Himself as we are for ourselves, and no more. God can also be seen as a form, just as we are seen. As men we must have God; as God we need none. This is why gri Ramakrishna saw the Divine Mother ever present with him, more real than any other thing around him; but in samädhi all disappeared but the Self. The Personal God comes nearer and nearer, until He melts away and there is no more Personal God and no more "I"—all is merged in the Self.
After so much austerity I have understood this as the real truth: God is present in every jiva; there is no other God besides that. He who serves the jiva serves God indeed.
He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life. Then all doubt ceases. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about God is: "I have seen God."
I have been asked many times, "Why do you use that word God?" Because it is the best word for our purpose. You cannot find a better word than that; all the hopes, aspirations, and happiness of humanity have been centred in that word. It is impossible now to change that word. A word like this is first coined by a great saint, who realizes its import and understands its meaning. But as it becomes current in society, ignorant people take up the word, and the result is that it loses its spirit and glory. The word God has been used from time immemorial, and the idea of the Cosmic Intelligence, and all that is great and holy, is associated with it.
Today God is being abandoned by the world because He does not seem to be doing enough for the world. So they say, "Of what good is He?" Shall we look upon God as a mere municipal authority?
He neither punishes nor rewards any. His infinite mercy is open to everyone, at all times, in all places, under all conditions—unfailing, unswerving.
The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind? Is it the fault of the Merciful Father, whose wind of mercy is blowing without ceasing, day and night, whose mercy knows no end—is it His fault that some of us are happy and some unhappy?
Be strong and stand up and seek the God of Love. This is the highest strength. What power is higher than the power of purity? Love and purity govern the world. This love of God cannot be reached by the weak; therefore be not weak, either physically, mentally, morally, or spiritually.
The Lord alone is real; everything else is unreal. Everything else should be rejected for the sake of the Lord. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! Serve the Lord and Him alone.
God is the inexplicable, inexpressible essence of love—to be known, but• never defined.
DIVINE INCARNATION
GOD UNDERSTANDS human failings and becomes man to do good to humanity. "Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails I manifest Myself. To estab¬lish virtue, to destroy evil, to save the good, I come in every age." "Fools deride Me who have assumed the human form, without knowing My real nature as the Lord of the universe." Such are Sri Krishna's declarations in the Gitã on Incarnation.
"When a huge tidal wave comes," says Sri Ramakrishna, "all the little brooks and ditches become full to the brim without any effort or con¬sciousness on their own part; so when an Incarnation comes, a tidal wave of spirituality breaks upon the world, and people feel spirituality in the very air."
It has been said: "No man hath seen God at any time, but through the Son." And that is true. Where shall we see God but in the Son? It is true that you and I. and the poorest of us, the meanest, even, embody that God, even reflect that God.
The vibration of light is everywhere, omnipresent. But we have to light the lamp before we can see the light. The omnipresent God of the universe 187
cannot be seen until He is reflected in these giant 'amps of the earth—the Prophets, the God-men, the Incarnations.
"Whenever extraordinary spiritual power is manifested by man, know that I am there; it is from Me that the manifestation comes." That leaves the door open for the Hindu to worship the Incarnations of all the religions in the world. The Hindu can worship any sage and any saint from any country whatsoever.
It is absolutely necessary to worship God as man, and blessed are those races which have such God-men to worship. Christians have such a God-man in Christ. That is the natural way to see God; see God in man. All our ideas of God are concentrated there.
The Absolute cannot be worshipped; so we must worship a manifestation, such a one as has our nature. Jesus had our nature; he became the Christ. So can we and so must we. Christ and Buddha are the names of a state to be attained; Jesus and Gautama were the persons to attain it.
Our salutations go to all the past Prophets, whose teachings and lives we have inherited, whatever may have been their race, clime, or creed. Our salu¬tations go to all those God-like men and women who are working at present to help humanity, whatever be their birth, colour, or race. Our salutations go to those who are coming in the future—living Gods—to work unselfishly for our descendants!
THE ATMAN, OR SOUL
WHAT IS IT that gives unity to the changing elements of our being? 'What is it that keeps up the identity of the thing called individuality, moving from mo¬ment to moment? What is it by which all our different impressions are pieced together, upon which the perceptions come together, as it were, reside, and form a united whole? This something upon which the mind is painting all these pictures, this something upon which our sensations, carried by the mind, are placed and grouped and formed into a unity, is what is called the Soul of man.
The mind and the body are like two layers in the same substance, moving at different rates of speed. One being slower and the other quicker—relatively speaking—we can distinguish between the two motions. But still something else is necessary. Motion can only be perceived when there is something else which is not moving. Behind this never-ending chain of motion is the Soul, changeless, colourless, pure. All these impressions are merely reflected upon It, as images are thrown upon a screen by a magic lantern without in any way tarnishing it.
The feeling of freedom which possesses us all shows there is something in us besides mind and body. The Soul that reigns within is free and creates the desire for freedom.
188 Vivekananda
The Hindu believes that man is Spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce, Him fire cannot burn, Him water cannot melt, Him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of this centre from body to body. The soul is not bound by the conditions of matter. In its very essence it is free, unlimited, holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matter and thinks of itself as matter.
We all hold in India that the Soul is by Its nature pure and perfect, infinite in power, and blessed. According to the dualist, this natural blissfulness of the Soul has become contracted by past bad work, and through the grace of God It is again going to open out and show Its perfection; while according to the non-dualist, even this idea of contraction is a partial mistake; it is the veil of maya that causes us to think the Soul has lost Its powers; but the powers are there, fully present.
In every man and in every animal, however weak or wicked, great or small, resides the same omnipresent, omniscient Soul. The difference is not in the Soul, but in the degree of manifestation.
Everything in time, space, and causation is bound. The Soul is beyond all time, all space, all causation. That which is bound is nature, not the Soul. Therefore proclaim your freedom and be what you are—ever free, ever blessed.
You are free, free, free! "Oh, blessed am I! Free am I! I am infinite! In my soul I can find no beginning and no end. All is my Self." Say this unceasingly.
Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.
There is no "I" and no "you"; it is all one. It is either all "I" or all "you." This idea of duality, of two, is entirely false, and the whole universe, as we ordinarily know it, is the result of this false knowledge. When discrimination comes, and man finds there are not two, but One, he finds that he himself is this universe.
The seeing of many is the great sin of the world. See all as the Self and love all; let the idea of separateness go.
Man, after his vain search for God outside himself, completes the circle and comes back to the point from which he started—the human soul; and he finds that the God whom he was searching for over hill and dale, whom he was seek-
Appendix 189
ing in every brook, in every temple, in churches and heavens, that God whom he was imagining as sitting in heaven and ruling the world, is his own Self. I am He, and He is I. None is God but I. and this little "I" never existed.
Cry for help and you will get it; and at last you will find that the one crying for help has vanished and so has the Helper, and the play is over. Only the Self remains.
THE GURU
THE SOUL can only receive impulses from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual; but in the end we shall find that we have not developed at all spiritually. . . . This inade¬quacy of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and the living of a spiritual life, we find ourselves awfully deficient. To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another soul. The person from whose soul such an impulse comes is called the guru, the teacher; and the person to whose soul the impulse is conveyed is called the ishya, the student.
He is the guru "who has himself crossed the terrible ocean of life, and with¬out any thought of gain to himself helps others also to cross the ocean." This is the guru, and mark that none else can be a guru.
It is a mysterious law of nature that as soon as the field is ready, the seed must come; as soon as the soul wants religion, the transmitter of religious force must come. "The seeking sinner meeteth the seeking Saviour."
There are great dangers in regard to the transmitter, the guru. There are many who, though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything, and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders; and thus, the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch. The world is full of these. Everyone wants to be a teacher, every beggar wants to make a gift of a million dollars! Just as these beggars are ridic¬ulous, so are these teachers.
Get the mercy of God and of His greatest children. These are the two chief ways to God. The company of these children of light is very hard to get; five minutes in their company will change a whole life, and if you really want it enough, one will come to you. The presence of those who love God makes a place holy, such is the glory of the children of the Lord. They are He; and when they speak, their words are scriptures. The places where they live are filled with their vibrations, and those going there feel them and tend to become holy also.
FAITH IN ONESELF
THROUGHOUT the history of mankind, if any one motive power has been more potent than others in the lives of great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves. Born with the consciousness that they were to be great, they became great.
Let a man go down as low as possible, there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and learn to have faith in him¬self. But it is better for us that we should know it from the very first. Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves?
It is generally said that he is an atheist who does not believe in God. Vedãnta says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself. But this is not selfish faith, because Vedãnta, again, is the doctrine of Oneness. It means faith in all because you are all.
Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces, are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested. Therefore you must not say that you are weak. How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you; for behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness.
Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of our woes. And it is fearlessness that brings heaven in a moment.
If a man, day and night, thinks he is miserable, low, and nothing, nothing he becomes. If you say, 'Yea, yea, I am, I am," so shall you be; and if you say, "I am not," think that you are not, and day and night meditate upon the fact that you are nothing, ay, nothing shall you be. That is the great fact which you ought to remember. We are the children of the Almighty; we are sparks of the infinite Divine Fire. How can you be nothing? We are everything, we can do everything—and man must do everything.
Losing faith in oneself means losing faith in God. Do you believe in that infinite, good Providence working in and through you? If you believe that this Omnipresent One is present in every atom, is in everything, through and through, penetrating your body, mind, and soul, how can you lose heart?
Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and that they are sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation. Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter
Appendix 191
into their brains from their very childhood. Lay yourself open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones. Say to your own minds, "I am He, I am He." Let it ring day and night in your minds like a song, and at the point of death declare, "I am He." That is the truth. The infinite strength of the world is yours.
Those that blame others—and alas! the number of them is increasing every day—are generally miserable, with helpless brains. They have brought them¬selves to that pass through their own mistakes, and Name others; but this does not alter their position. It does not serve them in any way. This attempt to throw the blame upon others only weakens them the more. Therefore blame none for your faults; stand upon your own feet and take the whole respon¬sibility upon yourselves. Say, "This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone." That which I have created I can demolish; that which is created by someone else I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore stand up, be bold, be strong!
All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore make your own future. Let the dead past bury its dead. The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed lays up a store for you, and that as the bad thoughts and bad deeds are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready, with the power of a hundred thousand angels, to defend you always and for ever.
What makes a man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin. If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bomb-shell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word fearlessness. And the only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.
KARMA-YOGA
WHAT IS KARMA-YOGA? It is the knowledge of the secret of work. Instead of being knocked about in this universe and after long delay and thrashing getting to know things as they are, we learn from karma-yoga the secret of work, the method of work, the organizing power of work. A vast mass of energy may be spent in vain if we do not know how to utilize it. Karma-yoga makes a science of work; you learn by it how best to utilize all the activities of this world. Work is inevitable; it must be so. But we should work to the highest purpose.
Work incessantly, but give up all attachment to work. Do not identify your¬self with anything. Hold your mind free. All this that you see, the pains and
192 Vivekananda
miseries, are but the necessary conditions of this world. Poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary; they do not belong to our real nature at all. Our nature is far beyond misery and happiness, beyond every object of the senses, beyond the imagination; and yet we must go on working all the time. Misery comes through attachment, not through work. As soon as we identify ourselves with the work we do, we feel miserable; but if we do not identify ourselves with it, we do not feel that misery.
Each wave in the mind that says "I" and "mine" immediately puts a chain round us and makes us slaves; and the more we say "I" and "mine," the more our slavery grows, the more our misery increases. Therefore karma-yoga tells us to enjoy the beauty of all things in the world, but not to identify ourselves with any one of them.
Non-attachment does not mean anything that we may do in relation to our external body; it is all in the mind. If we have no link with the body and with the things of the senses, we are non-attached, wherever and whatever we may be. A man may be on the throne and perfectly non-attached; another man may be in rags and still very much attached. First we have to attain this state of non-attachment, and then to work incessantly. Karma-yoga gives us the method that will help us in giving up all attachment, though it is very hard.
Here are two ways of giving up attachment. The one is for those who do not believe in God or in any outside help. They are left to their own devices; they have simply to work with their own will, with the powers of their mind and discrimination, saying, "I must be non-attached." For those who believe in God there is another way, which is much less difficult. They give up the fruit of work unto the Lord; they work and are never attached to the results. Whatever they see, feel, hear, or do is for Him. Let us not claim any praise or benefit for whatever work we may do. It is the Lord's; give up the fruit unto Him.
Karma-yoga teaches us how to work for work's sake, unattached, without caring who is helped, and, it also teaches us why we should work. The karma-yogi works because it is his nature, because he feels it is good for him to do so, and he has no object beyond that. His position in the world is that of a giver, and he never cares to receive anything. He knows that he is giving, and does not ask for anything in return, and therefore he eludes the grasp of misery.
The karma-yogi need not believe in any doctrine whatever. He may even not believe in God, may not ask what his soul is or indulge in any metaphysical speculation. He has his own special method of realizing selflessness, and he has to work it out himself. Every moment of his life must be realization, because he has to solve by mere work, without the help of doctrine or theory, the very same problem to which the jnãni applies his reason, and the bhakta his love.
I have been told many times that a man cannot work if he does not have
Appendix 193
the passion which we generally feet for work. I also thought that way years ago; but as I am growing older and getting more experience, I find that it is not true. The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better it is for us and the greater is the amount of work we can do. When we et loose our feelings we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little. The energy which ought to have gone into work is spent as mere feeling, which counts for nothing. It is only when the mind is very calm and collected that the whole of its energy is spent in doing good work. And if you read the lives of the great workers whom the world has produced, you will find that they were wonderfully calm men. Nothing could throw them off their balance. That is why the man who becomes angry never does a great amount of work, and the man whom nothing can make angry accomplishes so much. The man who gives way to anger or hatred or any other passion cannot work; he only breaks himself to pieces and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.
BHAKTI, OR LOVE OF GOD
BIIAKTI-YOGA is a real, genuine search after the Lord, a search beginning, con¬tinuing, and ending in love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love of God brings us eternal freedom.
"Bhakti is intense love of God." "When a man gets it he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied for ever." This love cannot be reduced to any earthly benefit, because so long as worldly desires last, this kind of love does not come.
There is bhakti within you, only a veil oflust-and-wealth covers it, and as soon as that is removed, bhakti will manifest by itself.
One way of attaining bhakti is by repeating the name of God a number of times. Mantras have an effect—the mere repetition of words. . . . To obtain bhakti, seek the company of holy men who have bhakti, and read books like the Gitd and The Imitation of Christ. Always think of the attributes of God.
The daily necessary thoughts can all be associated with God: Eat to Him, drink to Him, sleep to Him, see Him in all. Talk of God to others; this is most beneficial.
Bhakti-yoga does not say, "Give up"; it only says, "Love; love the Highest." And everything low naturally falls away from him the object of whose love is the Highest.
If a man does not get food one day, he is troubled; if his son dies, how agonizing it is to him! The true bhakta feels the same pangs in his heart when he yearns for God. The great quality of bhakti is that it cleanses the mind; and
194 Vivekananda
bhakti for the Supreme Lord, firmly established, is alone sufficient to purify the mind.
Bhakti differs from the Western idea of religion in that bhakti admits no element of fear, no Being to be appeased or propitiated. There are even bhaktas who worship God as their own child so that there may remain no feeling even of awe or reverence. There can be no fear in true love; so long as there is the least fear, bhakti cannot even begin. In bhakti there is also no place for begging or bargaining with God. The idea of asking God for anything is sacrilege to a bhakta. He will not pray for health or wealth or even to go to heaven.
"Lord, they build high temples in Thy name; they make gifts in Thy name. I am poor; I have nothing; so I take this body of mine and place it at Thy feet. Do not give me up, 0 Lord!" Such is the prayer proceeding out of the depths of the bhakta's heart. To him who has experienced it, this eternal sacrifice of the self unto the beloved Lord is higher by far than all wealth and power, than all soaring thoughts of renown and enjoyment.
When the devotee has realized his Ideal, he is no more impelled to ask whether God can be demonstrated or not, whether He is omnipotent and omniscient or not. To him He is only the God of Love. He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes. God, as love, is self-evident; it requires no proof to demonstrate the existence of the beloved to the lover. The magistrate God of other forms of religion may require a good deal of proof to demonstrate, but the bhakta does not and cannot think of such a God at all. To him God exists entirely as love.
The perfected bhakta no more goes to see God in temples and churches; he knows no place where he will not find Him. He finds Him outside the temple as well as in the temple; he finds Him in the wicked man's wickedness as well as in the saint's saintliness, because he has Him already seated in glory in his own heart as the one almighty, inextinguishable Light of Love, which is ever shining and eternally present.
We all have to begin as dualists in the religion of love. God is to us a separate Being, and we feel ourselves to be separate beings also. Love then comes in between, and man begins to approach God; and God also comes nearer and nearer to man. Man takes up all the various relationships of life, such as those of father, mother, son, friend, master, and lover, and projects them on his ideal of love, on his God. To him God exists as all these. And the last point of his progress is reached when he feels that he has become absolutely merged in the object of his worship.
I know one whom the world used to call mad, and this was his answer: "My friends, the whole world is a lunatic asylum: some are mad after worldly love, some after name, some after fame, some after money, some after salvation and going to heaven. In this big lunatic asylum I too am mad; I am mad after God. You are mad; so am I. I think my madness is after all the best."
Appendix 19
MEDITATION
THE MEDITATIVE STATE is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual con¬templation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.
First the practice of meditation has to proceed with some one object before the mind. Once I used to concentrate my mind on a black point. In the end, I could not see the point any more or feel that the point was before me at all; the mind had ceased to exist; no wave or mental state would arise—as if it were all an ocean without any breath of air. In that state I used to experience glimpses of supersensuous truth. So, I think, the practice of meditation even on some trifling external object leads to mental concentration. But it is true that the mind very easily attains calmness when one practises meditation on something on which one's mind is most apt to settle down. This is why we have in India so much worship of gods and goddesses. . . . The fact is, however, that the objects of meditation can never be the same with all men. People have pro¬claimed and preached to others only those external objects to which they them¬selves held in order to become perfected in meditation. Oblivious of the fact that these objects are merely aids to the attainment of perfect mental calmness, men have extolled them, later, beyond everything else. They have wholly concerned themselves with the means, remaining comparatively unmindful of the end. The real aim is to make the mind functionless; but this cannot be done unless one first becomes absorbed in some object.
You must keep the mind fixed on one object; meditation should be like an unbroken stream of oil. The ordinary man's mind is scattered on different objects, and at the time of meditation, too, the mind is at first apt to wander. Let any desire whatever arise in the mind; sit calmly and watch what sorts of ideas are coming. By continuing to watch in that way, the mind becomes calm and there are no thought-waves in it. These waves represent the thought-activity of the mind. Those things that you have previously thought about too deeply have transformed themselves into a subconscious current, and therefore they come up in the mind in meditation. The rise of these waves, or thoughts, dur¬ing meditation is evidence that your mind is tending towards concentration.
Think always that you are the omnipresent Atman. "I am neither the body nor the mind nor the buddhi (the determinative faculty), neither the gross nor the subtle body"—by this process of elimination immerse your mind in the transcendental Knowledge which is your real nature. Kill the mind by thus plunging it repeatedly in this Knowledge. Then only will you realize the Essence of Intelligence and be established in your real nature. Knower and
196 Vivekananda
known, meditator and object meditated upon, will then become one, and the cessation of all phenomenal superimpositions will follow. . . . There is no rela¬tive or conditional knowledge in this state. When the Atman is the only knower, by what means can you possibly know It? The Atman is knowledge, the Atman is intelligence, the Atman is Satchidãnanda.
How has all the knowledge in the world been gained but by the concentra¬tion of the powers of the mind? The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point; that is the secret.
How are we to know that the mind has become concentrated? The idea of time will vanish. The more time passes unnoticed, the more concentrated we are. In common life we see that when we are interested in a book we do not note the time at all, and when we leave the book we are often surprised to find how many hours have passed. All time will have the tendency to stand in the present. So the definition is given: when the past and present become one, the mind is said to be concentrated.
Concentration is the essence of all knowledge; nothing can be done without it. Ninety per cent of his thought-force is wasted by the ordinary human being, and therefore he is constantly committing blunders; the trained man or mind never makes a mistake.
MIND AND THOUGHT
WHEN YOUR MIND has become controlled you have control over the whole body; instead of being a slave to this machine, the machine is your slave. Instead of the machine's being able to drag the soul down, it becomes its greatest helpmate.
When the mind is free from activity or functioning, it vanishes and the Self is revealed. This state has been described by the commentator Sankara as aparokshãnubhuti, or supersensuous experience.
We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care what you think.
Every vicious thought will rebound, every thought of hatred which you have thought, even in a cave, is stored up and will one day come back to you with tremendous power in the form of some misery here. If you project hatred and jealousy, they will rebound on you with compound interest. No power can avert them; when once you have put them in motion, you will have to bear their fruit. Remembering this will prevent you from doing wicked things.
Appendix 197
We are heirs to all the good thoughts of the universe if we open ourselves to them.
ONENESS
HE INDEED IS A YOGI who sees himself in the whole universe and the whole universe in himself.
Not one atom in the universe can move without dragging the whole world along with it. There cannot be any progress without the whole world's follow¬ing in its wake; and it is becoming clearer every day that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial or national or any narrow grounds.
I am thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by holding itself apart from the community of others; whenever such an attempt has been made, under the false notion of greatness, policy, or holiness, the result has always been disastrous to the one who thus secluded himself.
Each is responsible for the evil anywhere in the world.
All that unites with the universal is virtue. All that separates is sin.
Not one can be happy until all are happy.
When you hurt anyone you hurt yourself, for you and your brother are one.
DUTY
To GIVE AN objective definition of duty is entirely impossible. Yet there is duty from the subjective side. Any action that makes us go Godward is a good action and is our duty; any action that takes us away from God is evil and is not our duty.
By doing well the duty which is nearest to us, the duty which is in our hands now, we make ourselves stronger; and improving ourselves in this manner, step by step, we may even reach a state in which it will be our privilege to do the most coveted and honoured duties in life and in society.
No man can long occupy satisfactorily a position for which he is not fitted. There is no use in grumbling against nature's adjustment. He who does the lower work is not therefore a lower man. No man is to be judged by the mere nature of his duties; but all should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform them.
It is the worker attached to results who grumbles about the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached worker all duties are equally
good, and form efficient instruments with which selfishness and sensuality may be killed and the freedom of the soul secured.
Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise. How else could parents do their duty to their children, husbands to their wives, and vice versa? Do we not meet with cases of friction every day in our lives? Duty is sweet only through love.
Duty, as it is commonly understood, becomes a disease with us; it drags us ever onward. It catches hold of us and makes our whole life miserable. It is the bane of human life. This idea of duty is like the midday summer sun; it scorches the innermost soul of mankind. Look at those poor slaves to duty! Duty leaves them no time to say prayers, no time to bathe. Duty is ever on them. They go out and work—duty is on them! They come home and think of the work for the next day—duty is on them! It is living a slave's life, and at last dropping down in the street and dying in harness, like a horse. This is duty as it is understood. The only true duty is to be unattached and to work as free beings, to give up all works unto God.
Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God.
SERVICE
THIS IS THE GIST of all worship: to be good and to do good to others. He who sees 8iva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased really worships iva; and if he sees giva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man, seeing giva in him, without thinking of his caste or creed or race, or anything, with him 8iva is more pleased than He is with the man who sees Him only in temples.
Selfishness is the chief sin: thinking of ourselves first. He who thinks, "I will eat first, I will have more money than others, and I will possess everything"; he who thinks, "I will go to heaven before others, I will get mukti before others," is the selfish man. The unselfish man says, "I will be last; I do not care to go to heaven; I will go to hell if by doing so I can help my brothers." This unselfishness is the test of religion.
Do you love your fellow men? 'Where should you go to seek for God—are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, Gods? Why not worship them first? Why go to dig a well on the bank of the Ganges?
It is our privilege to be allowed to be charitable, for only so can we grow. The poor man suffers that we may be helped. Let the giver kneel down and give thanks; let the receiver stand up and permit. See the Lord back of every being and give to Him.
Appendix 199
Selfishness is the Devil incarnate in every man. Every bit of self is of the Devil. Take away self on one side and God enters by the other.
The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation, where there is no "I" but all is "Thou"
Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.
NON-INJURY
NEVER PRODUCING PAIN by thought, word, or deed, in any living being, is what is called ahimsã, non-injury. There is no virtue higher than non-injury. There is no happiness higher than that which a man obtains by this attitude of non-offensiveness to all creation.
The test of ahimsã is absence of jealousy. Any man may do a good deed or make a good gift on the spur of the moment or under the pressure of some superstition or priestcraft; but the real lover of mankind is he who is jealous of none. The so-called great men of the world are seen to become jealous of each other for a small name, for a little fame, and for a few bits of gold. So long as this jealousy exists in a heart, it is far away from the perfection of ahimsã. . . . The man who will mercilessly cheat widows and orphans, and do the vilest deeds for money, is worse than any brute, even if he lives entirely on vegetables. The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to anyone, who rejoices at the pros¬perity of even his greatest enemy, that man is a bhakta, he is a yogi, he is the guru of all, even though he lives every day on the flesh of swine. Therefore we must always remember that external practices have value only as they help to develop internal purity. It is better to have internal purity alone, when minute attention to external observances is not practicable. But woe unto the man and woe unto the nation that forgets the real, internal, spiritual essentials of religion and mechanically clutches with death-like grasp external forms and never lets them go!
Non-injury has to be attained by him who would be free. No one is more powerful than he who has attained perfect non-injury. No one could fight, no one could quarrel, in his presence. Yes, his very presence means peace, means love, wherever he may be. Nobody could be angry or fight in his presence. Even animals, ferocious animals, would be peaceful before him.
KARMA AND REBIRTH
ANY WORD, any action, any thought that produces an effect is called karma. Thus the law of karma means the law of causation, of inevitable cause and effect. 'Whatever we see or feel or do, whatever action there is anywhere in the
universe, while being the effect of past work on the one hand, becomes, on the other, a cause in its turn and produces its own effect. Each one of us is the effect of an infinite past. The child is ushered into the world not as something flashing from the hands of nature, as poets delight so much to depict, but he has the burden of an infinite past; for good or evil he comes to work out his own past deeds. This makes the differentiation. This is the law of karma. Each one of us is the maker of his own fate.
The idea of rebirth runs parallel with the doctrine of the eternity of the human soul. Nothing that ends at one point can be without a beginning, and nothing that begins at one point can be without an end.
How is it that one man is born of good parents, receives a good education, and becomes a good man, while another comes from besotted parents and ends on the gallows? How do you explain this inequality without implicating God? Then, too, what becomes of my freedom if this is my first birth? If I come into this world without experience of a former life, my independence would be gone, for my path would be marked out by the experience of others. If I cannot be the maker of my own fortune, then I am not free. But if this is not my first birth, I can take upon myself the blame for the misery of this life, which is the result of the evil I have committed in another, and say I will unmake it. This, then, is our philosophy of the migration of the soul: We come into this life with the experience of another, and the fortune or misfortune of this existence is the result of our acts in a former existence; and thus we are always becoming better till at last perfection is reached.
There is no other way to vindicate the glory and the liberty of the human soul and to reconcile the inequalities and the horrors of this world, than to place the whole burden upon the legitimate cause—our own independent actions, or karma. Not only so, but every theory of the creation of the soul from nothing inevitably leads to fatalism and pre-ordination, and instead of a Merciful Father, places before us a hideous, cruel, and ever angry God to worship.
EDUCATION
EDUCATION is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.
A child teaches itself. But you can help it to go forward in its own way. What you can do is not of a positive nature, but of a negative. You can take away the obstacles, but knowledge comes from within the child itself. . . . You have come to hear me. When you go home, reflect on what you have learnt, and you will find that you yourself have thought out the same thing; I have only given it expression. I can never teach you anything; you will have to teach your¬self; but I can help you, perhaps, in giving expression to that thought.
To me the very essence of education is concentration of mind, not the collecting of facts. If I had to receive my education over again, and had any voice in the matter, I would develop the power of concentration and detachment, and then with a perfect instrument I could collect facts at will.
Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-forming assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than a man who has got by heart a whole library.
All the knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to studying your own mind; but the object of your study is always your own mind. The falling of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he studied his own mind; he rearranged all the previous links of thought in his mind and discovered a new link among them, which we call gravitation. It was not in the apple or in anything in the centre of the earth.
HAPPINESS
CAN ANY PERMANENT HAPPINESS be given to the world? In the ocean we cannot raise a wave without causing a hollow somewhere else. The sum total of the good things in the world has been the same throughout in its relation to man's need and greed. It cannot be increased or decreased. Take the human race as we know it today. Do we not find the same miseries and the same happiness, the same pleasures and pains, the same differences in position, as in the past? Are not some rich, some poor, some high, some low, some healthy, some unhealthy? All this was the same with the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans in ancient times as it is with the Americans today. So far as history is known, it has always been the same.
We cannot add happiness to this world; similarly, we cannot add pain to it either. The sum total of pleasure and pain displayed here on earth will be the same throughout. We just push it from this side to the other side, and from that side to this, but it will remain the same, because to remain so is its very nature. This ebb and flow, this rising and falling, is the world's very nature; it would be as logical to hold otherwise as to say that we may have life without death.
Philosophy insists that there is a Joy which is absolute, which never changes. That Joy cannot be the same as the joys and pleasures we have in this life, and yet Vedãnta shows that everything that is joyful in this life is but a particle of that Real Joy, because that is the only joy there is. Every moment we are enjoying the Absolute Bliss, though covered up, misunderstood, and caricatured. Wherever there is any blessing, blissfulness, or joy--even, the joy of the thief
in stealing—it is a manifestation of that Absolute Bliss, only it has become obscured, muddled up, as it were, with all sorts of extraneous conditions, and misunderstood.
After every happiness comes misery; they may be far apart or near. The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does one follow the other. What we want is neither happiness nor misery. Both make us forget our true nature; both are chains, one iron, one gold. Behind both is the Atman, who knows neither happiness nor misery.
The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until man's nature changes, these physical needs will arise and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will cure them completely. . . . Let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, and not before.
BUDDHA
BUDDHA NEVER bowed down to anything, neither to Vedas, nor caste, nor priest, nor custom. He fearlessly reasoned so far as reason could take him. Such a fear¬less search for truth and such love for every living thing in the world has never been seen.
Buddha was the first who dared to say: "Believe not because some old manuscripts tell you it is so; believe not because it is your national belief, because you have been made to believe it from your childhood. But reason it all out, and after you have analysed it, then, if you find that it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it, and help others to live up to it. "
Buddha is the only Prophet who said: "I do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good. And this will take you to freedom and to what¬ever truth there is."
Buddha said about himself: "Buddha is the name of infinite knowledge, infinite as the sky. I, Gautama, have reached that state; you will reach it too if you struggle for it."
CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
THAT SOUL IS STRONG which has become one with the Lord; none else is strong. What do you think was the cause of the strength of Jesus of Nazareth, that immense, infinite strength which laughed at traitors and blessed those that were willing to murder him? It was his knowledge that "I and my Father are one";
Appendix 203
it was his prayer, "Father, just as I am one with You, so make them one with me."
If I, as an Oriental, have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one way left to me, and that is to worship him as God, and nothing else.
Let the churches preach doctrines, theories, philosophies, to their hearts' con¬tent, but when it comes to worship, the real practical part of religion, it should be as Jesus says: "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou bast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret."
"Watch and pray, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"—which means, purify your minds and be ready. . . You recollect that the Christians are, even in the darkest days, even in the most superstitious Christian countries, always trying to prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord by trying to help others, building hospitals, and so on. So long as the Christians keep to that ideal, their religion lives.
All religions are, at bottom, alike. This is so, although the Christian church, like the Pharisee in the parable, thanks God that it alone is right and thinks that all other religions are wrong and in need of Christian light. Christianity must become tolerant before the world will be willing to unite with the Chris¬tian church in a common charity. God has not left Himself without a witness in any heart, and men, especially men who follow Jesus Christ, should be willing to admit this. In fact, Jesus Christ was willing to welcome every good man to the family of God. It is not the man who believes a certain thing, but the man who does the will of the Father in heaven, who is right. On this basis—being right and doing right—the whole world can unite.
MOHAMMED AND ISLAM
MOHAMMED WAS the Prophet of equality, of the brotherhood of man, the brotherhood of all Mussulmans.
Mohammed showed, by his life, that amongst Mohammedans there should be perfect equality and brotherhood. There was no question of race, caste, colour, or sex. The Sultan of Turkey may buy a negro from the mart of Africa and bring him in chains to Turkey; but should he become a Mohammedan and have sufficient merit and abilities, he might even marry the daughter of the Sultan. Compare this with the way in which the negroes and the American Indians are treated in America! And what do the Hindus do? If a low-caste Hindu chances to touch the food of one belonging to a higher caste, the latter throws it away. Notwithstanding our grand philosophy, you note our weakness in practice; but there you see the greatness of the Mohammedan, beyond other faiths, showing itself in equality, perfect equality, regardless of race or colour.
204 Vivekananda
As soon as a man becomes a Mohammedan, the whole of Islam receives him as a brother, with open arms, without making any distinction, which no other religion does. If one of your American Indians becomes a Mohammedan, the Sultan of Turkey would have no objection to dining with him. If he has brains, no position is barred to him. In America I have never yet seen a church where the white man and the negro can kneel side by side to pray.
For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islãm—Vedãntic brain and Islamic body—is the only hope. . . . I see in my mind's eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedãntic brain and Islamic body.
THE HINDUS AND HINDUISM
IN INDIA there never was any religious persecution by the Hindus, but only that wonderful reverence which they have for all the religions of the world. They sheltered a portion of the Hebrews when the tatter were driven out of their own country; and the Malabar Jews remain as a result. The Hindus received, at another time, the remnant of the Persians when they were almost annihilated; and these remain, to this day, as a part of us and loved by us, as the modern Parsees of Bombay. There were Christians who claimed to have come with St. Thomas, the disciple of Jesus Christ; they were allowed to settle in India and hold their own opinions; and a colony of them is even now in existence in India. And this spirit of tolerance has not died out. It will not and cannot die there.
You may be a dualist, and I may be a monist; you may believe that you are the eternal servant of God, and I may declare that I am one with God Himself—yet both of us are good Hindus. How is that possible? Read then: "That which exists is One; sages call It by various names."
From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jams, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.
The religion of the Hindus does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing; not in believing, but in becoming.
Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God; and this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus.
THE GITA
THE GREATNESS of little things, that is what the Gitã teaches, Ness the old book!
Appendix 205
We read in the Bhagavad Gitã again and again that we must all work inces¬santly. All work is by nature composed of good and evil. We cannot do any work which will not do some good somewhere; there cannot be any work which will not cause some harm somewhere. Every action must necessarily be a mixture of good and evil; yet we are commanded to work incessantly. Good and evil will both have their results. Good action will entail upon us a good effect; bad action, a bad. But good and bad are both bondages of the soul. The solution reached in the Gin in regard to this bondage-producing nature of work is that if we do not attach ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding effect on our soul.
This is the one cause of our misery: we are attached, we are being caught. Therefore, says the Gitã, work constantly. Work but be not attached, be not caught. Reserve unto yourself the power of detaching yourself from everything, however beloved, however much the soul might yearn for it; however great the pangs of misery you feel if you are going to leave it, still, reserve the power of leaving it whenever you want.
The heart's love is due to only one. To whom? To Him who never changes. Sri Krishna says in the Gitã: The Lord is the only one who never changes. His love never fails. Wherever we are and whatever we do, He is ever and ever the same merciful, the same loving heart. He never changes. . . . We must love Him—and everyone that lives, only in and through Him. This is the key-note.
Ay, if there is anything in the Gitã that I like, it is the two verses, coming out strong as the very gist, the very essence, of Krishna's teaching: "He who sees the Supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, the Imperishable in things that perish, he sees indeed. For, seeing the Lord as the same, everywhere present, he does not destroy the self by the self, and thus he goes to the highest goal."
THE UPANISHADS
IN MODERN LANGUAGE, the theme of the Upanishads is to find an ultimate unity of things. Knowledge is nothing but finding unity in the midst of diversity. Every science is based upon this; all human knowledge is based upon the finding of unity in the midst of diversity. And if it is the task of small fragments of human knowledge, which we call our sciences, to find unity in the midst of a few different phenomena, the task becomes stupendous when the theme before us is to find unity in the midst of this marvellously diversified universe, where prevail unnumbered differences in name and form, in matter and spirit—each thought differing from every other thought, each form differing from every other form. Yet to harmonize these many planes and unending spheres, to find unity in the midst of this infinite variety, is the theme of the Upanishads.
"The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these light-flings—not to speak of this fire." What poetry in the world can be more sublime than this? Such poetry you find nowhere else.
206 Vivekananda
INDIA
THE DEBT which the world owes to India is immense. There is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much as it owes to the patient Hindu, the mild Hindu.
Gifts of political knowledge can be made with the blast of trumpets and the march of cohorts. Gifts of secular knowledge and social knowledge can be made with fire and sword. But spiritual knowledge can only be given in silence, like the dew, which falls unseen and unheard, and yet brings into bloom masses of roses. This has been the gift of India to the world again and again.
The one characteristic of Indian thought is its silence, its calmness. The tremendous power that is behind it is never expressed by violence.
Shall India die? Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct; all moral perfection will be extinct; all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct; all ideality will be extinct; and in their place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest; fraud, force, and competition its ceremonies; and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be. The power of suffering is infinitely greater than the power of doing; the power of love is of infinitely greater potency than the power of hatred.
CAUSES OF INDIA'S DOWNFALL
I CONSIDER that the great national sin is the neglect of the masses, and that is one of the causes of our downfall. No amount of politics will be of any avail until the masses in India are once more well educated, well fed, and well cared for.
Our nation is totally lacking in the faculty of organization. It is this one drawback which produces all sorts of evil. We are altogether averse to making a common cause for anything. The first requisite for organization is obedience.
No man, no nation, can hate others and live. India's doom was sealed the very day they invented the word mlechcha and stopped from communion with others. Take care how you foster that idea. It is easy to talk about Vedanta, but how hard to carry out even its least precepts!
THE WAY TO INDIA'S REGENERATION
THE MORE THE Hindus study the past, the more glorious will be their future, and whoever tries to bring the past to the door of everyone is a great bene¬factor to his nation. The degeneration of India came not because the laws and
customs of the ancients were bad, but because they were not allowed to be carried to their legitimate conclusions.
Nowadays everybody blames those who constantly look back to the past. It is said that so much looking back to the past is the cause of all India's woes. To me, on the contrary, it seems that the opposite is true. So long as they forgot the past, the Hindu nation remained in a state of stupor; and as soon as they have begun to look into the past, there is on every side a fresh manifestation of life. It is out of this past that the future has to be moulded; this past will become the future.
Our method is very easily described. It simply consists in reasserting the national life. Buddha preached renunciation; India heard, and in six centuries she reached her greatest height. The secret lies there. The national ideals of India are renunciation and service. Intensify her in those channels, and the rest will take care of itself. The banner of the spirit cannot be raised too high in this country. In it alone is salvation.
First bread and then religion. We stuff them too much with religion, when the poor fellows have been starving. No dogmas will satisfy the cravings of hunger. There are two curses here: first, our physical weakness, secondly, our jealousy, our dried-up hearts. You may talk doctrines by the millions, you may have sects by the hundreds of millions; ay, but it is all nothing until you have the heart to feel. Feel for them, as your Veda teaches you, till you find they are parts of your bodies, till you realize that you and they, the poor and the rich, the saint and the sinner, are all parts of one infinite Whole, which you call Brahman.
You must all set your shoulders to the wheel! Your duty at present is to go from one part of the country to another, from village to village, and make the people understand that mere sitting about idly won't do any more. Make them understand their real condition, and say: "0 ye brothers all, arise! Awake! How much longer will you remain asleep?" Go and advise them how to improve their own condition, and make them comprehend the sublime truths of the scriptures by presenting them in a lucid and popular way. Also instruct them, in simple words, about the necessities of life, and in trade, commerce, agriculture, and so on. If you cannot do this, then fie upon your education and culture, and fie upon your study of the Vedas and Vednta!
Religion for a long time has come to be static in India; what we want is to make it dynamic. I want it to be brought into the life of everybody. Religion, as it has always been in the past, must enter the palaces of kings as well as the homes of the poorest peasants in the land. Religion, the common inheritance, the universal birthright of the race, must be brought free to the door of every-body. Religion in India must be made as free and as easy of access as is God's air. And this is the kind of thing we have to bring about in India—but not by getting up little sects and fighting on points of difference. Let us preach where we all agree, and leave the differences to remedy themselves. As I have said again and again, if there is the darkness of centuries in a room, and we go into the room and begin to cry, "Oh, it is dark, it is dark!"—will the darkness go? Bring in light and the darkness will vanish at once.
We have to learn from others. You put the seed in the ground and give it plenty of earth and air and water to feed upon; when the seed grows into the plant, and into a gigantic tree, does it become the earth, does it become the air, or does it become the water? It becomes the mighty plant, the mighty tree, after its own nature, having absorbed everything that was given to it. Let that be your position. We have indeed many things to learn from others; yea, that man who refuses to learn is already dead.
Then only will India awake when hundreds of large-hearted men and women, giving up all desire of enjoying the luxuries of life, shall long and exert them¬selves to the utmost for the well-being of the millions of their countrymen who are gradually sinking lower and lower in the vortex of destitution and ignorance. I have experienced even in my insignificant life that good motives, sincerity, and infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessed of these virtues can destroy the dark designs of millions of hypocrites and brutes.
Let the New India arise—out of the cottage of the peasant grasping the plough, out of the huts of the fisherman, the cobbler, and the sweeper. Let her spring from the grocer's shop, from beside the oven of the fritter-seller. Let her emanate from the factory, from marts and from markets. Let her emerge from the groves and forests, from hills and mountains. These common people have suffered oppression for thousands of years—suffered it without a murmur—and as a result have got wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has given them unflinching vitality. Living on a handful of oatmeal they can convulse the world; give them only half a piece of bread, and the whole world will not be big enough to contain their energy. And besides, they have got the wonderful strength that comes of a pure and moral life which is not to be found anywhere else in the world. Such peacefulness, such contentment, such love, such power of silent and incessant work, and such a manifestation of a lion's strength in times of action—where else will you find these?
Do you know what my idea is? By preaching the profound secrets of the Vednta religion in the Western world, we shall attract the sympathy and regard of these mighty nations, maintaining for ourselves the position of their teacher in spiritual matters; let them remain our teachers in all material con¬cerns. . . . Nothing will come of crying day and night before them, "Give me this!" or "Give me that!" 'When there grows a link of sympathy and regard between both nations by this give-and-take intercourse, there will be then no need for these noisy cries. They will do everything of their own accord. I believe that by this cultivation of religion and the wider diffusion of Vedãnta, both this country and the West will gain enormously. To me the pursuit of politics is a secondary means in comparison with this. I will lay down my life to carry out this belief practically. If you believe in any other way of accomplishing the good of India, well, you may go on working in your own way.
MISCELLANEOUS
IN THE FIRST PLACE, I would ask mankind to recognize this maxim: Do not destroy. Break not, pull not anything down, but build. Help if you can. Do not injure if you cannot render help. Secondly, take a man where he stands, and from there give him a lift.
Remember the words of Christ: "Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you." These words are literally true, not figures or fiction. They were the outflow of the heart's blood of one of the greatest sons of God who ever came to this world of ours—words which came as the fruit of realization from a man who had felt and seen God, who had spoken with God a hundred times more intensely than you or I see this building.
Truth has such a face that anyone who sees that face becomes convinced. The sun does not require any torch to show it; the sun is self-sufficient. If truth requires evidence, what will evidence that evidence?
The yogis say that man can go beyond his direct sense perception and beyond his reason also. Man has in him the faculty, the power, of transcending even his intellect, a power which is in every being, every creature. By the practice of yoga that power is aroused, and then man transcends the ordinary limits of reason and directly perceives things which are beyond al reason.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." In that one sentence lies the gist of all religions. . . . It alone could save the world were all the other scriptures lost. A vision of God, a glimpse of the Beyond, never comes until the sou' is pure.
He who comes with a pure heart and a reverent attitude will have his heart opened; the doors will open for him and he will see the Truth.
It is very easy to say, "Don't be personal"; but the same man who says so is generally most personal. His attachment for particular men and women is very strong; it does not leave him when they die; he wants to follow them beyond death. That is idolatry; it is the seed, the very cause, of idolatry; and the cause being there, it will come out in some form or other. Is it not better to have a personal attachment to an image of Christ or Buddha than to an ordinary man or woman?
Two sorts of persons do not require any image: the human animal, who never thinks of any religion, and the perfected being, who has passed through the dis-
ciplinary stages. Between these two points, all of us require some sort of image, outside or inside.
MI these forms and ceremonies, these prayers and pilgrimages, these books, bells, candles, and priests, are the preparations; they take off the impurities of the soul; and when the soul becomes pure, it naturally wants to get to the mine of purity, God Himself.
No great work can be achieved by humbug. It is through love, a passion for truth, and tremendous energy, that all undertakings are accomplished. Therefore manifest your manhood.
Vedanta says that you are pure and perfect, and that there is a state beyond good and evil, and that that is your own nature. It is higher than good. Good is only a lesser differentiation than evil. We have no theory of evil. We call it ignorance.
One characteristic idea of Vedãnta is that we must allow infinite variation in religious thought, and not try to bring everybody to the same opinion, because the goat is the same. The Vedãntist says in his poetical language: "As so many rivers, having their source in different mountains, roll down, crooked or straight, and at last come into the ocean, so, 0 Lord, all these various creeds and religions, taking their start from different standpoints and running through courses crooked or straight, at last come unto Thee."
Materialism says that the voice of freedom is a delusion. Idealism says that the voice that tells of bondage is a delusion. Vedãnta says that you are free and not free at the same time: never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual.
Ye are the children of God, the sharers of Immortal Bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth—sinners! It is a sin to call a man so; it is a standing libel on human nature.
You may invent an image through which to worship God; but a better image already exists—the living man. You may build a temple in which to worship God, and that may be good; but a better one, a much higher one, already exists—the human body.
