"The Spiritand
Influence
of Vedanta"
Influence
of Vedanta"
( -- from
a lecture
by
Swami
Vivekananda
(1863-1902)
delivered
at the
Twentieth Century Club,
Boston,
March 28, 1896)
[found at:
Before going into the subject
of this afternoon,
will you allow me to say
a few words of thanks,
now that I have the opportunity?
I have lived three years amongst you.
I have travelled over nearly the whole of America,
and as I am going back from here to my own country,
it is meet that I should take this opportunity
of expressing my gratitude
in this Athens of America.
When I first came to this country,
after a few days I thought I would be able
to write a book on the nation.
But after three years' stay here,
I find I am not able to write even a page.
On the other hand,
I find in travelling in various countries
that beneath the surface differences that we find
in dress and food and little details of manners,
man is man all the world over;
the same wonderful human nature
is everywhere represented.
Yet there are certain characteristics,
and in a few words I would like to sum up
all my experiences here.
In this land of America,
no question is asked about a man's peculiarities.
If a man is a man,
that is enough,
and they take him into their hearts,
and that is one thing I have never seen
in any other country in the world.
I came here to represent a philosophy in India,
which is called the Vedanta philosophy.
This philosophy is very, very ancient;
it is the outcome of that mass of ancient Aryan literature
known by the name of the Vedas.
It is, as it were, the very flower
of all the speculations and experiences and analyses,
embodied in that mass of literature
--collected and culled through centuries.
This Vedanta philosophy has certain peculiarities.
In the first place,
it is perfectly impersonal;
it does not owe its origin to any person
or prophet:
it does not build itself around one man as a centre.
Yet it has nothing to say against philosophies
which do build themselves around certain persons.
In later days in India,
other philosophies and systems arose,
built around certain persons
--such as Buddhism,
or many of our present sects.
They each have a certain leader
to whom they owe allegiance,
just as the Christians and Mohammedans have.
But the Vedanta philosophy
stands at the background
of all these various sects,
and there is no fight and no antagonism
between the Vedanta
and any other system in the world.
One principle it lays down
--and that, the Vedanta claims, is to be found
in every religion in the world
--that man is divine,
that all this which we see around us
is the outcome of that consciousness
of the divine.
Everything that is strong,
and good,
and powerful in human nature
is the outcome of that divinity,
and though potential in many,
there is no difference
between man and man essentially,
all being alike divine.
There is, as it were, an infinite ocean behind,
and you and I are so many waves,
coming out of that infinite ocean;
and each one of us is trying his best
to manifest that infinite outside.
So, potentially,
each one of us has that infinite ocean of Existence,
Knowledge,
and Bliss
as our birthright,
our real nature;
and the difference between us
is caused by the greater or lesser power
to manifest that divine.
Therefore the Vedanta
lays down that each man should be treated
not as what he manifests,
but as what he stands for.
Each human being
stands for the divine,
and, therefore,
every teacher should be helpful,
not by condemning man,
but by helping him to call forth
the divinity that is within him.
It also teaches
that all the vast mass of energy
that we see displayed in society
and in every plane of action
is really from inside out;
and, therefore,
what is called "inspiration"
by other sects,
the Vedantist
begs the liberty to call
the "expiration" of man.
At the same time
it does not quarrel with other sects;
the Vedanta has no quarrel
with those who do not understand
this divinity of man.
Consciously or unconsciously,
every man is trying
to unfold that divinity.
Man is like an infinite spring,
coiled up in a small box,
and that spring is trying to unfold itself;
and all the social phenomena that we see
are the result of this trying to unfold.
All the competitions and struggles
and evils that we see around us
are neither the causes
of these unfoldments,
nor the effects.
As one of our great philosophers says
--in the case of the irrigation of a field,
the tank is somewhere upon a higher level,
and the water is trying to rush into the field,
and is barred by a gate.
But as soon as the gate is opened,
the water rushes in by its own nature;
and if there is dust and dirt in the way,
the water rolls over them.
But dust and dirt
are neither the result
nor the cause
of this unfolding
of the divine nature of man.
They are co-existent circumstances,
and, therefore,
can be remedied.
Now, this idea,
claims the Vedanta,
is to be found in all religions,
whether in India
or outside of it;
only,
in some of them,
the idea is expressed through mythology,
and in others, through symbology.
The Vedanta claims
that there has not been
one religious inspiration,
one manifestation of the divine man,
however great,
but it has been the expression
of that infinite oneness in human nature;
and all that we call ethics
and morality
and doing good to others
is also but the manifestation
of this oneness.
There are moments
when every man feels
that he is one with the universe,
and he rushes forth to express it,
whether he knows it or not.
This expression of oneness
is what we call love and sympathy,
and it is the basis
of all our ethics and morality.
This is summed up
in the Vedanta philosophy
by the celebrated aphorism,
Tat Tvam Asi,
"Thou art That".
To every man,
this is taught:
Thou art one
with this Universal Being,
and, as such,
every soul that exists
is your soul;
and every body that exists
is your body;
and in hurting anyone,
you hurt yourself,
in loving anyone,
you love yourself.
As soon as a current of hatred
is thrown outside,
whomsoever else it hurts,
it also hurts yourself;
and if love comes out from you,
it is bound to come back to you.
For I am the universe;
this universe is my body.
I am the Infinite,
only I am not conscious
of it now;
but I am struggling
to get this consciousness
of the Infinite,
and perfection will be reached
when full consciousness
of this Infinite comes.
Another peculiar idea
of the Vedanta
is that we must allow this infinite variation
in religious thought,
and not try to bring everybody
to the same opinion,
because the goal is the same.
As the Vedantist 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, all these various creeds and religions,
taking their start from different standpoints
and running through crooked or straight courses,
at last come unto THEE."
As a manifestation of that,
we find that this
most ancient philosophy has,
through its influence,
directly inspired Buddhism,
the first missionary religion of the world,
and indirectly,
it has also influenced Christianity,
through the Alexandrians,
the Gnostics,
and the European philosophers
of the middle ages.
And later,
influencing German thought,
it has produced almost a revolution
in the regions of philosophy and psychology.
Yet all this mass of influence
has been given to the world
almost unperceived.
As the gentle falling of the dew at night
brings support to all vegetable life,
so, slowly and imperceptibly,
this divine philosophy has been spread
through the world for the good of mankind.
No march of armies
has been used to preach this religion.
In Buddhism,
one of the most missionary religions of the world,
we find inscriptions remaining
of the great Emperor Asoka
--recording how missionaries
were sent to Alexandria,
to Antioch,
to Persia,
to China,
and to various other countries
of the then civilized world.
Three hundred years before Christ,
instructions were given them
not to revile other religions:
"The basis of all religions
is the same, wherever they are;
try to help them all you can,
teach them all you can,
but do not try to injure them."
Thus 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 they were driven out of their own country;
and the Malabar Jews remain as a result.
They received at another time
the remnant of the Persians,
when they were almost annihilated;
and they 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;
and 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 toleration
has not died out.
It will not
and cannot die
there.
This is one of the great lessons
that the Vedanta has to teach.
Knowing that,
consciously or unconsciously,
we are struggling to reach the same goal,
why should we be impatient?
If one man is slower than another,
we need not be impatient,
we need not curse him,
or revile him.
When our eyes are opened
and the heart is purified,
the work of the same divine influence,
the unfolding of the same divinity
in every human heart,
will become manifest;
and then alone
we shall be in a position
to claim
the brotherhood of man.
When a man has reached the highest,
when he sees neither
man nor woman,
neither sect nor creed,
nor color,
nor birth,
nor any of these differentiations,
but goes beyond
and finds that divinity
which is the real man
behind every human being
--then alone
he has reached
the universal brotherhood,
and that man alone
is a Vedantist.
Such are some
of the practical historical results
of the Vedanta.
+++
Also from Swami Vivekananda:
"RESPONSE TO WELCOME"
( -- from a lecture given at the
"World's Parliament of Religions",
in Chicago
on September 11, 1893
Sisters and Brothers
of America,
it fills my heart with joy unspeakable
to rise in response
to the warm and cordial welcome
which you have given us.
I thank you in the name
of the most ancient order
of monks in the world;
I thank you
in the name
of the mother of religions;
and I thank you in the name
of millions and millions
of Hindu people
of all classes and sects.
My thanks, also,
to some of the speakers
on this platform who,
referring to the delegates from the Orient,
have told you that these men from far-off nations
may well claim the honor
of bearing to different lands
the idea of toleration.
I am proud to belong
to a religion
which has taught the world
both tolerance
and universal acceptance.
We believe
not only in universal toleration,
but we accept all religions as true.
I am proud to belong to a nation
which has sheltered the persecuted
and the refugees of all religions
and all nations of the earth.
I am proud to tell you
that we have gathered in our bosom
the purest remnant of the Israelites,
who came to Southern India
and took refuge with us
in the very year in which
their holy temple was shattered to pieces
by Roman tyranny.
I am proud to belong to the religion
which has sheltered
and is still fostering
the remnant
of the grand Zoroastrian nation.
I will quote to you,
brethren,
a few lines from a hymn
which I remember to have repeated
from my earliest boyhood,
which is every day repeated
by millions of human beings:
“As the different streams
having their sources in different places
all mingle their water in the sea,
so, O Lord,
the different paths
which men take
through different tendencies,
various though they appear,
crooked or straight,
all lead to Thee.”
The present convention,
which is one of the most august assemblies
ever held, is in itself a vindication,
a declaration to the world
of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:
“Whosoever comes to Me,
through whatsoever form,
I reach him;
all men are struggling
through paths
which
in the end
lead to me.”
Sectarianism,
bigotry,
and its horrible descendant,
fanaticism,
have long possessed
this beautiful earth.
They have filled the earth
with violence,
drenched it often
and often with human blood,
destroyed civilization
and sent whole nations
to despair.
Had it not been
for these horrible demons,
human society
would be far more advanced
than it is now.
But their time is come;
and I fervently hope
that the bell that tolled this morning
in honor of this convention
may be the death-knell
of all fanaticism,
of all persecutions
with the sword
or with the pen,
and of all uncharitable feelings
between persons
wending their way
to the same goal.
+++
"WHY WE DISAGREE"
(-- from a lecture given
on September 15, 1893)
I will tell you a little story.
You have heard the eloquent speaker
who has just finished say,
"Let us cease from abusing each other,"
and he was very sorry
that there should be always
so much variance.
But I think I should tell you a story
which would illustrate
the cause of this variance.
A frog lived in a well.
It had lived there for a long time.
It was born there
and brought up there,
and yet was a little,
small frog.
Of course the evolutionists
were not there then to tell us
whether the frog lost its eyes or not,
but, for our story's sake,
we must take it for granted
that it had its eyes,
and that it every day
cleansed the water
of all the worms and bacilli
that lived in it
with an energy that would do credit
to our modern bacteriologists.
In this way
it went on and
became a little sleek and fat.
Well, one day
another frog that lived in the sea
came and fell
into the well.
"Where are you from?"
"I am from the sea."
"The sea!
How big is that?
Is it as big as my well?"
and he took a leap
from one side of the well
to the other.
"My friend,"
said the frog of the sea,
"how do you compare the sea
with your little well?”
Then the frog took another leap
and asked, "Is your sea so big?"
"What nonsense you speak,
to compare the sea with your well!"
"Well, then,"
said the frog of the well,
"nothing can be bigger than my well;
there can be nothing bigger than this;
this fellow is a liar,
so turn him out."
That has been the difficulty
all the while.
I am a Hindu.
I am sitting in my own little well
and thinking that the whole world
is my little well.
The Christian sits in his little well
and thinks the whole world is his well.
The Mohammedan sits in his little well
and thinks that is the whole world.
I have to thank you of America
for the great attempt you are making
to break down the barriers
of this little world of ours,
and hope that,
in the future,
the Lord will help you
to accomplish your purpose.
+++
"PAPER ON HINDUISM"
(-- from a paper read at the Parliament
on September 19, 1893)
Three religions
now stand in the world
which have come down to us
from time prehistoric
— Hinduism,
Zoroastrianism
and Judaism.
They have all received
tremendous shocks
and all of them prove by their survival
their internal strength.
But while Judaism
failed to absorb Christianity
and was driven out
of its place of birth
by its all-conquering daughter,
and a handful of Parsees
is all that remains
to tell the tale
of their grand religion,
sect after sect
arose in India
and seemed to shake the religion
of the Vedas to its very foundations,
but like the waters of the seashore
in a tremendous earthquake
it receded only for a while,
only to return in an all-absorbing flood,
a thousand times more vigorous,
and when the tumult of the rush was over,
these sects were all sucked in,
absorbed,
and assimilated
into the immense body
of the mother faith.
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 Jains,
each and all have a place
in the Hindu's religion.
Where then,
the question arises,
where is the common centre
to which all these widely diverging radii
converge?
Where is the common basis
upon which all these
seemingly hopeless contradictions
rest?
And this is the question
I shall attempt to answer.
The Hindus
have received their religion
through revelation,
the Vedas.
They hold that the Vedas
are without beginning
and without end.
It may sound ludicrous
to this audience,
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,
and would exist
if all humanity forgot it,
so is it with the laws
that govern the spiritual world.
The moral,
ethical,
and spiritual relations
between soul and soul
and between individual spirits
and the Father of all spirits,
were there
before their discovery,
and would remain
even if we forgot them.
The discoverers of these laws
are called Rishis,
and we honor them
as perfected beings.
I am glad to tell this audience
that some of the very greatest of them
were women.
Here it may be said
that these laws
as laws
may be without end,
but they must have had a beginning.
The Vedas teach us
that creation
is without beginning
or end.
Science is said to have proved
that the sum total of cosmic energy
is always the same.
Then, if there was a time
when nothing existed,
where
was all this manifested energy?
Some say it was
in a potential form
in God.
In that case God
is sometimes potential
and sometimes kinetic,
which would make Him
mutable.
Everything mutable
is a compound,
and everything compound
must undergo that change
which is called destruction.
So God would die,
which is absurd.
Therefore
there never was a time
when there was no creation.
If I may be allowed to use
a simile,
creation and creator
are two lines,
without beginning
and without end,
running parallel to each other.
God is the ever active
providence,
by whose power
systems after systems
are being evolved
out of chaos,
made to run for a time
and again destroyed.
This is what
the Brâhmin boy
repeats every day:
"The sun and the moon,
the Lord created
like the suns and moons
of previous cycles."
And this agrees
with modern science.
Here I stand
and if I shut my eyes,
and try to conceive my
existence,
"I",
"I",
"I",
what is the idea
before me?
The idea
of a body.
Am I,
then,
nothing
but a combination
of material substances?
The Vedas
declare,
“No”.
I am a spirit
living in a body.
I am not
the body.
The body will die,
but I shall not die.
Here am I
in this body;
it will fall,
but I shall go on living.
I had also
a past.
The soul was not created,
for creation
means a combination
which means
a certain future dissolution.
If
then
the soul was created,
it must die.
Some are born happy,
enjoy perfect health,
with beautiful body,
mental vigor
and all wants
supplied.
Others are born miserable,
some are without hands or feet,
others again are idiots
and only drag on
a wretched existence.
Why,
if they are all created,
why does a just and merciful God
create one happy
and another unhappy,
why is He so partial?
Nor would it
mend matters in the least
to hold that
those who are miserable in this life
will be happy in a future one.
Why should a man
be miserable
even here
in the reign of a just
and merciful God?
In the second place,
the idea of a creator God
does not explain the anomaly,
but simply expresses the cruel fiat
of an all-powerful being.
There must have been causes,
then, before his birth,
to make a man miserable
or happy
and those
were his past actions.
Are not all
the tendencies of the mind and the body
accounted for
by inherited aptitude?
Here are two parallel lines of existence
— one of the mind,
the other of matter.
If matter
and its transformations
answer for all that we have,
there is no necessity
for supposing the existence
of a soul.
But it cannot be proved
that thought
has been evolved out of matter,
and
if a philosophical monism is inevitable,
spiritual monism is certainly logical
and no less desirable
than a materialistic monism;
but neither of these
is necessary here.
We cannot deny
that bodies
acquire certain tendencies from heredity,
but those tendencies
only mean the physical configuration,
through which a peculiar mind alone
can act in a peculiar way.
There are other tendencies
peculiar to a soul
caused by its past actions.
And a soul
with a certain tendency
would by the laws of affinity
take birth
in a body
which is the fittest instrument
for the display
of that tendency.
This is in accord with science,
for science
wants to explain everything by habit,
and habit is got
through repetitions.
So repetitions are necessary
to explain the natural habits
of a new-born soul.
And since they were
not obtained
in this present life,
they must have come down
from past lives.
There is another suggestion.
Taking all these for granted,
how is it
that I do not remember anything
of my past life ?
This can be
easily explained.
I am now speaking English.
It is not my mother tongue,
in fact no words of my mother tongue
are now present in my consciousness;
but let me try to bring them up,
and they rush in.
That shows
that consciousness
is only the surface
of the mental ocean,
and within its depths
are stored up
all our experiences.
Try and struggle,
they would come up
and you would be conscious
even of your past life.
This is direct
and demonstrative evidence.
Verification
is the perfect proof of a theory,
and here
is the challenge thrown to the world
by the Rishis.
We have discovered the secret
by which the very depths
of the ocean of memory
can be stirred up
— try it
and you would get
a complete reminiscence
of your past life.
So then
the Hindu believes
that he is a spirit.
Him
the sword
cannot pierce
— him
the fire
cannot burn
— him
the 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.
Nor is the soul
bound
by the conditions of matter.
In its very essence
it is free,
unbounded,
holy,
pure,
and perfect.
But somehow or other
it finds itself
tied down
to matter,
and thinks of itself
as matter.
Why should the free,
perfect,
and pure being
be thus
under the thralldom of matter,
is the next question.
How can the perfect soul
be deluded
into the belief
that it is
imperfect?
We have been told
that the Hindus
shirk the question
and say that
no such question
can be there.
Some thinkers
want to answer it
by positing one or more
quasi-perfect beings,
and use big scientific names
to fill up the gap.
But naming
is not explaining.
The question remains the same.
How can the perfect
become the quasi-perfect;
how can the pure,
the absolute,
change even a microscopic particle
of its nature?
But the Hindu
is sincere.
He does not want
to take shelter
under sophistry.
He is brave enough
to face the question
in a manly fashion;
and his answer is:
“I do not know.
I do not know how
the perfect being,
the soul,
came to think of itself
as imperfect,
as joined to
and conditioned by
matter."
But the fact
is a fact
for all that.
It is a fact
in everybody's consciousness
that one thinks of oneself
as the body.
The Hindu
does not attempt to explain
why one thinks
one is the body.
The answer
that it is
the will of God
is no explanation.
This is nothing more
than what the Hindu says,
"I do not know."
Well, then,
the human soul
is eternal
and immortal,
perfect
and infinite,
and death
means only a change of centre
from one body
to another.
The present
is determined by our past actions,
and the future
by the present.
The soul
will go on evolving up
or reverting back
from birth to birth
and death to death.
But here is another question:
Is man
a tiny boat
in a tempest,
raised one moment
on the foamy crest of a billow
and dashed down
into a yawning chasm the next,
rolling to and fro
at the mercy of
good and bad actions
— a powerless,
helpless wreck
in an ever-raging,
ever-rushing,
uncompromising
current
of cause and effect;
a little moth
placed under
the wheel of causation
which rolls on
crushing everything in its way
and waits not
for the widow's tears
or the orphan's cry?
The heart sinks at the idea,
yet this is the law of Nature.
Is there no hope?
Is there no escape?
— was the cry that went up
from the bottom of the heart
of despair.
It reached the throne of mercy,
and words of hope and consolation
came down
and inspired a Vedic sage,
and he stood up
before the world
and in trumpet voice
proclaimed the glad tidings:
"Hear,
ye children of immortal bliss!
Even ye
that reside in higher spheres!
I have found
the Ancient One
who is beyond all darkness,
all delusion:
knowing Him alone
you shall be saved from death
over again."
"Children
of immortal bliss"
— what a sweet,
what a hopeful name!
Allow me
to call you,
brethren,
by that sweet name
— heirs of immortal bliss
— yea,
the Hindu refuses
to call you sinners.
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.
Come up,
O lions,
and shake off the delusion
that you are sheep;
you are souls immortal,
spirits free,
blest and eternal;
ye are not matter,
ye are not bodies;
matter is your servant,
not you
the servant of matter.
Thus it is
that the Vedas proclaim
not a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws,
not an endless prison of cause and effect,
but that
at the head of all these laws,
in and through
every particle of matter
and force,
stands One
"by whose command
the wind blows,
the fire burns,
the clouds rain,
and death stalks
upon the earth."
And what
is His nature?
He is everywhere,
the pure
and formless One,
the Almighty
and the All-merciful.
"Thou art our father,
Thou art our mother,
Thou art our beloved friend,
Thou art the source
of all strength;
give us strength.
Thou art He
that beareth the burdens
of the universe;
help me bear the little burden
of this life."
Thus sang the Rishis
of the Vedas.
And how
to worship Him?
Through love.
"He is to be worshipped
as the one beloved,
dearer than everything
in this
and the next
life."
This is the doctrine of love
declared in the Vedas,
and let us see how
it is fully developed
and taught by Krishna,
whom the Hindus believe
to have been God
incarnate on earth.
He taught that a man
ought to live in this world
like a lotus leaf,
which grows in water
but is never moistened by water;
so a man ought to live in the world
— his heart
to God
and his hands
to work.
It is good
to love God
for hope of reward in this
or the next world,
but it is
better
to love God
for love's sake,
and the prayer goes:
"Lord,
I do not want wealth,
nor children,
nor learning.
If it be Thy will,
I shall go
from birth to birth,
but grant me this,
that I may love Thee
without the hope of reward
— love unselfishly
for love's sake."
One of the disciples
of Krishna,
the then Emperor of India,
was driven from his kingdom
by his enemies
and had to take shelter
with his queen
in a forest in the Himalayas,
and there
one day
the queen asked him
how it was
that he,
the most virtuous of men,
should suffer so much misery.
Yudhishthira answered,
"Behold,
my queen,
the Himalayas,
how grand
and beautiful they are;
I love them.
They do not give me anything,
but my nature is to love the grand,
the beautiful,
therefore I love them.
Similarly,
I love
the Lord.
He is the source
of all beauty,
of all sublimity.
He is the only object to be loved;
my nature is to love Him,
and therefore I love.
I do not pray
for anything;
I do not ask
for anything.
Let Him place me
wherever He likes.
I must love Him
for love's sake.
I cannot trade
in love."
The Vedas teach
that the soul is divine,
only held
in the bondage
of matter;
perfection
will be reached
when this bond will burst,
and the word they use for it
is therefore, Mukti
— freedom,
freedom
from the bonds of imperfection,
freedom
from death and misery.
And this bondage
can only fall off
through the mercy of God,
and this mercy
comes on the pure.
So purity
is the condition
of His mercy.
How does that mercy act?
He reveals Himself
to the pure heart;
the pure
and the stainless
see God,
yea,
even in this life;
then
and then only
all the crookedness of the heart
is made straight.
Then all doubt ceases.
He is
no more
the freak of a terrible law of causation.
This is the very centre,
the very vital conception
of Hinduism.
The Hindu does not want
to live upon words
and theories.
If there are existences
beyond the ordinary sensuous existence
he wants to come
face to face
with them.
If there is a soul
in him
which is not matter,
if there is an all-merciful universal Soul,
he will go to Him direct.
He must see Him,
and that alone
can destroy all doubts.
So the best proof
a Hindu sage gives
about the soul,
about God,
is:
"I have seen the soul;
I have seen God."
And that is the only condition
of perfection.
The Hindu religion
does not consist in struggles
and attempts
to believe a certain doctrine or dogma,
but in realizing
— not in believing,
but in being
and 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
even as the Father
in Heaven is perfect,
constitutes the religion
of the Hindus.
And what becomes of a man
when he attains perfection?
He lives a life
of bliss
infinite.
He enjoys infinite
and perfect
bliss,
having obtained the only thing
in which man
ought to have pleasure,
namely God,
and enjoys the bliss
with God.
So far
all the Hindus are agreed.
This is the common religion
of all the sects of India;
but, then,
perfection is absolute,
and the absolute
cannot be
two or three.
It cannot have any qualities.
It cannot be an individual.
And so when a soul becomes perfect
and absolute,
it must become one with Brahman,
and it would only realize
the Lord
as the perfection,
the reality,
of its own nature
and existence,
the existence
absolute,
knowledge
absolute,
and bliss
absolute.
We have
often and often
read this
called
the losing of individuality
and becoming a stock
or a stone.
“He jests at scars
that never felt a wound.”
I tell you
it is nothing of the kind.
If it is happiness
to enjoy the consciousness
of this small body,
it must be greater happiness
to enjoy the consciousness
of two bodies,
the measure of happiness
increasing with the consciousness
of an increasing number of bodies,
the aim,
the ultimate of happiness
being reached
when it would become
a universal consciousness.
Therefore,
to gain this infinite universal individuality,
this miserable little prison-individuality
must go.
Then alone
can death cease
when I am alone with life,
then alone
can misery cease
when I am one with happiness itself,
then alone
can all errors cease
when I am one with knowledge itself;
and this is the necessary
scientific conclusion.
Science has proved to me
that physical individuality
is a delusion,
that really my body
is one little continuously changing body
in an unbroken ocean of matter;
and Advaita (unity)
is the necessary conclusion
with my other counterpart,
soul.
Science is nothing but
the finding of unity.
As soon as science would reach perfect unity,
it would stop from further progress,
because it would reach the goal.
Thus Chemistry
could not progress farther
when it would discover one element
out of which all others could be made.
Physics
would stop
when it would be able to fulfill its services
in discovering one energy
of which all others
are but manifestations,
and the science of religion
become perfect
when it would discover
Him who is the one life
in a universe of death,
Him who is the constant basis
of an ever-changing world.
One
who is the only Soul
of which all souls
are but delusive manifestations.
Thus is it,
through multiplicity
and duality,
that the ultimate unity
is reached.
Religion can go no farther.
This is the goal of all science.
All science
is bound to come to this conclusion
in the long run.
Manifestation,
and not creation,
is the word of science today,
and the Hindu
is only glad
that what he has been cherishing
in his bosom for ages
is going to be taught
in more forcible language,
and with further light
from the latest conclusions
of science.
Descend we now
from the aspirations of philosophy
to the religion
of the ignorant.
At the very outset,
I may tell you
that
there is no polytheism in India.
In every temple,
if one stands by and listens,
one will find the worshippers
applying all the attributes of God,
including omnipresence,
to the images.
It is not polytheism,
nor would the name
henotheism
explain the situation.
"The rose
called by any other name
would smell as sweet."
Names
are not explanations.
I remember, as a boy,
hearing a Christian missionary preach
to a crowd in India.
Among other sweet things
he was telling them
was that if he gave a blow
to their idol with his stick,
what could it do?
One of his hearers
sharply answered,
"If I abuse your God,
what can He do?"
“You would be punished,”
said the preacher,
"when you die."
"So my idol
will punish you
when you die,"
retorted the Hindu.
The tree is known by its fruits.
When I have seen
amongst them
that are called idolaters,
men, the like of whom
in morality
and spirituality
and love
I have never seen anywhere,
I stop and ask myself,
"Can sin
beget holiness?"
Superstition
is a great enemy of man,
but bigotry
is worse.
Why does a Christian
go to church?
Why is the cross
holy?
Why is the face
turned toward the sky
in prayer?
Why are there so many images
in the Catholic Church?
Why are there so many images
in the minds of Protestants
when they pray?
My brethren,
we can no more think about anything
without a mental image
than we can live
without breathing.
By the law of association,
the material image
calls up the mental idea
and vice versa.
This is why
the Hindu uses an external symbol
when he worships.
He will tell you,
it helps to keep his mind
fixed on the Being
to whom he prays.
He knows as well as you do
that the image is not God,
is not omnipresent.
After all,
how much does omnipresence mean
to almost the whole world?
It stands merely as a word,
a symbol.
Has God
superficial area?
If not,
when we repeat that word
"omnipresent",
we think of the extended sky
or of space,
that is all.
As we find that
somehow or other,
by the laws of our mental constitution,
we have to associate our ideas of infinity
with the image of the blue sky,
or of the sea,
so we naturally connect our idea of holiness
with the image of a church,
a mosque,
or a cross.
The Hindus
have associated the idea of
holiness,
purity,
truth,
omnipresence,
and such other ideas
with different images and forms.
But with this difference
that while some people
devote their whole lives
to their idol of a church
and never rise higher,
because with them religion
means an intellectual assent
to certain doctrines
and doing good to their fellows,
the whole religion of the Hindu
is centered
in realization.
Man is to become divine
by realizing
the divine.
Idols
or temples
or churches
or books
are only the supports,
the helps,
of his spiritual childhood:
but on and on
he must progress.
He must not stop anywhere.
"External worship,
material worship,"
say the scriptures,
"is the lowest stage;
struggling to rise high,
mental prayer
is the next stage,
but the highest stage
is when the Lord
has been realized."
Mark,
the same earnest man
who is kneeling before the idol
tells you,
"Him the Sun cannot express,
nor the moon,
nor the stars,
the lightning cannot express Him,
nor what we speak of as fire;
through Him
they shine."
But he does not abuse any one's idol
or call its worship
sin.
He recognizes in it
a necessary stage
of life.
"The child
is father
of the man."
Would it be right
for an old man
to say that childhood
is a sin
or youth
a sin?
If a man can realize his divine nature
with the help of an image,
would it be right
to call that a sin?
Nor even
when he has passed that stage,
should he call it
an error.
To the Hindu,
man is not travelling
from error to truth,
but from truth to truth,
from lower
to higher
truth.
To him all the 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 marks
a stage of progress;
and every soul
is a young eagle
soaring higher and higher,
gathering more and more strength,
till it reaches
the Glorious Sun.
Unity
in variety
is the plan of nature,
and the Hindu
has recognized it.
Every other religion
lays down certain fixed dogmas,
and tries to force society
to adopt them.
It places before
society
only one coat
which must fit Jack
and John
and Henry,
all alike.
If it does not fit John
or Henry,
he must go without a coat
to cover his body.
The Hindus
have discovered
that the absolute
can only be realized,
or thought of,
or stated,
through the relative,
and the images,
crosses,
and crescents
are simply so many symbols
— so many pegs
to hang the spiritual ideas
on.
It is not that this help
is necessary for every one,
but those that do not need it
have no right to say
that it is wrong.
Nor is it
compulsory
in Hinduism.
One thing I must tell you.
Idolatry in India
does not mean
anything horrible.
It is not
the mother of harlots.
On the other hand,
it is the attempt
of undeveloped minds
to grasp high spiritual truths.
The Hindus
have their faults,
they sometimes have
their exceptions;
but mark this,
they are always for
punishing their own bodies,
and never for cutting the throats
of their neighbors.
If the Hindu fanatic
burns himself on the pyre,
he never lights the fire
of Inquisition.
And even this
cannot be laid at the door
of his religion
any more than the burning of witches
can be laid at the door
of Christianity.
To the Hindu,
then,
the whole world of religions
is only a travelling,
a coming up,
of different men and women,
through various conditions
and circumstances,
to the same goal.
Every religion
is only evolving a God
out of the material man,
and the same God
is the inspirer
of all of them.
Why, then,
are there
so many contradictions?
They are only
apparent,
says the Hindu.
The contradictions
come from the same truth
adapting itself
to the varying circumstances
of different natures.
It is the same light
coming through glasses
of different colors.
And these little variations
are necessary
for purposes of adaptation.
But in the heart
of everything
the same truth
reigns.
The Lord
has declared to the Hindu
in His incarnation as Krishna,
"I am in every religion
as the thread
through a string of pearls.
Wherever
thou seest extraordinary holiness
and extraordinary power
raising and purifying humanity,
know thou
that I am there."
And what
has been the result?
I challenge the world to find,
throughout the whole system
of Sanskrit philosophy,
any such expression
as that the Hindu alone will be saved
and not others.
Says Vyasa,
"We find
perfect men
even beyond the pale
of our caste
and creed."
One thing more.
How, then,
can the Hindu,
whose whole fabric of thought
centers in God,
believe in Buddhism
which is agnostic,
or in Jainism
which is atheistic?
The Buddhists
or the Jains
do not depend upon God;
but the whole force of their religion
is directed to the great central truth
in every religion,
to evolve a God
out of man.
They have not seen
the Father,
but they have seen
the Son.
And he that hath seen
the Son
hath seen
the Father also.
This, brethren,
is a short sketch
of the religious ideas
of the Hindus.
The Hindu
may have failed to carry out
all his plans,
but 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
like the God it will preach,
and whose sun
will shine
upon the followers of Krishna
and of Christ,
on saints
and sinners alike;
which will not be
Brahminic
or Buddhistic,
Christian
or Mohammedan,
but the sum total
of all these,
and still have infinite space
for development;
which
in its catholicity
will embrace
in its infinite arms,
and find a place for,
every human being,
from the lowest
groveling 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 created
in aiding humanity
to realize
its own true, divine nature.
Offer such a religion,
and all the nations
will follow you.
Asoka's council
was a council
of the Buddhist faith.
Akbar's,
though more to the purpose,
was only a parlor-meeting.
It was reserved for
America
to proclaim
to all quarters of the globe
that the Lord
is in every religion.
May He
who is the Brahman of the Hindus,
the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians,
the Buddha of the Buddhists,
the Jehovah of the Jews,
the Father in Heaven of the Christians,
give strength to you
to carry out
your noble idea!
The star arose in the East;
it travelled steadily towards the West,
sometimes dimmed
and sometimes effulgent,
till it made a circuit of the world;
and now it is again
rising on the very horizon of the East,
the borders of the Sanpo,
a thousand-fold more effulgent
than it ever was before.
Hail, Columbia,
motherland
of liberty.
It has been given to thee,
who never dipped her hand
in her neighbor’s blood,
who never found out
that the shortest way of becoming rich
was by robbing one’s neighbors,
it has been given to thee
to march at the vanguard of civilization
with the flag
of harmony.
+++
"RELIGION
NOT THE CRYING NEED
OF INDIA"
( -- from a lecture
given on September 20, 1893)
Christians
must always be ready for good criticism,
and I hardly think that you will mind
if I make a little criticism.
You Christians,
who are so fond
of sending out missionaries
to save the soul of the heathen
— why do you not
try to save their bodies
from starvation?
In India,
during the terrible famines,
thousands died from hunger,
yet you Christians did nothing.
You erect churches
all through India,
but the crying evil
in the East
is not religion
— they have religion enough
— but it is bread
that the suffering millions
of burning India cry out for
with parched throats.
They ask us for bread,
but we give them stones.
It is an insult
to a starving people
to offer them religion;
it is an insult
to a starving man
to teach him metaphysics.
In India
a priest that preached for money
would lose caste
and be spat upon by the people.
I came here
to seek aid
for my impoverished people,
and I fully realized
how difficult it was
to get help for heathens
from Christians
in a Christian land.
+++
"BUDDHISM,
THE FULFILLMENT OF HINDUISM"
( -- from a lecture given
on September 26, 1893)
I am not a Buddhist,
as you have heard,
and yet I am.
If China, or Japan, or Ceylon
follow the teachings
of the Great Master,
India worships him
as God incarnate on earth.
You have just now heard
that I am going to criticize Buddhism,
but by that
I wish you to understand
only this.
Far be it from me to criticize him
whom I worship as God incarnate on earth.
But our views
about Buddha
are that he was not understood properly
by his disciples.
The relation between Hinduism
(by Hinduism
I mean the religion of the Vedas)
and what is called Buddhism
at the present day
is nearly the same
as between Judaism
and Christianity.
Jesus Christ
was a Jew,
and Shâkya Muni
was a Hindu.
The Jews
rejected Jesus Christ,
nay,
crucified him,
and the Hindus
have accepted Shâkya Muni
as God
and worship him.
But the real difference
that we Hindus
want to show
between modern Buddhism
and what we should understand
as the teachings of Lord Buddha
lies principally in this:
Shâkya Muni
came to preach
nothing new.
He also,
like Jesus,
came to fulfill
and not
to destroy.
Only,
in the case of Jesus,
it was the old people,
the Jews,
who did not understand him,
while in the case of Buddha,
it was his own followers
who did not realize
the import of his teachings.
As the Jew
did not understand
the fulfillment
of the Old Testament,
so the Buddhist
did not understand
the fulfillment of the truths
of the Hindu religion.
Again, I repeat,
Shâkya Muni
came not to destroy,
but he was the fulfillment,
the logical conclusion,
the logical development
of the religion of the Hindus.
The religion of the Hindus
is divided into two parts:
the ceremonial
and the spiritual.
The spiritual portion
is specially studied
by the monks.
In that
there is no caste.
A man from the highest caste
and a man from the lowest
may become a monk in India,
and the two castes become equal.
In religion there is no caste;
caste is simply a social institution.
Shâkya Muni himself
was a monk,
and it was his glory
that he had the large-heartedness
to bring out the truths
from the hidden Vedas
and through them
broadcast all over the world.
He was the first being in the world
who brought missionarising
into practice
— nay,
he was the first to conceive the idea
of proselytizing.
The great glory of the Master
lay in his wonderful sympathy
for everybody,
especially for the ignorant
and the poor.
Some of his disciples
were Brahmins.
When Buddha was teaching,
Sanskrit was no more
the spoken language in India.
It was then
only in the books
of the learned.
Some of Buddha's
Brahmins disciples
wanted to translate
his teachings
into Sanskrit,
but he distinctly told them,
"I am
for
the poor,
for
the people;
let me speak
in the tongue
of
the people."
And so to this day
the great bulk of his teachings
are in the vernacular
of that day in India.
Whatever may be the position
of philosophy,
whatever may be the position
of metaphysics,
so long as there is such a thing
as death in the world,
so long as there is such a thing
as weakness in the human heart,
so long as there is
a cry going out
of the heart of man
in his very weakness,
there shall be a faith
in God.
On the philosophic side
the disciples of the Great Master
dashed themselves
against the eternal rocks
of the Vedas
and could not crush them,
and on the other side
they took away
from the nation
that eternal God
to which every one,
man or woman,
clings so fondly.
And the result was
that Buddhism
had to die a natural death
in India.
At the present day
there is not one
who calls oneself a Buddhist
in India,
the land of its birth.
But at the same time,
Brahmin-ism lost something
— that reforming zeal,
that wonderful sympathy
and charity for everybody,
that wonderful heaven
which Buddhism had brought
to the masses
and which had rendered Indian society
so great
that a Greek historian
who wrote about India of that time
was led to say
that no Hindu
was known to tell an untruth
and no Hindu woman
was known to be unchaste.
Hinduism
cannot live
without Buddhism,
nor Buddhism
without Hinduism.
Then realize
what the separation
has shown to us,
that the Buddhists
cannot stand
without the brain and philosophy
of the Brahmins,
nor the Brahmin
without the heart
of the Buddhist.
This separation
between the Buddhists
and the Brahmins
is the cause
of the downfall of India.
That is why India
is populated
by three hundred millions
of beggars,
and that is why India
has been the slave of conquerors
for the last thousand years.
Let us then
join the wonderful intellect
of the Brahmins
with the heart,
the noble soul,
the wonderful humanizing power
of the Great Master.
+++
"ADDRESS AT THE FINAL SESSION"
( -- from a lecture given
on September 27, 1893)
The World's Parliament of Religions
has become an accomplished fact,
and the merciful Father
has helped those
who labored
to bring it into existence,
and crowned with success
their most unselfish labor.
My thanks to those noble souls
whose large hearts and love of truth
first dreamed this wonderful dream
and then realized it.
My thanks
to the shower of liberal sentiments
that has overflowed
this platform.
My thanks to this enlightened audience
for their uniform kindness to me
and for their appreciation
of every thought that tends to smooth the friction
of religions.
A few jarring notes
were heard from time to time
in this harmony.
My special thanks to them,
for they have,
by their striking contrast,
made general harmony the sweeter.
Much has been said
of the common ground
of religious unity.
I am not going just now
to venture my own theory.
But if any one here
hopes that this unity
will come by the triumph
of any one of the religions
and the destruction of the others,
to him I say,
“Brother,
yours
is an impossible hope.”
Do I wish
that the Christian
would become Hindu?
God forbid.
Do I wish that the Hindu
or Buddhist
would become Christian?
God forbid.
The seed
is put in the ground,
and earth and air and water
are placed around it.
Does the seed become the earth;
or the air,
or the water?
No.
It becomes a plant,
it develops
after the law of its own growth,
assimilates the air,
the earth,
and the water,
converts them
into plant substance,
and grows into a plant.
Similar is the case with religion.
The Christian
is not to become a Hindu
or a Buddhist,
nor a Hindu
or a Buddhist
to become a Christian.
But each
must assimilate the spirit of the others
and yet preserve his individuality
and grow
according to his own law of growth.
If the Parliament of Religions
has shown anything to the world
it is this:
It has proved to the world
that holiness,
purity
and charity
are not the exclusive possessions
of any church in the world,
and that every system
has produced men and women
of the most exalted character.
In the face of this evidence,
if anybody dreams
of the exclusive survival
of his own religion
and the destruction of the others,
I pity him
from the bottom of my heart,
and point out to him
that upon the banner
of every religion
will soon be written,
in spite of resistance:
"Help
and not Fight,"
"Assimilation
and not Destruction,"
"Harmony and Peace
and not Dissension."
+++
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