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| AYURVEDA |
Mukti (Freedom)
Even in the highest of heaven, says our Scripture, you are a slave: what matters it if you are a king for twenty thousand years? So long as you have a body, so long as you are a slave to happiness, so long as time works on you, space works on you, you are a slave. The idea, therefore, is to be free of external and internal nature. Nature must fall at your feet, and you must trample on it, and be free and glorious, by going beyond. No more is there life, therefore, no more is there death, no more enjoyment, therefore, no more misery. It is bliss unspeakable, indestructible, beyond everything. What we call happiness and good here are but particles of that eternal Bliss. And this eternal Bliss, is our goal.
Knowledge
The soul is also sexless, we cannot say of the Aatma that it is a man or a woman. Sex belongs to the body alone. All such ideas, therefore, as man or woman, are a delusion when spoken with regard to the Self, and are only proper when spoken of the body. So are the ideas of age. It never ages: The ancient One is along the same. How did it come down to earth? There is but one answer to that in our Scriptures. Ignorance is the cause of all this bondage. It is through ignorance that we have become bound: knowledge will cure it, by taking us to the other side. How will that knowledge come? Through love, Bhakti. By the worship of God, by loving all beings as the temples of God: He resides within them. Thus, with that intense love will come knowledge, and ignorance will disappear, the bonds will break, and the soul will be free.
God
There are two ideas of God in our Scriptures: one, the person (Saguna) and the other, the impressed (Niruna). The idea of the person God is, that He is the omnipresent 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: and liberation consists in coming near to Him and living in Him. Then there is the other idea of the Impersonal where all those remains an impersonal, omnipresent Being who cannot be called a knowing being, because knowledge only belongs to the human mind. He cannot be called a thinking being, because that is a process of the weak only. He cannot be called a reasoning being because reasoning 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 is 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 individuals distinction, as if he were a man, “It” the impersonal, is used and this impersonal “It”, is preached. This system is called the Advaita.
ETHICS
And what are our relations with this Impersonal Being? That we are life. We and He are one, every one is but a manifestation of that Impersonal **basis of all being, and misery consists in thinking of ** as different from this infinite, Impersonal Being: and **common consists in knowing our unity with this wonderful Impersonality. These in short, are the two ideas of God that we ** Scriptures. Some remarks ought to be made here, It is **only through the idea of the Impersonal God that you can have **any system of ethics. In every nation the truth has been **pressure from the most ancient times. `love human beings as yourselves **in India, it has been preached’, ‘love all beings as yourselves, we make no distinction between men and animals. But no reason was forthcoming, no one know why it would be good to love ** beings as ourselves. And the reason why is there, in the idea of the Impersonal God: you understand it when you learn that the whole world is one the oneness of the universe – the solidarity of all life-that in hurting any one I am hurting myself in living any one I am loving myself. Hence we understand why in it that we ought not to hurt others. The reason for ethics, therefore, can be had from this ideal of the Impersonal God. Then there is the question of the position of the Personal God in it, I understand the wonderful flow of love that comes from the **rise of a Personal God. I thoroughly appreciate the owner and tendency of Bhakti on men to suit the needs of different times. What we now want in our country, however, is not so much of weeping, but a little strength. What a mine of strength is in this Impersonal God, hen all superstitions have been thrown over-board, and man stands on his feet with the knowledge that I am the Impersonal Being of the world? What can make me afraid? I care not even for nature’s laws. Death is a joke to me. Man stands on the glory of his own Soul, the Infinite, the Eternal the Deathless – that Soul which no instruments can pierce, which no heat can dry, nor fir burn, no water melt, the Infinite, the Deathless, without beginning and without end before whose magnitude the suns and moons and all their systems appear like drops in the ocean, before whose glory spice melts away into nothingness, and time vanishes into non-existence. This glorious Soul, we must believe in, Out of that will come power, Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be; if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be. This teaches not to think ourselves as weak, but as strong, omnipotent, omniscient. No matter that I have not expressed it yet; it is in me. All knowledge is in me, all power, all purity, and all freedom. Why cannot I express this Knowledge? Because I do not believe in it. Let me believe in it and it must and will come out. This is what the idea of the Impersonal teaches, makes your children strong from their very childhood, teach them and weakness, nor forms, but make them strong, let them stand on their feet, bold, all conquering, all suffering and first of all let them learn of the glory of the Soul. That, you get alone in the Vedanta – and there alone. It has ideas of love and worship and other things which we have in other religions, and more besides; but this idea of the Soul is the life-giving thought, the most wonderful. There and there alone, is the great thought that is going to revolutionize the world and reconcile the knowledge of the material world with religion.
Mind you, we have no quarrel with any religion in the world. We have each our Istham, (option), pleasure. But when we see men coming and saying, “this is the only way”, and trying to force it on us in India, we have a word to say; we laugh at them. For such people who want to destroy their brothers because they seem to follow a different path towards God, for them to talk of love is absurd. Their love does not count for much. How can they preach of love who cannot bear another man to follow a different path from their own? If that is love, what is that red? We have no quarrel with any religion in the world, whether it teaches men to worship Christ, Buddha or Mahammat or any other prophet. “Welcome, my brother,” the Hindu says, “I am going to help you; but you must allow me to follow my way too. That is my Istham, Your way is very good, no doubt, but it may be dangerous for me. My own experience tells me what food is good for me, and no army of doctors can tell me that. So I know from my own experience what path is the best for me”. That is the goal, the Ishtam and therefore we say that if a temple, or a symbol, or an image, helps you to realize the Divinity within, you are welcome to it. Have two hundred images if you like. If certain forms and formularies help you to realities the Divine, God speed you; have, by all means, whatever forms, and whatever temples, and whatever ceremonies bring you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them: the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward, towards the brutes. The idea is one of inclusion of every one is exclusion of none. The highest and greatest help that is given in the dissemination of spiritual knowledge. The one vital duty incumbent on you if you really love your religion, if you really love your country, is that you must struggle hard to be up and doing, with this one great idea of bringing out the treasures from your closed books, and delivering them over to their rightful heirs. And above all, one thing is necessary. Every one wants to command and no one wants to obey: and this is owing to the absence of that wonderful Brahmacharya system of yore. First, learn to obey. The command will come by itself, Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master.
The East and the West
[*The Mission of the Vedanta P. 182-190]
In the West, they are trying to solve the problem how much a man can possess, and we are trying here to solve the problem on how little a man can live. This struggle and this difference will still go on for some centuries. But if history has any truth in it, and if prognostications ever prove true, it must be that those who train themselves to live on the least and control themselves well, will in the end gain the battle, and that those who run after enjoyment and luxury, however vigorous they may seem for the moment, will have to die and become annihilated.
All their theories, their teachings, their doctrines, and their ethics are built round the life of a personal founder, from whom they get either sanction, their authority, and their power; and strangely enough, upon the historicity of the founder’s life is built, as it were all the fabric of such religions.
Everyone of the great religions in the world excepting our own, is built upon such historical characters; but ours rests upon principles. There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiments of eternal principles; sages discovered them: and now and then the names of these sages are mentioned, just their names; we do not even know who or what they were. In many cases, we do not know who their fathers were, and almost in every case we do not know when and where they were born. But what cared they, these sages, for their names? They were the preachers of principles and they themselves, so far as they went, tried to become illustrations of the principles they preached.
This little earthly horizon of a few fact is not that which bounds the view of our religion. Ours is away beyond, and still beyond; beyond the senses, beyond space and beyond time, away, away beyond till nothing of this woeld is left and the universe itself becomes like a drop in the transcendent ocean of the glory of the Soul. Ours is the true religion, because it teaches that God alone is true, that this world is false and fleeting, that all your gold is but as dust that all your power is finite, and that life itself is oftentimes an evil; therefore it is, that ours is the true religion.
It is in vain to try to gather all the peoples of the world around a single personality. It is difficult to make them gather together even round eternal and universal principles. If it ever becomes possible to bring the largest portion of humanity to one way of thinking in regard to religion, mark you, it must be always through principles and not through persons. You may take up any one of the prophets or teachers your guide and the object of your special adoration; you are even allowed to think that he whom you have chosen is the greatest of the prophets, greatest of all the avataaras; there is no harm in that, but you must keep to a firm background of eternally true principles. The strange fact here is, that the power of our Incarnations has been holding good with us only so far as they are illustrations of the principles in the Vedas. The glory of Sri Krishna is, that he has been the best preacher of our eternal religion of principles and the best commentator on the Vedanta that ever lived in India.
Universal Toleration
The conclusions of modern science are the very conclusions the Vedanta reached ages ago; only, in modern science, they are written in the language of matter. I have myself been told by some of the best Western scientific minds of the day, how wonderfully rational the conclusions of the Vedanta were. I know one of them personally, who scarcely has time to eat his meals, or go out of his laboratory, but who yet would stand by the hour to attend my lectures on the Vedanta; for, as he expresses it, they are so scientific, they, so exactly harmonious with the aspirations of the age and with the conclusions to which modern science is coming at the present time. India was alone to e the land of all lands of toleration and of spirituality. In that distant time, the sage arose, and declared, “Ekam sal vipraa bahudhaa vadanti.” –He who exists is one; the sages call Him variously. This is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been the very backbone of our national existence. For throughout the vistas of the centuries of our national life, this one idea, “Ekam sal vipraa bahudhaa vadanti.” Comes down, gaining in volume ad in fullness till it has permeated the whole of our national existence, till it has mingled in our blood, and has become one with us. We love that grand truth in every vein, and our country has become the glorious land of religious toleration. It is here and here alone that they build temples and churches for the religious, which have come with the object of condemning our own religion. This is one very great principle that the world is waiting to learn from us.
Therefore the world is waiting for this grand idea of universal toleration. It will be a great acquisition to civilization. Nay, no civilization can long exist unless this idea enters into it. No civilization can grow, unless fanaticism, bloodshed and brutality stop. No civilization can begin to lift up its head until we look charitably upon one another, and the fist step towards that much needed charity is to look charitably and kindly upon the religious convictions of others. Nay more, to understand that not only should we be charitable, but positively helpful, to each other, however different our religious ideas and convictions may be. And that is exactly what we do in India, as I have just related to you. It is here in India that Hindus have built and are still building churches for Christians, and mosques for Mohammedans. That is the thing to do. In spite of their hatred, in spite of their brutality, in spite of their cruelty, in spite of their tyranny, and in spite of the vile language they are given to uttering, we will and must go on building churches for the Christians an mosques for the Mohammedans until we conquer through love, until we have demonstrated to the world that love alone is the fittest thing to survive and no hatred, that it is gentleness that has the strength to live on to fructify, and not mere brutality and physical force.
The other great idea that the world wants from us to-day the thinking part of Europe, nay, the whole world is that eternal grand idea of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. I need not tell you to day, men from the Madras University, how the modern researches of the West have demonstrated through physical means, the oneness and the solidarity of the whole universe: how physically speaking, you and I, the Sun, Moon and stars, are but little waves or wavelets in the midst of an infinite ocean of matter; how, Indian psychology demonstrated ages ago that; similarly, both body and mind are but mere names or little wavelets in the ocean of matter, the Samashti and how, going one step further, it is also shown in the Vedanta that behind that idea of the unity of the whole show, the real Soul is one. There is but one Soul throughout the universe, all is but One Existence. None can regenerate this land of ours without the practical application and effective operation of this ideal of the oneness of things. The infinite oneness of the Soul is the eternal sanction of all morality, that you and I are not only brothers but that you and I are really one. This is the dictate of the Indian philosophy. This oneness is the rationale of all ethics and all spirituality, Europe wants it to-day just as much as our down-trodden masses do.
What our Country now Wants?
What out country now wants, are muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic will which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and the secrets of the universe and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion, even if it meant going down to the bottom of the ocean and meeting death face to face. That is what we want, and that can only be created, established and strengthened, by understanding and realizing the ideal of the Advaita, that ideal of the oneness of all.
Have Faith in Yourselves
Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith in God-this is the secret of greatness. If you have faith in all three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have a faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need. Why is it that we, three hundred and thirty millions of people, have been ruled for the last one thousand, years by any and every handful of foreigners who choose to walk over our prostrate bodies? Because they had faith in themselves and we had not. What did I learn in the West, and what did I see behind those frothy sayings of the Christian sects repeating that man was a fallen and hopelessly fallen sinner? There, I saw that inside the national hearts of both Europe and America, resides the tremendous power of the men’s faith in themselves. An English boy will tell you “I am an Englishman, and I can do any thing”. The American will tell you the same thing, and so will any European boy. Can our boys say the same thing here? No, nor even the boys’ fathers. We have lost faith in ourselves. Therefore to preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the heats of men, to show them the glory of their souls. It is therefore that I preach this Advaita, and I do so not as a sectarian, but upon universal and widely acceptable grounds.
If the Brahman has more aptitude for learning on the ground of heredity than the Pariah, spend no more money on the Brahman’s education, but spend all on the Pariah. Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed. If the others are not born clever, let them have all the teaching and the teachers they want. This is justice and reason as I understand it. Our poor people, these down-trodden masses of India, therefore, require to hear and to know what they really are. Aye, let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness or strength, hear and learn that behind strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind every one, there is that Infinite Soul, assuring the Infinite possibility and the infinite capacity of all to become great and good.
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