The Argument
If it be absolutely impracticable, no theory is of any value
whatever, except as intellectual gymnastics If a religion cannot help man
wherever he may be, wherever he stands, it is not of much use; it will remain
only a theory for the chosen few. The Vedanta, therefore, as a religion must be
intensely practical. We must be able to carry it out in every part of our
lives. And not only this, the fictitious differentiation between religion and
the life of the world must vanish, for the Vedanta teaches oneness - one life
throughout. The old religion said that he was an atheist who did not believe in
God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in
himself.
"This Atman is first to be heard of." Hear day and night
that you are that Soul "I am the birthless, the deathless, the blissful,
the omniscient, the omnipotent, ever-glorious Soul." Think on it day and
night; think on it till it becomes part and parcel of your life.
Meditate upon it, and out of that will come work. "Out of the
fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and out of the fullness of the
heart the hand worketh also. All your actions will be magnified, transformed,
deified, by the very power of the thought. If matter is powerful, thought is
omnipotent. Bring this thought to bear upon your life, fill yourselves with the
thought of your almightiness, your majesty, and your glory.
The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If
faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a
very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
But it is not selfish faith, because the
Vedanta, again, is the doctrine of
oneness. It means faith in all, because you are all. Love for yourselves means
love for all, love for animals, love for everything, for you are all one. It is
the great faith, which will make the world better.
Essence of Vedanta: "Thou art That"
After all its ramifications and intellectual gymnastics, you know the human
soul to be pure and omniscient. The soul was never born and will never die. As
certain religions of the world say that a man who does not believe in a
Personal God outside of himself is an atheist, so the Vedanta says, a man who
does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the glory of our
own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism. All the powers in the universe are
already ours. It is we who have put our hands
before our eyes and cry that it is dark. Know that there is no darkness around
us. Take the hands away and there is the light, which was from the beginning.
Darkness never existed; weakness never existed. This Ideal, this Reality, is
our own nature. Everything else that you see is false, untrue.
Goal of Vedanta
Real activity, which is the goal of Vedanta, is combined with eternal calmness,
the calmness which cannot be ruffled, the balance of mind which is never
disturbed, whatever happens. The doctrine which stands out luminously in every
page of the Gita is intense activity, but in the midst of it, eternal calmness.
This is the secret of work, to attain which is the goal of the Vedanta.
Inactivity, as we understand it in the sense of passivity, certainly cannot be
the goal. Were it so, then the walls around us would be the most intelligent;
they are inactive. Clods of earth, stumps of trees, would be the greatest sages
in the world; they are inactive. Nor does inactivity become activity when it is
combined with passion. Real activity, which is the goal of Vedanta, is combined
with eternal calmness, the calmness which cannot be ruffled, the balance of
mind which is never disturbed, whatever happens. And we all know from our
experience in life that that is the best attitude for work. Less passion there
is, the better we work. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much
energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.
The energy, which ought to have gone out as 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. 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.
Oneness
The amoeba and I are the same, the difference is only in degree. The central
ideal of Vedanta is this oneness. There are no two in anything, no two lives,
nor even two different kinds of life for the two worlds. You will find the
Vedas speaking of heavens and things like that at first; but later on, when
they come to the highest ideals of their philosophy, they brush away all these
things. There is but one life, one world, one existence. Everything is that
One, the difference is in degree and not in kind. From the standpoint of the
highest ideal, the lowest animal and the highest man are the same. If you
believe there is a God, the animals and the highest creatures must be the same.
A God who is partial to his children called men, and cruel to his children
called brute beasts, is worse than a demon. Everything that makes for oneness
is truth. Love is truth, and hatred is false, because hatred makes for
multiplicity. It is hatred that separates man from man; therefore it is wrong
and false. It is a disintegrating power; it separates and destroys.
What is there to be taught more in religion than the oneness of the universe
and faith in one's self? All the works of mankind for thousands of years past
have been towards this one goal, and mankind is yet working it out. Not only
philosophy and psychology, but materialistic sciences have declared it. Where
is the scientific man today who fears to acknowledge the truth of this oneness
of the universe? Who is there who dares talk of many worlds? All these are
superstitions. There is only one life and one world, and this one life and one
world is appearing to us as manifold.
Practical or Ideal
We all use this word practical for things we like and can do. There are two
tendencies in human nature: one to harmonize the ideal with the life, and the
other to elevate the life to the ideal. It is a great thing to understand this,
for the former tendency is the temptation of our lives. Vedanta, though it is
intensely practical, is always so in the sense of the ideal. It does not preach
an impossible ideal, however high it be, and it is high enough for an ideal.
There is this strongly conservative tendency in human nature: we do not like to
move one step forward. I think of mankind just as I read of persons who become
frozen in snow; all such, they say, want to go to sleep, and if you try to drag
them up, they say, "Let me sleep; it is so beautiful to sleep in the
snow", and they die there in that sleep. So is our nature. Therefore you
must struggle towards the ideal, and if a man comes who wants to bring that
ideal down to your level, and teach a religion that does not carry that highest
ideal, do not listen to him. To me that is an impracticable religion.
Practical GOD
You are He, the Omnipresent God Almighty, the Soul of your
souls. The God whom you worship as an unknown God, the same I preach unto
thee." It is through the Self that you know anything. I see the chair; but
to see the chair, I have first to perceive myself and then the chair. It is in
and through the Self that the chair is perceived. It is in and through the Self
that you are known to me, that the whole world is known to me; and therefore to
say this Self is unknown is sheer nonsense. Take off the Self and the whole
universe vanishes. In and through the Self all knowledge comes. Therefore it is
the best known of all. It is yourself.
If this is not preaching a practical God, how else could you teach a practical
God? Where is there a more practical God than He whom I see before me--a God
omnipresent, in every being, more real than our senses? For you are He, the
Omnipresent God Almighty, the Soul of your souls, and if I say you are not, I
tell an untruth. I know it, whether at all times I realize it or not. He is the
Oneness, the Unity of all, the Reality of all life and all existence.
There is nothing that exists that is not God
The Vedanta Says there is nothing that is not God. He existing, the whole
universe exists. He is the light and life of the universe.
In the Upanishads, we see a tremendous departure made. It is declared that
these heavens in which men live with the ancestors after death cannot be
permanent, seeing that everything which has name and form must die. If there
are heavens with forms, these heavens must vanish in course of time; they may
last millions of years, but there must come a time when they will have to go.
One thing is clear from this that mankind had a perception of the philosophy of
causation even at the early time.
It is practice first and knowledge afterwards
One thing you may remark in reading these books that it is all
internal perception. If you ask me if this can be practical, my answer is, it
has been practical first, and philosophical next. You can see that first these
things have been perceived and realised and then written.
Not by cogitation, not by the force of logic, not by picking the
brains of others and making a big book, as is the fashion in modern times, not
even as I do, by taking up one of their writings and making a long lecture, but
by patient investigation and discovery they found out the truth. Its essential
method was practice, and so it must be always. Religion is ever a practical
science, and there never was nor will be any theological religion. It is
practice first, and knowledge afterwards. The idea that souls come back is
already there. Those persons who do good work with the idea of a result, get
it, but the result is not permanent. There we get the idea of causation very
beautifully put forward, that the effect is only commensurate with the cause.
As the cause is, so the effect will be. The cause being finite, the effect must
be finite. If the cause is eternal the effect can be eternal, but all these
causes, doing good work, and all other things, are only finite causes, and as
such cannot produce infinite result.
As there cannot be an eternal heaven, on the same grounds, there
cannot be an eternal hell. Suppose I am a very wicked man, doing evil every
minute of my life. Still, my whole life here, compared with my eternal life, is
nothing. If there be an eternal punishment, it will mean that there is an
infinite effect produced by a finite cause, which cannot be. If I do good all
my life, I cannot have an infinite heaven; it would be making the same mistake.
But there is a third course which applies to those who have known the Truth, to
those who have realised It. This is the only way to get beyond this veil of
Maya--to realise what Truth is; and the Upanishads indicate what is meant by
realising the Truth.
It means recognising neither good nor
bad, but knowing all as coming from the Self; Self is in everything. It means
denying the universe; shutting your eyes to it; seeing the Lord in hell as well
as in heaven; seeing the Lord in death as well as in life.
Everything is Brahman, is full of the Lord
And this is to be seen, realised, not simply talked or thought about. We can
see as its logical consequence that when the soul has realised that everything
is full of the Lord, of Brahman, it will not care whether it goes to heaven, or
hell, or anywhere else; whether it be born again on this earth or in heaven.
These things have ceased to have any meaning to that soul, because every place
is the same, every place is the temple of the Lord, every place has become holy
and the presence of the Lord is all that it sees in heaven, or hell, or
anywhere else. Neither good nor bad, neither life nor death--only the one
infinite Brahman exists.
We want to worship a living God
The Impersonal God is a living God, a principle. The difference between
personal and impersonal is this, that the personal is only a man, and the
impersonal idea is that He is the angel, the man, the animal, and yet something
more which we cannot see, because impersonality includes all personalities, is
the sum total of everything in the universe, and infinitely more besides.
"As the one fire coming into the world is manifesting itself in so many
forms, and yet is infinitely more besides," so is the Impersonal.
I have seen nothing but God all my life, nor have you. To see this chair you
first see God, and then the chair in and through Him. He is everywhere saying,
"I am". The moment you feel "I am", you are conscious of
Existence. Where shall we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts
and in every living being? "Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art
the girl, and Thou art the boy. Thou art the old man tottering with a stick.
Thou art the young man walking in the pride of his strength." Thou art all
that exists, a wonderful living God who is the only fact in the universe. This
seems to many to be a terrible contradiction to the traditional God who lives
behind a veil somewhere and whom nobody ever sees. The priests only give us an
assurance that if we follow them, listen to their admonitions, and walk in the
way they mark out for us--then when we die, they will give us a passport to
enable us to see the face of God! What are all these heaven ideas but simply
modifications of this nonsensical priestcraft?
Of course the impersonal idea is very destructive; it takes away all trade from
the priests, churches, and temples. If the priests taught this Impersonal idea
to the people, their occupation would be gone. Yet we have to teach it
unselfishly, without priest craft. You are God and so am I; who obeys whom? Who
worships whom? You are the highest temple of God; I would rather worship you
than any temple, image, or Bible.
The only God to Worship is the Human Soul in
the Human Body
The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God. It may frighten many of
you, but you will understand it by degrees. The living God is within you, and
yet you are building churches and temples and believing all sorts of imaginary
nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of
course all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of
temples. If I cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage.
The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the
moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him--that
moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
This is the most practical of all worship. It has nothing to do with theorising
and speculation. Yet it frightens many. They say it is not right. They go on
theorising about old ideals told them by their grandfathers, that a God
somewhere in heaven had told some one that he was God. Since that time we have
only theories. This is practicality according to them, and our ideas are
impractical! No doubt, the Vedanta says that each one must have his own path,
but the path is not the goal. The worship of a God in heaven and all these
things are not bad, but they are only steps towards the Truth and not the Truth
itself.
Love cannot come through fear
He existing, the whole universe exists. He is the light and life of the
universe. If the 'I' were not in you, you would not see the sun, everything
would be a dark mass. He shining, you see the world."
One question is generally asked, and it is this that this may lead to a
tremendous amount of difficulty. Everyone of us will think, "I am God, and
whatever I do or think must be good, for God can do no evil." In the first
place, even taking this danger of misinterpretation for granted, can it be
proved that on the other side the same danger does not exist? They have been
worshipping a God in heaven separate from them, and of whom they are much
afraid. They have been born shaking with fear, and all their life they will go
on shaking. Has the world been made much better by this? Those who have
understood and worshipped a Personal God, and those who have understood and
worshipped an Impersonal God, on which side have been the great workers of the
world--gigantic workers, gigantic moral powers? Certainly on the Impersonal.
How can you expect morality to be developed through fear? It can never be.
"Where one sees another, where one hears another, that is Maya. When one
does not see another, when one does not hear another, when everything has
become the Atman, who sees whom, who perceives whom?" It is all He, and
all I, at the same time. The soul has become pure. Then, and then alone we
understand what love is. Love cannot come through fear, its basis is freedom.
When we really begin to love the world, then we understand what is meant by
brotherhood or mankind, and not before.
So, it is not right to say that the Impersonal idea will lead to a tremendous
amount of evil in the world, as if the other doctrine never lent itself to
works of evil, as if it did not lead to sectarianism deluging the world with
blood and causing men to tear each other to pieces. "My God is the
greatest god, let us decide it by a free fight." That is the outcome of
dualism all over the world. Come out into the broad open light of day, come out
from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to
live and die in small ruts? Come out into the universe of Light.
Our true nature is infinite
Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms
and embrace it with love. If you ever felt you wanted to do that, you have felt
God. The whole universe is one person; let go the little things. Give up the
small for the Infinite, give up small enjoyments for infinite bliss. It is all
yours, for the Impersonal includes the Personal. So God is Personal and
Impersonal at the same time. And Man, the Infinite, Impersonal Man, is
manifesting Himself as person. We the infinite have limited ourselves, as it
were, into small parts. The Vedanta says that Infinity is our true nature; it will
never vanish, it will abide for ever. But we are limiting ourselves by our
Karma, which like a chain round our necks has dragged us into this limitation.
Break that chain and be free. Trample law under your feet. There is no law in
human nature, there is no destiny, no fate. How can there be law in infinity?
Freedom is its watchword. Freedom is its nature, its birthright. Be free, and
then have any number of personalities you like. Then we will play like the
actor who comes upon the stage and plays the part of a beggar. So long as we
have no knowledge of our real nature, we are beggars, jostled about by every
force in nature; and made slaves of by everything in nature; we cry all over
the world for help, but help never comes to us; we cry to imaginary beings, and
yet it never comes. But still we hope help will come, and thus in weeping,
wailing, and hoping, one life is passed, and the same play goes on and on.
Replace hope with the knowledge
Be free; hope for nothing from anyone. I am sure if you look back
upon your lives you will find that you were always vainly trying to get help
from others which never came. All the help that has come was from within
yourselves. Give up hope, says the Vedanta. Why should you hope? You have
everything, nay, you are everything. What are you hoping for? Give up all these
mad pursuits, and then play your part in the universe, as an actor on the
stage.
When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society
and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were,
only we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain, but
with a new meaning. We do not know the world yet; it is only through freedom
that we see what it is, and understand its nature. We shall see then that this so-called
law, or fate, or destiny occupies only an infinitesimal part of our nature. It
was only one side, but on the other side there was freedom all the time. We did
not know this, and that is why we have been trying to save ourselves from evil
by hiding our faces in the ground, like the hunted hare. Through delusion we
have been trying to forget our nature, and yet we could not; it was always
calling upon us, and all our search after God or gods, or external freedom, was
a search after our real nature.
The ideal of Vedanta is to know the person as he/she really is.
Within ourselves is this eternal voice speaking of eternal freedom; its music
is eternally going on. Part of this music of the Soul has become the earth, the
law, this universe, but it was always ours and always will be. In one word, the
ideal of Vedanta is to know man as he really is, and this is its message, that
if you cannot worship your brother man, the manifested God, how can you worship
a God who is unmanifested?
Do you not remember what the Bible
says, "If you cannot love your brother whom you have seen, how can you
love God whom you have not seen?" If you cannot see God in the human face,
how can you see him in the clouds, or in images made of dull, dead matter, or
in mere fictitious stories of our brain? I shall call you religious from the
day you begin to see God in men and women, and then you will understand what is
meant by turning the left cheek to the man who strikes you on the right. When
you see man as God, everything, even the tiger, will be welcome. Whatever comes
to you is but the Lord, the Eternal, the Blessed One, appearing to us in
various forms, as our father, and mother, and friend, and child--they are our
own soul playing with us.
He is everything; he is in everything
As our human relationships can thus be made divine, so our
relationship with God may take any of these forms and we can look upon Him as
our father, or mother, or friend, or beloved. Calling God Mother is a higher
ideal than calling Him Father; and to call Him Friend is still higher; but the
highest is to regard Him as the Beloved. The highest point of all is to see no
difference between lover and beloved. You may remember, perhaps, the old
Persian story, of how a lover came and knocked at the door of the beloved and
was asked, "Who are you?" He answered, "It is I", and there
was no response. A second time he came, and exclaimed, "I am here",
but the door was not opened. The third time he came, and the voice asked from
inside, "Who is there?" He replied, "I am thyself, my
beloved", and the door opened. So is the relation between God and
ourselves. He is in everything. He is everything. Every man and woman is the
palpable, blissful, living God. Who says God is unknown? Who says He is to be
searched after? We have found God eternally. We have been living in Him
eternally; everywhere He is eternally known, eternally worshipped.
From lower truth to higher truth
Then comes another idea, that other forms of worship are not errors. This is
one of the great points to be remembered, that those who worship God through
ceremonials and forms, however crude we may think them to be, are not in error.
It is the journey from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth.
Darkness is less light; evil is less good; impurity is less purity. It must
always be borne in mind that we should see others with eyes of love, with
sympathy, knowing that they are going along the same path that we have trodden.
If you are free, you must know that all will be so sooner or later, and if you
are free, how can you see the impermanent? If you are really pure, how do you
see the impure? For what is within, is without. We cannot see impurity without
having it inside ourselves. This is one of the practical sides of Vedanta, and
I hope that we shall all try to carry it into our lives. Our whole life here is
to carry this into practice, but the one great point we gain is that we shall
work with satisfaction and contentment, instead of with discontent and
dissatisfaction, for we know that Truth is within us, we have It as our
birthright, and we have only to manifest It, and make It tangible.