Introduction
Every soul is destined to be perfect, and every being, in the end, will attain
to that state. Whatever we are now is the result of whatever we have been or
thought in the past; and whatever we shall be in the future will be the result
of what we do or think now. But this does not preclude our receiving help from
outside; the possibilities of the soul are always quickened by some help from
outside, so much so that in the vast majority of cases in the world, help from
outside is almost absolutely necessary. Quickening influence comes from
outside, and that works upon our own potentialities; and then the growth
begins, spiritual life comes, and man becomes holy and perfect in the end. This
quickening impulse which comes from outside cannot be received from books; the
soul can receive impulse only from another soul, and from nothing else. We may
study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we
find we have not developed at all spiritually. It does not follow that a high order
of intellectual development always shows an equivalent development of the
spiritual side of man; on the other hand, we find cases almost every day where
the intellect has become very highly developed at the expense of the spirit.
Now in intellectual development we can get much help from books, but in
spiritual development, almost nothing. It is because books cannot give us that
impulse from outside. To quicken the spirit, that impulse must come from
another soul.
It is because books cannot give us that impulse from
outside. To quicken the spirit, that impulse must come from another soul.
First of all it is wrong to think that spirituality cannot be
"given." Swami vivekananda repeatedly declared that spirituality can
be given just as a flower or any other tangible object can be given by one to
another."
Swami Ashokananda, A Call to the Eternal, Advaita Ashrama,
1995, p. 236-37.
The Seed Must Be a Living Seed
That soul from which this impulse comes is called the Guru, the teacher; and
the soul to which the impulse is conveyed is called the disciple, the student.
In order to convey this impulse, in the first place, the soul from which it
comes must possess the power of transmitting it, as it were, to another; and in
the second place, the object to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive
it. The seed must be a living seed, and the field must be ready ploughed; and
when both these conditions are fulfilled, a wonderful growth of religion takes
place. "The speaker of religion must be wonderful, so must the hearer
be"; and when both of these are really wonderful, extraordinary, then
alone will splendid spiritual growth come, and not otherwise. These are real
teachers, and these are the real students. Besides these, the others are
playing with spirituality--just having a little intellectual struggle, just
satisfying a little curiosity--but are standing only on the outward fringes of
the horizon of religion. There is some value in that; real thirst for religion
may thus be awakened; all comes in course of time. It is a mysterious law of
nature that as soon as the field is ready the seed must come, as soon as the
soul wants religion, the transmitter of religious force must come. "The
seeking sinner meeteth the seeking Saviour." When the power that attracts
in the receiving soul is full and ripe, the power which answers to that
attraction must come.
But there are great dangers in the way. There is the danger to the receiving
soul of mistaking its momentary emotion for real religious yearning. We oft
times mistake such impulses for real thirst after religion, but so long as
these momentary emotions are thus mistaken, that continuous, real want of the
soul will not come, and we shall not find the "transmitter".
There are still more difficulties for the "transmitter". There are
many who, though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts,
think they know everything, and not only do not stop there, but offer to take
others on their shoulders, and thus "the blind leading the blind, they both
fall into the ditch". The world is full of these; everyone wants to be a
teacher, every beggar wants to make a gift of a million dollars. Just as the
latter is ridiculous, so are these teachers.
How are we to know a teacher then? In the first place, the sun requires no
torch to make it visible. We do not light a candle to see the sun. Truth stands
on its own evidences; it does not require any other testimony to attest it; it
is self-effulgent. It penetrates into the inmost recesses of our nature, and
the whole universe stands up and says, "This is Truth." These are the
very great teachers, but we get help from the lesser ones also; and as we
ourselves are not always sufficiently intuitive to be certain of our judgment
of the man from whom we receive, there ought to be certain tests.
The conditions necessary in the taught are purity, a real thirst after
knowledge, and perseverance. No impure soul can be religious; that is the one
great condition; purity in every way is absolutely necessary. The other
condition is a real thirst after knowledge. Who wants ? That is the old
question. We get whatever we want--that is an old, old law. He who wants, gets.
To want religion is a very difficult thing, not so easy as we generally think.
Then we always forget that religion does not consist in hearing talks, or in
reading books, but it is a continuous struggle, a grappling with our own
nature, a continuous fight till the victory is achieved. It may come
immediately, or it may not come in hundreds of lifetimes; and we must be ready for
that. The student who sets out with such a spirit finds success.
The Secret of the Scriptures
Those who deal too much in words and let the mind run always in the force of
words lose the spirit. So the teacher must be able to know the spirit of the scriptures.
In the teacher we must first see that he knows the secret of the scriptures.
The whole world reads scriptures--Bibles, Vedas, Korans, and others; but they
are only words, external arrangement, syntax, the etymology, the philosophy,
the dry bones of religion. You will find that no one of the great teachers of
the world went into these various explanations of texts; on their part there is
no attempt at "text-torturing", no saying, "This word means
this, and this is the philological connection between this and that word."
You study all the great teachers the world has produced, and you will see that
no one of them goes that way. Yet they taught, while others, who have nothing
to teach, will take a word and write a three-volume book on its origin and use.
If you want to be a Christian, it is not necessary to know whether Christ was
born in Jerusalem or Bethlehem or just the exact date on which he pronounced
the Sermon on the Mount; you only require to feel the Sermon on the Mount. It
is not necessary to read two thousand words on when it was delivered. All that
is for the enjoyment of the learned. Let them have it; say amen to that.
Spiritual Truth Is Purity
The second condition necessary in the teacher is that he must be sinless. The
question was once asked me in England by a friend, "Why should we look to
the personality of a teacher? We have only to judge of what he says, and take
that up." Not so. If a man wants to teach me something of dynamics or
chemistry or any other physical science, he may be of any character; he can
still teach dynamics or any other science. For the knowledge that the physical
sciences require is simply intellectual and depends on intellectual strength; a
man can have in such a case a gigantic intellectual power without the least
development of his soul.
But in the spiritual sciences it is impossible from first to last that there
can be any spiritual light in that soul which is impure. What can such a soul
teach? It knows nothing. Spiritual truth is purity. "Blessed are the pure
in heart, for they shall see God". In that one sentence is the gist of all
religions. If you have learnt that, all that has been said in the past and all
that it is possible to say in the future, you have known; you need not look
into anything else, for you have all that is necessary in that one sentence; it
could save the world, were all the other scriptures lost. A vision of God, a
glimpse of the beyond never comes until the soul is pure. Therefore in the
teacher of spirituality, purity is the one thing indispensable; we must see
first what he is, and then what he says.
Not so with intellectual teachers; there we care more for what he says than
what he is. With the teacher of religion we must first and foremost see what he
is, and then alone comes the value of the words, because he is the transmitter.
What will he transmit, if he has not that spiritual power in him? To give a
simile: If a heater is hot, it can convey heat vibrations, but if not, it is
impossible to do so. Even so is the case with the mental vibrations of the
religious teacher which he conveys to the mind of the taught. It is a question
of transference, and not of stimulating only our intellectual faculties. Some
power, real and tangible, goes out from the teacher and begins to grow in the
mind of the taught. Therefore the necessary condition is that the teacher must
be true. When spiritual forces are transmitted from the teacher to the taught,
they can only be conveyed through the medium of love; there is no other medium
that can convey them.
Give Me a Dollar's Worth of Religion
The third condition is motive. We should see that he does not teach with any
ulterior motive, for name, or fame, or anything else, but simply for love, pure
love for you. Any other motive, such as gain or name, would immediately destroy
the conveying medium; therefore all must be done through love. One who has
known God can alone be a teacher. When you see that in the teacher these
conditions are fulfilled, you are safe; if they are not fulfilled, it is unwise
to accept him.
A blind man may come to a museum, but he comes and goes only; if he is to see,
his eyes must first be opened. This eye-opener of religion is the teacher. It
is all very well to talk of liberty and independence, but without humility,
submission, veneration, and faith, there will not be any religion. In nations
and churches where this relation between teacher and taught is not maintained
spirituality, is almost an unknown quantity. Of whom can they learn? And if
they come to learn, they come to buy learning. Give me a dollar's worth of
religion; cannot I pay a dollar for it? Religion cannot be got that way!
Find the Teacher
Our attention should be fixed on the teacher as the highest manifestation of
God; and as the power of attention concentrates there, the picture of the
teacher as man will melt away; the frame will vanish, and the real God will be
left there. There is nothing higher and holier than the knowledge which comes
to the soul transmitted by a spiritual teacher. Find the teacher, serve him as
a child, open your heart to his influence, see in him God manifested. Those
that come to truth with such a spirit of veneration and love--for them the Lord
of truth speaks the most wonderful words.
"Take thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is
holy ground". Wherever His name is spoken, that place is holy. How much
more so is a man who speaks His name, and with what veneration ought we to
approach a man out of whom come spiritual truths! This is the spirit in which
we are to be taught. Such teachers are few in number, no doubt, in this world,
but the world is never altogether without them. The moment it is absolutely
bereft of these, it will cease to be, it will become a hideous hell and will
just drop. These teachers are the fair flowers of human life and keep the world
going; it is the strength that is manifested from these hearts of life that
keeps the bounds of society intact.
Teachers of All Teachers
The time will come when we transcend our human nature and know Him as He is;
but so long as we are men, we must worship Him in man. Beyond these is another
set of teachers, the Christs of the world. These Teachers of all teachers
represent God Himself in the form of man. They are much higher; they can
transmit spirituality with a touch, with a wish, which makes even the lowest
and most degraded characters saints in one second. Do you not read of how they
used to do these things? They are not the teachers about whom I was speaking;
they are the Teachers of all teachers, the greatest manifestations of God to
man; we cannot see God and they are the only beings we are bound to worship.
No man hath "seen" God but as He is manifested in the Son. We cannot
see God. If we try to see Him, we make a hideous caricature of God. There is an
Indian story that an ignorant man was asked to make an image of the God Shiva,
and after days of struggle he made an image of a monkey. So whenever we attempt
to make an image of God, we make a caricature of Him, because we cannot
understand Him as anything higher than man so long as we are men. The time will
come when we transcend our human nature and know Him as he is; but so long as
we are men we must worship Him in man.
Religion is realisation, and you must make the sharpest distinction between talk
and realisation. What you perceive in your soul is realisation. Man has no idea
of the Spirit, he has to think of it with the forms he has before him. He has
to think of the blue skies, or the expansive fields, or the sea, or something
huge. How else can you think of God? So what are you doing in reality? You are
talking of omnipresence, and thinking of the sea. Is God the sea? A little more
common sense is required. Nothing is so uncommon as common sense, the world is
too full of talk. Two classes of men do not worship God as man--the human brute
who has no religion, and the Paramahamsa (highest Yogi) who has gone beyond
humanity, who has thrown off his mind and body and gone beyond the limits of
nature. All nature has become his Self. He has neither mind nor body, and can
worship God as God, as can a Jesus or a Buddha. They do not worship God as man.
The other extreme is the human brute. You know how extremes look alike. Similar
is the case with the extreme of ignorance and the other extreme of knowledge;
neither of these worships anybody. The extremely ignorant do not worship God,
not being developed enough to feel the need for so doing. Those that have
attained the highest knowledge also do not worship God--having realised and
become one with God.
Therefore it is absolutely necessary to worship God as man, and blessed are
those races which has such a "God-man" to worship. Christians have
such a God-man in Christ; therefore cling close to Christ; never give up
Christ. That is the natural way to see God; see God in man. All our ideas of
God are concentrated there. The great limitation Christians have is that they
do not heed other manifestations of God besides Christ. He was a manifestation
of God; so was Buddha; so were some others, and there will be hundreds of
others. Do not limit God to anywhere. Pay all the reverence that you think is
due to God, to Christ; that is the only worship we can have. God cannot be
worshipped; He is the immanent Being of the universe. It is only to His
manifestation as man that we can pray. It would be a very good plan, when
Christians pray, to say, "in the name of Christ". It would be wise to
stop praying to God, and only pray to Christ. God understands human failings
and becomes a man to do good to humanity. "Whenever virtue subsides and
immorality prevails, then I come to help mankind", says Krishna. These
great Incarnations of God are to be worshipped. Not only so, they alone can be
worshipped; and on the days of their birth, and on the days when they went out
of this world, we ought to pay more particular reverence to them. In
worshipping Christ I would rather worship Him just as He desires; on the day of
His birth I would rather worship him by fasting than by feasting--by praying.
When these are thought of, these great ones, they manifest themselves in our
souls, and they make us like unto them.
But you must not mix up Christ or Buddha with hobgoblins flying through the air
and all that sort of nonsense. Sacrilege! Christ coming into a spiritualistic
seance to dance! I have seen that pretence in this country. It is not in that
way that these manifestations of God come. The very touch of one of them will
be manifest upon a man; when Christ touches, the whole soul of man will change,
that man will be transfigured just as He was. His whole life will be
spiritualised; from every pore of his body spiritual power will emanate. What
were the great powers of Christ in miracles and healing, in one of his
character? They were low, vulgar things that He could not help doing because He
was among vulgar beings. Where was this miracle-making done? Among the Jews;
and the Jews did not take Him. Where was it not done? In Europe. The
miracle-making went to the Jews, who rejected Christ, and the Sermon on the
Mount to Europe, which accepted Him. The human spirit took on what was true and
rejected what was spurious. The great strength of Christ is not in His miracles
or His healing. Any fool could do those things. Fools can heal others, devils
can heal others. I have seen horrible demoniacal men do wonderful miracles. I
have seen fools heal at a glance, by the will, the most horrible diseases.
These are powers, truly, but often demoniacal powers. The other is the
spiritual power of Christ which will live and always has lived--an almighty,
gigantic love, and the words of truth which He preached. The action of healing
men at a glance is forgotten, but His saying, "Blessed are the pure in
heart", that lives today. These words are a gigantic magazine of
power--inexhaustible. So long as the human mind lasts, so long as the name of
God is not forgotten, these words will roll on and on and never cease to be.
These are the powers Jesus taught, and the powers He had. The power of purity;
that is a definite power. So in worshipping Christ, in praying to Him, we must
always remember what we are seeking. Not those foolish things of miraculous
display, but the wonderful powers of the Spirit, which make man free, give him
control over the whole of nature, take from him the badge of slavery, and show
God unto him.