The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 2/Practical Vedanta and other lectures/The Way to Blessedness
THE WAY TO BLESSEDNESS
I shall tell you a story from the Vedas tonight. The Vedas are the sacred
scriptures of the Hindus and are a vast collection of literature, of which
the last part is called the Vedanta, meaning the end of the Vedas. It deals
with the theories contained in them, and more especially the philosophy with
which we are concerned. It is written in archaic Sanskrit, and you must
remember it was written thousands of years ago. There was a certain man who
wanted to make a big sacrifice. In the religion of the Hindus, sacrifice
plays a great part. There are various sorts of sacrifices. They make altars
and pour oblations into the fire, and repeat various hymns and so forth; and
at the end of the sacrifice they make a gift to the Brahmins and the poor.
Each sacrifice has its peculiar gift. There was one sacrifice, where
everything a man possessed had to be given up. Now this man, though rich,
was miserly, and at the same time wanted to get a great name for having done
this most difficult sacrifice. And when he did this sacrifice, instead of
giving up everything he had, he gave away only his blind, lame, and old cows
that would never more give milk. But he had a son called Nachiketas, a
bright young boy, who, observing the poor gifts made by his father, and
pondering on the demerit that was sure to accrue to him thereby, resolved to
make amends for them by making a gift of himself. So he went to his father
and said, "And to whom will you give me?" The father did not answer the boy,
and the boy asked a second and a third time, when the father got vexed and
said, "Thee I give unto Yama, thee I give unto Death." And the boy went
straight to the kingdom of Yama. Yama was not at home, so he waited there.
After three days Yama came and said to him, "O Brahmin, thou art my guest,
and thou hast been here for three days without any food. I salute thee, and
in order to repay thee for this trouble, I will grant thee three boons."
Then the boy asked the first boon, "May my father's anger against me get
calmed down," and the second boon was that he wanted to know about a certain
sacrifice. And then came the third boon. "When a man dies, the question
arises: What becomes of him: Some people say he ceases to exist. Others say
that he exists. Please tell me what the answer is. This is the third boon
that I want." Then Death answered, "The gods in ancient times tried to
unravel the mystery; this mystery is so fine that it is hard to know. Ask
for some other boon: do not ask this one. Ask for a long life of a hundred
years. Ask for cattle and horses, ask for great kingdoms. Do not press me to
answer this. Whatever man desires for his enjoyment, ask all that and I will
fulfil it, but do not want to know this secret." "No sir," said the boy,
man is not to be satisfied with wealth; if wealth were wanted, we should
"get it, if we have only seen you. We shall also live so long as you rule.
What decaying mortal, living in the world below and possessed of knowledge,
having gained the company of the undecaying and the immortal, will delight
in long life, knowing the nature of the pleasure produced by song and sport?
Therefore, tell me this secret about the great hereafter, I do not want
anything else; that is what Nachiketas wants, the mystery of death." Then
the God of death was pleased. We have been saying in the last two or three
lectures that this Jnâna prepares the mind. So you see here that the first
preparation is that a man must desire nothing else but the truth, and truth
for truth's sake. See how this boy rejected all these gifts which Death
offered him; possessions, property, wealth, long life, and everything he was
ready to sacrifice for this one idea, knowledge only, the truth. Thus alone
can truth come. The God of death became pleased. "Here are two ways," he
said, "one of enjoyment, the other of blessedness. These two in various ways
draw mankind. He becomes a sage who, of these two, takes up that which leads
to blessedness, and he degenerates who takes up the road to enjoyment. I
praise you, Nachiketas; you have not asked for desire. In various ways I
tempted you towards the path of enjoyment; you resisted them all, you have
known that knowledge is much higher than a life of enjoyment.
"You have understood that the man who lives in ignorance and enjoys, is not
different from the brute beast. Yet there are many who, though steeped in
ignorance, in the pride of their hearts, think that they are great sages and
go round and round in many crooked ways, like the blind led by the blind.
This truth, Nachiketas, never shines in the heart of those who are like
ignorant children, deluded by a few lumps of earth. They do not understand
this world, nor the other world. They deny this and the other one, and thus
again and again come under my control. Many have not even the opportunity to
hear about it; and many, though hearing, cannot know it, because the teacher
must be wonderful; so must he be wonderful too unto whom the knowledge is
carried. If the speaker is a man who is not highly advanced, then even a
hundred times heard, and a hundred times taught, the truth never illumines
the soul. Do not disturb your mind by vain arguments, Nachiketas; this truth
only becomes effulgent in the heart which has been made pure. He who cannot
be seen without the greatest difficulty, He who is hidden, He who has
entered the cave of the heart of hearts — the Ancient One — cannot be seen
with the external eyes; seeing Him with the eyes of the soul, one gives up
both pleasure and pain. He who knows this secret gives up all his vain
desires, and attains this superfine perception, and thus becomes ever
blessed. Nachiketas, that is the way to blessedness. He is beyond all
virtue, beyond all vice, beyond all duties, beyond all non-duties, beyond
all existence, beyond all that is to be; he who knows this, alone knows. He
whom all the Vedas seek, to see whom men undergo all sorts of asceticism, I
will tell you His name: It is Om. This eternal Om is the Brahman, this is
the immortal One; he who knows the secret of this — whatever he desires is
his. This Self of man, Nachiketas, about which you seek to know, is never
born, and never dies. Without beginning, ever existing, this Ancient One is
not destroyed, when the body is destroyed. If the slayer thinks that he can
slay, and if the slain man thinks he is slain, both are mistaken, for
neither can the Self kill, nor can It be killed. Infinitely smaller than the
smallest particle, infinitely greater than the greatest existence, the Lord
of all lives in the cave of the heart of every being. He who has become
sinless sees Him in all His glory, through the mercy of the same Lord. (We
find that the mercy of God is one of the causes of God-realisation.) Sitting
He goes far, lying He goes everywhere; who else but men of purified and
subtle understanding are qualified to know the God in whom all conflicting
attributes meet? Without body, yet living in the body, untouched, yet
seemingly in contact, omnipresent — knowing the Âtman to be such, the sage
gives up all misery. This Atman is not to be attained by the study of the
Vedas, nor by the highest intellect, nor by much learning. Whom the Atman
seeks, he gets the Atman; unto him He discloses His glory. He who is
continuously doing evil deeds, he whose mind is not calm, he who cannot
meditates he who is always disturbed and fickle — he cannot understand and
realise this Atman who has entered the cave of the heart. This body, O
Nachiketas, is the chariot, the organs of the senses are the horses, the
mind is the reins, the intellect is the charioteer, and the soul is the
rider in the chariot. When the soul joins himself with the charioteer,
Buddhi or intellect, and then through it with the mind, the reins, and
through it again with the organs, the horses, he is said to be the enjoyer;
he perceives, he works, he acts. He whose mind is not under control, and who
has no discrimination, his senses are not controllable like vicious horses
in the hands of a driver. But he who has discrimination, whose mind is
controlled, his organs are always controllable like good horses in the hands
of a driver. He who has discrimination, whose mind is always in the way to
understand truth, who is always pure — he receives that truth, attaining
which there is no rebirth. This, O Nachiketas, is very difficult, the way is
long, and it is hard to attain. It is only those who have attained the
finest perception that can see it, that can understand it. Yet do not be
frightened. Awake, be up and doing. Do not stop till you have reached the
goal. For the sages say that the task is very difficult, like walking on the
edge of a razor. He who is beyond the senses, beyond all touch, beyond all
form, beyond all taste, the Unchangeable, the Infinite, beyond even
intelligence, the Indestructible — knowing Him alone, we are safe from the
jaws of death."
So far, we see that Yama describes the goal that is to be attained. The
first idea that we get is that birth, death, misery, and the various
tossings about to which we are subject in the world can only be overcome by
knowing that which is real. What is real? That which never changes, the Self
of man, the Self behind the universe. Then, again, it is said that it is
very difficult to know Him. Knowing does not mean simply intellectual
assent, it means realisation. Again and again we have read that this Self is
to be seen, to be perceived. We cannot see it with the eyes; the perception
for it has to become superfine. It is gross perception by which the walls
and books are perceived, but the perception to discern the truth has to be
made very fine, and that is the whole secret of this knowledge. Then Yama
says that one must be very pure. That is the way to making the perception
superfine; and then he goes on to tell us other ways. That self-existent One
is far removed from the organs. The organs or instruments see outwards, but
the self-existing One, the Self, is seen inwards. You must remember the
qualification that is required: the desire to know this Self by turning the
eyes inwards. All these beautiful things that we see in nature are very
good, but that is not the way to see God. We must learn how to turn the eyes
inwards. The eagerness of the eyes to see outwards should be restricted.
When you walk in a busy street, it is difficult to hear the man speak with
whom you are walking, because of the noise of the passing carriages. He
cannot hear you because there is so much noise. The mind is going outwards,
and you cannot hear the man who is next to you. In the same way, this world
around us is making such a noise that it draws the mind outwards. How can we
see the Self? This going outwards must be stopped. That is what is meant by
turning the eyes inwards, and then alone the glory of the Lord within will
be seen.
What is this Self? We have seen that It is even beyond the intellect. We
learn from the same Upanishad that this Self is eternal and omnipresent,
that you and I and all of us are omnipresent beings, and that the Self is
changeless. Now this omnipresent Being can be only one. There cannot be two
beings who are equally omnipresent — how could that be? There cannot be two
beings who are infinite, and the result is, there is really only one Self,
and you, I, and the whole universe are but one, appearing as many. "As the
one fire entering into the world manifests itself in various ways, even so
that one Self, the Self of all, manifests Itself in every form." But the
question is: If this Self is perfect and pure, and the One Being of the
universe, what becomes of It when It goes into the impure body, the wicked
body, the good body, and so on? How can It remain perfect? "The one sun is
the cause of vision in every eye, yet it is not touched by the defects in
the eyes of any." If a man has jaundice he sees everything as yellow; the
cause of his vision is the sun, but his seeing everything as yellow does not
touch the sun. Even so this One Being, though the Self of every one, is not
touched by the purities or impurities outside. "In this world where
everything is evanescent, he who knows Him who never changes, in this world
of insentience, he who knows the one sentient Being, in this world of many,
he who knows this One and sees Him in his own soul, unto him belongs eternal
bliss, to none else, to none else. There the sun shines not, nor the stars,
nor the lightning flashes, what to speak of fire? He shining, everything
shines; through His light everything becomes effulgent. When all the desires
that trouble the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal, and here one
attains Brahman. When all the crookedness of the heart disappears, when all
its knots are cut asunder, then alone the mortal becomes immortal. This is
the way. May this study bless us; may it maintain us; may it give us
strength, may it become energy in us; may we not hate each other; peace unto
all!"
This is the line of thought that you will find in the Vedanta philosophy. We
see first that here is a thought entirely different from what you see
anywhere else in the world. In the oldest parts of the Vedas the search was
the same as in other books, the search was outside. In some of the old, old
books, the question was raised, "What was in the beginning? When there was
neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, who created
all this?" So the search began. And they began to talk about the angels, the
Devas, and all sorts of things, and later on we find that they gave it up as
hopeless. In their day the search was outside and they could find nothing;
but in later days, as we read in the Vedas, they had to look inside for the
self-existent One. This Is the one fundamental idea in the Vedas, that our
search in the stars, the nebulae, the Milky Way, in the whole of this
external universe leads to nothing, never solves the problem of life and
death. The wonderful mechanism inside had to be analysed, and it revealed to
them the secret of the universe; nor star or sun could do it. Man had to be
anatomised; not the body, but the soul of man. In that soul they found the
answer. What was the answer they found? That behind the body, behind even
the mind, there is the self-existent One. He dies not, nor is He born. The
self-existent One it omnipresent, because He has no form. That which has no
form or shape, that which is not limited by space or time, cannot live in a
certain place. How can it? It is everywhere, omnipresent, equally present
through all of us.
What is the soul of man? There was one party who held that there is a Being,
God, and an infinite number of souls besides, who are eternally separate
from God in essence, and form, and everything. This is dualism. This is the
old, old crude idea. The answer given by another party was that the soul was
a part of the infinite Divine Existence. Just as this body is a little world
by itself, and behind it is the mind or thought, and behind that is the
individual soul, similarly, the whole world is a body, and behind that is
the universal mind, and behind that is the universal Soul. Just as this body
is a portion of the universal body, so this mind is a portion of the
universal mind, and the soul of man a portion of the universal Soul. This is
what is called the Vishishtâdvaita, qualified monism. Now, we know that the
universal Soul is infinite. How can infinity have parts? How can it be
broken up, divided? It may be very poetic to say that I am a spark of the
Infinite, but it is absurd to the thinking mind. What is meant by dividing
Infinity? Is it something material that you can part or separate it into
pieces? Infinite can never be divided. If that were possible, it would be no
more Infinite. What is the conclusion then? The answer is, that Soul which
is the universal is you; you are not a part but the whole of It. You are the
whole of God. Then what are all these varieties? We find so many millions of
individual souls. What are they? If the sun reflects upon millions of
globules of water, in each globule is the form, the perfect image of the
sun; but they are only images, and the real sun is only one. So this
apparent soul that is in every one of us is only the image of God, nothing
beyond that. The real Being who is behind, is that one God. We are all one
there. As Self, there is only one in the universe. It is in me and you, and
is only one; and that one Self has been reflected in all these various
bodies as various different selves. But we do not know this; we think we are
separate from each other and separate from Him. And so long as we think
this, misery will be in the world. This is hallucination.
Then the other great source of misery is fear. Why does one man injure
another? Because he fears he will not have enough enjoyment. One man fears
that, perhaps, he will not have enough money, and that fear causes him to
injure others and rob them. How can there be fear if there is only one
existence? If a thunderbolt falls on my head, it was I who was the
thunderbolt, because I am the only existence. If a plague comes, it is I; if
a tiger comes, it is I. If death comes, it is I. I am both death and life.
We see that fear comes with the idea that there are two in the universe. We
have always heard it preached, "Love one another". What for? That doctrine
was preached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one?
Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I
are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From
the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever
lived — all have various bodies, but are the one Soul. Through all mouths,
you eat; through all hands, you work; through all eyes, you see. You enjoy
health in millions of bodies, you are suffering from disease in millions of
bodies. When this idea comes, and we realise it, see it, feel it, then will
misery cease, and fear with it. How can I die? There is nothing beyond me.
Fear ceases, and then alone comes perfect happiness and perfect love. That
universal sympathy, universal love, universal bliss, that never changes,
raises man above everything. It has no reactions and no misery can touch it;
but this little eating and drinking of the world always brings a reaction.
The whole cause of it is this dualism, the idea that I am separate from the
universe, separate from God. But as soon as we have realised that "I am He,
I am the Self of the universe, I am eternally blessed, eternally free" —
then will come real love, fear will vanish, and all misery cease.