The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 2/Practical Vedanta and other lectures/Practical Vedanta: Part II
PRACTICAL VEDANTA
PART II
(Delivered in London, 12th November 1896)
I will relate to you a very ancient story from the Chhândogya Upanishad,
which tells how knowledge came to a boy. The form of the story is very
crude, but we shall find that it contains a principle. A young boy said to
his mother, "I am going to study the Vedas. Tell me the name of my father
and my caste." The mother was not a married woman, and in India the child of
a woman who has not been married is considered an outcast; he is not
recognised by society and is not entitled to study the Vedas. So the poor
mother said, "My child, I do not know your family name; I was in service,
and served in different places; I do not know who your father is, but my
name is Jabâlâ and your name is Satyakâma." The little child went to a sage
and asked to be taken as a student. The sage asked him, "What is the name of
your father, and what is your caste?" The boy repeated to him what he had
heard from his mother. The sage at once said, "None but a Brâhmin could
speak such a damaging truth about himself. You are a Brahmin and I will
teach you. You have not swerved from truth." So he kept the boy with him and
educated him.
Now come some of the peculiar methods of education in ancient India. This
teacher gave Satyakama four hundred lean, weak cows to take care of, and
sent him to the forest. There he went and lived for some time. The teacher
had told him to come back when the herd would increase to the number of one
thousand. After a few years, one day Satyakama heard a big bull in the herd
saying to him, "We are a thousand now; take us back to your teacher. I will
teach you a little of Brahman." "Say on, sir," said Satyakama. Then the bull
said, "The East is a part of the Lord, so is the West, so is the South, so
is the North. The four cardinal points are the four parts of Brahman. Fire
will also teach you something of Brahman." Fire was a great symbol in those
days, and every student had to procure fire and make offerings. So on the
following day, Satyakama started for his Guru's house, and when in the
evening he had performed his oblation, and worshipped at the fire, and was
sitting near it, he heard a voice come from the fire, "O Satyakama." "Speak,
Lord," said Satyakama. (Perhaps you may remember a very similar story in the
Old Testament, how Samuel heard a mysterious voice.) "O Satyakama, I am come
to teach you a little of Brahman. This earth is a portion of that Brahman.
The sky and the heaven are portions of It. The ocean is a part of that
Brahman." Then the fire said that a certain bird would also teach him
something. Satyakama continued his journey and on the next day when he had
performed his evening sacrifice a swan came to him and said, "I will teach
you something about Brahman. This fire which you worship, O Satyakama, is a
part of that Brahman. The sun is a part, the moon is a part, the lightning
is a part of that Brahman. A bird called Madgu will tell you more about it."
The next evening that bird came, and a similar voice was heard by Satyakama,
"I will tell you something about Brahman. Breath is a part of Brahman, sight
is a part, hearing is a part, the mind is a part." Then the boy arrived at
his teacher's place and presented himself before him with due reverence. No
sooner had the teacher seen this disciple than he remarked: "Satyakama, thy
face shines like that of a knower of Brahman! Who then has taught thee?"
"Beings other than men," replied Satyakama. "But I wish that you should
teach me, sir. For I have heard from men like you that knowledge which is
learnt from a Guru alone leads to the supreme good." Then the sage taught
him the same knowledge which he had received from the gods. "And nothing was
left out, yea, nothing was left out."
Now, apart from the allegories of what the bull, the fire, and the birds
taught, we see the tendency of the thought and the direction in which it was
going in those days. The great idea of which we here see the germ is that
all these voices are inside ourselves. As we understand these truths better,
we find that the voice is in our own heart, and the student understood that
all the time he was hearing the truth; but his explanation was not correct.
He was interpreting the voice as coming from the external world, while all
the time, it was within him. The second idea that we get is that of making
the knowledge of the Brahman practical. The world is always seeking the
practical possibilities of religion, and we find in these stories how it was
becoming more and more practical every day. The truth was shown through
everything with which the students were familiar. The fire they were
worshipping was Brahman, the earth was a part of Brahman, and so on.
The next story belongs to Upakosala Kâmalâyana, a disciple of this
Satyakama, who went to be taught by him and dwelt with him for some time.
Now Satyakama went away on a journey, and the student became very
downhearted; and when the teacher's wife came and asked him why he was not
eating, the boy said, "I am too unhappy to eat." Then a voice came from the
fire he was worshipping, saying "This life is Brahman, Brahman is the ether,
and Brahman is happiness. Know Brahman." "I know, sir," the boy replied,
"that life is Brahman, but that It is ether and happiness I do not know."
Then it explained that the two words ether and happiness signified one thing
in reality, viz. the sentient ether (pure intelligence) that resides in the
heart. So, it taught him Brahman as life and as the ether in the heart. Then
the fire taught him, "This earth, food, fire, and sun whom you worship, are
forms of Brahman. The person that is seen in the sun, I am He. He who knows
this and meditates on Him, all his sins vanish and he has long life and
becomes happy. He who lives in the cardinal points, the moon, the stars, and
the water, I am He. He who lives in this life, the ether, the heavens, and
the lightning, I am He." Here too we see the same idea of practical
religion. The things which they were worshipping, such as the fire, the sun,
the moon, and so forth, and the voice with which they were familiar, form
the subject of the stories which explain them and give them a higher
meaning. And this is the real, practical side of Vedanta. It does not
destroy the world, but it explains it; it does not destroy the person, but
explains him; it does not destroy the individuality, but explains it by
showing the real individuality. It does not show that this world is vain and
does not exist, but it says, "Understand what this world is, so that it may
not hurt you." The voice did not say to Upakosala that the fire which he was
worshipping, or the sun, or the moon, or the lightning, or anything else,
was all wrong, but it showed him that the same spirit which was inside the
sun, and moon, and lightning, and the fire, and the earth, was in him, so
that everything became transformed, as it were, in the eyes of Upakosala.
The fire which was merely a material fire before, in which to make
oblations, assumed a new aspect and became the Lord. The earth became
transformed, life became transformed, the sun, the moon, the stars, the
lightning, everything became transformed and deified. Their real nature was
known. The theme of the Vedanta is to see the Lord in everything, to see
things in their real nature, not as they appear to be. Then another lesson
is taught in the Upanishads: "He who shines through the eyes is Brahman; He
is the Beautiful One, He is the Shining One. He shines in all these worlds."
A certain peculiar light, a commentator says, which comes to the pure man,
is what is meant by the light in the eyes, and it is said that when a man is
pure such a light will shine in his eyes, and that light belongs really to
the Soul within, which is everywhere. It is the same light which shines in
the planets, in the stars, and suns.
I will now read to you some other doctrine of these ancient Upanishads,
about birth and death and so on. Perhaps it will interest you. Shvetaketu
went to the king of the Panchâlas, and the king asked him, "Do you know
where people go when they die? Do you know how they come back? Do you know
why the other world does not become full?" The boy replied that he did not
know. Then he went to his father and asked him the same questions. The
father said, "I do not know," and he went to the king. The king said that
this knowledge was never known to the priests, it was only with the kings,
and that was the reason why kings ruled the world. This man stayed with the
king for some time, for the king said he would teach him. "The other world,
O Gautama, is the fire. The sun is its fuel. The rays are the smoke. The day
is the flame. The moon is the embers. And the stars are the sparks. In this
fire the gods pour libation of faith and from this libation king Soma is
born." So on he goes. "You need not make oblation to that little fire: the
whole world is that fire, and this oblation, this worship, is continually
going on. The gods, and the angels, and everybody is worshipping it. Man is
the greatest symbol of fire, the body of man." Here also we see the ideal
becoming practical and Brahman is seen in everything. The principle that
underlies all these stories is that invented symbolism may be good and
helpful, but already better symbols exist than any we can invent. You may
invent an image through which to worship God, but a better image already
exists, the living man. You may build a temple in which to worship God, and
that may be good, but a better one, a much higher one, already exists, the
human body.
You remember that the Vedas have two parts, the ceremonial and the knowledge
portions. In time ceremonials had multiplied and become so intricate that it
was almost hopeless to disentangle them, and so in the Upanishads we find
that the ceremonials are almost done away with, but gently, by explaining
them. We see that in old times they had these oblations and sacrifices, then
the philosophers came, and instead of snatching away the symbols from the
hands of the ignorant, instead of taking the negative position, which we
unfortunately find so general in modern reforms, they gave them something to
take their place. "Here is the symbol of fire," they said. "Very good! But
here is another symbol, the earth. What a grand, great symbol! Here is this
little temple, but the whole universe is a temple; a man can worship
anywhere. There are the peculiar figures that men draw on the earth, and
there are the altars, but here is the greatest of altars, the living,
conscious human body, and to worship at this altar is far higher than the
worship of any dead symbols."
We now come to a peculiar doctrine. I do not understand much of it myself.
If you can make something out of it, I will read it to you. When a man dies,
who has by meditation purified himself and got knowledge, he first goes to
light, then from light to day, from day to the light half of the moon, from
that to the six months when the sun goes to the north, from that to the
year, from the year to the sun, from the sun to the moon, from the moon to
the lightning, and when he comes to the sphere of lightning, he meets a
person who is not human, and that person leads him to (the conditioned)
Brahman. This is the way of the gods. When sages and wise persons die, they
go that way and they do not return. What is meant by this month and year,
and all these things, no one understands clearly. Each one gives his own
meaning, and some say it is all nonsense. What is meant by going to the
world of the moon and of the sun, and this person who comes to help the soul
after it has reached the sphere of lightning, no one knows. There is an
idea among the Hindus that the moon is a place where life exists, and we
shall see how life has come from there. Those that have not attained to
knowledge, but have done good work in this life, first go, when they die,
through smoke, then to night, then to the dark fifteen days, then to the six
months when the sun goes to the south, and from that they go to the region
of their forefathers, then to ether, then to the region of the moon, and
there become the food of the gods, and later, are born as gods and live
there so long as their good works will permit. And when the effect of the
good work has been finished, they come back to earth by the same route. They
first become ether, and then air, and then smoke, and then mist, then cloud,
and then fall upon the earth as raindrops; then they get into food, which is
eaten up by human beings, and finally become their children. Those whose
works have been very good take birth in good families, and those whose works
have been bad take bad births, even in animal bodies. Animals are
continually coming to and going from this earth. That is why the earth is
neither full nor empty.
Several ideas we can get also from this, and later on, perhaps, we shall be
able to understand it better, and we can speculate a little upon what it
means. The last part which deals with how those who have been in heaven
return, is clearer, perhaps, than the first part; but the whole idea seems
to be this that there is no permanent heaven without realising God. Now some
people who have not realised God, but have done good work in this world,
with the view of enjoying the results, go, when they die, through this and
that place, until they reach heaven, and there they are born in the same way
as we are here, as children of the gods, and they live there as long as
their good works will permit. Out of this comes one basic idea of the
Vedanta that everything which has name and form is transient. This earth is
transient, because it has name and form, and so the heavens must be
transient, because there also name and form remain. A heaven which is
eternal will be contradictory in terms, because everything that has name and
form must begin in time, exist in time, and end in time. These are settled
doctrines of the Vedanta, and as such the heavens are given up.
We have seen in the Samhitâ that the idea of heaven was that it was eternal,
much the same as is prevalent among Mohammedans and Christians. The
Mohammedans concretise it a little more. They say it is a place where there
are gardens, beneath which rivers run. In the desert of Arabia water is very
desirable, so the Mohammedan always conceives of his heaven as containing
much water. I was born in a country where there are six months of rain every
year. I should think of heaven, I suppose, as a dry place, and so also would
the English people. These heavens in the Samhita are eternal, and the
departed have beautiful bodies and live with their forefathers, and are
happy ever afterwards. There they meet with their parents, children, and
other relatives, and lead very much the same sort of life as here, only much
happier. All the difficulties and obstructions to happiness in this life
have vanished, and only its good parts and enjoyments remain. But however
comfortable mankind may consider this state of things, truth is one thing
and comfort is another. There are cases where truth is not comfortable until
we reach its climax. Human nature is very conservative It does something,
and having once done that, finds it hard to get out of it. The mind will not
receive new thoughts, because they bring discomfort.
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. With this idea came another that these souls must come back to earth,
and that heavens are places where they enjoy the results of their good
works, and after these effects are finished they come back into this earth
life again. One thing is clear from this that mankind had a perception of
the philosophy of causation even at the early time. Later on we shall see
how our philosophers bring that out in the language of philosophy and logic,
but here it is almost in the language of children. 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. This world spoke to the early thinkers. Birds
spoke to them, animals spoke to them, the sun and the moon spoke to them;
and little by little they realised things, and got into the heart of nature.
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.
We now come to the other side of the question. 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 Mâyâ — 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. This is the line of thought in the passage
I have read to you; the earth is a symbol of the Lord, the sky is the Lord,
the place we fill is the Lord, everything is Brahman. 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.
According to the Vedanta, when a man has arrived at that perception, he has
become free, and he is the only man who is fit to live in this world. Others
are not. The man who sees evil, how can he live in this world? His life is a
mass of misery. The man who sees dangers, his life is a misery; the man who
sees death, his life is a misery. That man alone can live in this world, he
alone can say, "I enjoy this life, and I am happy in this life". Who has
seen the Truth, and the Truth in everything. By the by, I may tell you that
the idea of hell does not occur in the Vedas anywhere. It comes with the
Purânas much later. The worst punishment according to the Vedas is coming
back to earth, having another chance in this world. From the very first we
see the idea is taking the impersonal turn. The ideas of punishment and
reward are very material, and they are only consonant with the idea of a
human God, who loves one and hates another, just as we do. Punishment and
reward are only admissible with the existence of such a God. They had such a
God in the Samhita, and there we find the idea of fear entering, but as soon
as we come to the Upanishads, the idea of fear vanishes, and the impersonal
idea takes its place. It is naturally the hardest thing for man to
understand, this impersonal idea, for he is always clinging on to the
person. Even people who are thought to be great thinkers get disgusted at
the idea of the Impersonal God. But to me it seems so absurd to think of God
as an embodied man. Which is the higher idea, a living God, or a dead God? A
God whom nobody sees, nobody knows, or a God Known?
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.
We want to worship a living God. 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. In India there is a famine now, but
there are temples in each one of which there are jewels worth a king's
ransom! If the priests taught this Impersonal idea to the people, their
occupation would be gone. Yet we have to teach it unselfishly, without
priestcraft. 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. Why are some people so contradictory in their thought? They
are like fish slipping through our fingers. They say they are hard-headed
practical men. Very good. But what is more practical than worshipping here,
worshipping you? I see you, feel you, and I know you are God. The Mohammedan
says, there is no God but Allah. 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. They are good and beautiful, and some wonderful ideas are
there, but the Vedanta says at every point, "My friend, Him whom you are
worshipping as unknown, I worship as thee. He whom you are worshipping as
unknown and are seeking for, throughout the universe, has been with you all
the time. You are living through Him, and He is the Eternal Witness of the
universe" "He whom all the Vedas worship, nay, more, He who is always
present in the eternal 'I'. 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.
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.
You remember that passage in the sermon of Buddha, how he sent a thought of
love towards the south, the north, the east, and the west, above and below,
until the whole universe was filled with this lose, so grand, great, and
infinite. When you have that feeling, you have true personality. 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.
Contrast him with the actual beggar walking in the streets. The scene is,
perhaps, the same in both cases, the words are, perhaps, the same, but yet
what difference! The one enjoys his beggary while the other is suffering
misery from it. And what makes this difference? The one is free and the
other is bound. The actor knows his beggary is not true, but that he has
assumed it for play, while the real beggar thinks that it is his too
familiar state and that he has to bear it whether he wills it or not. This
is the law. 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.
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. You only had the fruits of what you yourselves worked for, and
yet you were strangely hoping all the time for help. A rich man's parlour is
always full; but if you notice, you do not find the same people there. The
visitors are always hoping that they will get something from those wealthy
men, but they never do. So are our lives spent in hoping, hoping, hoping,
which never comes to an end. Give up hope, says the Vedanta. Why should you
hope? You have everything, nay, you are everything. What are you hoping for?
If a king goes mad, and runs about trying to find the king of his country,
he will never find him, because he is the king himself. He may go through
every village and city in his own country, seeking in every house, weeping
and wailing, but he will never find him, because he is the king himself. It
is better that we know we are God and give up this fool's search after Him;
and knowing that we are God we become happy and contented. Give up all these
mad pursuits, and then play your part in the universe, as an actor on the
stage.
The whole vision is changed, and instead of an eternal prison this world has
become a playground; instead of a land of competition it is a land of bliss,
where there is perpetual spring, flowers bloom and butterflies flit about.
This very world becomes heaven, which formerly was hell. To the eyes of the
bound it is a tremendous place of torment, but to the eyes of the free it is
quite otherwise. This one life is the universal life, heavens and all those
places are here. All the gods are here, the prototypes of man. The gods did
not create man after their type, but man created gods. And here are the
prototypes, here is Indra, here is Varuna, and all the gods of the universe.
We have been projecting our little doubles, and we are the originals of
these gods, we are the real, the only gods to be worshipped. This is the
view of the Vedanta, and this its practicality. 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 occupied 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. We mistook the voice. We thought it was
from the fire, or from a god or the sun, or moon, or stars, but at last we
have found that it was from within ourselves. 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.
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.
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.