The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 3/Lectures from Colombo to Almora/My Plan of Campaign
MY PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
(Delivered at the Victoria Hall, Madras)
As the other day we could not proceed, owing to the crowd, I shall take this
opportunity of thanking the people of Madras for the uniform kindness that I
have received at their hands. I do not know how better to express my
gratitude for the beautiful words that have been expressed in the addresses
than by praying to the Lord to make me worthy of the kind and generous
expressions and by working all my life for the cause of our religion and to
serve our motherland; and may the Lord make me worthy of them.
With all my faults, I think I have a little bit of boldness. I had a message
from India to the West, and boldly I gave it to the American and the English
peoples. I want, before going into the subject of the day, to speak a few
bold words to you all. There have been certain circumstances growing around
me, tending to thwart me, oppose my progress, and crush me out of existence
if they could. Thank God they have failed, as such attempts will always
fail. But there has been, for the last three years, a certain amount of
misunderstanding, and so long as I was in foreign lands, I held my peace and
did not even speak one word; but now, standing upon the soil of my
motherland, I want to give a few words of explanation. Not that I care what
the result will be of these words — not that I care what feeling I shall
evoke from you by these words. I care very little, for I am the same
Sannyâsin that entered your city about four years ago with this staff and
Kamandalu; the same broad world is before me. Without further preface let me
begin.
First of all, I have to say a few words about the Theosophical Society. It
goes without saying that a certain amount of good work has been done to
India by the Society; as such every Hindu is grateful to it, and especially
to Mrs. Besant; for though I know very little of her, yet what little I know
has impressed me with the idea that she is a sincere well-wisher of this
motherland of ours, and that she is doing the best in her power to raise our
country. For that, the eternal gratitude of every trueborn Indian is hers,
and all blessings be on her and hers for ever. But that is one thing — and
joining the Society of the Theosophists is another. Regard and estimation
and love are one thing, and swallowing everything any one has to say,
without reasoning, without criticising, without analysing, is quite another.
There is a report going round that the Theosophists helped the little
achievements of mine in America and England. I have to tell you plainly that
every word of it is wrong, every word of it is untrue. We hear so much tall
talk in this world, of liberal ideas and sympathy with differences of
opinion. That is very good, but as a fact, we find that one sympathises with
another only so long as the other believes in everything he has to say, but
as soon as he dares to differ, that sympathy is gone, that love vanishes.
There are others, again, who have their own axes to grind, and if anything
arises in a country which prevents the grinding of them, their hearts burn,
any amount of hatred comes out, and they do not know what to do. What harm
does it do to the Christian missionary that the Hindus are trying to cleanse
their own houses? What injury will it do to the Brâhmo Samâj and other
reform bodies that the Hindus are trying their best to reform themselves?
Why should they stand in opposition? Why should they be the greatest enemies
of these movements? Why? — I ask. It seems to me that their hatred and
jealousy are so bitter that no why or how can be asked there.
Four years ago, when I, a poor, unknown, friendless Sannyasin was going to
America, going beyond the waters to America without any introductions or
friends there, I called on the leader of the Theosophical Society. Naturally
I thought he, being an American and a lover of India, perhaps would give me
a letter of introduction to somebody there. He asked me, "Will you join my
Society?" "No," I replied, "how can I? For I do not believe in most of your
doctrines." "Then, I am sorry, I cannot do anything for you," he answered.
That was not paving the way for me. I reached America, as you know, through
the help of a few friends of Madras. Most of them are present here. Only one
is absent, Mr. Justice Subramania Iyer, to whom my deepest gratitude is due.
He has the insight of a genius and is one of the staunchest friends I have
in this life, a true friend indeed, a true child of India. I arrived in
America several months before the Parliament of Religions began. The money I
had with me was little, and it was soon spent. Winter approached, and I had
only thin summer clothes. I did not know what to do in that cold, dreary
climate, for if I went to beg in the streets, the result would have been
that I would have been sent to jail. There I was with the last few dollars
in my pocket. I sent a wire to my friends in Madras. This came to be known
to the Theosophists, and one of them wrote, "Now the devil is going to die;
God bless us all." Was that paving the way for me? I would not have
mentioned this now; but, as my countrymen wanted to know, it must come out.
For three years I have not opened my lips about these things; silence has
been my motto; but today the thing has come out. That was not all. I saw
some Theosophists in the Parliament of Religions, and I wanted to talk and
mix with them. I remember the looks of scorn which were on their faces, as
much as to say, "What business has the worm to be here in the midst of the
gods?" After I had got name and fame at the Parliament of Religions, then
came tremendous work for me; but at every turn the Theosophists tried to cry
me down. Theosophists were advised not to come and hear my lectures, for
thereby they would lose all sympathy of the Society, because the laws of the
esoteric section declare that any man who joins that esoteric section should
receive instruction from Kuthumi and Moria, of course through their visible
representatives — Mr. Judge and Mrs. Besant — so that, to join the esoteric
section means to surrender one's independence. Certainly I could not do any
such thing, nor could I call any man a Hindu who did any such thing. I had a
great respect for Mr. Judge. He was a worthy man, open, fair, simple, and he
was the best representative the Theosophists ever had. I have no right to
criticise the dispute between him and Mrs. Besant when each claims that his
or her Mahâtmâ is right. And the strange part of it is that the same Mahatma
is claimed by both. Lord knows the truth: He is the Judge, and no one has
the right to pass judgement when the balance is equal. Thus they prepared
the way for me all over America!
They joined the other opposition — the Christian missionaries. There is not
one black lie imaginable that these latter did not invent against me. They
blackened my character from city to city, poor and friendless though I was
in a foreign country. They tried to oust me from every house and to make
every man who became my friend my enemy. They tried to starve me out; and I
am sorry to say that one of my own countrymen took part against me in this.
He is the leader of a reform party in India. This gentleman is declaring
every day, "Christ has come to India." Is this the way Christ is to come to
India? Is this the way to reform India? And this gentleman I knew from my
childhood; he was one of my best friends; when I saw him — I had not met for
a long time one of my countrymen — I was so glad, and this was the treatment
I received from him. The day the Parliament cheered me, the day I became
popular in Chicago, from that day his tone changed; and in an underhand way,
he tried to do everything he could to injure me. Is that the way that Christ
will come to India? Is that the lesson that he had learnt after sitting
twenty years at the feet of Christ? Our great reformers declare that
Christianity and Christian power are going to uplift the Indian people. Is
that the way to do it? Surely, if that gentleman is an illustration, it does
not look very hopeful.
One word more: I read in the organ of the social reformers that I am called
a Shudra and am challenged as to what right a Shudra has to become a
Sannyasin. To which I reply: I trace my descent to one at whose feet every
Brahmin lays flowers when he utters the words — यमाय धर्मराजाय चित्रगुप्ताय वै नमः
— and whose descendants are the purest of Kshatriyas. If you believe in
your mythology or your Paurânika scriptures, let these so-called reformers
know that my caste, apart from other services in the past, ruled half of
India for centuries. If my caste is left out of consideration, what will
there be left of the present-day civilisation of India? In Bengal alone, my
blood has furnished them with their greatest philosopher, the greatest poet,
the greatest historian, the greatest archaeologist, the greatest religious
preacher; my blood has furnished India with the greatest of her modern
scientists. These detractors ought to have known a little of our own
history, and to have studied our three castes, and learnt that the Brahmin,
the Kshatriya, and the Vaishya have equal right to be Sannyasins: the
Traivarnikas have equal right to the Vedas. This is only by the way. I just
refer to this, but I am not at all hurt if they call me a Shudra. It will be
a little reparation for the tyranny of my ancestors over the poor. If I am a
Pariah, I will be all the more glad, for I am the disciple of a man, who —
the Brahmin of Brahmins — wanted to cleanse the house of a Pariah. Of course
the Pariah would not allow him; how could he let this Brahmin Sannyasin come
and cleanse his house! And this man woke up in the dead of night, entered
surreptitiously the house of this Pariah, cleansed his latrine, and with his
long hair wiped the place, and that he did day after day in order that he
might make himself the servant of all. I bear the feet of that man on my
head; he is my hero; that hero's life I will try to imitate. By being the
servant of all, a Hindu seeks to uplift himself. That is how the Hindus
should uplift the masses, and not by looking for any foreign influence.
Twenty years of occidental civilisation brings to my mind the illustration
of the man who wants to starve his own friend in a foreign land, simply
because this friend is popular, simply because he thinks that this man
stands in the way of his making money. And the other is the illustration of
what genuine, orthodox Hinduism itself will do at home. Let any one of our
reformers bring out that life, ready to serve even a Pariah, and then I will
sit at his feet and learn, and not before that. One ounce of practice is
worth twenty thousand tons of big talk.
Now I come to the reform societies in Madras. They have been very kind to
me. They have given me very kind words, and they have pointed out, and I
heartily agree with them, that there is a difference between the reformers
of Bengal and those of Madras. Many of you will remember what I have very
often told you, that Madras is in a very beautiful state just now. It has
not got into the play of action and reaction as Bengal has done. Here there
is steady and slow progress all through; here is growth, and not reaction.
In many cases, end to a certain extent, there is a revival in Bengal; but in
Madras it is not a revival, it is a growth, a natural growth. As such, I
entirely agree with what the reformers point out as the difference between
the two peoples; but there is one difference which they do not understand.
Some of these societies, I am afraid, try to intimidate me to join them.
That is a strange thing for them to attempt. A man who has met starvation
face to face for fourteen years of his life, who has not known where he will
get a meal the next day and where to sleep, cannot be intimidated so easily.
A man, almost without clothes, who dared to live where the thermometer
registered thirty degrees below zero, without knowing where the next meal
was to come from, cannot be so easily intimidated in India. This is the
first thing I will tell them — I have a little will of my own. I have my
little experience too; and I have a message for the world which I will
deliver without fear and without care for the future. To the reformers I
will point out that I am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want
to reform only little bits. I want root-and-branch reform. Where we differ
is in the method. Theirs is the method of destruction, mine is that of
construction. I do not believe in reform; I believe in growth. I do not dare
to put myself in the position of God and dictate to our society, "This way
thou shouldst move and not that." I simply want to be like the squirrel in
the building of Râma's bridge, who was quite content to put on the bridge
his little quota of sand-dust. That is my position. This wonderful national
machine has worked through ages, this wonderful river of national life is
flowing before us. Who knows, and who dares to say whether it is good and
how it shall move? Thousands of circumstances are crowding round it, giving
it a special impulse, making it dull at one time and quicker at another. Who
dares command its motion? Ours is only to work, as the Gita says, without
looking for results. Feed the national life with the fuel it wants, but the
growth is its own; none can dictate its growth to it. Evils are plentiful in
our society, but so are there evils in every other society. Here the earth
is soaked sometimes with widows' tears; there in the West, the air is rent
with the sighs of the unmarried. Here poverty is the great bane of life;
there the life-weariness of luxury is the great bane that is upon the race.
Here men want to commit suicide because they have nothing to eat; there they
commit suicide because they have so much to eat. Evil is everywhere; it is
like chronic rheumatism. Drive it from the foot, it goes to the head; drive
it from there, it goes somewhere else. It is a question of chasing it from
place to place; that is all. Ay, children, to try to remedy evil is not the
true way. Our philosophy teaches that evil and good are eternally conjoined,
the obverse and the reverse of the same coin. If you have one, you must have
the other; a wave in the ocean must be at the cost of a hollow elsewhere.
Nay, all life is evil. No breath can be breathed without killing some one
else; not a morsel of food can be eaten without depriving some one of it.
This is the law; this is philosophy. Therefore the only thing we can do is
to understand that all this work against evil is more subjective than
objective. The work against evil is more educational than actual, however
big we may talk. This, first of all, is the idea of work against evil; and
it ought to make us calmer, it ought to take fanaticism out of our blood.
The history of the world teaches us that wherever there have been fanatical
reforms, the only result has been that they have defeated their own ends. No
greater upheaval for the establishment of right and liberty can be imagined
than the war for the abolition of slavery in America. You all know about it.
And what has been its results? The slaves are a hundred times worse off
today than they were before the abolition. Before the abolition, these poor
negroes were the property of somebody, and, as properties, they had to be
looked after, so that they might not deteriorate. Today they are the
property of nobody. Their lives are of no value; they are burnt alive on
mere presences. They are shot down without any law for their murderers; for
they are niggers, they are not human beings, they are not even animals; and
that is the effect of such violent taking away of evil by law or by
fanaticism. Such is the testimony of history against every fanatical
movement, even for doing good. I have seen that. My own experience has
taught me that. Therefore I cannot join any one of these condemning
societies. Why condemn? There are evils in every society; everybody knows
it. Every child of today knows it; he can stand upon a platform and give us
a harangue on the awful evils in Hindu Society. Every uneducated foreigner
who comes here globe-trotting takes a vanishing railway view of India and
lectures most learnedly on the awful evils in India. We admit that there are
evils. Everybody can show what evil is, but he is the friend of mankind who
finds a way out of the difficulty. Like the drowning boy and the philosopher
— when the philosopher was lecturing him, the boy cried, "Take me out of the
water first" — so our people cry: "We have had lectures enough, societies
enough, papers enough; where is the man who will lend us a hand to drag us
out? Where is the man who really loves us? Where is the man who has sympathy
for us?" Ay, that man is wanted. That is where I differ entirely from these
reform movements. For a hundred years they have been here. What good has
been done except the creation of a most vituperative, a most condemnatory
literature? Would to God it was not here! They have criticised, condemned,
abused the orthodox, until the orthodox have caught their tone and paid them
back in their own coin; and the result is the creation of a literature in
every vernacular which is the shame of the race, the shame of the country.
Is this reform? Is this leading the nation to glory? Whose fault is this?
There is, then, another great consideration. Here in India, we have always
been governed by kings; kings have made all our laws. Now the kings are
gone, and there is no one left to make a move. The government dare not; it
has to fashion its ways according to the growth of public opinion. It takes
time, quite a long time, to make a healthy, strong, public opinion which
will solve its own problems; and in the interim we shall have to wait. The
whole problem of social reform, therefore, resolves itself into this: where
are those who want reform? Make them first. Where are the people? The
tyranny of a minority is the worst tyranny that the world ever sees. A few
men who think that certain things are evil will not make a nation move. Why
does not the nation move? First educate the nation, create your legislative
body, and then the law will be forthcoming. First create the power, the
sanction from which the law will spring. The kings are gone; where is the
new sanction, the new power of the people? Bring it up. Therefore, even for
social reform, the first duty is to educate the people, and you will have to
wait till that time comes. Most of the reforms that have been agitated for
during the past century have been ornamental. Every one of these reforms
only touches the first two castes, and no other. The question of widow
marriage would not touch seventy per cent of the Indian women, and all such
questions only reach the higher castes of Indian people who are educated,
mark you, at the expense of the masses. Every effort has been spent in
cleaning their own houses. But that is no reformation. You must go down to
the basis of the thing, to the very root of the matter. That is what I call
radical reform. Put the fire there and let it burn upwards and make an
Indian nation. And the solution of the problem is not so easy, as it is a
big and a vast one. Be not in a hurry, this problem has been known several
hundred years.
Today it is the fashion to talk of Buddhism and Buddhistic agnosticism,
especially in the South. Little do they dream that this degradation which is
with us today has been left by Buddhism. This is the legacy which Buddhism
has left to us. You read in books written by men who had never studied the
rise and fall of Buddhism that the spread of Buddhism was owing to the
wonderful ethics and the wonderful personality of Gautama Buddha. I have
every respect and veneration for Lord Buddha, but mark my words, the spread
of Buddhism was less owing to the doctrines and the personality of the great
preacher, than to the temples that were built, the idols that were erected,
and the gorgeous ceremonials that were put before the nation. Thus Buddhism
progressed. The little fire-places in the houses in which the people poured
their libations were not strong enough to hold their own against these
gorgeous temples and ceremonies; but later on the whole thing degenerated.
It became a mass of corruption of which I cannot speak before this audience;
but those who want to know about it may see a little of it in those big
temples, full of sculptures, in Southern India; and this is all the
inheritance we have from the Buddhists.
Then arose the great reformer Shankarâchârya and his followers, and during
these hundreds of years, since his time to the present day, there has been
the slow bringing back of the Indian masses to the pristine purity of the
Vedantic religion. These reformers knew full well the evils which existed,
yet they did not condemn. They did not say, "All that you have is wrong, and
you must throw it away." It can never be so. Today I read that my friend Dr.
Barrows says that in three hundred years Christianity overthrew the Roman
and Greek religious influences. That is not the word of a man who has seen
Europe, and Greece, and Rome. The influence of Roman and Greek religion is
all there, even in Protestant countries, only with changed names — old gods
rechristened in a new fashion. They change their names; the goddesses become
Marys and the gods become saints, and the ceremonials become new; even the
old title of Pontifex Maximus is there. So, sudden changes cannot be and
Shankaracharya knew it. So did Râmânuja. The only way left to them was
slowly to bring up to the highest ideal the existing religion. If they had
sought to apply the other method, they would have been hypocrites, for the
very fundamental doctrine of their religion is evolution, the soul going
towards the highest goal, through all these various stages and phases, which
are, therefore necessary and helpful. And who dares condemn them?
It has become a trite saying that idolatry is wrong, and every man swallows
it at the present time without questioning. I once thought so, and to pay
the penalty of that I had to learn my lesson sitting at the feet of a man
who realised everything through idols; I allude to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
If such Ramakrishna Paramahamsas are produced by idol-worship, what will you
have — the reformer's creed or any number of idols? I want an answer. Take a
thousand idols more if you can produce Ramakrishna Paramahamsas through idol
worship, and may God speed you! Produce such noble natures by any means you
can. Yet idolatry is condemned! Why? Nobody knows. Because some hundreds of
years ago some man of Jewish blood happened to condemn it? That is, he
happened to condemn everybody else's idols except his own. If God is
represented in any beautiful form or any symbolic form, said the Jew, it is
awfully bad; it is sin. But if He is represented in the form of a chest,
with two angels sitting on each side, and a cloud hanging over it, it is the
holy of holies. If God comes in the form of a dove, it is holy. But if He
comes in the form of a cow, it is heathen superstition; condemn it! That is
how the world goes. That is why the poet says, "What fools we mortals be!"
How difficult it is to look through each other's eyes, and that is the bane
of humanity. That is the basis of hatred and jealousy, of quarrel and of
fight. Boys, moustached babies, who never went out of Madras, standing up
and wanting to dictate laws to three hundred millions of people with
thousands of traditions at their back! Are you not ashamed? Stand back from
such blasphemy and learn first your lessons! Irreverent boys, simply because
you can scrawl a few lines upon paper and get some fool to publish them for
you, you think you are the educators of the world, you think you are the
public opinion of India! Is it so? This I have to tell to the social
reformers of Madras that I have the greatest respect and love for them. I
love them for their great hearts and their love for their country, for the
poor, for the oppressed. But what I would tell them with a brother's love is
that their method is not right; It has been tried a hundred years and
failed. Let us try some new method.
Did India ever stand in want of reformers? Do you read the history of India?
Who was Ramanuja? Who was Shankara? Who was Nânak? Who was Chaitanya? Who
was Kabir? Who was Dâdu? Who were all these great preachers, one following
the other, a galaxy of stars of the first magnitude? Did not Ramanuja feel
for the lower classes? Did he not try all his life to admit even the Pariah
to his community? Did he not try to admit even Mohammedans to his own fold?
Did not Nanak confer with Hindus and Mohammedans, and try to bring about a
new state of things? They all tried, and their work is still going on. The
difference is this. They had not the fanfaronade of the reformers of today;
they had no curses on their lips as modern reformers have; their lips
pronounced only blessings. They never condemned. They said to the people
that the race must always grow. They looked back and they said, "O Hindus,
what you have done is good, but, my brothers, let us do better." They did
not say, "You have been wicked, now let us be good." They said, "You have
been good, but let us now be better." That makes a whole world of
difference. We must grow according to our nature. Vain is it to attempt the
lines of action that foreign societies have engrafted upon us; it is
impossible. Glory unto God, that it is impossible, that we cannot be twisted
and tortured into the shape oil other nations. I do not condemn the
institutions of other races; they are good for them, but not for us. What is
meat for them may be poison for us. This is the first lesson to learn. With
other sciences, other institutions, and other traditions behind them, they
have got their present system. We, with our traditions, with thousands of
years of Karma behind us, naturally can only follow our own bent, run in our
own grooves; and that we shall have to do.
What is my plan then? My plan is to follow the ideas of the great ancient
Masters. I have studied their work, and it has been given unto me to
discover the line of action they took. They were the great originators of
society. They were the great givers of strength, and of purity, and of life.
They did most marvellous work. We have to do most marvellous work also.
Circumstances have become a little different, and in consequence the lines
of action have to be changed a little, and that is all. I see that each
nation, like each individual, has one theme in this life, which is its
centre, the principal note round which every other note comes to form the
harmony. In one nation political power is its vitality, as in England,
artistic life in another, and so on. In India, religious life forms the
centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life; and if any nation
attempts to throw off its national vitality — the direction which has become
its own through the transmission of centuries — that nation dies if it
succeeds in the attempt. And, therefore, if you succeed in the attempt to
throw off your religion and take up either politics, or society, or any
other things as your centre, as the vitality of your national life, the
result will be that you will become extinct. To prevent this you must make
all and everything work through that vitality of your religion. Let all your
nerves vibrate through the backbone of your religion. I have seen that I
cannot preach even religion to Americans without showing them its practical
effect on social life. I could not preach religion in England without
showing the wonderful political changes the Vedanta would bring. So, in
India, social reform has to be preached by showing how much more spiritual a
life the new system will bring; and politics has to be preached by showing
how much it will improve the one thing that the nation wants — its
spirituality. Every man has to make his own choice; so has every nation. We
made our choice ages ago, and we must abide by it. And, after all, it is not
such a bad choice. Is it such a bad choice in this world to think not of
matter but of spirit, not of man but of God? That intense faith in another
world, that intense hatred for this world, that intense power of
renunciation, that intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal
soul, is in you. I challenge anyone to give it up. You cannot. You may try
to impose upon me by becoming materialists, by talking materialism for a few
months, but I know what you are; if I take you by the hand, back you come as
good theists as ever were born. How can you change your nature?
So every improvement in India requires first of all an upheaval in religion.
Before flooding India with socialistic or political ideas, first deluge the
land with spiritual ideas. The first work that demands our attention is that
the most wonderful truths confined in our Upanishads, in our scriptures, in
our Purânas must be brought out from the books, brought out from the
monasteries, brought out from the forests, brought out from the possession
of selected bodies of people, and scattered broadcast all over the land, so
that these truths may run like fire all over the country from north to south
and east to west, from the Himalayas to Comorin, from Sindh to the
Brahmaputra. Everyone must know of them, because it is said, "This has first
to be heard, then thought upon, and then meditated upon." Let the people
hear first, and whoever helps in making the people hear about the great
truths in their own scriptures cannot make for himself a better Karma today.
Says our Vyasa, "In the Kali Yuga there is one Karma left. Sacrifices and
tremendous Tapasyâs are of no avail now. Of Karma one remains, and that is
the Karma of giving." And of these gifts, the gift of spirituality and
spiritual knowledge is the highest; the next gift is the gift of secular
knowledge; the next is the gift of life; and the fourth is the gift of food.
Look at this wonderfully charitable race; look at the amount of gifts that
are made in this poor, poor country; look at the hospitality where a man can
travel from the north to the south, having the best in the land, being
treated always by everyone as if he were a friend, and where no beggar
starves so long as there is a piece of bread anywhere!
In this land of charity, let us take up the energy of the first charity, the
diffusion of spiritual knowledge. And that diffusion should not be confined
within the bounds of India; it must go out all over the world. This has been
the custom. Those that tell you that Indian thought never went outside of
India, those that tell you that I am the first Sannyasin who went to foreign
lands to preach, do not know the history of their own race. Again and again
this phenomenon has happened. Whenever the world has required it, this
perennial flood of spirituality has overflowed and deluged the world. Gifts
of political knowledge can be made with the blast of trumpets and the march
of cohorts. Gifts of secular knowledge and social knowledge can be made with
fire and sword. But spiritual knowledge can only be given in silence like
the dew that falls unseen and unheard, yet bringing into bloom masses of
roses. This has been the gift of India to the world again and again.
Whenever there has been a great conquering race, bringing the nations of the
world together, making roads and transit possible, immediately India arose
and gave her quota of spiritual power to the sum total of the progress of
the world. This happened ages before Buddha was born, and remnants of it are
still left in China, in Asia Minor, and in the heart of the Malayan
Archipelago. This was the case when the great Greek conqueror united the
four corners of the then known world; then rushed out Indian spirituality,
and the boasted civilisation of the West is but the remnant of that deluge.
Now the same opportunity has again come; the power of England has linked the
nations of the world together as was never done before. English roads and
channels of communication rush from one end of the world to the other. Owing
to English genius, the world today has been linked in such a fashion as has
never before been done. Today trade centres have been formed such as have
never been before in the history of mankind. And immediately, consciously or
unconsciously, India rises up and pours forth her gifts of spirituality; and
they will rush through these roads till they have reached the very ends of
the world. That I went to America was not my doing or your doing; but the
God of India who is guiding her destiny sent me, and will send hundreds of
such to all the nations of the world. No power on earth can resist it. This
also has to be done. You must go out to preach your religion, preach it to
every nation under the sun, preach it to every people. This is the first
thing to do. And after preaching spiritual knowledge, along with it will
come that secular knowledge and every other knowledge that you want; but if
you attempt to get the secular knowledge without religion, I tell you
plainly, vain is your attempt in India, it will never have a hold on the
people. Even the great Buddhistic movement was a failure, partially on
account of that.
Therefore, my friends, my plan is to start institutions in India, to train
our young men as preachers of the truths of our scriptures in India and
outside India. Men, men, these are wanted: everything else will be ready,
but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are
wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized. The will is
stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for
that comes from God and God Himself; a pure and a strong will is omnipotent.
Do you not believe in it? Preach, preach unto the world the great truths of
your religion; the world waits for them. For centuries people have been
taught theories of degradation. They have been told that they are nothing.
The masses have been told all over the world that they are not human beings.
They have been so frightened for centuries, till they have nearly become
animals. Never were they allowed to hear of the Atman. Let them hear of the
Atman — that even the lowest of the low have the Atman within, which never
dies and never is born — of Him whom the sword cannot pierce, nor the fire
burn, nor the air dry — immortal, without beginning or end, the all-pure,
omnipotent, and omnipresent Atman! Let them have faith in themselves, for
what makes the difference between the Englishman and you? Let them talk
their religion and duty and so forth. I have found the difference. The
difference is here, that the Englishman believes in himself and you do not.
He believes in his being an Englishman, and he can do anything. That brings
out the God within him, and he can do anything he likes. You have been told
and taught that you can do nothing, and nonentities you are becoming every
day. What we want is strength, so believe in yourselves. We have become
weak, and that is why occultism and mysticism come to us — these creepy
things; there may be great truths in them, but they have nearly destroyed
us. Make your nerves strong. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of
steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and
be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories
that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want. And here is
the test of truth — anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually,
and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be
true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all-knowledge; truth
must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating. These
mysticisms, in spite of some grains of truth in them, are generally
weakening. Believe me, I have a lifelong experience of it, and the one
conclusion that I draw is that it is weakening. I have travelled all over
India, searched almost every cave here, and lived in the Himalayas. I know
people who lived there all their lives. I love my nation, I cannot see you
degraded, weakened any more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your
sake and for truth's sake to cry, "Hold!" and to raise my voice against this
degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticisms and be strong. Go
back to your Upanishads — the shining, the strengthening, the bright
philosophy — and part from all these mysterious things, all these weakening
things. Take up this philosophy; the greatest truths are the simplest things
in the world, simple as your own existence. The truths of the Upanishads are
before you. Take them up, live up to them, and the salvation of India will
be at hand.
One word more and I have finished. They talk of patriotism. I believe in
patriotism, and I also have my own ideal of patriotism. Three things are
necessary for great achievements. First, feel from the heart. What is in the
intellect or reason? It goes a few steps and there it stops. But through the
heart comes inspiration. Love opens the most impossible gates; love is the
gate to all the secrets of the universe. Feel, therefore, my would-be
reformers, my would-be patriots! Do you feel? Do you feel that millions and
millions of the descendants of gods and of sages have become next-door
neighbours to brutes? Do you feel that millions are starving today, and
millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel that ignorance has come
over the land as a dark cloud? Does it make you restless? Does it make you
sleepless? Has it gone into your blood, coursing through your veins,
becoming consonant with your heartbeats? Has it made you almost mad? Are you
seized with that one idea of the misery of ruin, and have you forgotten all
about your name, your fame, your wives, your children, your property, even
your own bodies? Have you done that? That is the first step to become a
patriot, the very first step. I did not go to America, as most of you know,
for the Parliament of Religions, but this demon of a feeling was in me and
within my soul. I travelled twelve years all over India, finding no way to
work for my countrymen, and that is why I went to America. Most of you know
that, who knew me then. Who cared about this Parliament of Religions? Here
was my own flesh and blood sinking every day, and who cared for them? This
was my first step.
You may feel, then; but instead of spending your energies in frothy talk,
have you found any way out, any practical solution, some help instead of
condemnation, some sweet words to soothe their miseries, to bring them out
of this living death?
Yet that is not all. Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high
obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you
still dare to do what you think is right? If your wives and children are
against you, if all your money goes, your name dies, your wealth vanishes,
would you still stick to it? Would you still pursue it and go on steadily
towards your own goal? As the great King Bhartrihari says, "Let the sages
blame or let them praise; let the goddess of fortune come or let her go
wherever she likes; let death come today, or let it come in hundreds of
years; he indeed is the steady man who does not move one inch from the way
of truth." Have you got that steadfastness? If you have these three things,
each one of you will work miracles. You need not write in the newspapers,
you need not go about lecturing; your very face will shine. If you live in a
cave, your thoughts will permeate even through the rock walls, will go
vibrating all over the world for hundreds of years, maybe, until they will
fasten on to some brain and work out there. Such is the power of thought, of
sincerity, and of purity of purpose.
I am afraid I am delaying you, but one word more. This national ship, my
countrymen, my friends, my children — this national ship has been ferrying
millions and millions of souls across the waters of life. For scores of
shining centuries it has been plying across this water, and through its
agency, millions of souls have been taken to the other shore, to
blessedness. But today, perhaps through your own fault, this boat has become
a little damaged, has sprung a leak; and would you therefore curse it? Is it
fit that you stand up and pronounce malediction upon it, one that has done
more work than any other thing in the world? If there are holes in this
national ship, this society of ours, we are its children. Let us go and stop
the holes. Let us gladly do it with our hearts' blood; and if we cannot,
then let us die. We will make a plug of our brains and put them into the
ship, but condemn it never. Say not one harsh word against this society. I
love it for its past greatness. I love you all because you are the children
of gods, and because you are the children of the glorious forefathers. How
then can I curse you! Never. All blessings be upon you! I have come to you,
my children, to tell you all my plans. If you hear them I am ready to work
with you. But if you will not listen to them, and even kick me out of India,
I will come back and tell you that we are all sinking! I am come now to sit
in your midst, and if we are to sink, let us all sink together, but never
let curses rise to our lips.