The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 5/Notes from Lectures and Discourses/On Jnana-Yoga
ON JNANA-YOGA
All souls are playing, some consciously, some unconsciously. Religion is
learning to play consciously.
The same law which holds good in our worldly life also holds good in our
religious life and in the life of the cosmos. It is one, it is universal. It
is not that religion is guided by one law and the world by another. The
flesh and the devil are but degrees of difference from God Himself.
Theologians, philosophers, and scientists in the West are ransacking
everything to get a proof that they live afterwards! What a storm in a
tea-cup! There are much higher things to think of. What silly superstition
is this, that you ever die! It requires no priests or spirits or ghosts to
tell us that we shall not die. It is the most self-evident of all truths. No
man can imagine his own annihilation. The idea of immortality is inherent in
man.
Wherever there is life, with it there is death. Life is the shadow of death,
and death, the shadow of life. The line of demarcation is too fine to
determine, too difficult to grasp, and most difficult to hold on to.
I do not believe in eternal progress, that we are growing on ever and ever
in a straight line. It is too nonsensical to believe. There is no motion in
a straight line. A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle. The
force sent out will complete the circle and return to its starting place.
There is no progress in a straight line. Every soul moves in a circle, as it
were, and will have to complete it; and no soul can go so low but that there
will come a time when it will have to go upwards. It may start straight
down, but it has to take the upward curve to complete the circuit. We are
all projected from a common centre, which is God, and will come back after
completing the circuit to the centre from which we started.
Each soul is a circle. The centre is where the body is, and the activity is
manifested there. You are omnipresent, though you have the consciousness of
being concentrated in only one point. That point has taken up particles of
matter and formed them into a machine to express itself. That through which
it expresses itself is called the body. You are everywhere. When one body or
machine fails you, the centre moves on and takes up other particles of
matter, finer or grosser, and works through them. Here is man. And what is
God? God is a circle with circumference nowhere and centre everywhere. Every
point in that circle is living, conscious, active, and equally working. With
our limited souls only one point is conscious, and that point moves forward
and backward.
The soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere (limitless), but whose
centre is in some body. Death is but a change of centre. God is a circle
whose circumference is nowhere, and whose centre is everywhere. When we can
get out of the limited centre of body, we shall realise God, our true Self.
A tremendous stream is flowing towards the ocean, carrying little bits of
paper and straw hither and thither on it. They may struggle to go back, but
in the long run they; must flow down to the ocean. So you and I and all
nature are like these little straws carried in mad currents towards that
ocean of Life, Perfection, and God. We may struggle to go back, or float
against the current and play all sorts of pranks, but in the long run we
must go and join this great ocean of Life and Bliss.
Jnâna (knowledge) is "creedlessness"; but that does not mean that it
despises creeds. It only means that a stage above and beyond creeds has been
gained. The Jnâni (true philosopher) strives to destroy nothing but to help
all. All rivers roll their waters into the sea and become one. So all creeds
should lead to Jnana and become one. Jnana teaches that the world should be
renounced but not on that account abandoned. To live in the world and not to
be of it is the true test of renunciation.
I cannot see how it can be otherwise than that all knowledge is stored up in
us from the beginning. If you and I are little waves in the ocean, then that
ocean is the background.
There is really no difference between matter, mind, and Spirit. They are
only different phases of experiencing the One. This very world is seen by
the five senses as matter, by the very wicked as hell, by the good as
heaven, and by the perfect as God.
We cannot bring it to sense demonstration that Brahman is the only real
thing; but we can point out that this is the only conclusion that one can
come to. For instance, there must be this oneness in everything, even in
common things. There is the human generalisation, for example. We say that
all the variety is created by name and form; yet when we want to grasp and
separate it, it is nowhere. We can never see name or form or causes standing
by themselves. So this phenomenon is Mâyâ — something which depends on the
noumenon and apart from it has no existence. Take a wave in the ocean. That
wave exists so long as that quantity of water remains in a wave form; but as
soon as it goes down and becomes the ocean, the wave ceases to exist. But
the whole mass of water does not depend so much on its form. The ocean
remains, while the wave form becomes absolute zero.
The real is one. It is the mind which makes it appear as many. When we
perceive the diversity, the unity has gone; and as soon as we perceive the
unity, the diversity has vanished. Just as in everyday life, when you
perceive the unity, you do not perceive the diversity. At the beginning you
start with unity. It is a curious fact that a Chinaman will not know the
difference in appearance between one American and another; and you will not
know the difference between different Chinamen.
It can be shown that it is the mind which makes things knowable. It is only
things which have certain peculiarities that bring themselves within the
range of the known and knowable. That which has no qualities is unknowable.
For instance, there is some external world, X, unknown and unknowable. When
I look at it, it is X plus mind. When I want to know the world, my mind
contributes three quarters of it. The internal world is Y plus mind, and the
external world X plus mind. All differentiation in either the external or
internal world is created by the mind, and that which exists is unknown and
unknowable. It is beyond the range of knowledge, and that which is beyond
the range of knowledge can have no differentiation. Therefore this X outside
is the same as the Y inside, and therefore the real is one.
God does not reason. Why should you reason if you know? It is a sign of
weakness that we have to go on crawling like worms to get a few facts, and
then the whole thing tumbles down again. The Spirit is reflected in mind and
in everything. It is the light of the Spirit that makes the mind sentient.
Everything is an expression of the Spirit; the minds are so many mirrors.
What you call love, fear, hatred, virtue, and vice are all reflections of
the Spirit. When the reflector is base, the reflection is bad.
The real Existence is without manifestation. We cannot conceive It, because
we should have to conceive through the mind, which is itself a
manifestation. Its glory is that It is inconceivable. We must remember that
in life the lowest and highest vibrations of light we do not see, but they
are the opposite poles of existence. There are certain things which we do
not know now, but which we can know. It is due to our ignorance that we do
not know them. There are certain things which we can never know, because
they are much higher than the highest vibrations of knowledge. But we are
the Eternal all the time, although we cannot know it. Knowledge will be
impossible there. The very fact of the limitations of the conception is the
basis for its existence. For instance, there is nothing so certain in me as
my Self; and yet I can only conceive of it as a body and mind, as happy or
unhappy, as a man or a woman. At the same time, I try to conceive of it as
it really is and find that there is no other way of doing it but by dragging
it down; yet I am sure of that reality. "No one, O beloved, loves the
husband for the husband's sake, but because the Self is there. It is in and
through the Self that she loves the husband. No one, O beloved, loves the
wife for the wife's sake, but in and through the Self." And that Reality is
the only thing we know, because in and through It we know everything else;
and yet we cannot conceive of It. How can we know the Knower? If we knew It,
It would not be the knower, but the known; It would be objectified.
The man of highest realisation exclaims, "I am the King of kings; there is
no king higher than I, I am the God of gods; there is no God higher than II
I alone exist, One without a second." This monistic idea of the Vedanta
seems to many, of course, very terrible, but that is on account of
superstition.
We are the Self, eternally at rest and at peace. We must not weep; there is
no weeping for the Soul. We in our imagination think that God is weeping on
His throne out of sympathy. Such a God would not be worth attaining. Why
should God weep at all? To weep is a sign of weakness, of bondage.
Seek the Highest, always the Highest, for in the Highest is eternal bliss.
If I am to hunt, I will hunt the lion. If I am to rob, I will rob the
treasury of the king. Seek the Highest.
Oh, One that cannot be confined or described! One that can be perceived in
our heart of hearts! One beyond all compare, beyond limit, unchangeable like
the blue sky! Oh, learn the All, holy one I Seek for nothing else!
Where changes of nature cannot reach, thought beyond all thought,
Unchangeable, Immovable; whom all books declare, all sages worship; Oh, holy
one, seek for nothing else!
Beyond compare, Infinite Oneness! No comparison is possible. Water above,
water below, water on the right, water on the left; no wave on that water,
no ripple, all silence; all eternal bliss. Such will come to thy heart. Seek
for nothing else!
Why weepest thou, brother? There is neither death nor disease for thee. Why
weepest thou, brother? There is neither misery nor misfortune for thee. Why
weepest thou, brother? Neither change nor death was predicated of thee. Thou
art Existence Absolute.
I know what God is—I cannot speak Him to you. I know not what God is—how
can I speak Him to you? But seest thou not, my brother, that thou art He,
thou art; He? Why go seeking God here and there? Seek not, and that is God.
Be your own Self.
Thou art Our Father, our Mother, our dear Friend. Thou bearest the burden of
the world. Help us to bear the burden of our lives. Thou art our Friend,
our Lover, our Husband, Thou art ourselves!