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There is a word which has become very common as an appellation of our race and our religion. The word "Hindu" requires a little explanation in connection with what I mean by Vedantism. This word "Hindu" was the name that the ancient Persians used to apply to the river Sindhu. Whenever in Sanskrit there is an "s", in ancient Persian it changes into "h", so that "Sindhu" became "Hindu"; and you are all aware how the Greeks found it hard to pronounce "h" and dropped it altogether, so that we became known as Indians. Now this word "Hindu" as applied to the inhabitants of the other side of the Indus, whatever might have been its meaning in ancient times, has lost all its force in modern times; for all the people that live on this side of the Indus no longer belong to one religion. There are the Hindus proper, the Mohammedans, the Parsees, the Christians, the Buddhists, and Jains. The word "Hindu" in its literal sense ought to include all these; but as signifying the religion, it would not be proper to call all these Hindus. It is very hard, therefore, to find any common name for our religion, seeing that this religion is a collection, so to speak, of various religions, of various ideas, of various ceremonials and forms, all gathered together almost without a name, and without a church, and without an organisation. The only point where, perhaps, all our sects agree is that we all believe in the scriptures--the Vedas. This perhaps is certain that no man can have a right to be called Hindu who does not admit the supreme authority of the Vedas. All these Vedas, as you are aware, are divided into two portions--the Karma Kanda and the Jnana Kanda. The Karma Kanda includes various sacrifices and ceremonials, of which the larger part has fallen into disuse in the present age. The Jnana Kanda, as embodying the spiritual teachings of the Vedas known as the Upanishads and the Vedanta, has always been cited as the highest authority by all our teachers, philosophers, and writers, whether dualist, or qualified monist, or monist. Whatever be his philosophy or sect, every one in India has to find his authority in the Upanishads. If he cannot, his sect would be heterodox. Therefore, perhaps the one name in modern times which would designate every Hindu throughout the land would be "Vedantist" or "Vaidika", as you may put it; and in that sense I always use the words "Vedantism" and "Vedanta". I make to make it a little clearer, for of late, it has become the custom of most people to identify the word Vedanta with the Advaitic system of the Vedanta philosophy. We all know the Advaitism is only one branch of the various philosophic systems that have been founded on the Upanishads. The followers of the Vishishadvaitic system have as much reverence for the Upanishads as the followers of the Advaita, and the Vishishtadvaitists claim as much authority for the Vedanta as the Advaitist. So do the dualists; so does every other sect in India. But the word Vedantist has become somewhat identified in the popular mind with the word Advaitist, and perhaps with some reason, because, although we have the Vedas for our scriptures, we have Smritis and Puranas--subsequent writings--to illustrate the doctrines of the Vedas; these of course have not the same weight as the Vedas. And the law is that wherever these Puranas and Smritis differ from any part of the Shruti, the Shruti must be followed and the Smriti rejected. Now in the expositions of the great Advaitic philosopher Shankara, and the school founded by him, we find most of the authorities cited are from the Upanishads, very rarely is an authority cited from the Smritis, except, perhaps, to elucidate a point which could hardly be found in the Shrutis. On the other hand, other schools take refuge more and more in the Smritis and less and less in the Shrutis; and as we go to the more and more dualistic sects, we find a proportionate quantity of the Smritis quoted, which is out of all proportion to what we should expect from a Vedantist. It is, perhaps, because these gave such predominance to the Pauranika authorities that the Advaitist came to be considered as the Vedantist par excellence, if I may say so. However it might have been, the word Vedanta must cover the whole ground of Indian religious life, and being part of the Vedas, by all acceptance it is the most ancient literature that we have; for whatever might be the idea of modern scholars, the Hindus are not ready to admit that parts of the Vedas were written at one time and parts were written at another time. They of course still hold on to their belief that the Vedas as a whole were produced at the same time, rather if I may say so, that they were never produced, but that they always existed in the mind of the Lord. This is what I mean by the word Vedanta, that it covers the ground of dualism, of qualified monism, and Advaitism in India. Perhaps we may even take in parts of Buddhism, and of Jainism too, if they would come in--for our hearts are sufficiently large. But it is they that will not come in, we are ready for upon severe analysis you will always find that the essence of Buddhism was all borrowed from the same Upanishads; even the ethics, the so-called great and wonderful ethics of Buddhism, were there word for word, in some one or other of the Upanishads; and so all the good doctrines of the Jains were there, minus their vagaries. In the Upanishads, also, we find the germs of all the subsequent development of Indian religious thought. Sometimes it has been urged without any ground whatsoever that there is no ideal of Bhakti in the Upanishads. Those that have been students of the Upanishads know that that is not true at all. There is enough of Bhakti in every Upanishad if you will only seek for it; but many of these ideas which are found so fully developed in later times in the Puranas and other Smritis are only in the germ in the Upanishads. The sketch, the skeleton, was there as it were. It was filled in in some of the Puranas. But there is not one full-grown Indian ideal that cannot be traced back to the same source--the Upanishads. Certain ludicrous attempts have been made by persons without much Upanishadic scholarship to trace Bhakti to some foreign source; but as you know, these have all been proved to be failures, and all that you want of Bhakti is there, even in the Samhitas, not to speak of the Upanishads--it is there, worship and love and all the rest of it; only the ideals of Bhakti are becoming higher and higher. In the Samhita portions, now and then, you find traces of a religion of fear and tribulation; in the Samhitas now and then you find a worshipper quaking before a Varuna, or some other god. Now and then you will find they are very much tortured by the idea of sin, but the Upanishads have no place for the delineation of these things. There is no religion of fear in the Upanishads; it is one of Love and one of Knowledge. These Upanishads are our scriptures. They have been differently explained, and, as I have told you already, whenever there is a difference between subsequent Pauranika literature and the Vedas, the Puranas must give way. But it is at the same time true that, as a practical result, we find ourselves ninety per cent Pauranika and ten per cent Vaidika--even if so much as that. And we all find the most contradictory usages prevailing in our midst and also religious opinions prevailing in our society which scarcely have any authority in the scriptures of the Hindus; and in many cases we read in books, and see with astonishment, customs of the country that neither have their authority in the Vedas nor in the Smritis or Puranas, but are simply local. And yet each ignorant villager thinks that if that little local custom dies out, he will no more remain a Hindu. In his mind Vedantism and these little local customs have been indissolubly identified. In reading the scriptures it is hard for him to understand that what he is doing has not the sanction of the scriptures, and that the giving up of them will not hurt him at all, but on the other hand will make him a better man. Secondly, there is the other difficulty. These scriptures of ours have been very vast. We read in the Mahabhashya of Patanjali, that great philological work, that the Sama-Veda had one thousand branches. Where are they all? Nobody knows. So with each of the Vedas; the major portion of these books have disappeared, and it is only the minor portion that remains to us. They were all taken charge of by particular families; and either these families died out, or were killed under foreign persecution, or somehow became extinct; and with them, that branch of the learning of the Vedas they took charge of became extinct also. This fact we ought to remember, as it always forms the sheet-anchor in the hands of those who want to preach anything new or to defend anything even against the Vedas. Wherever in India there is a discussion between local custom and the Shrutis, and whenever it is pointed out that the local custom is against the scriptures, the argument that is forwarded is that it is not, that the customs existed in the branch of the Shrutis which has become extinct and so has been a recognised one. In the midst of all these varying methods of reading and commenting on our scriptures, it is very difficult indeed to find the thread that runs through all of them; for we become convinced at once that there must be some common ground underlying all these varying divisions and subdivisions. There must be harmony, a common plan, upon which all these little bits of buildings have been constructed, some basis common to this apparently hopeless mass of confusion which we call our religion. Otherwise it could not have stood so long, it could not have endured so long. Coming to our commentators again, we find another difficulty. The Advaitic commentator, whenever an Advaitic text comes, preserves it just as it is; but the same commentator, as soon as a dualistic text presents itself, tortures it if he can, and brings the most queer meaning out of it. Sometimes the "Unborn" becomes a "goat", such are the wonderful changes effected. To suit the commentator, "Aja" the Unborn is explain as "Ajâ" a she-goat. In the same way, if not in a still worse fashion, the texts are handled by the dualistic commentator. Every dualistic text is preserved, and every text that speaks of non-dualistic philosophy is tortured in any fashion he likes. This Sanskrit language is so intricate, the Sanskrit of the Vedas is so ancient, and the Sanskrit philology so perfect, that any amount of discussion can be carried on for ages in regard to the meaning of one word. If Pandit takes it into his head, he can render anybody's prattle into correct Sanskrit by force of argument and quotation of texts and rules. These are the difficulties in our way of understanding the Upanishads. It was given to me to live with a man who was as ardent a dualist, as ardent an Advaitist, as ardent a Bhakta, as a Jnani. And living with this man first put it into my head to understand the Upanishads and the texts of the scriptures from an independent and better basis than by blindly following the commentators; and in my opinion and in my researches, I came to the conclusion that these texts are not at all contradictory. So we need have no fear of text-torturing at all! The texts are beautiful, ay, they are the most wonderful; and they are not contradictory, but wonderfully harmonious, one idea leading up to the other. But the one fact I found is that in all the Upanishads, they begin with dualistic ideas, with worship and all that, and end with a grand flourish of Advaitic ideas. Therefore I now find in the light of this man's life that the dualist and the Advaitist need not fight each other. Each has a place, and a great place in the national life. The dualist must remain, for he is as much part and parcel of the national religious life as the Advaitist. One cannot exist without the other; one is the fulfilment of the other; one is the building, the other is the top; the one the root, the other the fruit, and so on. Therefore any attempt to torture the texts of the Upanishads appears to me very ridiculous. I begin to find out that the language is wonderful. Apart from all its merits as the greatest philosophy, apart from its wonderful merit as theology, as showing the path of salvation to mankind, the Upanishadic literature is the most wonderful painting of sublimity that the world has. Here comes out in full force that individuality of the human mind, that introspective, intuitive Hindu mind. We have paintings of sublimity elsewhere in all nations, but almost without exception you will find that their ideal is to grasp the sublime in the muscles. Take for instance, Milton, Dante, Homer, or any of the Western poets. There are wonderfully sublime passages in them; but there it is always a grasping at infinity through the senses, the muscles, getting the ideal of infinite expansion, the infinite of space. We find the same attempts made in the Samhita portion. You know some of those wonderful Riks where creation is described; the very heights of expression of the sublime in expansion and the infinite in space are attained. But they found out very soon that the Infinite cannot be reached in that way, that even infinite space, and expansion, and infinite external nature could not express the ideas that were struggling to find expression in their minds, and so they fell back upon other explanations. The language became new in the Upanishads; it is almost negative, it is sometimes, chaotic, sometimes taking you beyond the senses, pointing out to you something which you cannot grasp, which you cannot sense, and at the same time you feel certain that it is there. What passage in the world can compare with this? --n tÇ sUyaeR -ait n cNÔtark< nema iv*utae -aiNt k…tae=ymi¶>, --"There the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon nor the stars, the flash of lightning cannot illumine the place, what to speak of this mortal fire." Again, where can you find a more perfect expression of the whole philosophy of the world, the gist of what the Hindus ever thought, the whole dream of human salvation, painted in language more wonderful, in figure more marvellous than this? Upon the same tree there are two birds of beautiful plumage, most
friendly to each other, one eating the fruits, the other sitting there
calm and silent without eating--the one on the lower branch eating sweet
and bitter fruits in turn and becoming happy and unhappy, but the other
one on the top, calm and majestic; he eats neither sweet nor bitter
fruits, cares neither for happiness nor misery, immersed in his own glory.
This is the picture of the human soul. Man is eating the sweet and bitter
fruits of this life, pursuing gold, pursuing his senses, pursuing the
vanities of life--hopelessly, madly careering he goes. In other places the
Upanishads have compared the human soul to the charioteer, and the senses
to the mad horses unrestrained. Such is the career of men pursuing the
vanities of life--hopelessly, madly careering he goes. In other places the
Upanishads have compared the human soul to the charioteer, and the senses
to the mad horses unrestrained. Such is the career of men pursuing the
vanities of life, children dreaming golden dreams only to find that they
are but vain, and old men chewing the cud of their past deeds, and yet not
knowing how to get out of this network. This is the world. Yet in the life
of every one there come golden moments; in the midst of the deepest
sorrows, nay, of the deepest joys, there come moments when a part of the
cloud that hides the sunlight moves away as it were, and we catch a
glimpse, in spite of ourselves of something beyond--away, away beyond the
life of the senses; away, away beyond its vanities, its joys, and its
sorrows; away, away beyond nature, or our imaginations of happiness here
or hereafter; away beyond all thirst for gold, or for fame, or for name,
or for posterity. Man stops for a moment at this glimpse and sees the
other bird calm and majestic, eating neither sweet nor bitter fruits, but
immersed in his own glory, Self-content, Self-satisfied. As the Gita says,
ySTvaTmritrev SyadaTmt&Ýí manv> AaTmNyev c s Strength, strength is what the Upanishads speak to me from every page.
This is the one great thing to remember, it has been the one great lesson
I have been taught in my life; strength, it says, strength, O man, be not
weak. Are there no human weaknesses?--says man. There are, say the
Upanishads, but will more weakness heal them, would you try to wash dirt
with dirt? Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness? Strength, O man,
strength, say the Upanishads, stand up and be strong. Ay, it is the only
literature in the world where you find the word "Abhih", "fearless", used
again and again; in no other scripture in the world is this adjective
applied either to God or to man. Abhih, fearless! And in my mind rises
from the past the vision of the great Emperor of the West, Alexander the
Great, and I see, as it were in a picture, the great monarch standing on
the bank of the Indus, talking to one of our Sannyasins in the forest; the
old man he was talking to, perhaps naked, stark naked, sitting upon a
block of stone, and the Emperor, astonished at his wisdom, tempting him
with gold and honour to come over to Greece. And this man smiles at his
gold, and smiles at his temptations, and refuses; and then the Emperor
standing on his authority as an Emperor, says, "I will kill you if you do
not come", and the man burst into a laugh and says, "You never told such a
falsehood in your life, as you tell just now. Who can kill me? Me you
kill, Emperor of the material world! Never! For I am Spirit unborn and
undecaying: never was I born and never do I die; I am the Infinite, the
Omnipresent, the Omniscient; and you kill me, child that you are!" That is
strength, that is strength! And the more I read the Upanishads, my
friends, my countrymen, the more I weep for you, for therein is the great
practical application. Strength, strength for us. What we need is
strength, but who will give us strength? There are thousands to weaken us,
and of stories we have had enough. Every one of our Puranas, if you press
it, gives out stories enough to fill three-fourths of the libraries of the
world. Everything that can weaken us as a race we have had for the last
thousand years. It seems as if during that period the national life had
this one end in view, viz how to make us weaker and weaker till we have
become real earthworms, crawling at the feet of every one who dares to put
his foot on us. Therefore, my friends, as one of your blood, as one that
lives and dies with you, let me tell you that we want strength, strength,
and every time strength. And the Upanishads are the great mine of
strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the
whole world can be vivified, made strong, energised through them. They
will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the
downtrodden of all races, all creeds, and all sects to stand on their feet
and be free. Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual
freedom are the watchwords of the Upanishads.
Ay, this is the one scripture in the world, of all others, that does
not talk of salvation, but of freedom. Be free from the bonds of nature,
be free from weakness! And it shows to you that you have this freedom
already in you. That is another peculiarity of its teachings. You are a
Dvaitist; never mind, you have got to admit that by its very nature the
soul is perfect; only by certain actions of the soul has it become
contracted. Indeed, Ramanuja's theory of contraction and expansion is
exactly what the modern evolutionists call evolution and atavism. The soul
goes back, becomes contracted as it were, its powers become potential; and
by good deeds and good thoughts it expands again and reveals its natural
perfection. With the Advaitist the one difference is that he admits
evolution in nature and not in the soul. Suppose there is a screen, and
there is a small hole in the screen. I am a man standing behind the screen
and looking at this grand assembly. I can see only very few faces here.
Suppose the hole increases; as it increases, more and more of this
assembly is revealed to me, and in full when the hole has become
identified with the screen--there is nothing between you and me in this
case. Neither you changed nor I changed; all the change was in the screen.
You were the same from first to last; only the screen changed. This is the
Advaitist's position with regard to evolution--evolution of nature and
manifestation of the Self within. Not that the Self can by any means be
made to contract. It is unchangeable, the Infinite One. It was covered, as
it were, with a veil, the veil of Maya, and as this Maya veil becomes
thinner and thinner, the inborn, natural glory of the soul comes out and
becomes more manifest. This is the one great doctrine which the world is
waiting to learn from India. Whatever they may talk, however they may try
to boast, they will find out day after day that no society can stand
without admitting this. Do you not find how everything is being
revolutionised? Do you not see how it was the custom to take for granted
that everything was wicked until it proved itself good? In education, in
punishing criminals, in treating lunatics, in the treatment of common
diseases even, that was the old law. What is the modern law? The modern
law says, the body itself is healthy; it cures diseases of its own nature.
Medicine can at the best but help the storing up of the best in the body.
What says it of criminals? It takes for granted that however low a
criminal may be, there is still the divinity within, which does not
change, and we must treat criminals accordingly. All these things are now
changing, and reformatories and penitentiaries are established. So with
everything. Consciously or unconsciously that Indian idea of the divinity
within every one is expressing itself even in other countries. And in your
books is the explanation which other nations have to accept. The treatment
of one man to another will be entirely revolutionised, and these old, old
ideas of pointing to the weakness of mankind will have to go. They will
have received their death-blow within this century. Now people may stand
up and criticise us. I have been criticised, from one end of the world to
the other, as one who preaches the diabolical idea that there is no sin!
Very good. The descendants of these very men will bless me as the preacher
of virtue, and not of sin. I am the teacher of virtue, not of sin. I glory
in being the preacher of light, and not of darkness.
The second great idea which the world is waiting to receive from our
Upanishads is the solidarity of the universe. The old lines of demarcation
and differentiation are vanishing rapidly. Electricity and steam-power are
placing the different parts of the world in intercommunication with each
other, and, as a result, we Hindus no longer say that every country beyond
our own land is peopled with demons and hobgoblins, nor do the people of
Christian countries say that India is only peopled by cannibals and
savages. When we go out of our country, we find the same brother-man, with
the same strong hand to help, with the same lips to say godspeed; and
sometimes they are better than in the country in which we are born. When
they come here, they find the same brotherhood, the same cheer, the same
godspeed. Our Upanishads say that the cause of all misery is ignorance;
and that is perfectly true when applied to every state of life, either
social or spiritual. It is ignorance that makes us hate each other, it is
through ignorance that we do not know and do not love each other. As soon
as we come to know each other, love comes, must come, for are we not one?
Thus we find solidarity coming in spite of itself. Even in politics and
sociology, problems that were only national twenty years ago can no more
be solved on national grounds only. They are assuming huge proportions,
gigantic shapes. They can only be solved when looked at in the broader
light of international grounds. International organisations, international
combinations, international laws are the cry of the day. That shows the
solidarity. In science, every day they are coming to a similar broad view
of matter. You speak of matter, the whole universe as one mass, one ocean
of matter, in which you and I, the sun and the moon, and everything else
are but the names of different little whirlpools and nothing more.
Mentally speaking, it is one universal ocean of thought in which you and I
are similar little whirlpools; and as spirit it moveth not, it changeth
not. It is the One Unchangeable, Unbroken, Homogeneous Atman. The cry for
morality is coming also, and that is to be found in our books. The
explanation of morality, the fountain of ethics, that also the world
wants; and that it will get here.
What do we want in India? If foreigners want these things, we want them
twenty times more. Because, in spite of the greatness of the Upanishads,
in spite of our boasted ancestry of sages, compared to many other races, I
must tell you that we are weak, very weak. First of all is our physical
weakness. That physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our
miseries. We are lazy, we cannot work; we cannot combine, we do not love
each other; we are intensely selfish, not three of us can come together
without hating each other, without being jealous of each other. That is
the state in which we are--hopelessly disorganised mobs, immensely
selfish, fighting each other for centuries as to whether a certain mark is
to be put on our forehead this way or that way, writing volumes and
volumes upon such momentous questions as to whether the look of a man
spoils my food or not! This we have been doing for the past few centuries.
We cannot expect anything high from a race whose whole brain energy has
been occupied in such wonderfully beautiful problems and researches! And
are we not ashamed of ourselves? Ay, sometimes we are; but though we think
these things frivolous, we cannot give them up. We speak of many things
parrot-like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit
with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak
brain is not able to do anything; we must strengthen it. First of all, our
young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my
young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to Heaven
through football than through the study of the Gita. These are bold words;
but I have to say them, for I love you. I know where the shoe pinches. I
have gained a little experience. You will understand the Gita better with
your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the
mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little of
strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the
glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel
yourselves as men. Thus we have to apply these to our needs.
People get disgusted many times at my preaching Advaitism. I do not
mean to preach Advaitism, or Dvaitism, or any ism in the world. The only
ism that we require now is this wonderful idea of the soul--its eternal
might, its eternal strength, its eternal purity, and its eternal
perfection. If I had a child I would from its very birth begin to tell it,
"Thou art the Pure One." You have read in one of the Puranas that
beautiful story of queen Madalasa, how as soon as she has a child she puts
her baby with her own hands in the cradle, and how as the cradle rocks to
and fro, she begins to sing, "Thou art the Pure One, the Stainless, the
Sinless, the Mighty One, the Great One." Ay, there is much in that. Feel
that you are great and you become great. What did I get as my experience
all over the world, is the question. They may talk about sinners--and if
all Englishmen really believed that they were sinners, Englishmen would be
no better than the negroes in Central Africa. God bless them that they do
not believe it! On the other hand, the Englishman believes he is born the
lord of the world. He believes he is great and can do anything in the
world; if he wants to go to the sun or the moon, he believes he can; and
that makes him great. If he had believed his priests that he was a poor
miserable sinner, going to be barbecued through all eternity, he would not
be the same Englishman that he is today. So I find in every nation that,
in spite of priests and superstition, the divine within lives and asserts
itself. We have lost faith. Would you believe me, we have less faith than
the Englishman and woman--a thousand times less faith! These are plain
words; but I say these, I cannot help it. Don't you see how Englishmen and
women, when they catch our ideals, become mad as it were; and although
they are the ruling class, they come to India to preach our own religion
notwithstanding the jeers and ridicule of their own countrymen? How many
of you could do that? And why cannot you do that? Do you not know it? You
know more than they do; you are more wise than is good for you, that is
your difficulty! Simply because your blood is only like water, your brain
is sloughing, your body is weak! You must change the body. Physical
weakness is the cause and nothing else. You have talked of reforms, of
ideals, and all these things for the past hundred years; but when it comes
to practice, you are not to be found anywhere--till you have disgusted the
whole world, and the very name of reform is a thing of ridicule! And what
is the cause? Do you not know? You know too well. The only cause is that
you are weak, weak, weak; your body is weak, your mind is weak, you have
no faith in yourselves! Centuries and centuries, a thousand years of
crushing tyranny of castes and kings and foreigners and your own people
have taken out all your strength, my brethren. Your backbone is broken,
you are like downtrodden worms. Who will give you strength? Let me tell
you, strength, strength is what we want. And the first step in getting
strength is to uphold the Upanishads, and believe--"I am the Soul", "Me
the sword cannot cut; nor weapons pierce; me the fire cannot burn; me the
air cannot dry; I am the Omnipotent, I am the Omniscient." So repeat these
blessed, saving words. Do not say we are weak; we can do anything and
everything. What can we not do? Everything can be done by us; we all have
the same glorious soul, let us believe in it. Have faith, as Nachiketa. At
the time of his father's sacrifice, faith came unto Nachiketa; ay, I wish
that faith would come to each of you; and every one of you would stand up
a giant, a world-mover with a gigantic intellect--an infinite God in every
respect. That is what I want you to become. This is the strength that you
get from the Upanishads, this is the faith that you get from there.
Ay, but it was only for the Sannyasin! Rahaysa (esoteric)! The
Upanishads were in the hands of the Sannyasin; he went into the forest!
Shankara was a little kind and said even Grihasthas (householders) may
study the Upanishads, it will do them good; it will not hurt them. But
still the idea is that the Upanishads talked only of the forest life of
the recluse. As I told you the other day, the only commentary, the
authoritative commentary on the Vedas, has been made once and for all by
Him who inspired the Vedas--by Krishna in the Gita. It is there for every
one in every occupation of life. These conceptions of the Vedanta must
come out, must remain not only in the forest, not only in the cave, but
they must come out to work at the bar and the bench, in the pulpit, and in
the cottage of the poor man, with the fishermen that are catching fish,
and with the students that are studying. They call to every man, woman,
and child whatever be their occupation, wherever they may be. And what is
there to fear! How can the fishermen and all these carry out the ideals of
the Upanishads? The way has been shown. It is infinite; religion is
infinite, none can go beyond it; and whatever you do sincerely is good for
you. Even the least thing well done brings marvellous results; therefore
let everyone do what little he can. If the fisherman thinks that he is the
Spirit, he will be a better fisherman; if the student thinks he is the
Spirit, he will be a better student. If the lawyer thinks that he is the
Spirit, he will be a better lawyer, and so on, and the result will be that
the castes will remain for ever. It is in the nature of society to form
itself into groups; and what will go will be these privileges. Caste is a
natural order; I can perform one duty in social life, and you another; you
can govern a country, and I can mend a pair of old shoes, but that is no
reason why you are greater than I, for can you mend my shoes? Can I govern
the country? I am clever in mending shoes, you are clever in reading
Vedas, but that is no reason why you should trample on my head. Why if one
commits murder should he be praised, and if another steals an apple why
should he be hanged? This will have to go. Caste is good. That is the only
natural way of solving life. Men must form themselves into groups, and you
cannot get rid of that. Wherever you go, there will be caste. But that
does not mean that there should be these privileges. They should be
knocked on the head. If you teach Vedanta to the fisherman, he will say, I
am as good a man as you; I am a fisherman, you are a philosopher, but I
have the same God in me as you have in you. And that is what we want, no
privilege for any one, equal chances for all; let every one be taught that
the divine is within, and every one will work out his own salvation.
Liberty is the first condition of growth. It is wrong, a thousand times
wrong, if any of you dares to say, "I will work out the salvation of this
woman or child." I am asked again and again, what I think of the widow
problem and what I think of the woman question. Let me answer once for
all--am I a widow that you ask me that nonsense? Am I am a woman that you
ask me that question again and again? Who are you to solve women's
problems? Are you the Lord God that you should rule over every widow and
every woman? Hands off! They will solve their own problems. O tyrants,
attempting to think that you can do anything for any one! Hands Off! The
Divine will look after all. Who are you to assume that you know
everything? How dare you think, O blasphemers, that you have the right
over God? For don't you know that every soul is the Soul of God? Mind your
own Karma; a load of Karma is there in you to work out. Your nation may
put you upon a pedestal, your society may cheer you up to the skies, and
fools may praise you: but He sleeps not, and retribution will be sure to
follow, here or hereafter.
Look upon every man, woman, and every one as God. You cannot help
anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord
Himself, if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help
any one of his children, blessed you are; do not think too much of
yourselves. Blessed you are that that privilege was given to you when
others had it not. Do it only as a worship. I should see God in the poor,
and it is for my salvation that I go and worship them. The poor and the
miserable are for our salvation, so that we may serve the Lord, coming in
the shape of the diseased, coming in the shape of the lunatic, the leper,
and the sinner! Bold are my words; and let me repeat that it is the
greatest privilege in our life that we are allowed to serve the Lord in
all these shapes. Give up the idea that by ruling over others you can do
any good to them. But you can do just as much as you can in the case of
the plant; you can supply the growing seed with the materials for the
making up of its body, bringing to it the earth, the water, the air, that
it wants. It will take all that it wants by its own nature, it will
assimilate and grow by its own nature.
Bring all light into the world. Light, bring light! Let light come unto
every one; the task will not be finished till every one has reached the
Lord. Bring light to the poor; and bring more light to the rich, for they
require it more than the poor. Bring light to the ignorant, and more light
to the educated, for the vanities of the education of our time are
tremendous! Thus bring light to all and leave the rest unto the Lord, for
in the words of the same Lord, "To work you have the right and not to the
fruits thereof." "Let not your work produce results for you, and at the
same time may you never be without work."
May He who taught such grand ideas to our forefathers ages ago help us
to get strength to carry into practice His commands! |
