Swami Vivekanada Ii

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SWAMI VIVEKANADA Publisher: Advaita Ashrama Summary: Satyendra N. Dwivedi “Each soul is potentially divine. The Goal is to manifest this divinity, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy – by one, or more, or all of these – and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.” - Swami Vivekananda PART II THE VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY The Vedanta Philosophy really comprises all the various sects that now exist in India. Usually by the word Vedas, in India, Vedanta is meant. All our commentators, when they want to quote a passage from the scriptures, as a rule, quote from the Vedanta, which has another technical name with the commentators – the ‘Shrutis’. The Vedanta practically forms the scriptures of the Hindus, and all systems of philosophy that are orthodox have to take it as their foundation. ‘Sutras’ or aphorisms of Vyasa are, in modern India, the basis of the Vedanta philosophy. The ancient commentaries are perhaps lost; but they have been revised in modern times by the post-Buddhistic commentators – Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhava. Shankara revived the non-dualistic form; Ramanuja the qualified nondualistic form of the ancient commentator Bodhayana; and Madhava the dualistic form. All the Vedantists agree on three points. They believe in God, in the Vedas as revealed, and in cycles. According to the Advaitist, the followers of Shankaracharya, the whole universe is the apparent evolution of God. God is the material cause of the universe, but not really, only apparently. We are all one, and the cause of evil is the perception of duality. As soon as I begin to feel that I am separate from the universe, then first comes fear, and then comes misery.

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“Where one hears another, one sees another, that is small. Where one does not see another, where one does not hear another, that is the greatest, that is God. In that greatest is perfect happiness. In small things there is no happiness.” Love every one as your own self, because the whole universe is One. When the Vedantist has realized his own nature, the whole world has vanished for him. It will come back again, but no more the same world of misery. The prison of misery has become changed to ‘Sat-Chit-Ananada’ – Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute – and the attainment of this is the goal of the Advaita Philosophy. MAYA AND ILLUSION The whole of world is going toward death; everything dies. All our progress, our vanities, our luxuries, our wealth, our knowledge, have that one end – death. Saints die and sinners die, kings die and beggars die. They are all going to death, and yet this tremendous clinging on to life exists. Somehow, we do not know why, we cling to life; we cannot give it up. And this is Maya. Maya is not a theory for the explanation of the world: it is simply a statement of facts as they exist, that the very basis of our being is contradiction, that everywhere we have to move through this tremendous contradiction, that wherever there is good, there must also be evil, and wherever there is evil, there must be some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as its shadow, and everyone who smiles will have to weep and vice versa. Life without death and happiness without misery are contradictions, and neither can be found alone, because each of them is but a different manifestation of the same thing. The Vedanta says there must come a time when we shall look back and laugh at the ideals which make us afraid of giving up our individuality. Each one of us wants to keep this body for an indefinite time, thinking we shall be happy, but there will come a time when we shall laugh at this idea. In this life, with all its miseries and sorrows, its joys and smiles, and tears, one thing is certain, that all things are rushing towards their goal and it is only a question of time when you and I, and plants and animals, and every particle of life that exists must reach the Infinite Ocean of Perfection, must attain to Freedom, to God. The idea of a Personal God, the Ruler and Creator of this universe, as He has been styled, the Ruler of Maya, or nature, is not the end of these Vedantic ideas; it is only the beginning. The idea grows and grows until the Vedantist finds that

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He who, he thought was standing outside, is he himself and is in reality within. He is the One who is free, but who through limitation thought he was bound. THE REAL AND THE APPARENT MAN The one theme of Vedanta philosophy is the search after unity. The Hindu mind does not care of the particular; it is always after the general, nay, the universal. That which is outside sends, as it were, the current of news into my brain. My mind takes it up, and presents it to the intellect, which groups in relation to perceived impressions, and sends a current of reaction and with that reaction comes perception. The state of mind which reacts is called Buddhi, the intellect. This something upon which the mind is painting all these pictures, this something upon which our sensations, carried by the mind and intellect, are placed and grouped and formed into a unity, is called the ‘soul’ of man. Behind this external body are organs, the mind, the intellect, and behind this is the soul. Man, according to the Vedanta Philosophy, is the greatest being that is in the universe and this world of work the best place in it, because only here is the best chance for him to be perfect. This is the great centre, the wonderful poise, and the wonderful opportunity – this human life. According to the Advaita philosophy, this Maya or ignorance – or name and form, or as it has been called in Europe, ‘time, space and causality’ – is out of this One Infinite existence, showing us the manifoldness of the universe; in substance, the universe is One. The wicked see this universe as a hell, and the particularly good see it a heaven, which the perfect beings realize as God Himself. Then alone the veil falls off from the eyes, and the man, purified and cleansed, finds his whole vision changed. The man who has in this life, attained to this state, for whom, for a minute at least, the ordinary vision of the world has changed and the reality has been apparent, he is called the ‘Living Free’. This is the goal of the Vedantin, to attain freedom while living. What is left attached to the man who reached the Self and seen the Truth, is the remnant of the good impressions of past life. Even if he lives in the body and works incessantly, he works only to do good; his lips speak only benediction to all; his hands do only good works; his mind can only think good thoughts; his presence is a blessing wherever he goes. He is himself a living blessing. Such a man will, by his very presence, change even the most wicked persons into Saints.

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Those that have realized truth do not require the ratiocinations of logic and all other gymnastics of the intellect to make them understand the truth, it is to them the life of their lives, concretized, made more than tangible. Such a man becomes a world mover for whom this little self is dead and God stands in its place. The whole universe will become transfigured to him. That which is painful and miserable will all vanish; struggles will all depart and go. THE ATMAN We find that from most ancient times India was full of religious sects. Of these various sects, in the first place, there can be made two main divisions – the orthodox and the unorthodox. Those that believe in the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, as eternal revelations of truth, are called orthodox; and those who stand on other authorities, rejecting the Vedas, are the heterodox in India. The chief modern unorthodox Hindu sects are the Jains and the Buddhists. Of the three orthodox divisions, the Sankhyas, the Naiyayikas, and the Mimansakas, the former two, although they existed as philosophical schools, failed to form any sect. The one sect that now really covers India is that of the later Mimansakas or the Vedantists. Their philosophy is called Vedantism. All the schools of Hindu philosophy start from the Vedanta or Upanishads, but the monists took the name to themselves as a specialty, because they wanted to base the whole of their theology and philosophy upon Vedanta and nothing else. We find that there are three principal variations among the Vedantists: 1. ‘Dualists’ believe the God, who is the creator of the universe and its ruler, is eternally separate from nature, eternally separate from the human soul. God is eternal; nature is eternal; so are all souls. 2. ‘Qualified non-dualists’ assert that God is both the efficient and the material cause of the universe; that He Himself is the Creator, and He Himself is the material out of which the whole of nature is projected. 3. ‘Advaitists’ declare that there is but one Existence, the Infinite, EverBlessed One. In that existence we dream all these various dreams. It is the Atman, beyond all, the Infinite beyond the known, beyond the knowable; and through that we see the universe. It is the only Reality. The whole of this universe is only one Unity, one Existence, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually. No books, no scriptures, no science can ever imagine the glory of the Self that appears as man, the most Glorious God that ever was, the only God that ever existed, exists or will ever exist. Thus man, after this vain search after various gods outside himself, completes the circle, and comes back to the point from which he started – the human soul, and he finds that the God he was searching in hill and dale, whom he was

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seeking in every brook, in every temple, in Churches and heavens, that God whom he was even imagining as sitting in heaven and ruling the world, is his own Self. I am He, and He is I. “He who in this world of many sees that One, he who in this mass of in-sentiency sees that one Sentient Being, he who in this world of shadows catches that Reality, unto him belong eternal peace, unto none else, unto none else.” [What Swamiji was referring to was this verse from Kathopanishad

] Why is it that all great men have preached the brotherhood of mankind, and greater men the brotherhood of all lives? Because whether they were conscious of it or not, behind all that, through all their irrational and personal superstitions, was peering forth the eternal light of the Self denying all manifoldness, and asserting that the whole universe is but One. The last word gave us one universe, which through the senses we see as matter, through the intellect as souls, and through the spirit as God. THE ATMAN: ITS BONDAGE AND FREEDOM According to the Advaita philosophy, there is only one thing real in the universe, which it calls Brahman; everything else is unreal, manifested and manufactured out of Brahman by the power of ‘Maya’. To reach back to the Brahman is our goal. We are, each one of us, that Brahman, that Reality, plus this Maya. If we get rid of this Maya or ignorance, then we shall become what we really are. The Atman never comes nor goes, is never born nor dies. It is nature moving before the Atman; and the Atman ignorantly thinks it is moving, and not nature. When the Atman thinks that, it is in bondage; but when it comes to find it never moves, that it is omnipresent, then freedom comes. To go back to the Brahman from whom we have been projected is the great struggle of life.

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THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION Religion is the highest plane of human thought and life. We see in every religion there are three parts – I mean in every great and recognized religion. First there is the ‘Philosophy’, which presents the whole scope of that religion, setting forth its basic principles, the goal, and the means of reaching it. The second part is ‘Mythology’, which is philosophy made concrete. It consists of legends relating to the lives of men, or of supernatural beings, and so forth. It is the abstractions of philosophy concretized in the more or less imaginary lives of men and supernatural beings. The third part is the ‘Ritual’. This is still more concrete, and is made up of forms and ceremonies, various physical attitudes, flowers and incense, and many other things that appeal to the senses. Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. We must learn that truth may be expressed in a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways is true as far as it goes. Through high philosophy or low, through the most exalted mythology or the grossest, through the most refined ritualism or arrant fetishism, every sect, every soul, every nation, every religion, consciously or unconsciously, is struggling upward, towards God; every vision of truth that man has, is a vision of Him and of none else. That plan alone is practical which does not destroy the individuality of any man in religion, and at the same time shows him a point of union with all others. ‘Instinct’, ‘Reason’ and ‘Inspiration’ are the three instruments of knowledge. Instinct belongs to animals, reason to men and inspiration to God-men. But in all human beings is to be found, in a more or less developed condition, the germs of these three instruments of knowledge. The more this power of concentration, the more knowledge is acquired, because this is the one and only method of acquiring knowledge. The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure house of knowledge. The system of Raja-Yoga deals almost exclusively with this. Karma-Yoga teaches how to work for work’s sake, unattached, without caring who is helped, and what for. The Karma-Yogi works because it is his nature, because he feels it is good for him to do so, and he has no object beyond that. Bhakti-Yoga teaches them how to love, without any ulterior motives, loving God and loving the good because it is good to do so, not for going to heaven, not to get children, wealth or anything else. It teaches them that love itself is the highest recompense of love – that God Himself is love. Jnana-Yoga tells man that he is essentially divine. It shows to mankind the real unity of being and that each one of us is the Lord God Himself, manifested on

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earth. All of us, from the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest being to whom we look up with wonder and awe – all are manifestations of the same Lord. Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing and acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes. MISSION OF THE VEDANTA Ours is the true religion because it teaches us that God alone is true, that the world is false and fleeting, that all your gold is but dust, that all your power is finite, and that life itself is oftentimes an evil. Ours is the true religion because, above all, it teaches renunciation and stands up with the wisdom of ages to tell and to declare to the nations who are mere children of yesterday in comparison with us Hindus – who own the hoary antiquity of the wisdom, discovered by our ancestors here in India. What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate unto the mysteries and secrets of the universe, and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion even if it meant going down to the bottom of the ocean and meeting death face to face. That is what we want, and that can be created, established and strengthened by understanding and realizing the ideal of the Advaita, that ideal of the oneness of all. Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith, faith in God – that is the secret of greatness. We have lost faith in ourselves. Therefore to preach Advaita aspect of Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. It is, therefore, that I preach this Advaita; and I do so not as a sectarian, but upon universal and widely acceptable grounds. Let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness or strength, hear and learn that behind the strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind everyone, there is that Infinite Soul, assuring the infinite possibility and infinite capacity of all to become great and good. Let us proclaim to every soul:

“Arise, awake, and stop not till your goal is reached.” Arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, don’t deny Him.

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If there is anything in the Gita that I like, it is these two verses, coming out strong as the very gist, the very essence of Krishna’s teaching: “He who sees the Supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, the Imperishable in things that perish, he sees indeed. For seeing the Lord as the same, everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by the Self, and thus he goes to the highest goal.”[Gita 13-27, 13-28]

It is love and love alone that I preach, and I base my teaching on the great Vedantic truth of sameness and omnipresence of the Soul of the universe. I only ask you to realize more and more the Vedantic ideal of the solidarity of man and his inborn divine nature. (To be continued) Summary: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

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