THE
VEDANTA IN ALL ITS PHASES
(Delivered
in Calcutta)
Away
back, where no recorded history, nay, not even the dim light of tradition,
can penetrate, has been steadily shining the light, sometimes dimmed by
external circumstances, at others effulgent, but undying and steady,
shedding its lustre not only over India, but permeating the whole
thought-world with its power, silent, unperceived, gentle, yet omnipotent,
like the dew that falls in the morning, unseen and unnoticed, yet bringing
into bloom the fairest of roses: this has been the thought of the
Upanishads, the philosophy of the Vedanta. Nobody knows when it first came
to flourish on the soil of India. Guesswork has been vain. The guesses,
especially of Western writers, have been so conflicting that no certain
date can be ascribed to them. But we Hindus, from the spiritual
standpoint, do not admit that they had any origin. This Vedanta, the
philosophy of the Upanishads, I would make bold to state, has been the
first as well as the final thought on the spiritual plane that has ever
been vouchsafed to man.
From this ocean of
the Vedanta, waves of light from time to time have been going Westward and
Eastward. In the days of yore it travelled Westward and gave its impetus
to the mind of the Greeks, either in Athens, or in Alexandria, or in
Antioch. The Sânkhya system must clearly have made its mark on the minds
of the ancient Greeks; and the Sankhya and all other systems in India hail
that one authority, the Upanishads, the Vedanta. In India, too, in spite
of all these jarring sects that we see today and all those that have been
in the past, the one authority, the basis of all these systems, has yet
been the
teaching,
was a living commentary on the texts of the Upanishads, was in fact the
spirit of the Upanishads living in a human form. Perhaps I have got a
little of that harmony; I do not know whether I shall be able to express
it or not. But this is my attempt, my mission in life, to show that the
Vedantic schools are not contradictory, that they all necessitate each
other, all fulfil each other, and one, as it were, is the stepping-stone
to the other, until the goal, the Advaita, the Tat Tvam Asi, is reached.
There was a time in India when the Karma Kânda had its sway. There are
many grand ideals, no doubt, in that portion of the Vedas. Some of our
present daily worship is still according to the precepts of the Karma
Kanda. But with all that, the Karma Kanda of the Vedas has almost
disappeared from India. Very little of our life today is bound and
regulated by the orders of the Karma Kanda of the Vedas. In our ordinary
lives we are mostly Paurânikas or Tântrikas, and, even where some Vedic
texts are used by the Brahmins of India, the adjustment of the texts is
mostly not according to the Vedas, but according to the Tantras or the
Puranas. As such, to call ourselves Vaidikas in the sense of following the
Karma Kanda of the Vedas, I do not think, would be proper. But the other
fact stands that we are all of us Vedantists. The people who call
themselves Hindus had better be called Vedantists, and, as I have shown
you, under that one name Vaidantika come in all our various sects, whether
dualists or non-dualists.
The sects that are
at the present time in India come to be divided in general into the two
great classes of dualists and monists. The little differences which some
of these sects insist upon, and upon the authority of which want to take
new names as pure Advaitists, or qualified Advaitists, and so forth, do
not matter much. As a classification, either they are dualists or monists,
and of the sects existing at the present time, some of them are very
new,
and others seem to be reproductions of very ancient sects. The one class I
would present by the life and philosophy of Râmânuja, and the other by
Shankarâchârya.
Ramanuja is the
leading dualistic philosopher of later India, whom all the other dualistic
sects have followed, directly or indirectly, both in the substance of
their teaching and in the organization of their sects even down to some of
the most minute points of their organization. You will be astonished if
you compare Ramanuja and his work with the other dualistic Vaishnava sects
in India, to see how much they resemble each other in organization,
teaching, and method. There is the great Southern preacher Madhva Muni,
and following him, our great Chaitanya of Bengal who took up the
philosophy of the Madhvas and preached it in Bengal. There are some other
sects also in Southern India, as the qualified dualistic Shaivas. The
Shaivas in most parts of India are Advaitists, except in some portions of
Southern India and in Ceylon. But they also only substitute Shiva for
Vishnu and are Ramanujists in every sense of the term except in the
doctrine of the soul. The followers of Ramanuja hold that the soul is Anu,
like a particle, very small, and the followers of Shankaracharya hold that
it is Vibhu, omnipresent. There have been several non-dualistic sects. It
seems that there have been sects in ancient times which Shankara's
movement has entirely swallowed up and assimilated. You find sometimes a
fling at Shankara himself in some of the commentaries, especially in that
of Vijnâna Bhikshu who, although an Advaitist, attempts to upset the Mâyâvâda
of Shankara. It seems there were schools who did not believe in this
Mayavada, and they went so far as to call Shankara a crypto-Buddhist,
Prachchhanna Bauddha, and they thought this Mayavada was taken from the
Buddhists and brought within the Vedantic fold. However that may be, in
modern times the Advaitists have all
ranged
themselves under Shankaracharya; and Shankaracharya and his disciples have
been the great preachers of Advaita both in Southern and in Northern
India. The influence of Shankaracharya did not penetrate much into our
country of Bengal and in Kashmir and the Punjab, but in Southern India the
Smârtas are all followers of Shankaracharya, and with Varanasi as the
centre, his influence is simply immense even in many parts of Northern
India.
Now both Shankara
and Ramanuja laid aside all claim to originality. Ramanuja expressly tells
us he is only following the great commentary of Bodhâyana.
— "Ancient
teachers abridged that extensive commentary on the Brahma-sutras
which was composed by the Bhagavân Bodhayana; in accordance with their
opinion, the words of the Sutra are explained." That is what Ramanuja
says at the beginning of his commentary, the Shri-Bhâshya. He
takes it up and makes of it a Samkshepa, and that is what we have today. I
myself never had an opportunity of seeing this commentary of Bodhayana.
The late Swami Dayânanda Saraswati wanted to reject every other
commentary of the Vyâsa-Sutras except that of Bodhayana; and
although he never lost an opportunity of having a fling at Ramanuja, he
himself could never produce the Bodhayana. I have sought for it all over
India, and never yet have been able to see it. But Ramanuja is very plain
on the point, and he tells us that he is taking the ideas, and sometimes
the very passages out of Bodhayana, and condensing them into the present
Ramanuja Bhashya. It seems that Shankaracharya was also doing the same.
There are a few places in his Bhashya which mention older commentaries,
and when we know that his Guru and his Guru's Guru had been Vedantists of
the same school as he, sometimes corn more thorough-going, bolder even
than
Shankara
himself on certain points, it seems pretty plain that he also was not
preaching anything very original, and that even in his Bhashya he himself
had been doing the same work that Ramanuja did with Bodhayana, but from
what Bhashya, it cannot be discovered at the present time.
All these Darshanas
that you have ever seen or heard of are based upon Upanishadic authority.
Whenever they want to quote a Shruti, they mean the Upanishads. They are
always quoting the Upanishads. Following the Upanishads there come other
philosophies of India, but every one of them failed in getting that hold
on India which the philosophy of Vyasa got, although the philosophy of
Vyasa is a development out of an older one, the Sankhya, and every
philosophy and every system in India — I mean throughout the world —
owes much to Kapila, perhaps the greatest name in the history of India in
psychological and philosophical lines. The influence of Kapila is
everywhere seen throughout the world. Wherever there is a recognised
system of thought, there you can trace his influence; even if it be
thousands of years back, yet he stands there, the shining, glorious,
wonderful Kapila. His psychology and a good deal of his philosophy have
been accepted by all the sects of India with but very little differences.
In our own country, our Naiyâyika philosophers could not make much
impression on the philosophical world of India. They were too busy with
little things like species and genus, and so forth, and that most
cumbersome terminology, which it is a life's work to study. As such, they
were very busy with logic and left philosophy to the Vedantists, but every
one of the Indian philosophic sects in modern times has adopted the
logical terminology of the Naiyayikas of Bengal. Jagadisha, Gadadhara, and
Shiromani are as well known at Nadia as in some of the cities in Malabar.
But the philosophy of Vyasa, the Vyasa-Sutras, is firm-seated and
has attained the permanence of that which it intended to present to men,
the Brahman of the Vedantic side of
philosophy.
Reason was entirely subordinated to the Shrutis, and as Shankaracharya
declares, Vyasa did not care to reason at all. His idea in writing the
Sutras was just to bring together, and with one thread to make a garland
of the flowers of Vedantic texts. His Sutras are admitted so far as they
are subordinate to the authority of the Upanishads, and no further.
And, as I have said,
all the sects of India now hold these Vyasa-Sutras to be the great
authority, and every new sect in India starts with a fresh commentary on
the Vyasa-Sutras according to its light. The difference between
some of these commentators is sometimes very great, sometimes the
text-torturing is quite disgusting. The Vyasa-Sutras have got the
place of authority, and no one can expect to found a sect in India until
he can write a fresh commentary on the Vyasa-Sutras.
Next in authority is
the celebrated Gita. The great glory of Shankaracharya was his preaching
of the Gita. It is one of the greatest works that this great man did among
the many noble works of his noble life — the preaching of the Gita and
writing the most beautiful commentary upon it. And he has been followed by
all founders of the orthodox sects in India, each of whom has written a
commentary on the Gita.
The Upanishads are
many, and said to be one hundred and eight, but some declare them to be
still larger in number. Some of them are evidently of a much later date,
as for instance, the Allopanishad in which Allah is praised and Mohammed
is called the Rajasulla. I have been told that this was written during the
reign of Akbar to bring the Hindus and Mohammedans together, and sometimes
they got hold of some word, as Allah, or Illa in the Samhitâs, and made
an Upanishad on it. So in this Allopanishad, Mohammed is the Rajasulla,
whatever that may mean. There are other sectarian Upanishads of the same
species, which you find
to
be entirely modern, and it has been so easy to write them, seeing that
this language of the Samhitâ portion of the Vedas is so archaic that
there is no grammar to it. Years ago I had an idea of studying the grammar
of the Vedas, and I began with all earnestness to study Panini and the Mahâbhâshya,
but to my surprise I found that the best part of the Vedic grammar
consists only of exceptions to rules. A rule is made, and after that comes
a statement to the effect, "This rule will be an exception". So
you see what an amount of liberty there is for anybody to write anything,
the only safeguard being the dictionary of Yâska. Still, in this you will
find, for the must part, but a large number of synonyms. Given all that,
how easy it is to write any number of Upanishads you please. Just have a
little knowledge of Sanskrit, enough to make words look like the old
archaic words, and you have no fear of grammar. Then you bring in
Rajasulla or any other Sulla you like. In that way many Upanishads have
been manufactured, and I am told that that is being done even now. In some
parts of India, I am perfectly certain, they are trying to manufacture
such Upanishads among the different sects. But among the Upanishads are
those, which, on the face of them, bear the evidence of genuineness, and
these have been taken up by the great commentators and commented upon,
especially by Shankara, followed by Ramanuja and all the rest.
There are one or two
more ideas with regard to the Upanishads which I want to bring to your
notice, for these are an ocean of knowledge, and to talk about the
Upanishads, even for an incompetent person like myself, takes years and
not one lecture only. I want, therefore, to bring to your notice one or
two points in the study of the Upanishads. In the first place, they are
the most wonderful poems in the world. If you read the Samhita portion of
the Vedas, you now and then find passages of most marvellous beauty. For
instance, the famous Shloka
were
bolder in declaring the utter helplessness of the senses to find the
solution. Nowhere else was the answer better put than in the Upanishad:
— "From
whence words come back reflected, together with the mind";
— "There the
eye cannot go, nor can speech reach". There are various sentences
which declare the utter helplessness of the senses, but they did not stop
there; they fell back upon the internal nature of man, they went to get
the answer from their own soul, they became introspective; they gave up
external nature as a failure, as nothing could be done there, as no hope,
no answer could be found; they discovered that dull, dead matter would not
give them truth, and they fell back upon the shining soul of man, and
there the answer was found.
—
"Know this Atman alone," they declared, "give up all other
vain words, and hear no other." In the Atman they found the solution
— the greatest of all Atmans, the God, the Lord of this universe, His
relation to the Atman of man, our duty to Him, and through that our
relation to each other. And herein you find the most sublime poetry in the
world. No more is the attempt made to paint this Atman in the language of
matter. Nay, for it they have given up even all positive language. No more
is there any attempt to come to the senses to give them the idea of the
infinite, no more is there an external, dull, dead, material, spacious,
sensuous infinite, but instead of that comes something which is as fine as
even that mentioned in the saying —
What poetry in the
world can be more sublime than this! "There the sun cannot illumine,
nor the moon, nor the stars, there this flash of lightning cannot
illumine; what to speak of this mortal fire!" Such poetry you find
nowhere else. Take that most marvellous Upanishad,
the
Katha. What a wonderful finish, what a most marvellous art displayed in
that poem! How wonderfully it opens with that little boy to whom Shraddhâ
came, who wanted to see Yama, and how that most marvellous of all
teachers, Death himself, teaches him the great lessons of life and death!
And what was his quest? To know the secret of death.
The second point
that I want you to remember is the perfectly impersonal character of the
Upanishads. Although we find many names, and many speakers, and many
teachers in the Upanishads, not one of them stands as an authority of the
Upanishads, not one verse is based upon the life of any one of them. These
are simply figures like shadows moving in the background, unfelt, unseen,
unrealised, but the real force is in the marvellous, the brilliant, the
effulgent texts of the Upanishads, perfectly impersonal. If twenty Yâjnavalkyas
came and lived and died, it does not matter; the texts are there. And yet
it is against no personality; it is broad and expansive enough to embrace
all the personalities that the world has yet produced, and all that are
yet to come. It has nothing to say against the worship of persons, or
Avataras, or sages. On the other hand, it is always upholding it. At the
same time, it is perfectly impersonal. It is a most marvellous idea, like
the God it preaches, the impersonal idea of. the Upanishads. For the sage,
the thinker, the philosopher, for the rationalist, it is as much
impersonal as any modern scientist can wish. And these are our scriptures.
You must remember that what the Bible is to the Christians, what the Koran
is to the Mohammedans, what the Tripitaka is to the Buddhist, what the
Zend Avesta is to the Parsees, these Upanishads are to us. These and
nothing but these are our scriptures. The Purânas, the Tantras, and all
the other books, even the Vyasa-Sutras, are of secondary, tertiary
authority, but primary are the Vedas. Manu, and the Puranas, and all the
other books
but
no more. The idea is that the Vedas were never written; the idea is, they
never came into existence. I was told once by a Christian missionary that
their scriptures have a historical character, and therefore are true, to
which I replied, "Mine have no historical character and therefore
they are true; yours being historical, they were evidently made by some
man the other day. Yours are man-made and mine are not; their
non-historicity is in their favour." Such is the relation of the
Vedas with all the other scriptures at the present day.
We now come to the
teachings of the Upanishads. Various texts are there. Some are perfectly
dualistic, while others are monistic. But there are certain doctrines
which are agreed to by all the different sects of India. First, there is
the doctrine of Samsâra or reincarnation of the soul. Secondly, they all
agree in their psychology; first there is the body, behind that, what they
call the Sukshma Sharira, the mind, and behind that even, is the Jiva.
That is the great difference between Western and Indian psychology; in the
Western psychology the mind is the soul, here it is not. The Antahkarana,
the internal instrument, as the mind is called, is only an instrument in
the hands of that Jiva, through which the Jiva works on the body or on the
external world. Here they all agree, and they all also agree that this
Jiva or Atman, Jivatman as it is called by various sects, is eternal,
without beginning; and that it is going from birth to birth, until it gets
a final release. They all agree in this, and they also all agree in one
other most vital point, which alone marks characteristically, most
prominently, most vitally, the difference between the Indian and the
Western mind, and it is this, that everything is in the soul. There is no
inspiration, but properly speaking, expiration. All powers and all purity
and all greatness — everything is in the soul. The Yogi would tell you
that the Siddhis - Animâ, Laghimâ, and so on — that he wants to attain
to are not
to
be attained, in the proper sense of the word, but are already there in the
soul; the work is to make them manifest. Patanjali, for instance, would
tell you that even in the lowest worm that crawls under your feet, all the
eightfold Yogi's powers are already existing. The difference has been made
by the body. As soon as it gets a better body, the powers will become
manifest, but they are there.
— "Good and
bad deeds are not the direct causes in the transformations of nature, but
they act as breakers of obstacles to the evolutions of nature: as a farmer
breaks the obstacles to the course of water, which then runs down by its
own nature." Here Patanjali gives the celebrated example of the
cultivator bringing water into his field from a huge tank somewhere. The
tank is already filled and the water would flood his land in a moment,
only there is a mud-wall between the tank and his field. As soon as the
barrier is broken, in rushes the water out of its own power and force.
This mass of power and purity and perfection is in the soul already. The
only difference is the Âvarana — this veil — that has been cast over
it. Once the veil is removed, the soul attains to purity, and its powers
become manifest. This, you ought to remember, is the great difference
between Eastern and Western thought. Hence you find people teaching such
awful doctrines as that we are all born sinners, and because we do not
believe in such awful doctrines we are all born wicked. They never stop to
think that if we are by our very nature wicked, we can never be good —
for how can nature change? If it changes, it contradicts itself; it is not
nature. We ought to remember this. Here the dualist, and the Advaitist,
and all others in India agree.
The next point,
which all the sects in India believe in, is God. Of course their ideas of
God will be different. The dualists believe in a Personal God, and a
personal
only.
I want you to understand this word personal a little more. This word
personal does not mean that God has a body, sits on a throne somewhere,
and rules this world, but means Saguna, with qualities. There are many
descriptions of the Personal God. This Personal God as the Ruler, the
Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer of this universe is believed in
by all the sects. The Advaitists believe something more. They believe in a
still higher phase of this Personal God, which is personal-impersonal. No
adjective can illustrate where there is no qualification, and the
Advaitist would not give Him any qualities except the three —Sat-Chit-Ananda,
Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Absolute. This is what Shankara did. But
in the Upanishads themselves you find they penetrate even further, and
say, nothing can be predicated of it except Neti, Neti, "Not this,
Not this".
Here all the
different sects of India agree. But taking the dualistic side, as I have
said, I will take Ramanuja as the typical dualist of India, the great
modern representative of the dualistic system. It is a pity that our
people in Bengal know so very little about the great religious leaders in
India, who have been born in other parts of the country; and for the
matter of that, during the whole of the Mohammedan period, with the
exception of our Chaitanya, all the great religious leaders were born in
Southern India, and it is the intellect of Southern India that is really
governing India now; for even Chaitanya belonged to one of these sects, a
sect of the Mâdhvas. According to Ramanuja, these three entities are
eternal — God, and soul, and nature. The souls are eternal, and they
will remain eternally existing, individualised through eternity, and will
retain their individuality all through. Your soul will be different from
my soul through all eternity, says Ramanuja, and so will this nature —
which is an existing fact, as much a fact as the existence of soul or the
existence of God — remain always different. And God
is
interpenetrating, the essence of the soul, He is the Antaryâmin. In this
sense Ramanuja sometimes thinks that God is one with the soul, the essence
of the soul, and these souls — at the time of Pralaya, when the whole of
nature becomes what he calls Sankuchita, contracted — become contracted
and minute and remain so for a time. And at the beginning of the next
cycle they all come out, according to their past Karma, and undergo the
effect of that Karma. Every action that makes the natural inborn purity
and perfection of the soul get contracted is a bad action, and every
action that makes it come out and expand itself is a good action, says
Ramanuja. Whatever helps to make the Vikâsha of the soul is good, and
whatever makes it Sankuchita is bad. And thus the soul is going on,
expanding or contracting in its actions, till through the grace of God
comes salvation. And that grace comes to all souls, says Ramanuja, that
are pure and struggle for that grace.
There is a
celebrated verse in the Shrutis,
"When the food
is pure, then the Sattva becomes pure; when the Sattva is pure, then the
Smriti" — the memory of the Lord, or the memory of our own
perfection — if you are an Advaitist — "becomes truer, steadier,
and absolute". Here is a great discussion. First of all, what is this
Sattva? We know that according to the Sankhya — and it has been admitted
by all our sects of philosophy — the body is composed of three sorts of
materials — not qualities. It is the general idea that Sattva, Rajas,
and Tamas are qualities. Not at all, not qualities but the materials of
this universe, and with Âhâra-shuddhi, when the food is pure, the Sattva
material becomes pure. The one theme of the Vedanta is to get this Sattva.
As I have told you, the soul is already pure and perfect, and it is,
according to the Vedanta, covered up by Rajas and Tamas particles. The
Sattva particles are the most luminous, and the effulgence of the soul
penetrates through
them
as easily as light through glass. So if the Rajas and Tamas particles go,
and leave the Sattva particles, in this state the power and purity of the
soul will appear, and leave the soul more manifest.
Therefore it is
necessary to have this Sattva. And the text says, "When Ahara becomes
pure". Ramanuja takes this word Ahara to mean food, and he has made
it one of the turning points of his philosophy. Not only so, it has
affected the whole of India, and all the different sects. Therefore it is
necessary for us to understand what it means, for that, according to
Ramanuja, is one of the principal factors in our life, Ahara-shuddhi. What
makes food impure? asks Ramanuja. Three sorts of defects make food impure
— first, Jâti-dosha, the defect in the very nature of the class to
which the food belongs, as the smell in onions, garlic, and suchlike. The
next is Âshraya-dosha, the defect in the person from whom the food comes;
food coming from a wicked person will make you impure. I myself have seen
many great sages in India following strictly that advice all their lives.
Of course they had the power to know who brought the food, and even who
had touched the food, and I have seen it in my own life, not once, but
hundreds of times. Then Nimitta-dosha, the defect of impure things or
influences coming in contact with food is another. We had better attend to
that a little more now. It has become too prevalent in India to take food
with dirt and dust and bits of hair in it. If food is taken from which
these three defects have been removed, that makes Sattva-shuddhi, purifies
the Sattva. Religion seems to be a very easy task then. Then every one can
have religion if it comes by eating pure food only. There is none so weak
or incompetent in this world, that I know, who cannot save himself from
these defects. Then comes Shankaracharya, who says this word Ahara means
thought collected in the mind; when that becomes pure, the Sattva becomes
pure, and not before that. You may eat what
you
like. If food alone would purify the Sattva, then feed the monkey with
milk and rice all its life; would it become a great Yogi? Then the cows
and the deer would be great Yogis. As has been said, "If it is by
bathing much that heaven is reached, the fishes will get to heaven first.
If by eating vegetables a man gets to heaven, the cows and the deer will
get to heaven first."
But what is the
solution? Both are necessary. Of course the idea that Shankaracharya gives
us of Ahara is the primary idea. But pure food, no doubt, helps pure
thought; it has an intimate connection; both ought to be there. But the
defect is that in modern India we have forgotten the advice of
Shankaracharya and taken only the "pure food" meaning. That is
why people get mad with me when I say, religion has got into the kitchen;
and if you had been in Madras with me, you would have agreed with me. The
Bengalis are better than that. In Madras they throw away food if anybody
looks at it. And with all this, I do not see that the people are any the
better there. If only eating this and that sort of food and saving it from
the looks of this person and that person would give them perfection, you
would expect them all to be perfect men, which they are not.
Thus, although these
are to be combined and linked together to make a perfect whole, do not put
the cart before the horse. There is a cry nowadays about this and that
food and about Varnâshrama, and the Bengalis are the most vociferous in
these cries. I would ask every one of you, what do you know about this
Varnashrama? Where are the four castes today in this country? Answer me; I
do not see the four castes. Just as our Bengali proverb has it, "A
headache without a head", so you want to make this Varnashrama here.
There are not four castes here. I see only the Brâhmin and the Shudra. If
there are the Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas, where are they and why do not
you Brahmins order them to take the Yajnopavita
Shrutis.
Fathers of Calcutta, do you not feel ashamed that such horrible stuff as
these Vamachara Tantras, with translations too, should be put into the
hands of your boys and girls, and their minds poisoned, and that they
should be brought up with the idea that these are the Shastras of the
Hindus? If you are ashamed, take them away from your children, and let
them read the true Shastras, the Vedas, the Gita, the Upanishads.
According to the
dualistic sects of India, the individual souls remain as individuals
throughout, and God creates the universe out of pre-existing material only
as the efficient cause. According to the Advaitists, on the other hand,
God is both the material and the efficient cause of the universe. He is
not only the Creator of the universe, but He creates it out of Himself.
That is the Advaitist position. There are crude dualistic sects who
believe that this world has been created by God out of Himself, and at the
same time God is eternally separate from the universe, and everything is
eternally subordinate to the Ruler of the universe. There are sects too
who also believe that out of Himself God has evolved this universe, and
individuals in the long run attain to Nirvâna to give up the finite and
become the Infinite. But these sects have disappeared. The one sect of
Advaitists that you see in modern India is composed of the followers of
Shankara. According to Shankara, God is both the material and the
efficient cause through Mâyâ, but not in reality. God has not become
this universe; but the universe is not, and God is. This is one of the
highest points to understand of Advaita Vedanta, this idea of Maya. I am
afraid I have no time to discuss this one most difficult point in our
philosophy. Those of you who are acquainted with Western philosophy will
find something very similar in Kant. But I must warn you, those of you who
have studied Professor Max Müller's writings on Kant, that there is one
idea most misleading. It was Shankara who
first
found out the idea of the identity of time, space, and causation with
Maya, and I had the good fortune to find one or two passages in Shankara's
commentaries and send them to my friend the Professor. So even that idea
was here in India. Now this is a peculiar theory — this Maya theory of
the Advaita Vedantists. The Brahman is all that exists, but
differentiation has been caused by this Maya. Unity, the one Brahman, is
the ultimate, the goal, and herein is an eternal dissension again between
Indian and Western thought. India has thrown this challenge to the world
for thousands of years, and the challenge has been taken up by different
nations, and the result is that they all succumbed and you live. This is
the challenge that this world is a delusion, that it is all Maya, that
whether you eat off the ground with your fingers or dine off golden
plates, whether you live in palaces and are one of the mightest monarchs
or are the poorest of beggars, death is the one result; it is all the
same, all Maya. That is the old Indian theme, and again and again nations
are springing up trying to unsay it, to disprove it; becoming great, with
enjoyment as their watchword, power in their hands, they use that power to
the utmost, enjoy to the utmost, and the next moment they die. We stand
for ever because we see that everything is Maya. The children of Maya live
for ever, but the children of enjoyment die.
Here again is
another great difference. Just as you find the attempts of Hegel and
Schopenhauer in German philosophy, so you will find the very same ideas
brought forward in ancient India. Fortunately for us, Hegelianism was
nipped in the bud and not allowed to sprout and cast its baneful shoots
over this motherland of ours. Hegel's one idea is that the one, the
absolute, is only chaos, and that the individualized form is the greater.
The world is greater than the non-world, Samsâra is greater than
salvation. That is the one idea, and the more you plunge into this Samsara
the more your soul is covered with the
workings
of life, the better you are. They say, do you not see how we build houses,
cleanse the streets, enjoy the senses? Ay, behind that they may hide
rancour, misery, horror — behind every bit of that enjoyment.
On the other hand,
our philosophers have from the very first declared that every
manifestation, what you call evolution, is vain, a vain attempt of the
unmanifested to manifest itself. Ay, you the mighty cause of this
universe, trying to reflect yourself in little mud puddles! But after
making the attempt for a time you find out it was all in vain and beat a
retreat to the place from whence you came. This is Vairâgya, or
renunciation, and the very beginning of religion. How can religion or
morality begin without renunciation itself ? The Alpha and Omega is
renunciation. "Give up," says the Veda, "give up."
That is the one way, "Give up".
— "Neither
through wealth, nor through progeny, but by giving up alone that
immortality is to be reached." That is the dictate of the Indian
books. Of course, there have been great givers-up of the world, even
sitting on thrones. But even (King) Janaka himself had to renounce; who
was a greater renouncer than he? But in modern times we all want to be
called Janakas! They are all Janakas (lit. fathers) of children —
unclad, ill-fed, miserable children. The word Janaka can be applied to
them in that sense only; they have none of the shining, Godlike thoughts
as the old Janaka had. These are our modern Janakas! A little less of this
Janakism now, and come straight to the mark! If you can give up, you will
have religion. If you cannot, you may read all the books that are in the
world, from East to West, swallow all the libraries, and become the
greatest of Pandits, but if you have Karma Kanda only, you are nothing;
there is no spirituality. Through renunciation alone this immortality is
to be reached. It is the power, the great power, that cares not even for
the universe; then it is that 
"The whole
universe becomes like a hollow made by a cow's foot."
Renunciation, that
is the flag, the banner of India, floating over the world, the one undying
thought which India sends again and again as a warning to dying races, as
a warning to all tyranny, as a warning to wickedness in the world. Ay,
Hindus, let not your hold of that banner go. Hold it aloft. Even if you
are weak and cannot renounce, do not lower the ideal. Say, "I am weak
and cannot renounce the world", but do not try to be hypocrites,
torturing texts, and making specious arguments, and trying to throw dust
in the eyes of people who are ignorant. Do not do that, but own you are
weak. For the idea is great, that of renunciation. What matters it if
millions fail in the attempt, if ten soldiers or even two return
victorious! Blessed be the millions dead! Their blood has bought the
victory. This renunciation is the one ideal throughout the different Vedic
sects except one, and that is the Vallabhâchârya sect in Bombay
Presidency, and most of you are aware what comes where renunciation does
not exist. We want orthodoxy — even the hideously orthodox, even those
who smother themselves with ashes, even those who stand with their hands
uplifted. Ay, we want them, unnatural though they be, for standing for
that idea of giving up, and acting as a warning to the race against
succumbing to the effeminate luxuries that are creeping into India, eating
into our very vitals, and tending to make the whole race a race of
hypocrites. We want to have a little of asceticism. Renunciation conquered
India in days of yore, it has still to conquer India. Still it stands as
the greatest and highest of Indian ideals — this renunciation. The land
of Buddha, the land of Ramanuja, of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the land of
renunciation, the land where, from the days of yore, Karma Kanda was
preached against, and even today there are hundreds who have given up
everything, and become
Jivanmuktas
— ay, will that land give up its ideals? Certainly not. There may be
people whose brains have become turned by the Western luxurious ideals;
there may be thousands and hundreds of thousands who have drunk deep of
enjoyment, this curse of the West — the senses — the curse of the
world; yet for all that, there will be other thousands in this motherland
of mine to whom religion will ever be a reality, and who will be ever
ready to give up without counting the cost, if need be.
Another ideal very
common in all our sects, I want to place before you; it is also a vast
subject. This unique idea that religion is to be realised is in India
alone.
— "This Atman
is not to be reached by too much talking, nor is it to be reached by the
power of intellect, nor by much study of the scriptures." Nay, ours
is the only scripture in the world that declares, not even by the study of
the scriptures can the Atman be realised — not talks, not lecturing,
none of that, but It is to be realised. It comes from the teacher to the
disciple. When this insight comes to the disciple, everything is cleared
up and realisation follows.
One more idea. There
is a peculiar custom in Bengal, which they call Kula-Guru, or hereditary
Guruship. "My father was your Guru, now I shall be your Guru. My
father was the Guru of your father, so shall I be yours." What is a
Guru? Let us go back to the Shrutis — "He who knows the secret of
the Vedas", not bookworms, not grammarians, not Pandits in general,
but he who knows the meaning.
— "An ass
laden with a load of sandalwood knows only the weight of the wood, but not
its precious qualities"; so are these Pandits. We do not want such.
What can they teach if they have no realisation? When I was a boy here, in
this city of Calcutta, I used to go from place to place in search of
religion, and everywhere I asked the lecturer after hearing very big
lectures, "Have you seen God?"
The
man was taken aback at the idea of seeing God; and the only man who told
me, "I have", was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and not only so, but
he said, "I will put you in the way of seeing Him too". The Guru
is not a man who twists and tortures texts
— "Different
ways of throwing out words, different ways of explaining texts of the
scriptures, these are for the enjoyment of the learned, not for
freedom." Shrotriya, he who knows the secret of the Shrutis, Avrijina,
the sinless, and Akâmahata, unpierced by desire — he who does not want
to make money by teaching you — he is the Shânta, the Sâdhu, who comes
as the spring which brings the leaves and blossoms to various plants but
does not ask anything from the plant, for its very nature is to do good.
It does good and there it is. Such is the Guru,
— "Who has
himself crossed this terrible ocean of life, and without any idea of gain
to himself, helps others also to cross the ocean." This is the Guru,
and mark that none else can be a Guru, for
— "Themselves
steeped in darkness, but in the pride of their hearts, thinking they know
everything, the fools want to help others, and they go round and round in
many crooked ways, staggering to and fro, and thus like the blind leading
the blind, both fall into the ditch." Thus say the Vedas. Compare
that and your present custom. You are Vedantists, you are very orthodox,
are you not? You are great Hindus and very orthodox. Ay, what I want to do
is to make you more orthodox. The more orthodox you are, the more
sensible; and the more you think of modern orthodoxy, the more foolish you
are. Go back to your old orthodoxy, for in those days every sound that
came from these books, every pulsation, was out of a strong, steady, and
sincere heart; every note was true. After that came degradation in art, in
science, in religion,
in
everything, national degradation. We have no time to discuss the causes,
but all the books written about that period breathe of the pestilence —
the national decay; instead of vigour, only wails and cries. Go back, go
back to the old days when there was strength and vitality. Be strong once
more, drink deep of this fountain of yore, and that is the only condition
of life in India.
According to the
Advaitist, this individuality which we have today is a delusion. This has
been a hard nut to crack all over the world. Forthwith you tell a man he
is not an individual, he is so much afraid that his individuality,
whatever that may be, will be lost! But the Advaitist says there never has
been an individuality, you have been changing every moment of your life.
You were a child and thought in one way, now you are a man and think
another way, again you will be an old man and think differently. Everybody
is changing. If so, where is your individuality? Certainly not in the
body, or in the mind, or in thought. And beyond that is your Atman, and,
says the Advaitist, this Atman is the Brahman Itself. There cannot be two
infinites. There is only one individual and it is infinite. In plain
words, we are rational beings, and we want to reason. And what is reason?
More or less of classification, until you cannot go on any further. And
the finite can only find its ultimate rest when it is classified into the
infinite. Take up a finite thing and go on analysing it, but you will find
rest nowhere until you reach the ultimate or infinite, and that infinite,
says the Advaitist, is what alone exists. Everything else is Maya, nothing
else has real existence; whatever is of existence in any material thing is
this Brahman; we are this Brahman, and the shape and everything else is
Maya. Take away the form and shape, and you and I are all one. But we have
to guard against the word, "I". Generally people say, "If I
am the Brahman, why cannot I do this and that?" But this is using the
word in a different sense.
As
soon as you think you are bound, no more you are Brahman, the Self, who
wants nothing, whose light is inside. All His pleasures and bliss are
inside; perfectly satisfied with Himself, He wants nothing, expects
nothing, perfectly fearless, perfectly free. That is Brahman. In That we
are all one.
Now this seems,
therefore, to be the great point of difference between the dualist and the
Advaitist. You find even great commentators like Shankaracharya making
meanings of texts, which, to my mind, sometimes do not seem to be
justified. Sometimes you find Ramanuja dealing with texts in a way that is
not very clear. The idea has been even among our Pandits that only one of
these sects can be true and the rest must be false, although they have the
idea in the Shrutis, the most wonderful idea that India has yet to give to
the world: 
—
"That which exists is One; sages call It by various names." That
has been the theme, and the working out of the whole of this life-problem
of the nation is the working out of that theme — Yea,
except a very few learned men, I mean, barring a very few spiritual men,
in India, we always forget this. We forget this great idea, and you will
find that there are persons among Pandits — I should think ninety-eight
per cent — who are of opinion that either the Advaitist will be true, or
the Vishishtadvaitist will be true, or the Dvaitist will be true; and if
you go to Varanasi, and sit for five minutes in one of the Ghats there,
you will have demonstration of what I say. You will see a regular
bull-fight going on about these various sects and things.
Thus it remains.
Then came one whose life was the explanation, whose life was the working
out of the harmony that is the background of all the different sects of
India, I mean Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. It is his life that explains that
both of these are necessary, that they are like the geocentric and the
heliocentric theories in
astronomy.
When a child is taught astronomy, he is taught the geocentric first, and
works out similar ideas of astronomy to the geocentric. But when he comes
to finer points of astronomy, the heliocentric will be necessary, and he
will understand it better. Dualism is the natural idea of the senses; as
long as we are bound by the senses we are bound to see a God who is only
Personal, and nothing but Personal, we are bound to see the world as it
is. Says Ramanuja, "So long as you think you are a body, and you
think you are a mind, and you think you are a Jiva, every act of
perception will give you the three — Soul, and nature, and something as
causing both." But yet, at the same time, even the idea of the body
disappears where the mind itself becomes finer and finer, till it has
almost disappeared, when all the different things that make us fear, make
us weak, and bind us down to this body-life have disappeared. Then and
then alone one finds out the truth of that grand old teaching. What is the
teaching?
"Even in this
life they have conquered the round of birth and death whose minds are
firm-fixed on the sameness of everything, for God is pure and the same to
all, and therefore such are said to be living in God."
"Thus
seeing the Lord the same everywhere, he, the sage, does not hurt the Self
by the self, and so goes to the highest goal."
etc.
— "When darkness was hidden in darkness", so on it goes. One
reads and feels the wonderful sublimity of the poetry. Do you mark this
that outside of India, and inside also, there have been attempts at
painting the sublime. But outside, it has always been the infinite in the
muscles the external world, the infinite of matter, or of space. When
Milton or Dante, or any other great European poet, either ancient or
modern, wants to paint a picture of the infinite, he tries to soar
outside, to make you feel the infinite through the muscles. That attempt
has been made here also. You find it in the Samhitas, the infinite of
extension most marvellously painted and placed before the readers, such as
has been done nowhere else. Mark that one sentence — 
,
— and now mark the description of darkness by three poets. Take our own
Kâlidâsa — "Darkness which can be penetrated with the point of a
needle"; then Milton — "No light but rather darkness
visible"; but come now to the Upanishad, "Darkness was covering
darkness", "Darkness was hidden in darkness". We who live
in the tropics can understand it, the sudden outburst of the monsoon, when
in a moment, the horizon becomes darkened and clouds become covered with
more rolling black clouds. So on, the poem goes; but yet, in the Samhita
portion, all these attempts are external. As everywhere else, the attempts
at finding the solution of the great problems of life have been through
the external world. Just as the Greek mind or the modern European mind
wants to find the solution of life and of all the sacred problems of Being
by searching into the external world. so also did our forefathers, and
just as the Europeans failed, they failed also. But the Western people
never made a move more, they remained there, they failed in the search for
the solution of the great problems of life and death in the external
world, and there they remained, stranded; our forefathers also found it
impossible, but