|
THE
COMMON BASES OF HINDUISM
On
his arrival at Lahore the Swamiji was accorded a grand reception by the
leaders, both of the Ârya Samâj and of the Sanâtana Dharma Sabhâ.
During his brief stay in Lahore, Swamiji delivered three lectures. The
first of these was on "The Common Bases of Hinduism", the second
on "Bhakti",
and the third one was the famous lecture on "The
Vedanta".
On the first occasion he spoke as follows:
This
is the land which is held to be the holiest even in holy Âryâvarta; this
is the Brahmâvarta of which our great Manu speaks. This is the land from
whence arose that mighty aspiration after the Spirit, ay, which in times
to come, as history shows, is to deluge the world. This is the land where,
like its mighty rivers, spiritual aspirations have arisen and joined their
strength, till they travelled over the length and breadth of the world and
declared themselves with a voice of thunder. This is the land which had
first to bear the brunt of all inroads and invasions into India; this
heroic land had first to bare its bosom to every onslaught of the outer
barbarians into Aryavarta. This is the land which, after all its
sufferings, has not yet entirely lost its glory and its strength. Here it
was that in later times the gentle Nânak preached his marvellous love for
the world. Here it was that his broad heart was opened and his arms
outstretched to embrace the whole world, not only of Hindus, but of
Mohammedans too. Here it was that one of the last and one of the most
glorious heroes of our race, Guru Govinda Singh, after shedding his blood
and that of his dearest and nearest for the cause of religion, even when
deserted by those for whom this blood was shed, retired into the South to
die like a wounded lion struck to the heart, without a word against his
country, without a single word of murmur.
Here, in this
ancient land of ours, children of the land of five rivers, I stand before
you, not as a teacher, for I know very little to teach, but as one who has
come from the east to exchange words of greeting with the brothers of the
west, to compare notes. Here am I, not to find out differences that exist
among us, but to find where we agree. Here am I trying to understand on
what ground we may always remain brothers, upon what foundations the voice
that has spoken from eternity may become stronger and stronger as it
grows. Here am I trying to propose to you something of constructive work
and not destructive. For criticism the days are past, and we are waiting
for constructive work. The world needs, at times, criticisms even fierce
ones; but that is only for a time, and the work for eternity is progress
and construction, and not criticism and destruction. For the last hundred
years or so, there has been a flood of criticism all over this land of
ours, where the full play of Western science has been let loose upon all
the dark spots, and as a result the corners and the holes have become much
more prominent than anything else. Naturally enough there arose mighty
intellects all over the land, great and glorious, with the love of truth
and justice in their hearts, with the love of their country, and above
all, an intense love for their religion and their God; and because these
mighty souls felt so deeply, because they loved so deeply, they criticised
everything they thought was wrong. Glory unto these mighty spirits of the
past! They have done so much good; but the voice of the present day is
coming to us, telling, "Enough!" There has been enough of
criticism, there has been enough of fault-finding, the time has come for
the rebuilding, the reconstructing; the time has come for us to gather all
our scattered forces, to concentrate them into one focus, and through
that, to lead the nation on its onward march, which for centuries almost
has been stopped. The house has been cleansed; let it be inhabited
anew. The road has been cleared. March children of the Aryans!
Gentlemen, this is
the motive that brings me before you, and at the start I may declare to
you that I belong to no party and no sect. They are all great and glorious
to me, I love them all, and all my life I have been attempting to find
what is good and true in them. Therefore, it is my proposal tonight to
bring before you points where we are agreed, to find out, if we can, a
ground of agreement; and if through the grace of the Lord such a state of
things be possible, let us take it up, and from theory carry it out into
practice. We are Hindus. I do not use the word Hindu in any bad sense at
all, nor do I agree with those that think there is any bad meaning in it.
In old times, it simply meant people who lived on the other side of the
Indus; today a good many among those who hate us may have put a bad
interpretation upon it, but names are nothing. Upon us depends whether the
name Hindu will stand for everything that is glorious, everything that is
spiritual, or whether it will remain a name of opprobrium, one designating
the downtrodden, the worthless, the heathen. If at present the word Hindu
means anything bad, never mind; by our action let us be ready to show that
this is the highest word that any language can invent. It has been one of
the principles of my life not to be ashamed of my own ancestors. I am one
of the proudest men ever born, but let me tell you frankly, it is not for
myself, but on account of my ancestry. The more I have studied the past,
the more I have looked back, more and more has this pride come to me, and
it has given me the strength and courage of conviction, raised me up from
the dust of the earth, and set me working out that great plan laid out by
those great ancestors of ours. Children of those ancient Aryans, through
the grace of the Lord may you have the same pride, may that faith in your
ancestors come into your blood, may it become a part and parcel of
your lives, may it work towards the salvation of the world!
Before trying to
find out the precise point where we are all agreed, the common ground of
our national life, one thing we must remember. Just as there is an
individuality in every man, so there is a national individuality. As one
man differs from another in certain particulars, in certain
characteristics of his own, so one race differs from another in certain
peculiar characteristics; and just as it is the mission of every man to
fulfil a certain purpose in the economy of nature, just as there is a
particular line set out for him by his own past Karma, so it is with
nations — each nation has a destiny to fulfil, each nation has a message
to deliver, each nation has a mission to accomplish. Therefore, from the
very start, we must have to understand the mission of our own race, the
destiny it has to fulfil, the place it has to occupy in the march of
nations, the note which it has to contribute to the harmony of races. In
our country, when children, we hear stories how some serpents have jewels
in their heads, and whatever one may do with the serpent, so long as the
jewel is there, the serpent cannot be killed. We hear stories of giants
and ogres who had souls living in certain little birds, and so long as the
bird was safe, there was no power on earth to kill these giants; you might
hack them to pieces, or do what you liked to them, the giants could not
die. So with nations, there is a certain point where the life of a nation
centres, where lies the nationality of the nation, and until that is
touched, the nation cannot die. In the light of this we can understand the
most marvellous phenomenon that the history of the world has ever known.
Wave after wave of Barbarian conquest has rolled over this devoted land of
ours. "Allah Ho Akbar!" has rent the skies for hundreds of
years, and no Hindu knew what moment would be his last. This is the most
suffering and the most subjugated of all the historic lands of the world.
Yet we still stand practically
the same race, ready to face difficulties again and again if necessary;
and not only so, of late there have been signs that we are not only
strong, but ready to go out, for the sign of life is expansion.
We find today that
our ideas and thoughts are no more cooped up within the bounds of India,
but whether we will it or not, they are marching outside, filtering into
the literature of nations, taking their place among nations, and in some,
even getting a commanding dictatorial position. Behind this we find the
explanation that the great contribution to the sum total of the world's
progress from India is the greatest, the noblest, the sublimest theme that
can occupy the mind of man — it is philosophy and spirituality. Our
ancestors tried many other things; they, like other nations, first went to
bring out the secrets of external nature as we all know, and with their
gigantic brains that marvellous race could have done miracles in that line
of which the world could have been proud for ever. But they gave it up for
something higher; something better rings out from the pages of the Vedas:
"That science is the greatest which makes us know Him who never
changes!" The science of nature, changeful, evanescent, the world of
death, of woe, of misery, may be great, great indeed; but the science of
Him who changes not, the Blissful One, where alone is peace, where alone
is life eternal, where alone is perfection, where alone all misery ceases
— that, according to our ancestors, was the sublimest science of all.
After all, sciences that can give us only bread and clothes and power over
our fellowmen, sciences that can teach us only how to conquer our
fellow-beings, to rule over them, which teach the strong to domineer over
the weak — those they could have discovered if they willed. But praise
be unto the Lord, they caught at once the other side, which was grander,
infinitely higher, infinitely more blissful, till it has become the
national characteristic, till it has come down to us, inherited from
father to son for thousands of years,
till it has become a part and parcel of us, till it tingles in every drop
of blood that runs through our veins, till it has become our second
nature, till the name of religion and Hindu have become one. This is the
national characteristic, and this cannot be touched. Barbarians with sword
and fire, barbarians bringing barbarous religions, not one of them could
touch the core, not one could touch the "jewel", not one had the
power to kill the "bird" which the soul of the race inhabited.
This, therefore, is the vitality of I the race, and so long as that
remains, there is no power under the sun that can kill the race. All the
tortures and miseries of the world will pass over without hurting us, and
we shall come out of the flames like Prahlâda, so long as we hold on to
this grandest of all our inheritances, spirituality. If a Hindu is not
spiritual I do not call him a Hindu. In other countries a man may be
political first, and then he may have a little religion, but here in India
the first and the foremost duty of our lives is to be spiritual first, and
then, if there is time, let other things come. Bearing this in mind we
shall be in a better position to understand why, for our national welfare,
we must first seek out at the present day all the spiritual forces of the
race, as was done in days of yore and will be done in all times to come.
National union in India must be a gathering up of its scattered spiritual
forces. A nation in India must be a union of those whose hearts beat to
the same spiritual tune.
There have been
sects enough in this country. There are sects enough, and there will be
enough in the future, because this has been the peculiarity of our
religion that in abstract principles so much latitude has been given that,
although afterwards so much detail has been worked out, all these details
are the working out of principles, broad as the skies above our heads,
eternal as nature herself. Sects, therefore, as a matter of course, must
exist here, but what need not exist is sectarian quarrel. Sects must be
but sectarianism need not. The world would
not be the better for sectarianism, but the world cannot move on without
having sects. One set of men cannot do everything. The almost infinite
mass of energy in the world cannot tie managed by a small number of
people. Here, at once we see the necessity that forced this division of
labour upon us — the division into sects. For the use of spiritual
forces let there be sects; but is there any need that we should quarrel
when our most ancient books declare that this differentiation is only
apparent, that in spite of all these differences there is a thread of
harmony, that beautified unity, running through them all? Our most ancient
books have declared:  —
"That which exists is One; sages call Him by various names."
Therefore, if there are these sectarian struggles, if there are these
fights among the different sects, if there is jealousy and hatred between
the different sects in India, the land where all sects have always been
honoured, it is a shame on us who dare to call ourselves the descendants
of those fathers.
There are certain
great principles in which, I think, we — whether Vaishnavas, Shaivas, Shâktas,
or Gânapatyas, whether belonging to the ancient Vedantists or the modern
ones, whether belonging to the old rigid sects or the modern reformed ones
— are all one, and whoever calls himself a Hindu, believes in these
principles. Of course there is a difference in the interpretation, in the
explanation of these principles, and that difference should be there, and
it should be allowed, for our standard is not to bind every man down to
our position. It would be a sin to force every man to work out our own
interpretation of things, and to live by our own methods. Perhaps all who
are here will agree on the first point that we believe the Vedas to be the
eternal teachings of the secrets of religion. We all believe that this
holy literature is without beginning and without end, coeval with nature,
which is without beginning and without end; and that all our religious
differences, all our religious struggles must end when we stand in the
presence of that holy book; we are all agreed that this is the last court
of appeal in all our spiritual differences. We may take different points
of view as to what the Vedas are. There may be one sect which regards one
portion as more sacred than another, but that matters little so long as we
say that we are all brothers in the Vedas, that out of these venerable,
eternal, marvellous books has come everything that we possess today, good,
holy, and pure. Well, therefore, if we believe in all this, let this
principle first of all be preached broadcast throughout the length and
breadth of the land. If this be true, let the Vedas have that prominence
which they always deserve, and which we all believe in. First, then, the
Vedas. The second point we all believe in is God, the creating, the
preserving power of the whole universe, and unto whom it periodically
returns to come out at other periods and manifest this wonderful
phenomenon, called the universe. We may differ as to our conception of
God. One may believe in a God who is entirely personal, another may
believe in a God who is personal and yet not human, and yet another may
believe in a God who is entirely impersonal, and all may get their support
from the Vedas. Still we are all believers in God; that is to say, that
man who does not believe in a most marvellous Infinite Power from which
everything has come, in which everything lives, and to which everything
must in the end return, cannot be called a Hindu. If that be so, let us
try to preach that idea all over the land. Preach whatever conception you
have to give, there is no difference, we are not going to fight over it,
but preach God; that is all we want. One idea may be better than another,
but, mind you, not one of them is bad. One is good, another is better, and
again another may be the best, but the word bad does not enter the
category of our religion. Therefore, may the Lord bless them all who
preach the name of God in whatever
form they like! The more He is preached, the better for this race. Let our
children be brought up in this idea, let this idea enter the homes of the
poorest and the lowest, as well as of the richest and the highest — the
idea of the name of God.
The third idea that
I will present before you is that, unlike all other races of the world, we
do not believe that this world was created only so many thousand years
ago, and is going to be destroyed eternally on a certain day. Nor do we
believe that the human soul has been created along with this universe just
out of nothing. Here is another point I think we are all able to agree
upon. We believe in nature being without beginning and without end; only
at psychological periods this gross material of the outer universe goes
back to its finer state, thus to remain for a certain period, again to be
projected outside to manifest all this infinite panorama we call nature.
This wavelike motion was going on even before time began, through
eternity, and will remain for an infinite period of time.
Next, all Hindus
believe that man is not only a gross material body; not only that within
this there is the finer body, the mind, but there is something yet greater
— for the body changes and so does the mind — something beyond, the Âtman
— I cannot translate the word to you for any translation will be wrong
— that there is something beyond even this fine body, which is the Atman
of man, which has neither beginning nor end, which knows not what death
is. And then this peculiar idea, different from that of all other races of
men, that this Atman inhabits body after body until there is no more
interest for it to continue to do so, and it becomes free, not to be born
again, I refer to the theory of Samsâra and the theory of eternal souls
taught by our Shâstras. This is another point where we all agree,
whatever sect we may belong to. There may be differences as to the
relation between the soul and God. According to one sect the soul may be
eternally different from God, according
to another it may be a spark of that infinite fire, yet again according to
others it may be one with that Infinite. It does not matter what our
interpretation is, so long as we hold on to the one basic belief that the
soul is infinite, that this soul was never created, and therefore will
never die, that it had to pass and evolve into various bodies, till it
attained perfection in the human one — in that we are all agreed. And
then comes the most differentiating, the grandest, and the most wonderful
discovery in the realms of spirituality that has ever been made. Some of
you, perhaps, who have been studying Western thought, may have observed
already that there is another radical difference severing at one stroke
all that is Western from all that is Eastern. It is this that we hold,
whether we are Shâktas, Sauras, or Vaishnavas, even whether we are
Bauddhas or Jainas, we all hold in India that the soul is by its nature
pure and perfect, infinite in power and blessed. Only, according to the
dualist, this natural blissfulness of the soul has become contracted by
past bad work, and through the grace of God it is again going to open out
and show its perfection; while according to the monist, even this idea of
contraction is a partial mistake, it is the veil of Maya that causes us to
think the, soul has lost its powers, but the powers are there fully
manifest. Whatever the difference may be, we come to the central core, and
there is at once an irreconcilable difference between all that is Western
and Eastern. The Eastern is looking inward for all that is great and good.
When we worship, we close our eyes and try to find God within. The Western
is looking up outside for his God. To the Western their religious books
have been inspired, while with us our books have been expired; breath-like
they came, the breath of God, out of the hearts of sages they sprang, the
Mantra-drashtâs.
This is one great
point to understand, and, my friends, my brethren, let me tell you, this
is the one point we shall have to insist upon in the future. For I am
firmly convinced,
and I beg you to understand this one fact - no good comes out of the man
who day and night thinks he is nobody. If a man, day and night, thinks he
is miserable, low, and nothing, nothing he becomes. If you say yea, yea,
"I am, I am", so shall you be; and if you say "I am
not", think that you are not, and day and night meditate upon the
fact that you are nothing, ay, nothing shall you be. That is the great
fact which you ought to remember. We are the children of the Almighty, we
are sparks of the infinite, divine fire. How can we be nothings? We are
everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything, and man must do
everything. This faith in themselves was in the hearts of our ancestors,
this faith in themselves was the motive power that pushed them forward and
forward in the march of civilisation; and if there has been degeneration,
if there has been defect, mark my words, you will find that degradation to
have started on the day our people lost this faith in themselves. Losing
faith in one's self means losing faith in God. Do you believe in that
infinite, good Providence working in and through you? If you believe that
this Omnipresent One, the Antaryâmin, is present in every atom, is
through and through, Ota-prota, as the Sanskrit word goes, penetrating
your body, mind and soul, how can you lose, heart? I may be a little
bubble of water, and you may be a mountain-high wave. Never mind! The
infinite ocean is the background of me as well as of you. Mine also is
that infinite ocean of life, of power, of spirituality, as well as yours.
I am already joined — from my very birth, from the very fact of my life
— I am in Yoga with that infinite life and infinite goodness and
infinite power, as you are, mountain-high though you may be. Therefore, my
brethren, teach this life-saving, great, ennobling, grand doctrine to your
children, even from their very birth. You need not teach them Advaitism;
teach them Dvaitism, or any "ism" you please, but we have seen
that this is the common "ism" all through India; this marvellous
doctrine of the soul, the perfection of the soul, is commonly believed in
by all sects. As says our great philosopher Kapila, if purity has not been
the nature of the soul, it can never attain purity afterwards, for
anything that was not perfect by nature, even if it attained to
perfection, that perfection would go away again. If impurity is the nature
of man, then man will have to remain impure, even though he may be pure
for five minutes. The time will come when this purity will wash out, pass
away, and the old natural impurity will have its sway once more.
Therefore, say all our philosophers, good is our nature, perfection is our
nature, not imperfection, not impurity — and we should remember that.
Remember the beautiful example of the great sage who, when he was dying,
asked his mind to remember all his mighty deeds and all his mighty
thoughts. There you do not find that he was teaching his mind to remember
all his weaknesses and all his follies. Follies there are, weakness there
must be, but remember your real nature always — that is the only way to
cure the weakness, that is the only way to cure the follies.
It seems that these
few points are common among all the various religious sects in India, and
perhaps in future upon this common platform, conservative and liberal
religionists, old type and new type, may shake bands. Above all, there is
another thing to remember, which I am sorry we forget from time to time,
that religion, in India, means realisation and nothing short of that.
"Believe in the doctrine, and you are safe", can never be taught
to us, for we do not believe in that. You are what you make yourselves.
You are, by the grace of God and your own exertions, what you are. Mere
believing in certain theories and doctrines will not help you much. The
mighty word that came out from the sky of spirituality in India was
Anubhuti, realisation, and ours are the only books which declare again and
again: "The Lord is to be seen". Bold, brave words
indeed, but true to their very core; every sound,
every vibration is true. Religion is to be realised, not only heard; it is
not in learning some doctrine like a parrot. Neither is it mere
intellectual assent — that is nothing; but it must come into us. Ay, and
therefore the greatest proof that we have of the existence of a God is not
because our reason says so, but because God has been seen by the ancients
as well as by the moderns. We believe in the soul not only because there
are good reasons to prove its existence, but, above all, because there
have been in the past thousands in India, there are still many who have
realised, and there will be thousands in the future who will realise and
see their own souls. And there is no salvation for man until he sees God,
realises his own soul. Therefore, above all, let us understand this, and
the more we understand it the less we shall have of sectarianism in India,
for it is only that man who has realised God and seen Him, who is
religious. In him the knots have been cut asunder, in him alone the doubts
have subsided; he alone has become free from the fruits of action who has
seen Him who is nearest of the near and farthest of the far. Ay, we often
mistake mere prattle for religious truth, mere intellectual perorations
for great spiritual realisation, and then comes sectarianism, then comes
fight. If we once understand that this realisation is the only religion,
we shall look into our own hearts and find how far we are towards
realising the truths of religion. Then we shall understand that we
ourselves are groping in darkness, and are leading others to grope in the
same darkness, then we shall cease from sectarianism, quarrel, arid fight.
Ask a man who wants to start a sectarian fight, "Have you seen God?
Have you seen the Atman? If you have not, what right have you to preach
His name — you walking in darkness trying to lead me into the same
darkness — the blind leading the blind, and both falling into the
ditch?"
Therefore, take more
thought before you go and find fault
with others. Let them follow their own path to realisation so long as they
struggle to see truth in their own hearts; and when the broad, naked truth
will be seen, then they will find that wonderful blissfulness which
marvellously enough has been testified to by every seer in India, by every
one who has realised the truth. Then words of love alone will come out of
that heart, for it has already been touched by Him who is the essence of
Love Himself. Then and then alone, all sectarian quarrels will cease, and
we shall be in a position to understand, to bring to our hearts, to
embrace, to intensely love the very word Hindu and every one who bears
that name. Mark me, then and then alone you are a Hindu when the very name
sends through you a galvanic shock of strength. Then and then alone you
are a Hindu when every man who bears the name, from any country, speaking
our language or any other language, becomes at once the nearest and the
dearest to you. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when the distress of
anyone bearing that name comes to your heart and makes you feel as if your
own son were in distress. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when you
will be ready to bear everything for them, like the great example I have
quoted at the beginning of this lecture, of your great Guru Govind Singh.
Driven out from this country, fighting against its oppressors, after
having shed his own blood for the defence of the Hindu religion, after
having seen his children killed on the battlefield — ay, this example of
the great Guru, left even by those for whose sake he was shedding his
blood and the blood of his own nearest and dearest — he, the wounded
lion, retired from the field calmly to die in the South, but not a word of
curse escaped his lips against those who had ungratefully forsaken him!
Mark me, every one of you will have to be a Govind Singh, if you want to
do good to your country. You may see thousands of defects in your
countrymen, but mark their Hindu blood. They are the first Gods you will have
to worship even if they do everything to hurt you, even if everyone of
them send out a curse to you, you send out to them words of love. If they
drive you out, retire to die in silence like that mighty lion, Govind
Singh. Such a man is worthy of the name of Hindu; such an ideal ought to
be before us always. All our hatchets let us bury; send out this grand
current of love all round.
Let them talk of
India's regeneration as they like. Let me tell you as one who has been
working — at least trying to work — all his life, that there is no
regeneration for India until you be spiritual. Not only so, but upon it
depends the welfare of the whole world. For I must tell you frankly that
the very foundations of Western civilisation have been shaken to their
base. The mightiest buildings, if built upon the loose sand foundations of
materialism, must come to grief one day, must totter to their destruction
some day. The history of the world is our witness. Nation after nation has
arisen and based its greatness upon materialism, declaring man was all
matter. Ay, in Western language, a man gives up the ghost, but in our
language a man gives up his body. The Western man is a body first, and
then he has a soul; with us a man is a soul and spirit, and he has a body.
Therein lies a world of difference. All such civilisations, therefore, as
have been based upon such sand foundations as material comfort and all
that, have disappeared one after another, after short lives, from the face
of the world; but the civilisation of India and the other nations that
have stood at India's feet to listen and learn, namely, Japan and China,
live even to the present day, and there are signs even of revival among
them. Their lives are like that of the Phoenix, a thousand times
destroyed, but ready to spring up again more glorious. But a materialistic
civilisation once dashed down, never can come up again; that building once
thrown down is broken into pieces once for all. Therefore have patience
and wait, the future is in store for us.
Do not be in a
hurry, do not go out to imitate anybody else. This is another great lesson
we have to remember; imitation is not civilisation. I may deck myself out
in a Raja's dress, but will that make me a Raja? An ass in a lion's skin
never makes a lion. Imitation, cowardly imitation, never makes for
progress. It is verily the sign of awful degradation in a man. Ay, when a
man has begun to hate himself, then the last blow has come. When a man has
begun to be ashamed of his ancestors, the end has come. Here am I, one of
the least of the Hindu race, yet proud of my race, proud of my ancestors.
I am proud to call myself a Hindu, I am proud that I am one of your
unworthy servants. I am proud that I am a countryman of yours, you the
descendants of the sages, you the descendants of the most glorious Rishis
the world ever saw. Therefore have faith in yourselves, be proud of your
ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them. And do not imitate, do not
imitate! Whenever you are under the thumb of others, you lose your own
independence. If you are working, even in spiritual things, at the
dictation of others, slowly you lose all faculty, even of thought. Bring
out through your own exertions what you have, but do not imitate, yet take
what is good from others. We have to learn from others. You put the seed
in the ground, and give it plenty of earth, and air, and water to feed
upon; when the seed grows into the plant and into a gigantic tree, does it
become the earth, does it become the air, or does it become the water? It
becomes the mighty plant, the mighty tree, after its own nature, having
absorbed everything that was given to it. Let that be your position. We
have indeed many things to learn from others, yea, that man who refuses to
learn is already dead. Declares
our Manu:
— "Take the
jewel of a woman for your wife, though she be of inferior descent. Learn
supreme knowledge with service even from the man of low
birth; and even from the Chandâla, learn by serving him the way to
salvation." Learn everything that is good from others, but bring it
in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others. Do not be dragged
away out of this Indian life; do not for a moment think that it would be
better for India if all the Indians dressed, ate, and behaved like another
race. You know the difficulty of giving up a habit of a few years. The
Lord knows how many thousands of years are in your blood; this national
specialised life has been flowing in one way, the Lord knows for how many
thousands of years; and do you mean to say that that mighty stream, which
has nearly reached its ocean, can go back to the snows of its Himalayas
again? That is impossible! The struggle to do so would only break it.
Therefore, make way for the life-current of the nation. Take away the
blocks that bar the way to the progress of this mighty river, cleanse its
path, dear the channel, and out it will rush by its own natural impulse,
and the nation will go on careering and progressing.
These are the lines
which I beg to suggest to you for spiritual work in India. There are many
other great problems which, for want of time, I cannot bring before you
this night. For instance, there is the wonderful question of caste. I have
been studying this question, its pros and cons, all my life; I have
studied it in nearly every province in India. I have mixed with people of
all castes in nearly every part of the country, and I am too bewildered in
my own mind to grasp even the very significance of it. The more I try to
study it, the more I get bewildered. Still at last I find that a little
glimmer of light is before me, I begin to feel its significance just now.
Then there is the other great problem about eating and drinking. That is a
great problem indeed. It is not so useless a thing as we generally think.
I have come to the conclusion that the insistence which we make now about eating
and drinking is most curious and is just going against what the Shastras
required, that is to say, we come to grief by neglecting the proper purity
of the food we eat and drink; we have lost the true spirit of it.
There are several
other questions which I want to bring before you and show how these
problems can be solved, how to work out the ideas; but unfortunately the
meeting could not come to order until very late, and I do not wish to
detain you any longer now. I will, therefore, keep my ideas about caste
and other things for a future occasion.
Now, one word more
and I will finish about these spiritual ideas. Religion for a long time
has come to be static in India. What we want is to make it dynamic. I want
it to be brought into the life of everybody. Religion, as it always has
been in the past, must enter the palaces of kings as well as the homes of
the poorest peasants in the land. Religion, the common inheritance, the
universal birthright of the race, must be brought free to the door of
everybody. Religion in India must be made as free and as easy of access as
is God's air. And this is the kind of work we have to bring about in
India, but not by getting up little sects and fighting on points of
difference. Let us preach where we all agree and leave the differences to
remedy themselves. As I have said to the Indian people again and again, if
there is the darkness of centuries in a room and we go into the room and
begin to cry, "Oh, it is dark, it is dark!", will the darkness
go? Bring in the light and the darkness will vanish at once. This is the
secret of reforming men. Suggest to them higher things; believe in man
first. Why start with the belief that man is degraded and degenerated? I
have never failed in my faith in man in any case, even taking him at his
worst. Wherever I had faith in man, though at first the prospect was not
always bright, yet it triumphed in the long run. Have faith in man,
whether he appears to you to be a very learned one or a most ignorant one.
Have faith in man, whether
he appears to be an angel or the very devil himself. Have faith in man
first, and then having faith in him, believe that if there are defects in
him, if he makes mistakes, if he embraces the crudest and the vilest
doctrines, believe that it is not from his real nature that they come, but
from the want of higher ideals. If a man goes towards what is false, it is
because he cannot get what is true. Therefore the only method of
correcting what is false is by supplying him with what is true. Do this,
and let him compare. You give him the truth, and there your work is done.
Let him compare it in his own mind with what he has already in him; and,
mark my words, if you have really given him the truth, the false must
vanish, light must dispel darkness, and truth will bring the good out.
This is the way if you want to reform the country spiritually; this is the
way, and not fighting, not even telling people that what they are doing is
bad. Put the good before them, see how eagerly they take it, see how the
divine that never dies, that is always living in the human, comes up
awakened and stretches out its hand for all that is good, and all that is
glorious.
May
He who is the Creator, the Preserver, and the Protector of our race, the
God of our forefathers, whether called by the name of Vishnu, or Shiva, or
Shakti, or Ganapati, whether He is worshipped as Saguna or as Nirguna,
whether He is worshipped as personal or as impersonal, may He whom our
forefathers knew and addressed by the words, —
"That which exists is One; sages call Him by various names" —
may He enter into us with His mighty love; may He shower His blessings on
us, may He make us understand each other, may He make us work for each
other with real love, with intense love for truth, and may not the least
desire for our own personal fame, our own personal prestige, our own
personal advantage, enter into this great work of me spiritual
regeneration of India!
|
