Vivekananda delivered this Lecture at Los
Angeles, California in1900. He loved Christ and had many Christian disciples. It is posted on this Holiday.
The wave rises on the
ocean, and there is a hollow. Again another wave rises, perhaps bigger than the
former, to fall down again, similarly, again to rise — driving onward. In the
march of events, we notice the rise and fall, and we generally look towards the
rise, forgetting the fall. But both are necessary, and both are great. This is
the nature of the universe. Whether in the world of our thoughts, the world of
our relations in society, or in our spiritual affairs, the same movement of
succession, of rises and falls, is going on. Hence great predominances in the
march of events, the liberal ideals, are marshalled ahead, to sink down, to
digest, as it were, to ruminate over the past — to adjust, to conserve, to
gather strength once more for a rise and a bigger rise.
The history of nations
also has ever been like that. The great soul, the Messenger we are to study
this afternoon, came at a period of the history of his race which we may well
designate as a great fall. We catch only little glimpses here and there of the
stray records that have been kept of his sayings and doings; for verily it has
been well said, that the doings and sayings of that great soul would fill the
world if they had all been written down. And the three years of his ministry were
like one compressed, concentrated age, which it has taken nineteen hundred
years to unfold, and who knows how much longer it will yet take! Little men
like you and me are simply the recipients of just a little energy. A few
minutes, a few hours, a few years at best, are enough to spend it all, to
stretch it out, as it were, to its fullest strength, and then we are gone for
ever. But mark this giant that came; centuries and ages pass, yet the energy
that he left upon the world is not yet stretched, nor yet expended to its full.
It goes on adding new vigour as the ages roll on.
Now what you see in the
life of Christ is the life of all the past. The life of every man is, in a
manner, the life of the past. It comes to him through heredity, through
surroundings, through education, through his own reincarnation — the past of
the race. In a manner, the past of the earth, the past of the whole world is
there, upon every soul. What are we, in the present, but a result, an effect,
in the hands of that infinite past? What are we but floating waveless in the
eternal current of events, irresistibly moved forward and onward and incapable
of rest? But you and I are only little things, bubbles. There are always some
giant waves in the ocean of affairs, and in you and me the life of the past
race has been embodied only a little; but there are giants who embody, as it
were, almost the whole of the past and who stretch out their hands for the
future. These are the sign-posts here and there which point to the march of
humanity; these are verily gigantic, their shadows covering the earth — they
stand undying, eternal! As it has been said by the same Messenger, "No man
hath seen God at any time, but through the Son." And that is true. And
where shall we see God but in the Son? It is true that you and I, and the
poorest of us, the meanest even, embody that God, even reflect that God. The
vibration of light is everywhere, omnipresent; but we have to strike the light
of the lamp before we can see the light. The Omnipresent God of the universe
cannot be seen until He is reflected by these giant lamps of the earth — The
Prophets, the man-Gods, the Incarnations, the embodiments of God.
We all know that God
exists, and yet we do not see Him, we do not understand Him. Take one of these
great Messengers of light, compare his character with the highest ideal of God
that you ever formed, and you will find that your God falls short of the ideal,
and that the character of the Prophet exceeds your conceptions. You cannot even
form a higher ideal of God than what the actually embodied have practically
realised and set before us as an example. Is it wrong, therefore, to worship
these as God? Is it a sin to fall at the feet of these man-Gods and worship
them as the only divine beings in the world? If they are really, actually,
higher than all our conceptions of God, what harm is there in worshipping them?
Not only is there no harm, but it is the only possible and positive way of
worship. However much you may try by struggle, by abstraction, by whatsoever
method you like, still so long as you are a man in the world of men, your world
is human, your religion is human, and your God is human. And that must be so.
Who is not practical enough to take up an actually existing thing and give up
an idea which is only an abstraction, which he cannot grasp, and is difficult
of approach except through a concrete medium? Therefore, these Incarnations of
God have been worshipped in all ages and in all countries.
We are now going to
study a little of the life of Christ, the Incarnation of the Jews. When Christ
was born, the Jews were in that state which I call a state of fall between two
waves; a state of conservatism; a state where the human mind is, as it were,
tired for the time being of moving forward and is taking care only of what it
has already; a state when the attention is more bent upon particulars, upon
details, than upon the great, general, and bigger problems of life; a state of
stagnation, rather than a towing ahead; a state of suffering more than of doing.
Mark you, I do not blame this state of things. We have no right to criticise it
— because had it not been for this fall, the next rise, which was embodied in
Jesus of Nazareth would have been impossible. The Pharisees and Sadducees might
have been insincere, they might have been doing things which they ought not to
have done; they might have been even hypocrites; but whatever they were, these
factors were the very cause, of which the Messenger was the effect. The
Pharisees and Sadducees at one end were the very impetus which came out at the
other end as the gigantic brain of Jesus of Nazareth.
The attention to forms,
to formulas, to the everyday details of religion, and to rituals, may sometimes
be laughed at; but nevertheless, within them is strength. Many times in the
rushing forward we lose much strength. As a fact, the fanatic is stronger than
the liberal man. Even the fanatic, therefore, has one great virtue, he
conserves energy, a tremendous amount of it. As with the individual so with the
race, energy is gathered to be conserved. Hemmed in all around by external
enemies, driven to focus in a centre by the Romans, by the Hellenic tendencies
in the world of intellect, by waves from Persia, India, and Alexandria — hemmed
in physically, mentally, and morally — there stood the race with an inherent,
conservative, tremendous strength, which their descendants have not lost even
today. And the race was forced to concentrate and focus all its energies upon
Jerusalem and Judaism. But all power when once gathered cannot remain
collected; it must expend and expand itself. There is no power on earth which
can be kept long confined within a narrow limit. It cannot be kept compressed
too long to allow of expansion at a subsequent period.
This concentrated
energy amongst the Jewish race found its expression at the next period in the
rise of Christianity. The gathered streams collected into a body. Gradually,
all the little streams joined together, and became a surging wave on the top of
which we find standing out the character of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, every
Prophet is a creation of his own times, the creation of the past of his race;
he himself is the creator of the future. The cause of today is the effect of
the past and the cause for the future. In this position stands the Messenger.
In him is embodied all that is the best and greatest in his own race, the
meaning, the life, for which that race has struggled for ages; and he himself
is the impetus for the future, not only to his own race but to unnumbered other
races of the world.
We must bear another
fact in mind: that my view of the great Prophet of Nazareth would be from the
standpoint of the Orient. Many times you forget, also, that the Nazarene
himself was an Oriental of Orientals. With all your attempts to paint him with
blue eyes and yellow hair, the Nazarene was still an Oriental. All the similes,
the imageries, in which the Bible is written — the scenes, the locations, the
attitudes, the groups, the poetry, and symbol, — speak to you of the Orient: of
the bright sky, of the heat, of the sun, of the desert, of the thirsty men and
animals; of men and women coming with pitchers on their heads to fill them at
the wells; of the flocks, of the ploughmen, of the cultivation that is going on
around; of the water-mill and wheel, of the mill-pond, of the millstones. All
these are to be seen today in Asia.
The voice of Asia has
been the voice of religion. The voice of Europe is the voice of politics. Each
is great in its own sphere. The voice of Europe is the voice of ancient Greece.
To the Greek mind, his immediate society was all in all: beyond that, it is
Barbarian. None but the Greek has the right to live. Whatever the Greeks do is
right and correct; whatever else there exists in the world is neither right nor
correct, nor should be allowed to live. It is intensely human in its
sympathies, intensely natural, intensely artistic, therefore. The Greek lives
entirely in this world. He does not care to dream. Even his poetry is
practical. His gods and goddesses are not only human beings, but intensely
human, with all human passions and feelings almost the same as with any of us.
He loves what is beautiful, but, mind you, it is always external nature: the
beauty of the hills, of the snows, of the flowers, the beauty of forms and of
figures, the beauty in the human face, and, more often, in the human form —
that is what the Greeks liked. And the Greeks being the teachers of all
subsequent Europeanism, the voice of Europe is Greek.
There is another type
in Asia. Think of that vast, huge continent, whose mountain-tops go beyond the
clouds, almost touching the canopy of heaven's blue; a rolling desert of miles
upon miles where a drop of water cannot be found, neither will a blade of grass
grow; interminable forests and gigantic rivers rushing down into the sea. In
the midst of all these surroundings, the oriental love of the beautiful and of
the sublime developed itself in another direction. It looked inside, and not
outside. There is also the thirst for nature, and there is also the same thirst
for power; there is also the same thirst for excellence, the same idea of the
Greek and Barbarian, but it has extended over a larger circle. In Asia, even
today, birth or colour or language never makes a race. That which makes a race
is its religion. We are all Christians; we are all Mohammedans; we are all
Hindus, or all Buddhists. No matter if a Buddhist is a Chinaman, or is a man
from Persia, they think that they are brothers, because of their professing the
same religion. Religion is the tie, unity of humanity. And then again, the
Oriental, for the same reason, is a visionary, is a born dreamer. The ripples
of the waterfalls, the songs of the birds, the beauties of the sun and moon and
the stars and the whole earth are pleasant enough; but they are not sufficient
for the oriental mind; He wants to dream a dream beyond. He wants to go beyond
the present. The present, as it were, is nothing to him. The Orient has been
the cradle of the human race for ages, and all the vicissitudes of fortune are
there — kingdoms succeeding kingdoms, empires succeeding empires, human power,
glory, and wealth, all rolling down there: a Golgotha of power and learning.
That is the Orient: a Golgotha of power, of kingdoms, of learning. No wonder,
the oriental mind looks with contempt upon the things of this world and
naturally wants to see something that changeth not, something which dieth not,
something which in the midst of this world of misery and death is eternal, blissful,
undying. An oriental Prophet never tires of insisting upon these ideals; and,
as for Prophets, you may also remember that without one exception, all the
Messengers were Orientals.
We see, therefore, in
the life of this area: Messenger of life, the first watchword: "Not this
life, but something higher"; and, like the true son of the Orient, he is
practical in that. You people of the West are practical in your own department,
in military affairs, and in managing political circles and other things. Perhaps
the Oriental is not practical in those ways, but he is practical in his own
field; he is practical in religion. If one preaches a philosophy, tomorrow
there are hundreds who will struggle their best to make it practical in their
lives. If a man preaches that standing on one foot would lead one to salvation,
he will immediately get five hundred to stand on one foot. You may call it
ludicrous; but, mark you, beneath that is their philosophy — that intense
practicality. In the West, plans of salvation mean intellectual gymnastics —
plans which are never worked out, never brought into practical life. In the
West, the preacher who talks the best is the greatest preacher.
So, we find Jesus of
Nazareth, in the first place, the true son of the Orient, intensely practical.
He has no faith in this evanescent world and all its belongings. No need of
text-torturing, as is the fashion in the West in modern times, no need of
stretching out texts until the, will not stretch any more. Texts are not India
rubber, and even that has its limits. Now, no making of religion to pander to
the sense vanity of the present day! Mark you, let us all be honest. If we
cannot follow the ideal, let us confess our weakness, but not degrade it; let
not any try to pull it down. One gets sick at heart at the different accounts
of the life of the Christ that Western people give. I do not know what he was
or what he was not! One would make him a great politician; another, perhaps,
would make of him a great military general; another, a great patriotic Jew; and
so on. Is there any warrant in the books for all such assumptions? The best
commentary on the life of a great teacher is his own life. "The foxes have
holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay
his head." That is what Christ says as they only way to salvation; he lays
down no other way. Let us confess in sackcloth and ashes that we cannot do
that. We still have fondness for "me and mine". We want property,
money, wealth. Woe unto us! Let us confess and not put to shame that great
Teacher of Humanity! He had no family ties. But do you think that, that Man had
any physical ideas in him? Do you think that, this mass of light, this God and
not-man, came down to earth, to be the brother of animals? And yet, people make
him preach all sorts of things. He had no sex ideas! He was a soul! Nothing but
a soul — just working a body for the good of humanity; and that was all his
relation to the body. In the soul there is no sex. The disembodied soul has no
relationship to the animal, no relationship to the body. The ideal may be far
away beyond us. But never mind, keep to the ideal. Let us confess that it is
our ideal, but we cannot approach it yet.
He had no other
occupation in life, no other thought except that one, that he was a spirit. He
was a disembodied, unfettered, unbound spirit. And not only so, but he, with
his marvellous vision, had found that every man and woman, whether Jew or
Gentile, whether rich or poor, whether saint or sinner, was the embodiment of
the same undying spirit as himself. Therefore, the one work his whole life
showed was to call upon them to realise their own spiritual nature. Give up, he
says, these superstitious dreams that you are low and that you are poor. Think
not that you are trampled upon and tyrannised over as if you were slaves, for
within you is something that can never be tyrannised over, never be trampled
upon, never be troubled, never be killed. You are all Sons of God, immortal
spirit. "Know", he declared, "the Kingdom of Heaven is within
you." "I and my Father are one." Dare you stand up and say, not
only that "I am the Son of God", but I shall also find in my heart of
hearts that "I and my Father are one"? That was what Jesus of Nazareth
said. He never talks of this world and of this life. He has nothing to do with
it, except that he wants to get hold of the world as it is, give it a push and
drive it forward and onward until the whole world has reached to the effulgent
Light of God, until everyone has realised his spiritual nature, until death is
vanished and misery banished.
We have read the
different stories that have been written about him; we know the scholars and
their writings, and the higher criticism; and we know all that has been done by
study. We are not here to discuss how much of the New Testament is true, we are
not here to discuss how much of that life is historical. It does not matter at
all whether the New Testament was written within five hundred years of his
birth, nor does it matter even, how much of that life is true. But there is
something behind it, something we want to imitate. To tell a lie, you have to
imitate a truth, and that truth is a fact. You cannot imitate that which never
existed. You cannot imitate that which you never perceived. But there must have
been a nucleus, a tremendous power that came down, a marvellous manifestation
of spiritual power — and of that we are speaking. It stands there. Therefore,
we are not afraid of all the criticisms of the scholars. If I, as an Oriental,
have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one way left to me, that is,
to worship him as God and nothing else. Have we no right to worship him in that
way, do you mean to say? If we bring him down to our own level and simply pay
him a little respect as a great man, why should we worship at all? Our
scriptures say, "These great children of Light, who manifest the Light
themselves, who are Light themselves, they, being worshipped, become, as it
were, one with us and we become one with them."
For, you see, in three
ways man perceives God. At first the undeveloped intellect of the uneducated
man sees God as far away, up in the heavens somewhere, sitting on a throne as a
great Judge. He looks upon Him as a fire, as a terror. Now, that is good, for
there is nothing bad in it. You must remember that humanity travels not from
error to truth, but from truth to truth; it may be, if you like it better, from
lower truth to higher truth, but never from error to truth. Suppose you start
from here and travel towards the sun in a straight line. From here the sun
looks only small in size. Suppose you go forward a million miles, the sun will
be much bigger. At every stage the sun will become bigger and bigger. Suppose
twenty thousand photographs had been taken of the same sun, from different
standpoints; these twenty thousand photographs will all certainly differ from
one another. But can you deny that each is a photograph of the same sun? So all
forms of religion, high or low, are just different stages toward that eternal
state of Light, which is God Himself. Some embody a lower view, some a higher,
and that is all the difference. Therefore, the religions of the unthinking
masses all over the world must be, and have always been, of a God who is
outside of the universe, who lives in heaven, who governs from that place, who
is a punisher of the bad and a rewarder of the good, and so on. As man advanced
spiritually, he began to feel that God was omnipresent, that He must be in him,
that He must be everywhere, that He was not a distant God, but dearly the Soul
of all souls. As my soul moves my body, even so is God the mover of my soul.
Soul within soul. And a few individuals who had developed enough and were pure
enough, went still further, and at last found God. As the New Testament says,
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And they
found at last that they and the Father were one.
You find that all these
three stages are taught by the Great Teacher in the New Testament. Note the
Common Prayer he taught: "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy
name," and so on — a simple prayer, a child's prayer. Mark you, it is the
"Common Prayer" because it is intended for the uneducated masses. To
a higher circle, to those who had advanced a little more, he gave a more elevated
teaching: "I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." Do you
remember that? And then, when the Jews asked him who he was, he declared that
he and his Father were one, and the Jews thought that that was blasphemy. What
did he mean by that? This has been also told by your old Prophets, "Ye are
gods and all of you are children of the Most High." Mark the same three
stages. You will find that it is easier for you to begin with the first and end
with the last.
The Messenger came to
show the path: that the spirit is not in forms, that it is not through all
sorts of vexations and knotty problems of philosophy that you know the spirit.
Better that you had no learning, better that you never read a book in your
life. These are not at all necessary for salvation — neither wealth, nor
position nor power, not even learning; but what is necessary is that one thing,
purity. "Blessed are the pure in heart," for the spirit in its own
nature is pure. How can it be otherwise? It is of God, it has come from God. In
the language of the Bible, "It is the breath of God." In the language
of the Koran, "It is the soul of God." Do you mean to say that the
Spirit of God can ever be impure? But, alas, it has been, as it were, covered
over with the dust and dirt of ages, through our own actions, good and evil.
Various works which were not correct, which were not true, have covered the
same spirit with the dust and dirt of the ignorance of ages. It is only
necessary to clear away the dust and dirt, and then the spirit shines immediately.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you." Where goest thou to seek for the Kingdom
of God, asks Jesus of Nazareth, when it is there, within you? Cleanse the
spirit, and it is there. It is already yours. How can you get what is not
yours? It is yours by right. You are the heirs of immortality, sons of the
Eternal Father.
This is the great
lesson of the Messenger, and another which is the basis of all religions, is
renunciation. How can you make the spirit pure? By renunciation. A rich young
man asked Jesus, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal
life?" And Jesus said unto him, "One thing thou lackest; go thy way,
sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasures
in heaven: and come, take up thy cross, and follow Me." And he was sad at
that saying and went away grieved; for he had great possessions. We are all
more or less like that. The voice is ringing in our ears day and night. In the
midst of our pleasures and joys, in the midst of worldly things, we think that
we have forgotten everything else. Then comes a moment's pause and the voice
rings in our ears "Give up all that thou hast and follow Me."
"Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his
life for My sake shall find it." For whoever gives up this life for His
sake, finds the life immortal. In the midst of all our weakness there is a
moment of pause and the voice rings: "Give up all that thou hast; give it to
the poor and follow me." This is the one ideal he preaches, and this has
been the ideal preached by all the great Prophets of the world: renunciation.
What is meant by renunciation? That there is only one ideal in morality:
unselfishness. Be selfless. The ideal is perfect unselfishness. When a man is
struck on the right cheek, he turns the left also. When a man's coat is carried
off, he gives away his cloak also.
We should work in the
best way we can, without dragging the ideal down. Here is the ideal. When a man
has no more self in him, no possession, nothing to call "me" or
"mine", has given himself up entirely, destroyed himself as it were —
in that man is God Himself; for in him self-will is gone, crushed out,
annihilated. That is the ideal man. We cannot reach that state yet; yet, let us
worship the ideal, and slowly struggle to reach the ideal, though, maybe, with
faltering steps. It may be tomorrow, or it may be a thousand years hence; but
that ideal has to be reached. For it is not only the end, but also the means.
To be unselfish, perfectly selfless, is salvation itself; for the man within
dies, and God alone remains.
One more point. All the
teachers of humanity are unselfish. Suppose Jesus of Nazareth was teaching; and
a man came and told him, "What you teach is beautiful. I believe that it
is the way to perfection, and I am ready to follow it; but I do not care to
worship you as the only begotten Son of God." What would be the answer of
Jesus of Nazareth? "Very well, brother, follow the ideal and advance in
your own way. I do not care whether you give me the credit for the teaching or
not. I am not a shopkeeper. I do not trade in religion. I only teach truth, and
truth is nobody's property. Nobody can patent truth. Truth is God Himself. Go
forward." But what the disciples say nowadays is: "No matter whether
you practise the teachings or not, do you give credit to the Man? If you credit
the Master, you will be saved; if not, there is no salvation for you." And
thus the whole teaching of the Master is degenerated, and all the struggle and
fight is for the personality of the Man. They do not know that in imposing that
difference, they are, in a manner, bringing shame to the very Man they want to
honour — the very Man that would have shrunk with shame from such an idea. What
did he care if there was one man in the world that remembered him or not? He
had to deliver his message, and he gave it. And if he had twenty thousand
lives, he would give them all up for the poorest man in the world. If he had to
be tortured millions of times for a million despised Samaritans, and if for
each one of them the sacrifice of his own life would be the only condition of
salvation, he would have given his life. And all this without wishing to have
his name known even to a single person. Quiet, unknown, silent, would he world,
just as the Lord works. Now, what would the disciple say? He will tell you that
you may be a perfect man, perfectly unselfish; but unless you give the credit
to our teacher, to our saint, it is of no avail. Why? What is the origin of
this superstition, this ignorance? The disciple thinks that the Lord can
manifest Himself only once. There lies the whole mistake. God manifests Himself
to you in man. But throughout nature, what happens once must have happened
before, and must happen in future. There is nothing in nature which is not
bound by law; and that means that whatever happens once must go on and must
have been going on.
In India they have the
same idea of the Incarnations of God. One of their great Incarnations, Krishna,
whose grand sermon, the Bhagavad-Gitâ, some of you might have read, says,
"Though I am unborn, of changeless nature, and Lord of beings, yet
subjugating My Prakriti, I come into being by My own Mâyâ. Whenever virtue
subsides and immorality prevails, then I body Myself forth. For the protection
of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of
Dharma, I come into being, in every age." Whenever the world goes down,
the Lord comes to help it forward; and so He does from time to time and place
to place. In another passage He speaks to this effect: Wherever thou findest a
great soul of immense power and purity struggling to raise humanity, know that
he is born of My splendour, that I am there working through him.
Let us, therefore, find
God not only in Jesus of Nazareth, but in all the great Ones that have preceded
him, in all that came after him, and all that are yet to come. Our worship is
unbounded and free. They are all manifestations of the same Infinite God. They
are all pure and unselfish; they struggled and gave up their lives for us, poor
human beings. They each and all suffer vicarious atonement for every one of us,
and also for all that are to come hereafter.
In a sense you are all
Prophets; every one of you is a Prophet, bearing the burden of the world on
your own shoulders. Have you ever seen a man, have you ever seen a woman, who
is not quietly, patiently, bearing his or her little burden of life? The great
Prophets were giants — they bore a gigantic world on their shoulders. Compared
with them we are pigmies, no doubt, yet we are doing the same task; in our
little circles, in our little homes, we are bearing our little crosses. There
is no one so evil, no one so worthless, but he has to bear his own cross. But with
all our mistakes, with all our evil thoughts and evil deeds, there is a bright
spot somewhere, there is still somewhere the golden thread through which we are
always in touch with the divine. For, know for certain, that the moment the
touch of the divine is lost there would be annihilation. And because none can
be annihilated, there is always somewhere in our heart of hearts, however low
and degraded we may be, a little circle of light which is in constant touch
with the divine.
Our salutations go to all
the past Prophets whose teachings and lives we have inherited, whatever might
have been their race, clime, or creed! Our salutations go to all those Godlike
men and women who are working to help humanity, whatever be their birth,
colour, or race! Our salutations to those who are coming in the future — living
Gods — to work unselfishly for our descendants.
SOURCE: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda [Volume:4]
