A huge locomotive has
rushed on over the line and a small worm that was
creeping upon one of the
rails saved its life by crawling out of the path of the locomotive. Yet this
little worm, so insignificant that it can be crushed in a moment, is a living
something, while this locomotive, so huge, so immense, is only an engine, a
machine. You say the one has life and the other is only dead matter and all its
powers and strength and speed are only those of a dead machine, a mechanical
contrivance. Yet the poor little worm which moved upon the rail and which the
least touch of the engine would have deprived of its life is a majestic being
compared to that huge locomotive. It is a small part of the Infinite and,
therefore, it is greater than this powerful engine. Why should that be so? How
do we know the living from the dead? The machine mechanically performs all the
movements its maker made it to perform, its movements are not those of life.
How can we make the distinction between the living and the dead, then? In the
living there is freedom, there is intelligence; in the dead all is bound and no
freedom is possible, because there is no intelligence. This freedom that
distinguishes us from mere machines is what we are all striving for. To be more
free is the goal of all our efforts, for only in perfect freedom can there be
perfection. This effort to attain freedom underlies all forms of worship,
whether we know it or not.
 |
| Swami Vivekananda |
If we were to examine
the various sorts of worship all over the world, we would see that the rudest
of mankind are worshipping ghosts, demons, and the spirits of their forefathers
— serpent worship, worship of tribal gods, and worship of the departed ones.
Why do they do this? Because they feel that in some unknown way these beings
are greater, more powerful than themselves, and limit their freedom. They,
therefore, seek to propitiate these beings in order to prevent them from
molesting them, in other words, to get more freedom. They also seek to win
favour from these superior beings, to get by gift of the gods what ought to be
earned by personal effort.
On the whole, this
shows that the world is expecting a miracle. This expectation never leaves us,
and however we may try, we are all running after the miraculous and
extraordinary. What is mind but that ceaseless inquiry into the meaning and
mystery of life? We may say that only uncultivated people are going after all
these things, but the question still is there: Why should it be so? The Jews
were asking for a miracle. The whole world has been asking for the same these
thousands of years. There is, again, the universal dissatisfaction. We make an
ideal but we have rushed only half the way after it when we make a newer one.
We struggle hard to attain to some goal and then discover we do not want it.
This dissatisfaction we are having time after time, and what is there in the
mind if there is to be only dissatisfaction? What is the meaning of this
universal dissatisfaction? It is because freedom is every man's goal. He seeks
it ever, his whole life is a struggle after it. The child rebels against law as
soon as it is born. Its first utterance is a cry, a protest against the bondage
in which it finds itself. This longing for freedom produces the idea of a Being
who is absolutely free. The concept of God is a fundamental element in the
human constitution. In the Vedanta, Sat-chit-ânanda (Existence-Knowledge-Bliss)
is the highest concept of God possible to the mind. It is the essence of
knowledge and is by its nature the essence of bliss. We have been stifling that
inner voice long enough, seeking to follow law and quiet the human nature, but
there is that human instinct to rebel against nature's laws. We may not
understand what the meaning is, but there is that unconscious struggle of the
human with the spiritual, of the lower with the higher mind, and the struggle
attempts to preserve one's separate life, what we call our
"individuality".
Even hells stand out
with this miraculous fact that we are born rebels; and the first fact of life —
the inrushing of life itself — against this we rebel and cry out, "No law
for us." As long as we obey the laws we are like machines, and on goes the
universe, and we cannot break it. Laws as laws become man's nature. The first
inkling of life on its higher level is in seeing this struggle within us to
break the bond of nature and to be free. "Freedom, O Freedom! Freedom, O
Freedom!" is the song of the soul. Bondage, alas, to be bound in nature,
seems its fate.
Why should there be
serpent, or ghost, or demon worship and all these various creeds and forms for
having miracles? Why do we say that there is life, there is being in anything?
There must be a meaning in all this search, this endeavour to understand life,
to explain being. It is not meaningless and vain. It is man's ceaseless
endeavour to become free. The knowledge which we now call science has been struggling
for thousands of years in its attempt to gain freedom, and people ask for
freedom. Yet there is no freedom in nature. It is all law. Still the struggle
goes on. Nay, the whole of nature from the very sun to the atoms is under law,
and even for man there is no freedom. But we cannot believe it. We have been
studying laws from the beginning and yet cannot — nay, will not — believe that
man is under law. The soul cries ever, "Freedom, O Freedom!" With the
conception of God as a perfectly free Being, man cannot rest eternally in this
bondage. Higher he must go, and unless the struggle were for himself, he would
think it too severe. Man says to himself, "I am a born slave, I am bound;
nevertheless, there is a Being who is not bound by nature. He is free and
Master of nature."
The conception of God,
therefore, is as essential and as fundamental a part of mind as is the idea of
bondage. Both are the outcome of the idea of freedom. There cannot be life,
even in the plant, without the idea of freedom. In the plant or in the worm,
life has to rise to the individual concept. It is there, unconsciously working,
the plant living its life to preserve the variety, principle, or form, not
nature. The idea of nature controlling every step onward overrules the idea of
freedom. Onward goes the idea of the material world, onward moves the idea of
freedom. Still the fight goes on. We are hearing about all the quarrels of
creeds and sects, yet creeds and sects are just and proper, they must be there.
The chain is lengthening and naturally the struggle increases, but there need
be no quarrels if we only knew that we are all striving to reach the same goal.
The embodiment of
freedom, the Master of nature, is what we call God. You cannot deny Him. No,
because you cannot move or live without the idea of freedom. Would you come
here if you did not believe you were free? It is quite possible that the
biologist can and will give some explanation of this perpetual effort to be
free. Take all that for granted, still the idea of freedom is there. It is a
fact, as much so as the other fact that you cannot apparently get over, the
fact of being under nature.
Bondage and liberty,
light and shadow, good and evil must be there, but the very fact of the bondage
shows also this freedom hidden there. If one is a fact, the other is equally a
fact. There must be this idea of freedom. While now we cannot see that this
idea of bondage, in uncultivated man, is his struggle for freedom, yet the idea
of freedom is there. The bondage of sin and impurity in the uncultivated savage
is to his consciousness very small, for his nature is only a little higher than
the animal's. What he struggles against is the bondage of physical nature, the
lack of physical gratification, but out of this lower consciousness grows and
broadens the higher conception of a mental or moral bondage and a longing for
spiritual freedom. Here we see the divine dimly shining through the veil of
ignorance. The veil is very dense at first and the light may be almost
obscured, but it is there, ever pure and undimmed — the radiant fire of freedom
and perfection. Man personifies this as the Ruler of the Universe, the One Free
Being. He does not yet know that the universe is all one, that the difference
is only in degree, in the concept.
The whole of nature is
worship of God. Wherever there is life, there is this search for freedom and
that freedom is the same as God. Necessarily this freedom gives us mastery over
all nature and is impossible without knowledge. The more we are knowing, the more
we are becoming masters of nature. Mastery alone is making us strong and if
there be some being entirely free and master of nature, that being must have a
perfect knowledge of nature, must be omnipresent and omniscient. Freedom must
go hand in hand with these, and that being alone who has acquired these will be
beyond nature.
Blessedness, eternal
peace, arising from perfect freedom, is the highest concept of religion
underlying all the ideas of God in Vedanta — absolutely free Existence, not
bound by anything, no change, no nature, nothing that can produce a change in
Him. This same freedom is in you and in me and is the only real freedom.
God is still,
established upon His own majestic changeless Self. You and I try to be one with
Him, but plant ourselves upon nature, upon the trifles of daily life, on money,
on fame, on human love, and all these changing forms in nature which make for
bondage. When nature shines, upon what depends the shining? Upon God and not
upon the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. Wherever anything shines, whether it
is the light in the sun or in our own consciousness, it is He. He shining, all
shines after Him.
Now we have seen that
this God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and Master of
nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done
according to Him, whether we know it or not. I go one step further. That at
which all marvel, that which we call evil, is His worship too. This too is a
part of freedom. Nay, I will be terrible even and tell you that, when you are
doing evil, the impulse behind is also that freedom. It may have been misguided
and misled, but it was there; and there cannot be any life or any impulse
unless that freedom be behind it. Freedom breathes in the throb of the universe.
Unless there is unity at the universal heart, we cannot understand variety.
Such is the conception of the Lord in the Upanishads. Sometimes it rises even
higher, presenting to us an ideal before which at first we stand aghast — that
we are in essence one with God. He who is the colouring in the wings of the
butterfly, and the blossoming of the rose-bud, is the power that is in the
plant and in the butterfly. He who gives us life is the power within us. Out of
His fire comes life, and the direst death is also His power. He whose shadow is
death, His shadow is immortality also. Take a still higher conception. See how
we are flying like hunted hares from all that is terrible, and like them,
hiding our heads and thinking we are safe. See how the whole world is flying
from everything terrible. Once when I was in Varanasi, I was passing through a
place where there was a large tank of water on one side and a high wall on the
other. It was in the grounds where there were many monkeys. The monkeys of
Varanasi are huge brutes and are sometimes surly. They now took it into their
heads not to allow me to pass through their street, so they howled and shrieked
and clutched at my feet as I passed. As they pressed closer, I began to run,
but the faster I ran, the faster came the monkeys and they began to bite at me.
It seemed impossible to escape, but just then I met a stranger who called out
to me, "Face the brutes." I turned and faced the monkeys, and they
fell back and finally fled. That is a lesson for all life — face the terrible,
face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease
to flee before them. If we are ever to gain freedom, it must be by conquering
nature, never by running away. Cowards never win victories. We have to fight
fear and troubles and ignorance if we expect them to flee before us.
What is death? What are
terrors? Do you not see the Lord's face in them? Fly from evil and terror and
misery, and they will follow you. Face them, and they will flee. The whole
world worships ease and pleasure, and very few dare to worship that which is
painful. To rise above both is the idea of freedom. Unless man passes through
this gate he cannot be free. We all have to face these. We strive to worship
the Lord, but the body rises between, nature rises between Him and us and
blinds our vision. We must learn how to worship and love Him in the
thunderbolt, in shame, in sorrow, in sin. All the world has ever been preaching
the God of virtue. I preach a God of virtue and a God of sin in one. Take Him
if you dare — that is the one way to salvation; then alone will come to us the
Truth Ultimate which comes from the idea of oneness. Then will be lost the idea
that one is greater than another. The nearer we approach the law of freedom,
the more we shall come under the Lord, and troubles will vanish. Then we shall
not differentiate the door of hell from the gate of heaven, nor differentiate
between men and say, "I am greater than any being in the universe."
Until we see nothing in the world but the Lord Himself, all these evils will
beset us and we shall make all these distinctions; because it is only in the
Lord, in the Spirit, that we are all one; and until we see God everywhere, this
unity will not exist for us.
Two birds of beautiful
plumage, inseparable companions, sat upon the same tree, one on the top and one
below. The beautiful bird below was eating the fruits of the tree, sweet and
bitter, one moment a sweet one and another a bitter. The moment he ate a bitter
fruit, he was sorry, but after a while he ate another and when it too was
bitter, he looked up and saw the other bird who ate neither the sweet nor the
bitter, but was calm and majestic, immersed in his own glory. And then the poor
lower bird forgot and went on eating the sweet and bitter fruits again, until
at last he ate one that was extremely bitter; and then he stopped again and
once more looked up at the glorious bird above. Then he came nearer and nearer
to the other bird; and when he had come near enough, rays of light shone upon
him and enveloped him, and he saw he was transformed into the higher bird. He
became calm, majestic, free, and found that there had been but one bird all the
time on the tree. The lower bird was but the reflection of the one above. So we
are in reality one with the Lord, but the reflection makes us seem many, as
when the one sun reflects in a million dew-drops and seems a million tiny suns.
The reflection must vanish if we are to identify ourselves with our real nature
which is divine. The universe itself can never be the limit of our
satisfaction. That is why the miser gathers more and more money, that is why
the robber robs, the sinner sins, that is why you are learning philosophy. All
have one purpose. There is no other purpose in life, save to reach this
freedom. Consciously or unconsciously, we are all striving for perfection.
Every being must attain to it.
The man who is groping
through sin, through misery, the man who is choosing the path through hells,
will reach it, but it will take time. We cannot save him. Some hard knocks on
his head will help him to turn to the Lord. The path of virtue, purity,
unselfishness, spirituality, becomes known at last and what all are doing
unconsciously, we are trying to do consciously. The idea is expressed by St.
Paul, "The God that ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
This is the lesson for the whole world to learn. What have these philosophies
and theories of nature to do, if not to help us to attain to this one goal in life?
Let us come to that consciousness of the identity of everything and let man see
himself in everything. Let us be no more the worshippers of creeds or sects
with small limited notions of God, but see Him in everything in the universe.
If you are knowers of God, you will everywhere find the same worship as in your
own heart.
Get rid, in the first
place, of all these limited ideas and see God in every person — working through
all hands, walking through all feet, and eating through every mouth. In every being
He lives, through all minds He thinks. He is self-evident, nearer unto us than
ourselves. To know this is religion, is faith, and may it please the Lord to
give us this faith! When we shall feel that oneness, we shall be immortal. We
are physically immortal even, one with the universe. So long as there is one
that breathes throughout the universe, I live in that one. I am not this
limited little being, I am the universal. I am the life of all the sons of the
past. I am the soul of Buddha, of Jesus, of Mohammed. I am the soul of the
teachers, and I am all the robbers that robbed, and all the murderers that were
hanged, I am the universal. Stand up then; this is the highest worship. You are
one with the universe. That only is humility — not crawling upon all fours and
calling yourself a sinner. That is the highest evolution when this veil of
differentiation is torn off. The highest creed is Oneness. I am so-and-so is a
limited idea, not true of the real "I". I am the universal; stand
upon that and ever worship the Highest through the highest form, for God is
Spirit and should be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Through lower forms of
worship, man's material thoughts rise to spiritual worship and the Universal
Infinite One is at last worshipped in and through the spirit. That which is
limited is material. The Spirit alone is infinite. God is Spirit, is infinite;
man is Spirit and, therefore, infinite, and the Infinite alone can worship the
Infinite. We will worship the Infinite; that is the highest spiritual worship.
The grandeur of realising these ideas, how difficult it is! I theorise, talk,
philosophize; and the next moment something comes against me, and I
unconsciously become angry, I forget there is anything in the universe but this
little limited self, I forget to say, "I am the Spirit, what is this
trifle to me? I am the Spirit." I forget it is all myself playing, I
forget God, I forget freedom.
Sharp as the blade of a
razor, long and difficult and hard to cross, is the way to freedom. The sages
have declared this again and again. Yet do not let these weaknesses and
failures bind you. The Upanishads have declared, "Arise ! Awake ! and stop
not until the goal is reached." We will then certainly cross the path,
sharp as it is like the razor, and long and distant and difficult though it be.
Man becomes the master of gods and demons. No one is to blame for our miseries
but ourselves. Do you think there is only a dark cup of poison if man goes to
look for nectar? The nectar is these and is for every man who strives to reach
it. The Lord Himself tells us, "Give up all these paths and struggles. Do
thou take refuge in Me. I will take thee to the other shore, be not
afraid." We hear that from all the scriptures of the world that come to
us. The same voice teaches Us to say, "Thy will be done upon earth, as it
is in heaven," for "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the
glory." It is difficult, all very difficult. I say to myself, "This
moment I will take refuge in Thee, O Lord. Unto Thy love I will sacrifice all,
and on Thine altar I will place all that is good and virtuous. My sins, my
sorrows, my actions, good and evil, I will offer unto Thee; do Thou take them
and I will never forget." One moment I say, "Thy will be done,"
and the next moment something comes to try me and I spring up in a rage. The
goal of all religions is the same, but the language of the teachers differs.
The attempt is to kill the false "I", so that the real "I",
the Lord, will reign. "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. Thou shalt
have no other gods before me," say the Hebrew scriptures. God must be
there all alone. We must say, "Not I, but Thou," and then we should
give up everything but the Lord. He, and He alone, should reign. Perhaps we
struggle hard, and yet the next moment our feet slip, and then we try to
stretch out our hands to Mother. We find we cannot stand alone. Life is
infinite, one chapter of which is, "Thy will be done," and unless we
realise all the chapters we cannot realise the whole. "Thy will be done"
— every moment the traitor mind rebels against it, yet it must be said, again
and again, if we are to conquer the lower self. We cannot serve a traitor and
yet be saved. There is salvation for all except the traitor and we stand
condemned as traitors, traitors against our own selves, against the majesty of
Mother, when we refuse to obey the voice of our higher Self. Come what will, we
must give our bodies and minds up to the Supreme Will. Well has it been said by
the Hindu philosopher, "If man says twice, 'Thy will be done,' he commits
sin." "Thy will be done," what more is needed, why say it twice?
What is good is good. No more shall we take it back. "Thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory
for evermore."
SOURCE: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda; Volume-1
Lectures and Discourses
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