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| Swami Vivekananda |
The Hindus found their creed upon the ancient Vedas, a word derived
from Vid, "to know". These are a series of books which, to our minds,
contain the essence of all religion; but we do not think they alone contain the
truths. They teach us the immortality of the soul. In every country and every
human breast there is a natural desire to find a stable equilibrium — something
that does not change. We cannot find it in nature, for all the universe is
nothing but an infinite mass of changes. But to infer from that that nothing
unchanging exists is to fall into the error of the Southern school of Buddhists
and the Chârvâkas, which latter believe that all is matter and nothing mind,
that all religion is a cheat, and morality and goodness, useless superstitions.
The Vedanta philosophy teaches that man is not bound by his five senses. They
only know the present, and neither the future nor the past; but as the present
signifies both past and future, and all three are only demarcations of time,
the present also would be unknown if it were not for something above the
senses, something independent of time, which unifies the past and the future in
the present.
But what is independent? Not our body, for it depends upon outward
conditions; nor our mind, because the thoughts of which it is composed are
caused. It is our soul. The Vedas say the whole world is a mixture of
independence and dependence, of freedom and slavery, but through it all shines
the soul independent, immortal, pure, perfect, holy. For if it is independent,
it cannot perish, as death is but a change, and depends upon conditions; if
independent, it must be perfect, for imperfection is again but a condition, and
therefore dependent. And this immortal and perfect soul must be the same in the
highest God as well as in the humblest man, the difference between them being
only in the degree in which this soul manifests itself.
But why should the soul take to itself a body? For the same reason that
I take a looking-glass — to see myself. Thus, in the body, the soul is
reflected. The soul is God, and every human being has a perfect divinity within
himself, and each one must show his divinity sooner or later. If I am in a dark
room, no amount of protestation will make it any brighter — I must light a
match. Just so, no amount of grumbling and wailing will make our imperfect body
more perfect. But the Vedanta teaches — call forth your soul, show your divinity.
Teach your children that they are divine, that religion is a positive something
and not a negative nonsense; that it is not subjection to groans when under
oppression, but expansion and manifestation.
Every religion has it that man's present and future are modified by the
past, and that the present is but the effect of the past. How is it, then, that
every child is born with an experience that cannot be accounted for by
hereditary transmission? How is it that one is born of good parents, receives a
good education and becomes a good man, while another comes from besotted
parents and ends on the gallows? How do you explain this inequality without
implicating God? Why should a merciful Father set His child in such conditions
which must bring forth misery? It is no explanation to say God will make
amends; later on — God has no blood-money. Then, too, what becomes of my
liberty, if this be my first birth? Coming into this world without the
experience of a former life, my independence would be gone, for my path would
be marked out by the experience of others. If I cannot be the maker of my own
fortune, then I am not free. I take upon myself the blame for the misery of
this existence, and say I will unmake the evil I have done in another
existence. This, then, is our philosophy of the migration of the soul. We come
into this life with the experience of another, and the fortune or misfortune of
this existence is the result of our acts in a former existence, always becoming
better, till at last perfection is reached.
We believe in a God, the Father of the universe, infinite and
omnipotent. But if our soul at last becomes perfect, it also must become
infinite. But there is no room for two infinite unconditional beings, and hence
we believe in a Personal God, and we ourselves are He. These are the three
stages which every religion has taken. First we see God in the far beyond, then
we come nearer to Him and give Him omnipresence so that we live in Him; and at
last we recognise that we are He. The idea of an Objective God is not untrue —
in fact, every idea of God, and hence every religion, is true, as each is but a
different stage in the journey, the aim of which is the perfect conception of
the Vedas. Hence, too, we not only tolerate, but we Hindus accept every religion,
praying in the mosque of the Mohammedans, worshipping before the fire of the
Zoroastrians, and kneeling before the cross of the Christians, knowing that all
the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so
many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the infinite, each
determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of them
marking a stage of progress. We gather all these flowers and bind them with the
twine of love, making a wonderful bouquet of worship.
If I am God, then my soul is a temple of the Highest, and my every
motion should be a worship — love for love's sake, duty for duty's sake,
without hope of reward or fear of punishment. Thus my religion means expansion,
and expansion means realisation and perception in the highest sense — no
mumbling words or genuflections. Man is to become divine, realising the divine
more and more from day to day in an endless progress.
(Summary of a lecture delivered before the Ethical Society, Brooklyn,
at the Pouch Gallery in Clinton Avenue, on the 30th December, 1894. Reproduced
from the Brooklyn Standard Union.)
SOURCE: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,
Volume-1
[Lectures & Discourse]
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