Courtesy and Copyright Advaita Ashram
FRIENDS, FELLOW – COUNTRYMEN AND CO-RELIGIONISTS OF MADRAS:
It is most gratifying to me to find that my insignificant service to the cause of our religion has been acceptable to you, not because it is as a personal appreciation of me and my work in a foreign and distant land, but as a sure sign that, though whirlwind after whirlwind of foreign invasion has passed over the devoted head of India, though centuries of neglect on our part and contempt on the part of our conquerors have visibly dimmed the glories of ancient Aryavarta, though many a stately column on which it rested, many a beautiful arch, and many a marvelous corner have been washed away by the inundations that deluged the land for centuries – the centre is all sound, the keystone is unimpaired. The spiritual foundation upon which the marvelous monument of glory to God and charity to all beings has been reared stands unshaken, strong as ever. Your generous appreciation of Him whose message to India and to the whole world, I, the most unworthy of His servants, had the privilege to bear shows your innate spiritual instinct which saw in Him and His message the first murmurs of that tidal wave of spirituality which is destined at no distant future to break upon India in all its irresistible powers, carrying away in its omnipotent flood all that is weak and defective, and raising the Hindu race to the platform it is destined to occupy in the providence of God, crowned with more glory than it ever had even in the past, the reward of centuries of silent suffering, and fulfilling its mission amongst the races of the world – the evolution of spiritual humanity.
The people of Northern India are especially grateful to you of the South, as the great source to which most of the impulses that are working in India today can be traced. The great Bhashyakaras, epoch – making Acharyas, Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva were born in Southern India. Great Shankara to whom every Advaitavadin in the world owes allegiance; great Ramanuja whose heavenly touch converted the downtrodden pariahs into Alwars; great Madhva whose leadership was recognized even by the followers of the only Northern Prophet whose power has been felt all over the length and breadth of India – Sri Krishna Chaitanya. Even at the present day it is the South that carries the palm in the glories of Varanasi – your renunciation controls the sacred shrines on the farthest peaks of the Himalayas, and what wonder that with the blood of Prophets running in your veins, with your lives blessed by such charyas, you are the first and foremost to appreciate and hold on to the message of Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna.
The South had been the repository of Vedic learning, and you will understand me when I state that, in spite of the reiterated assertions of aggressive ignorance, it is the Shruti still that is the backbone of all the different divisions of the Hindu religion.
However great may be the merits of the Samhita and the Brahmana portions of the Vedas to the ethnologists or the philologists, however desirable may be the result that the in conjunction with the different Vedas (altars) and sacrifices and libations produce – it was all in the way of Bhoga; and no one ever contended that it could produce Moksha. As such, the Jnana – Kanda, the Aranyakas, and the Shrutis par excellence which teach the way to spirituality, the Moksha – Marga, have always ruled and will always rule in India.
Lost in the mazes and divisions of the ‘Religion Eternal’, by prepossession and prejudice unable to grasp the meaning of the only religion whose universal adaptation is the exact shadow of the God it preaches, groping in the dark with a standard of spiritual truth borrowed second hand from nations who never knew anything but rank materialism, the modern young Hindu struggles in vain to understand the religion of his forefathers, and gives up the quest altogether, and becomes a hopeless wreck of an agnostic, or else, unable to vegetate on account of the promptings of his innate religious nature, drinks carelessly of some of those different decoctions of Western materialism with an Eastern flavor, and thus fulfils the prophecy of the Shruti :
-‘Fools go staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind.’ They alone escape whose spiritual nature has been touched and vivified by the life-giving touch of the ‘Sadguru’.
Well has it been said by Bhagavan Bhashyakara:
-‘These three are difficult to obtain in this world, and depend on the mercy of the gods-the human birth, the desire for salvation, and the company of the great-souled ones.
Either in the sharp analysis of the Vaisheshikas, resulting in the wonderful theories about the Paramanus, Dvyanus, and Trasarenus or the still more wonderful analysis displayed in the discussions of the Jati Dravya, Guna, Samavaya, and to the various categories of the Naiyayikas, rising to the solemn march of the thought of the Sankhyas, the fathers of the theories of evolution, ending with the ripe fruit, the result of all these researches, the Sutras of Vyasa-the one background to all these different analyses and syntheses of the human mind is still the Shrutis. Even in the philosophical writings of the Buddhists or Jains, the help of Shrutis is never rejected, and at least in some of the Buddhistic schools and in the majority of the Jain writings, the authority of the Shrutis is fully admitted, excepting what they call the Himsaka Shrutis, which they hold to be interpolations of the Brahmins. In recent times, such a view has been held by the late great Swami Dayananda Sarasvati.
If one be asked to point out the system of thought towards which as a centre all the ancient and modern Indian thoughts have converged, if one wants to see the real backbone of Hinduism in all its various manifestations, the Sutras of Vyasa will unquestionably be pointed out as constituting all that.
Either one hears the Advaita-Keshari roaring in peals of thunder-the Asti, Bhati, and Priya – amidst the heart-stopping solemnities of the Himalayan forests, mixing with the solemn cadence of the river of heaven, or listens to the cooing of the Piya, Pitam in the beautiful bowers of the grove of Vrinda; whether one mingles with the sedate meditations of the monasteries of Varanasi, or the ecstatic dances of the followers of the Prophet of Nadia; whether one sits at the feet of the teacher of the Vishishtadvaita system with its Vadakale, Tenkale, and all the other subdivisions, or listens with reverence to the Acharyas of the Madhva school; whether one hearts the martial ‘Wa Guruki Fateh of the secular Sikhs, or the sermons on the Grantha Sahib of the Udasis and Nirmalas; whether he salutes the Sannyasin disciples of Kabir with ‘Sat Sahib’ and listens with joy to the Sakhis (Bhajans); whether he pores upon the wonderful lore of that reformer of Rajputana, Dadu, or the works of his royal disciple, Sundaradasa, down to the great Nishchaladas, the celebrated author of Vichara-sagara, which book has more influence in India than any that has been written in any language within the last three centuries; if even one asks the Bhangi Mehtar of Northern India to sit down and give an account pf the teachings of his Lalguru-one will find that all these various teachers and Schools have as their basis that system whose authority is the Shruti, Gita its divine commentary, the Shariraka-Sutras its organized system, and all the different sects in India, from the Paramahamsa Parivrajakacharyas to the poor despised Mehtar disciples of Lalguru, are different manifestations.
The three Prasthanas, then in their different explanations as Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita, or Advaita, with a few minor recensions, form the ‘authorities’ of the Hindu religion. The Puranas, the modern representations of the ancient Narasamsi (anecdote portion of the Vedas), supply the mythology, and the Tantras, the modern representations of the Brahmanas (ritual and explanatory portion of the Vedas), supply the ritual. Thus the three Prasthanas, as authorities, are common to all the sects; but as to the Puranas and Tantras, each sect has its own.
The Tantras, as we have said, represent the Vedic rituals in a modified form; and before any one jumps into the most absurd conclusions about them, I will advise him to read the Tantras in conjunction with the Brahmanas, especially the Adhvaryu portion. And most of the Mantras, used in the Tantras, will be found taken verbatim from their Brahmanas. As to their influence, apart from the Shrauta and Smarta rituals, all the forms of the rituals in vogue from the Himalayas to the Comorin have been taken from the Tantras, and they direct the worship of the Shakta, or Shaiva, or Vaishnava, and all the others alike.
Of course, I do not pretend that all the Hindus are thoroughly acquainted with these sources of their religion. Many, especially in lower Bengal, have not heard of the names of these sects and these great systems; but consciously or unconsciously, it is the plan laid down in the three Prasthanas that they are all working out.
Wherever, on the other hand, the Hindi language is spoken, even the lowest classes have more knowledge of the Vedantic religion than many of the highest in lower Bengal.
And why so? Transported from the soil of Mithila to Navadvipa, nurtured and developed by the fostering genius of Shiromani, Gadadhara, Jagadisha, and a host of other great names, an analysis of the laws of reasoning, in some points superior to every other system in the whole world, expressed in a wonderful and precise mosaic of language, stands the Nyaya of Bengal, respected and studied throughout the length and breadth of Hindusthan. But, alas, the Vedic study was sadly neglected, and until within the last few years, scarcely any one could be found in Bengal to teach the Mahabhasya of Patanjali. Once only a mighty genius rose above the never-ending Avachchhinnas and Avachchhedakas – Bhagavan Sri Krishna Chaitanya. For once the religious lethargy of Bengal was shaken, and for a time it entered into a communion with the religious life of other parts of India.
It is curious to note that thought Sri Chaitanya obtained his Sannyasa from a Bharati, and as such was a Bharati himself, it was through Madhavendra Puri that his religious genius was first awakened. The Puris seem to have a peculiar mission in rousing the spirituality of Bengal. Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna got his Sannyasashrama from Tota Puri.
The commentary that Sri Chaitanya wrote on the Vyasa-Sutras has either been lost or not found yet. His disciples joined themselves to the Madhvas of the South, and gradually the mantles of such giants as Rupa and Sanatana and Jiva Goswami fell on the shoulders of Babajis, and the great movement of Sri Chaitanya was decaying fast, till of late years there is a sign of revival. Hope that it will regain its lost splendor.
The influence of Sri Chaitanya is all over India. Wherever the Bhakti-Marga is known, there he is appreciated, studied, and worshipped. I have every reason to believe that the whole of the Vallabhacharya recension is only a branch of the sect founded by Sri Chaitanya. But most of his so-called disciples in Bengal do not know how his power is still working all over India; and how can they? The disciples have become Gadians (Heads of monasteries), while he was preaching barefooted from door to door in India, begging Achandalas (all down to the lowest) to love God.
The curious and unorthodox custom of hereditary Gurus that prevails in Bengal, and for the most part in Bengal alone, is another cause of its being cut off from the religious life of the rest of India.
The greatest cause of all is that the life of Bengal never received an influx from that of the great brotherhood of Sannyasins who are the representatives and repositories of the highest Indian spiritual culture even at the present day.
Tyaga (renunciation) is never liked by the higher classes of Bengal. Their tendency is for Bhoga (enjoyment). How can they get a deep insight into spiritual things? ‘By renunciation alone immortality was reached.’ How can it be otherwise?
On the other hand, throughout the Hindi speaking world, a succession of brilliant Tyagi teachers of far-reaching influence has brought the doctrines of the Vedanta to every door. Especially the impetus given to Tyaga during the reign of Ranjit Singh of the Punjab has made the highest teachings of the Vedantic philosophy available for the very lowest of the low. With true pride, the Punjabi peasant girl says that even her spinning wheel repeats: ‘Soham’, ‘Soham’. And I have seen Mehtar Tyagis in the forest of Hrishikesh wearing the garb of the Sannyasin, studying the Vedanta. And many a proud high-class man would be glad to sit at their feet and learn. And why not? ‘Supreme knowledge (can be learnt) even from the man of low birth.’
Thus it is that the Northwest and the Punjab have a religious education, which is far ahead of that of Bengal, Bombay, or Madras. The ever-travelling Tyagis of the various orders, Dashanamis or Vairagis or Panthis bring religion to everybody’s door, and the cost is only a bit of bread. And how noble and disinterested most of them are! There is one Sannyasin belonging to the Kachu Panthis or independents (who do not identify themselves with any sect), which has been instrumental in the establishing of hundreds of schools and charitable asylums all over Rajputana. He has opened hospital in forest, and thrown iron bridges over the gorges in the Himalayas, and this man never touches a coin with his hands, has no earthly possession except a blanket, which has given him the nickname of the ‘Blanket Swami’, and begs his bread from door to door. I have never known him taking a whole dinner from one house, lest it should be a tax on the householder. And he is only one amongst many. Do you think that so long as these Gods on earth live in India and protect the ‘Religion Eternal’ with the impenetrable rampart of such godly characters, the old religion will die?
In this country, the clergymen sometimes receive as high salaries as rupees thirty thousand, forty thousand, fifty thousand, even ninety thousand a year, for preaching two hours on Sunday only, and that only six months in a year. Look at the millions upon millions they spend for the support of their religion and Young Bengal has been taught that these Godlike, absolutely unselfish men like Kambli-Swami are idle vagabonds. ‘Those who are devoted to My worshippers are regarded as the best of devotees.
Take even an extreme case, that of an extremely ignorant Vairagi. Even he, when he goes into a village tries his best to impart to the villagers whatever he knows, from Tulsidasa, or Chaitanya-Charitamrita or the Alwars in Southern India. Is that not doing some good? And all this for only a bit of bread and a rag of cloth. Before unmercifully criticizing them, think how much you do, my brother, for your poor fellow-countrymen, at whose expense you have got your education, and by grinding whose face you maintain your position and pay your teachers for teaching you that the Babajis are only vagabonds.
A few of your fellow-countrymen in Bengal have criticized what they call a new development of Hinduism. And well they may. For Hinduism is only just now penetrating into Bengal, where so long the whole idea of religion was a bundle of Deshacharas (local customs) as to eating and drinking and marriage.
This short paper has not space for the discussion of such a big subject as to whether the view of Hinduism, which the disciples of Ramakrishna have been preaching all over India, was according to the ‘Sat-Shastras’ or not. But I will give a few hints to our critics, which may help them in understanding our position better.
In the first place, I never contended that a correct idea of Hinduism can be gathered from the writings of Kashidasa or Krittivasa, though their words are ‘Amrita Samana’ (like nectar), and those that hear them are ‘Punyavans’ (virtuous). But we must go to Vedic and Darshanika authorities, and to the great Acharyas and their disciples all over India.
If, brethren, you begin with the Sutras of Gautama, and read his theories about the Aptas (inspired) in the light of the commentaries of Vatsyayana, and go up to the Mimamsakas with Shabara and other commentators, and find out what they say about the (super sensuous realization), and who are Aptas, and whether every being can become an Apta or not, and that the poor of the Vedas is in their being the words of such Aptas if you have time to look into the introduction of Mahidhara to the Yajurveda, you will find a still more lucid discussion as to the Vedas being laws of the inner life of man, and as such they are eternal .
As to the eternity of creation-this doctrine is the cornerstone not only of the Hindu religion, but of the Buddhists and Jains also.
Now all the sects in India can be grouped roughly as following the Jnana-Marga or the Bhakti-Marga. If you will kindly look into the introduction to the Shariraka-Bhashya of Sri Shankaracharya, you will find there the Nirapekshata (transcendence) of Jnana is thoroughly discussed, and the conclusion is that realization of Brahman or the attainment of Moksha does not depend upon ceremonial. Creed, caste, color, or doctrine. It will come to any being who has the four Sadhanas, which are the most perfect moral culture.
As to the Bhaktas, even Bengali critics know very well that some of their authorities even declared that caste or nationality or sex, or, as to that, even the human birth, was never necessary to Moksha. Bhakti is the one and only thing necessary.
Both Jnana and Bhakti are everywhere preached to be unconditioned, and as such there is not one authority that lays down the conditions of caste or creed or nationality in attaining Moksha. See the discussion on the Sutra of Vyasa by Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva.
Go through all the Upanishads, and even in the Samhitas, nowhere you will find the limited ideas of Moksha, which every other religion has. As to toleration, it is everywhere, even in the Samhita of the Adhvaryu Veda, in the third or fourth verse of the fortieth chapter, if my memory does not fail; it begins with This is running through everywhere. Was anybody persecuted in India for choosing his Ishta Devata, or becoming an atheist or agnostic even, so long as he obeyed the social regulations? Society may punish anybody by its disapprobation for breaking any of its regulations, but no man, the lowest Patita (fallen), is ever shut out from Moksha.
You must not mix up the two together. As to that, in Malabar a Chandala is not allowed to pass through the same street as a high-caste man, but let him become a Mohammedan or Christian, he will be immediately allowed to go anywhere, and this rule has prevailed in the dominion of a Hindu sovereign for centuries. It may be queer, but it shows the idea of toleration for other religions even in the most untoward circumstances.
The one idea the Hindu religions differ in from every other in the world, the one idea to express which the sages almost exhaust the vocabulary of the Sanskrit language, is that man must realize God even in this life. And the Advaita very logically add, ‘To know God is to become God.’
And here comes as a necessary consequence the broadest and most glorious idea of inspiration-not only as asserted and declared by the Rishis of the Vedas, not only by Vidura and Dharmavyadha and a number of others, but even the other day Nishchalasasa, a Tyagi of the Dadu Panthi sect, boldly declared in his Vichara-sagara: ‘He who has known Brahman has become Brahman. His words are Vedas, and they will dispel the darkness of ignorance, either expressed in Sanskrit or any popular dialect.’
Thus to realize God, the Brahman, as the Dvaitins say, or to become Brahman, as the Advaitins say-is the aim and end of the whole teaching of the Vedas; and evry other teaching, therein contained, represents a stage in the course of our progress thereto. And the great glory of Bhagavan Bhashyakara Shankaracharya is that it was his genius that gave the most wonderful expression to the ideas of Vyasa.
As absolute, Brahman alone is true; as relative truth, all the different sects, standing upon different manifestations of the same Brahman, either in India or elsewhere is true. Only some are higher than others. Suppose a man starts straight towards the sun. At every step of his journey he will see newer and newer visions of the sun-the size, the view, and light will every moment be new, until he reaches the real sun. He saw the sun at first like a big ball. And then it began to increase in size. The sun was never small like the ball he saw; nor was it ever like all the succession of suns he saw in his journey. Still is it not true that our traveler always saw the sun, and nothing but the sun? Similarly, all these various sects are true some nearer, some farther off from the real sun, which is our ‘One without a second’.
And as the Vedas are the only scriptures which teach this real absolute God, of which all other ideas of God are but minimized and limited visions; as the Shruti takes the devotee gently by the hand, and leads him from one stage to another, through all the stages that are necessary for him to travel to reach the Absolute; and as all other religions represent one or other of these stages in an unprogressive and crystallized form, all the other religions of the world are included in the nameless, limitless , eternal Vedic religion.
Work hundreds of lives out, search every corner of your mind for ages-and still you will not find one noble religious idea that is not already imbedded in that infinite mine of spirituality.
As to the so-called Hindu idolatry-first go and learn the forms they are going through, and where it is that the worshippers are really worshipping, whether in the temple, in the image, or in the temple of their own bodies. First know for certain what they are doing-which more than ninety percent of the revilers are thoroughly ignorant of-and then it will explain itself in the light of the Vedantic philosophy.
Still these Karmas are not compulsory. On the other hand, open your Manu and see where it orders every old man to embrace the fourth Ashrama, and whether he embraces it or not, he must give up all Karma. It is reiterated everywhere that all these Karmas ‘finally end in Jnana’.
As to the matter of that, a Hindu peasant has more religious education than many a gentleman in other countries. A friend criticized the use of European terms of philosophy and religion in my addresses. I would have been very glad to use Sanskrit terms; it would have been much more easy, as being the only perfect vehicle of religious thought. But the friend forgot that I was addressing an audience of Western people; and although a certain Indian missionary declared that the Hindus had forgotten the meaning of their Sanskrit books, and that it was the missionaries who unearthed the meaning, I could not find one in that large concourse of missionaries who could understand a line in Sanskrit-and yet some of them read learned papers criticizing the Vedas, and all the sacred sources of the Hindu religion!
It is not true that I am against any religion. It is equally untrue that am hostile to the Christian missionaries in India. But I protest against certain of their methods of raising money in America. What is meant by those picture in the schoolbooks for children where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Gaga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy, and get more money. What is meant by those pictures, which paint a man burning his wife at a stake with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the husband’s enemy? What is meant by the pictures of huge cars crushing over human beings? The other day a book was published for children in this country, where one of these gentlemen tells a narrative of his visit to Calcutta. He says he saw a car running over fanatics in the streets of Calcutta. I have heard one of these gentlemen preach in Memphis that in every village of India there is a pond full of the bones of little babies.
What have the Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus ‘vile’, and ‘wretches’ and the most horrible devils on earth? Part of the Sunday school education for children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not a Christian and the Hindus especially, so that, from their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the missions. If not for truth’s sake, for the sake of the morality of their own children, the Christian missionaries ought not to allow such things going on. Is it any wonder that such children grow up to be ruthless cruel men and women? The greater a preacher can paint the tortures of eternal hell-the fire that is burning there, the brim stone -the higher is his position among the orthodox.
A servant girl in the employ of a friend of mine had to be sent to a lunatic asylum as a result of her attending what they call here the revivalist preaching. The dose of hell-fire and brimstone was too much for her. Look again at the books published in Madras against the Hindu religion. If a Hindu writes one such line against the Christian religion, the missionaries will cry fire vengeance.
My countrymen. I have been more than a year in this country. I have seen almost every corner of the society, and after comparing notes, let me tell you that neither are we devils, as the missionaries tell the world we are, nor are they angels, as they claim to be. The less the missionaries talk of immorality, infanticide, and the evils of the Hindu marriage system, the better for them. There may be actual pictures of some countries before which all the imaginary missionary pictures of the Hindu society will fade away into light. But my mission life is not to be a paid reviler. I will be the last man to claim perfection for the Hindu society. No man is more conscious of the defects that are therein, or the evils that have grown up under centuries of misfortunes. If foreign friends, you come with genuine sympathy to help and not to destroy, god speed top you. But if by abuses, incessantly hurled against the head of a prostrate race in season and out of season, you mean only the triumphant assertion of the moral superiority of your own nation let me tell you plainly, if such a comparison be instituted with any mount of justice, the Hindu will be found head and shoulders above all other nations in the world as a moral race.
In India religion was never shackled. No man was ever challenged in the selection of his Ishta Devata, or his sect, or his preceptor, and religion grew, as it nowhere else. On the other hand, a fixed point was necessary to allow this infinite variation to religion, and society was chosen as that point in India. As a result society became rigid and almost immovable. For liberty is the only condition of growth.
On the other hand, in the West, the field of variation was society, and the constant point was religion. Conformity was the watchword, and even now is the watchword of European religion, and each new departure had to gain the least advantage only by wading through a river of blood. The result is a splendid social organization, with a religion that never rose beyond the grossest materialistic conceptions.
Today the West is awakening to its wants; and the ‘true self of man and spirit’ is the watchword of the advanced school of Western theologians. The student of Sanskrit philosophy knows where the wind is blowing from, but it matters not whence the power comes so long as it brings new life.
In India, new circumstances at the same time are persistently demanding a new adjustment of social organizations. For the last three-quarters of a century, India has been bubbling over with reform societies and reformers. But, alas, every one of them has proved a failure. They did not know the secret. They had not learnt the great lesson to be learnt. In their haste, they laid all the evils in our society at the door of religion; and like the man in the story, wanting to kill the mosquito that sat on a friend’s forehead, they were trying to deal such heavy blows as would have killed man and mosquito together.
But in this case, fortunately, they only dashed themselves against immovable rocks And were crushed out of existence in the shock of recoil. Glory unto those noble and unselfish souls who have struggled and failed in their misdirected attempts. Those galvanic shocks of reformatory zeal were necessary to rouse the sleeping leviathan. But they were entirely destructive, and not constructive, and as such they were mortal, and therefore died.
Let us bless them, and profit by their experience. They had not learnt the lesson that all is a growth from inside out, that all evolution is only a manifestation of a preceding involution. They did not know that the seed can only assimilate the surrounding elements, but grows a tree in its own nature. Until all the Hindu race becomes extinct, and a new race takes possession of the land, such a thing can never be-try East or West, India can never be Europe until she dies.
And will she die-this old Mother of all that is noble or moral or spiritual, the land which the sages trod, the land in which Godlike men still live and breathe? I will borrow the lantern of the Athenian sage and follow you, my brother, through the cities and village, plains and forests, of this broad world-show me such men in other lands if you can. Truly have they said, the tree is known by its fruits. Go under every mango tree in India; pick up bushels of the worm-eaten, unripe, fallen ones from the ground and write hundreds of the most learned volumes on each one of them-still you have not described a single one from the tree, and now you have known all that the mango is.
Similarly, these Man-Gods show what the Hindu religion is. They show the character, the power, and the possibilities of that racial tree which counts culture by centuries, and has borne the buffets of a thousand years of hurricane, and still stands with the unimpaired vigor of eternal youth.
Shall India die? Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct, all moral perfection will be extinct, all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct, all ideality will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force, and competition its ceremonies, and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be. The power of suffering is infinite greater than the power of doing; the power of love is infinitely of greater potency than the power of hatred. Those that think that the present revival of Hinduism is only a manifestation of patriotic impulse are deluded.
First, let us study the quaint phenomenon. Is it not curious that, whilst under the terrific onset of modern scientific research, all the old forts of Western dogmatic religions are crumbling into dust; whilst the sledgehammer blows of modern science are pulverizing the porcelain mass of systems whose foundation is either in faith or in belief or in the majority of votes of church synods; whilst Western theology is at its wit’s end to accommodate itself to the ever-rising tide of aggressive modern thought; whilst in all other sacred books the texts have been stretched to their utmost tension under the ever-increasing pressure of modern thought, and the majority of them are broken and have been stored away in lumber rooms; whilst the vast majority of thoughtful Western humanity have broken asunder all their ties with the church and are drifting about in a sea of unrest, the religions which have drunk the water of life At that fountain of light, the Vedas – Hinduism and Buddhism-alone are reviving?
The restless Western atheist or agnostic finds in the Gita or in the Dhammapada the only place where his soul can anchor.
The tables have been turned, and the Hindu, who saw through tears of despair his ancient homestead covered with incendiary fire, ignited by unfriendly hands, now sees, when the searchlight of modern thought has dispersed the smoke, that his home is the one that is standing in all its strength, and all the rest have either vanished or are building their houses anew after the Hindu plan. He has wiped away his tears and has found that the axe that tried to cut down to the roots the has proved the merciful knife of the surgeon.
He has found that he has neither to torture texts nor commit any other form of intellectual dishonesty to save his religion. Nay he may call that is weak in his scriptures, weak, because sages, to help the weak, under the theory of Thanks to the ancient sages who have discovered such an all-pervading ever-expanding system of religion that can accommodate all that has been discovered in the realm of matter, and all that is to be known; he has begun to appreciate them anew, and discover anew, that those discoveries which have proved so disastrous to every limited little scheme of religion are but rediscoveries, in the plane of intellect and sense-consciousness, of truth which his ancestors discovered ages ago in the higher plane of intuition and super-consciousness.
He has not, therefore, to give up anything, nor go about seeking for anything anywhere, but it will be enough for him if he can utilize only a little from the infinite store he has inherited and apply it to his needs. And that he has begun to do and will do more and more.
Is this not the real cause of this revival? Young men of Bengal, to you I especially appeal. Brethren, we know to our shame that most of the real evils for which the foreign races abuse the Hindu nation are only owing to us. We have been the cause of bringing many undeserved calumnies on the head of the other races in India. But glory unto God, we have been fully awakened to it, and with his blessings, we will not only cleanse ourselves, but help the whole of India to attain the ideals preached in the religion eternal.
Let us wipe off first that mark which nature always puts on the forehead of a slave-the stain of jealousy. Be jealous of none. Be ready to lend a hand to every worker of good. Send a good thought for every being in the three worlds.
Let us take our stand on the central truth our religion-the common heritage of the Hindus, the Buddhists, and Jains alike the Spirit of man, the Atman of man, the immortal, birth less, all-pervading, eternal Soul of man whose glories the Vedas cannot themselves express, before whose majesty the universe with its galaxy upon galaxy of suns and stars and nebulae is as a drop. Every man or woman, nay, from the highest Devas to the worm that crawls under our feet, is such a spirit evolutes or involutes. The difference is not in kind, but in degree.
This infinite power of the spirit, brought to bear upon matter evolves material development, made to act upon thought evolves intellectuality, and made to act upon itself makes of man a God.
First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods. ‘Be and make.’ Let this be our motto. Say not man is a sinner. Tell him that he is a God. Even if there were a devil, it would be our duty to remember God always, and not the devil.
If the room is dark, the constant feeling and repeating of darkness will not take it away, but bring in the light. Let us know that all that is negative, all that is destructive, all that is mere criticism, is bound to pass away; it is the positive, the affirmative, the constructive that is immortal, that will remain for ever. Let us say, ‘We are’ and ‘God is’ and ‘We are God’, ‘Shivoham, Shivoham’, and march on. Not matter but spirit. All that has name and form is subject to all that has none. This is the eternal truth the Shrutis preach. Bring in the light; the darkness will vanish of itself. Let the lion of Vedanta roar; the foxes will fly to their holes. Throw the ideas broadcast, and let the result take care of itself. Let us put the chemicals together; the crystallization will take its own course. Bring forth the power of the spirit, and pour it over the length and breadth of India; and all that is necessary will come by itself.
Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it. Remember the illustration of Indra and Virochana in the Vedas; both were taught their divinity. But the Asura, Virochana, took his body for his God. Indra, being a Deva, understood that the Atman was meant. You are the children of Indra. You are the descendants of the Devas. Matter can never be your God; body can never be your god.
India will be raised, not with the power of the flesh, but with the power of the spirit; not with the flag of destruction, but with the flag of peace and love, the garb of the Sannyasin; not by the power of wealth, but by the power of the begging bowl. Say not that you are weak. The spirit is omnipotent. Look at that handful of young men called into existence by the divine touch of Ramakrishna’s feet. They have preached the message from Assam to Sindh, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. They have crossed the Himalayas at a height of twenty thousand feet, over snow and ice on foot, and penetrated into the mysteries of Tibet. They have begged their bread, covered themselves with rags; they have been persecuted, followed by the police, kept in prison, and at last set free when the government was convinced of their innocence.
They are now twenty. Make them two thousand tomorrow. Young men of Bengal, your country requires it. The world requires it. Call up the divinity within you, which will enable you to bear hunger and thirst, heat and cold. Sitting in luxurious homes, surrounded with all the comforts of life, and doling out a little amateur religion may be good for other lands, but India has a truer instinct. It intuitively detects the mask. You must give up. Be great. No great work can be done without sacrifice.
The Purusha Himself sacrificed Himself to create this world. Lay down your comforts, your pleasures, your names, fame or position, nay even your lives, and make a bridge of human chains over which millions will cross this ocean of life. Bring all the forces of good together. Do not care under what banner you march. Do not care what be your colour-green, blue, or red-but mix up all the colors and produce that intense glow of white, the color of love. Ours is to work. The results will take care of themselves. If any social institution stands in your way of becoming God, it will give way before the power of Spirit. I do not see into the future; nor do I care to see. But one vision I see clear as life before me: that the ancient Mother has awakened once more, sitting on Her throne rejuvenated, more glorious than ever. Proclaim Her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction.
Yours ever in love and labor
VIVEKANANDA