^ Copyright, 1902 BY SWAMI ABHEDANANDA New York Kay Printing House 66-68 Centre St.
PREFACE Ved^nta Philosophy regards the religious tenden- cies of mankind as being of four main divisions, the dividing lines not being necessarily sharply defined, for more than one of these tendencies may be found in one individual. Broadly speaking, there is a large class of men who seek to express their religious ideas through ethical work, through constant effort to help and uplift their fellow-men. Then there are others of a strongly devotional character, who find in love and worship the satisfaction of their religious needs. Others again, of more mystical nature, prefer to realize their ideals through concentration and meditation. Lastly, there is a class of men of strongly analytical natures who must have the sanction of logic and reason for every belief and who therefore take the path of philosophy and discrimination.
The books by Swami Vivekananda already published have been intended to meet the inquiries of the first three classes of men. The present work is adapted for the last class, the philosophers. Jnana Yoga is, as its name implies, the yoga, or method, of realizing our divine nature through wisdom {Jnana). Wis- 7 8 J NAN A YOGA dom is not knowledge in its ordinary sense, although it includes it. It is that higher knowledge which is self-illumination. This is equally the goal of every yoga, or method, the difference lying only in the path chosen for reaching that goal.
The present volume consists chiefly of lectures which were delivered in London, England. Two were given in India, and are consequently new both in England and in this country. The lectures deal with the teachings of the Upanishads, which contain the essence of Vedanta. Some of these Upanishads are among the most ancient of the Hindu Scriptures, and show a wonderful insight into the great truths under- lying all religious aspiration. It is because Vedanta is a religion of principles, not of external authority, that the late Professor Max Miiller said of it: "Vedanta has room for almost every religion; nay, it embraces them all."
CONTENTS PAGE I. The Song of the Sannyasin...9 11. The Necessity of Religion 12 III. The Real Nature of Man 28 IV. Maya and Illusion 51 V. Maya and the Evolution of the Con- ception OF God 74 VI. Maya and Freedom 91 VII. The Absolute and Manifestation.. 106 VIII. Unity in Diversity 124 IX. God in Everything 142 X. Realization 156 XL The Freedom of the Soul 183 XII. Practical Vedanta, Part i 201 XIII. Practical Vedanta^ Part ii 222 XIV. Practical Vedanta, Part ili 245 XV. Practical Vedanta, Part iv...261 XVI. Vedanta in All Its Phases...283 XVII. Vedanta 310 JNANA YOGA THE SONG OF THE SANNYASIN Wake up the note! The song that had its birth Far off, where worldly taint could never reach; In mountain caves, and glades of forest deep, Whose calm no sigh for lust or wealth or fame Could ever dare to break; where rolled the stream Of knowledge, truth, and bliss that follows both. Sing high that note, Sannyasin bold! Say — ''Om tat sat, Om!"
''Om tat sat, Om!"
Strike off thy fetters! Bonds that bind thee down, Of shining gold, or darker, baser ore; Love, hate — good, bad — and all the dual throng. Know slave is slave, caressed or whipped, not free; For fetters tho' of gold, are not less strong to bind. Then off with them Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
Let darkness go; the will-o'-the-wisp that leads With blinking light to pile more gloom on gloom. This thirst for life, for ever quench; it drags, From birth to death and death to birth, the soul. He conquers all who conquers self. Know this And never yield, Sannyasin bold! Say — 'Om tat sat, Omf 9 lO J NANA YOGA **Who sows must reap," they say, "and cause must bring The sure effect; good, good; bad, bad; and none Escape the law. But whoso wears a form Must wear the chain." Too true, but far beyond Both name and form is Atman, ever free. Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
They know not truth, who dream such vacant dreams As father, mother, children, wife and friend.
The sexless Self! Whose father He? Whose child?
Whose friend, whose foe is He who is but One?
The Self is all in all, naught else exists; And thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
There is but One— The Free— The Knower— Self I Without a name, without a form or stain; In Him is Maya dreaming all this dream. The Witness, He appears as nature, soul. Know thou art That, Sannyasin! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
Where seekest thou? That freedom, friend, this world Nor that, can give. In books and temples vain Thy search. Thine only is the hand that holds The rope that drags thee on. Then, cease lament. Let go thy hold, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, OniV Say — "Peace to all; from me no danger be To aught that lives; in those that dwell on high, In those that lowly creep, I am the Self in all!
All life, both here and there, do I renounce, And heav'ns, earths and hells; all hopes and fears."
Thus cut thy bonds, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!** THE SONG OF THE SANNYASIN II Heed then no more how body lives or goes, Its task is done. Let Karma float it down, Let one put garlands on, another kick This frame; say naught. No praise or blame can be Where praiser, praised — and blamer, blamed — are one.
Thus be thou calm, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
Truth never comes where lust and fame and greed Of gain reside. No man who thinks of woman As his wife can ever perfect be; Nor he who owns the least of things, nor he Whom anger chains, can pass thro' Maya's gates. So, give these up, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
Have thou no home. What home can hold thee, friend? The sky thy roof, the grass thy bed; and food What chance may bring, well cooked or ill, judge not. No food or drink can taint that noble self Which knows itself. Like rolling river, be Thou ever free, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
Few only know the truth. The rest will hate And laugh at thee, great one; but pay no heed. Go thou, the free, from place to place, and help Them out of darkness, Maya's veil. Without The fear of pain or search for pleasure, go Beyond them both Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
"Om tat sat, Om!"
Thus day to day, till Karma's powers spent Release the soul for ever. No more is birth Nor I, nor thou, nor god, nor man. The "I" Has all become, the all is "I," and bliss. Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say — "Om tat sat, Om!"
II THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION Of all the forces that have worked and are still working, to mould the destinies of the human race, none, certainly, is more potent than that, the manifes- tation of which we call religion. All social organiza- tions have as a background, somewhere, the workings of that peculiar force, and the greatest cohesive im- pulse ever brought into play amongst human units has been derived from this power of religion. It is obvious to all of us, that in very many cases the bonds of religion have proved stronger than the bonds of race, of climate, or even of descent. It is a well known fact that persons worshipping the same God, believing in the same leligion, have stood by each other, with much greater strength and constancy than people of merely the same descent, or even than brothers. Vari- ous attempts have been made to trace the beginnings of religion. In all the ancient religions which have come down to us at the present day we find one claim made — that they are all supernatural; that their genesis is not, as it were, in the human brain, but that they have originated somewhere outside of it.
Two theories have gained some acceptance amongst modern scholars. One is the spirit theory of religion, the other the evolution of the Infinite. One party 12 THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION 1 3 maintains that ancestor worship is the beginning of religious ideas; the other that reHgion originates in the personification of the powers of nature. Man wants to keep up the memory of his dead relatives, and thinks they are living even when the body has been dissolved, and he wants to place food for them and, in a certain sense, to worship them. Out of that came the growth we call religion. Studying the ancient religions of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chi- nese, and many other races in America and elsewhere, we find very clear traces of this ancestor worship being the beginning of religion. With the ancient Egyptians the first idea of the soul was that of a double. This physical man contained in it another being very similar to it, and when a man died this double went out of the body and yet lived on. But the life of the double lasted only as long as the dead body remained intact, and that is why we find among the Egyptians so much solicitude to keep the body intact. That is why they built those huge pyramids in which they preserved bodies. For, if any portion of the external body was hurt, just so would the double be hurt. This is clearly ancestor worship. With the ancient Babylonians we find the same idea of the double, but with a variation. The double lost all sense of love; it frightened the living to give it food and drink, and to help it in various ways. It even lost all affection for its own children, its own wife or daugh- ter. Am.ong the ancient Hindus, also, we find traces of this ancestor worship. Among the Chinese the basis of their religion may also be said to be clearly ancestor worship, and it still permeates the length and 14 J NANA YOGA breadth of that vast country. In fact the only reUgion that can really be said to flourish in China is that of ancestor worship. Thus it seems on the one hand a very good position is made out for those who hold to the theory of ancestor worship as the beginning of religion.
On the other hand there are scholars who go back to ancient Aryan literature. Although in India we find proofs of ancestor worship everywhere, yet in the oldest records there is no trace of it whatsoever. In the Rig Veda Samhita, the most ancient record of the Aryan race, we do not find any trace of it at all. Modern scholars think it is the worship of nature that they find there. The human mind seems to struggle to get a peep behind the scenes. The dawn, the even- ing, the hurricane, the stupendous and gigantic forces of nature, its beauties, these have exercised the human mind, and it aspires to go beyond, to understand some- thing about them. In the struggle they endow these phenomena with personal attributes, giving them souls and bodies, sometimes beautiful, sometimes transcen- dent. Every attempt ends by these phenomena becom- ing abstractions whether personalized or not. So also it is found with the ancient Greeks; their whole mythology is simply this abstracted nature worship. So also with the ancient Germans, the Scandinavians, and all the other Aryan races. Thus, on this side too a very strong case has been made out that religion has its origin in the personification of the powers of nature.
These two views, though they seem to be contra- dictory, can be reconciled on a third basis, which to THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION 1$ my mind is the real germ of religion, and that I pro- pose to call the struggle to transcend the limitations of the senses. Either man goes to seek for the spirits of his ancestors, or the spirits of the dead, or he wants to get a glimpse of what there is after the body is dissolved, or he desires to understand the power working behind the stupendous phenomena of nature. Whichever of these is the case, one thing is centain, that he is trying to transcend the limitations of the senses. He cannot remain satisfied with his senses; he wants to go beyond them. The explanation need not be mysterious. To me it seems very natural that the first glimpse of religion should come through dreams. The first idea of immortality man must get through dreams. Is not the dream state a most won- derful state? We know that children and untutored minds find very little difference between dreaming and their waking state. What can be more natural than that they find, as natural logic, that even during the sleep state, when the body is apparently dead, the mind goes on with all its intricate workings? What wonder that men will at once come to the conclusion that when this body is dissolved for ever the same working will go on? This, to my mind, would be a more natural explanation of the supernatural, and through this dream idea the human mind rises to higher and higher concepts. Of course in time the vast majority of mankind found out that these dreams were not verified by their awakened states, and that during the dream state it is not that man has a fresh existence, but simply that he recapitulates the experi- ences of the awakened state.
l6 J NANA YOGA But by this time the search had begun, and the search was inward, and they continued to inquire more deeply into the different stages of the mind, and dis- covered higher states than either the waking or dream- ing. This state of things we find in all the organized religions of the world, called either a state of ecstasy, or inspiration. In all the organized religions, their founders, prophets and messengers are declared to have gone into states of mind which were neither waking nor sleeping, but states in which they came face to face with a new series of facts, those relating to what is called the spiritual kingdom. They real- ized things there in a much more intense sense than we realize facts around us in our waking state. This we find in all the existing religions. Take, for in- stance, the religions of the Brahmans. The Vedas are said to be written by Rishis. These Rishis were sages who realized certain facts. The exact definition of the Sanskrit word is "The Seers of the Mantrams" — of the thoughts conveyed in the Vedic Hymns. These men declared that they had realized — sensed, if that word can be used with regard to the supersensuous — certain facts, and these facts they proceeded to put on record. We find the same thing declared among both the Jews and the Christians.
Some exception may be taken in the case of the Buddhists as represented by the Southern sect. It may be asked — if the Buddhists do not believe in any God, or a soul, how can their religion be derived from this supersensuous state of existence? The answer to this is, that even the Buddhists find an eternal moral law, and that moral law was not reasoned out THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION I7 in our sense of the word, but Buddha found it, discov- ered it, in a supersensuous state. Those of you who have studied the life of Buddha, even as shortly given in that beautiful poem "The Light of Asia," may remember that Buddha is represented as sitting under the Bo-tree until he had reached the supersensuous state of mind. All his teachings came from this, and not from intellectual cogitations.
Thus, here is a tremendous statement made by all religions, that this human mind, at certain moments, transcends not only the limitations of the senses, but also the power of reasoning. It then comes face to face with facts which it could never have sensed, could never have reasoned out. These facts are the basis of all the religions of the world. Of course we have the right to challenge these facts, to put them to the test of reason, nevertheless, all the existing religions of the world claim for the human mind this peculiar power of transcending the limits of the senses, and the limits of reason; and this power they put forward as a statement of fact.
Apart from the consideration of the question how far these facts claimed by religions are true, we find one characteristic common to them all. They are all abstractions as contrasted with the concrete discov- eries of physics, for instance; and in all the highly organized religions they take the purest form of Unit Abstraction, either in the form of an Abstracted Presence, as an Omnipresent Being, as an Abstract Personality, called God, as a Moral Law, or in the form of an Abstract Essence underlying every exist- ence. In modern times, too, the attempts made to l8 J NANA YOGA preach religions without appeaUng to the supersen*. suous state of the mind, have had to take up the old abstractions of the Ancients, and put different names to them as ''Moral Law," the ''Ideal Unity," and so forth, thus showing that these abstractions are not in the senses. None of us have yet seen an Ideal Human Being, and yet we are told to believe in an Ideal Human Being. None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress. Thus, this one fact stands out from all these different religions, that there is an Ideal Unit Abstraction, and this is either put before us in the form of a Person, or as an Impersonal Being, or as Law, or a Presence, or an Essence. We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal. Every human being whosoever and wheresoever he may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human being has an ideal of infinite pleasure. Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed every- where, are due to the struggle for this infinite power, or this infinite pleasure. But a few quickly discover that although they are struggling for infinite power, it is not through the senses that it can be reached. They find out very soon that that infinite pleasure is not to be got through the senses, or, in other words, the senses are too limited, and the body is too limited to express the Infinite. To manifest the Infinite through the finite is impossible, and, sooner or later, man learns to give up the attempt to express the Infinite through the finite. This giving up, this renun- ciation of the attempt, is the background of ethics. Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION I9 stand. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.
Ethics always says: "Not I, but thou." Its motto is, "Not self, but non-self." The vain ideas of indi- vidualism to which man clings when he is trying to find that Infinite Power, or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up, say the laws of ethics. You have to put yourself last, and others before you. The senses say, "Myself first." Ethics says, "I must hold myself last." Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane. That Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable.
So, man had to give up the plane of matter, and rise to other spheres to seek a deeper expression of that Infinite. In this way the various ethical laws are being moulded, but all have that one central idea, eternal self-abnegation. Perfect self-annihilation is the ideal of ethics. People are startled if they are asked not to think of their individualities. Every- body seems so very much afraid of losing what he calls his individuality. At the same time, the same men would declare the highest ideals of ethics to be right; never for a moment thinking that the scope, the goal, the idea of all ethics is destruction of the individual, and not the building up of the individual.
Utilitarian standards cannot explain the ethical rela- tions of men; for, in the first place we cannot derive any ethical laws from considerations of utility. With- out this supernatural sanction, as it is called, or the perception of the super-conscious, as I prefer to term 20 J NANA YOGA it, there can be no ethics. Without this struggle towards the Infinite there can be no ideal. Any sys- tem that wants to bind men down within the limits of their own societies would not be able to find an explanation for the ethical laws of mankind. The Utilitarian wants us to give up all this struggle after the Infinite, all this going to the Supersensuous, as impracticable and absurd, and, in the same breath, asks us to take up ethics, and do good to society. Why should we do good? Doing good is a secondary consideration. We must have an ideal. Ethics itself is not the end, but the means to the end. If the end is not there why should we be ethical? W^hy should 1 do good to other men, and not injure them? If happiness be the goal of mankind, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What pre- vents me? In the second place, the basis of utility is too narrow. All these forms and methods are derived from society as it exists, but what right has the Utilitarian to assume that society is eternal? Society did not exist ages ago, possibly will not exist ages hence. Most probably it is one of the passing stages through which we are going towards a higher evolution, and any law that is derived from society alone cannot be eternal, cannot cover the whole ground of man's nature. At best, therefore. Utilitarian theories can only work under present social condi- tions. Beyond that, they have no value. But a mor- ality, an ethical code derived from religion and spirit- uality, has the whole of infinite man for its scope. It takes up the individual but its relations are to the Infinite, and it takes up society also — because society THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION 21 is nothing but numbers of these individuals grouped together — and applying to the individual and his eternal relations, it must necessarily apply to the whole of society, in whatever condition it may be at any given time. Thus we see that there is always the necessity of spiritual religion for mankind. Man can- not always think of matter, however pleasurable it may be.
It has been said that too much attention to things spiritual disturbs our practical relations in this world. As long ago as the days of the Chinese sage Con- fucius it was said: "Let us take care of this world, and then, when we have finished with this world, we will take care of other worlds." It is all very well that we should take care of this world and let the other go, but though too much attention to the spirit- ual may hurt a little our practical relations, yet too much attention to the so-called practical hurts us here and hereafter. It makes us materialistic. For man is not to regard Nature as his goal, but something higher than Nature.
Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above Nature, and this nature is both internal and external. Not only does nature comprise the laws that govern the particles of matter outside us and in our bodies, but there is the more subtle nature inside us, which is, in fact, the motive power which is governing the external and the internal nature. It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer the internal nature of man. It is grand and good to know the laws that govern the stars and planets; it is infinitely grander and better to know the 22 JNANA YOGA laws that govern the passions, the feelings, the will of mankind. This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonder- ful secrets, belong entirely to religion. Human nature — ^the ordinary human nature, I mean — wants to see big material facts. Ordinary mankind cannot under- stand anything that is subtle. Well has it been said that mobs would run after a lion that could kill a thousand lambs, and never for a moment think that it is death unto the lambs, although it may be a mo- mentary triumph for the lion, because in that the mob finds the greatest manifestation of physical strength. Thus with the ordinary run of mankind, they under- stand and find pleasure in everything that is external; but in every society there is a section whose pleasures are not in the senses, but beyond, and who now and then catch glimpses of something higher than matter, and want to struggle thither. And if we read the histories of nations between the lines we shall always find that the rise of a nation comes with an increase in the number of such men in society; and the fall begins when this pursuit after the Infinite, however vain utilitarians may call it, has ceased. That is to say, the mainspring of the strength of every race lies in the spirituality manifested in religion, and the death of that race will begin the day that spirituality wanes and materialism begins.