Aye, we want them, unnatural though they be, as a warning to the race, as examples of the idea of giving up. They are to be preferred to the effeminate crav- ings for Western luxuries that are creeping into India; and mistaken as they are, even these crude ideas of renunciation are infinitely better than material- ism, with its gross and degenerating tendencies. We want to have renunciation. It has conquered India in 304 J NANA YOGA days of yore, it has still to conquer India. Still it stands greatest and highest of Indian ideals — Renun- ciation. The land of Buddha, the land of Ramanuja, of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the land of renuncia- tion, the land where from the days of yore they preached against Karma Kdnda, and where even to-day there are hundreds who have given up everything, passed everything away and became Jivan Muktds — shall that land give up its ideals? Certainly not. There may be people whose brains have become turned with luxurious Western ideals. There may be thou- sands, and hundreds of thousands, w^ho have drunk deep of this curse of the world — enjoyment— into whose brains have come the allurements of the senses, yet for all that there will be other thousands in this Motherland of ours to whom religion will be a reality, and who will be ready to give up if need be, without counting the cost.
Another ideal very common in all our sects, I want to place before you. It also is a vast subject. This idea is unique in India, that is that religion is to be realized. "This Atman is not to be reached by too much talking, nor is it to be reached by the power of intellect." Nay, ours are the only Scriptures in the world that declare that not even by the study of the Scriptures themselves is the Atman to be realized. This power of realization comes from the teacher unto the disciple. When this insight com.es to the disciple everything is cleared up and realization comes.
One more idea, what is a Guru? Let us go back to the Srutis: "He who knows the secret of the Vedas," not book-worms, not grammarians, not pandits in gen- VEDANTA IN ALL ITS PHASES 305 eral, but he who knows the meaning of the Scriptures, he alone is the Guru. "An ass laden with a mass of sandalwood knows only the weight of the wood, but not its precious qualities." So are these pandits (scholars); we do not want these to teach religion. What can they teach, if they have no realization? When I was a boy here in this city of Calcutta, I used to go from place to place in search of religion, and everywhere after hearing very great speakers I asked: "Have you seen God?' ' The men were all taken aback at the idea of seeing God, and the only man who told me, "I have," was Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and not only so, but he said: "I will put you in the way of seeing Him too." Not a man who can twist and torture texts, is fit to be a teacher. "Different ways of throwing out words, different ways of explaining texts of the Scriptures, these are for the enjoyment of the learned, not for freedom." He who knows the secret of the Srutis, the sinless, and he who does not want to make money by teaching — ^he is the Shanta (saint), the Sddhu (Holy one), who comes as the Spring, which brings the leaves and fruits to various plants but does not ask anything from the plant, for its very nature is to do good. It does good and that is all Such is the Guru. "Who has himself crossed this ocean of life, and without any idea of gain to himself helps others to cross the ocean also;" this is the Guru, and mark that none else can be a Guru. As for others: "Themselves steeped in dark- ness, but in the pride of their hearts thinking they know everything, do not stop even there, but want to help others, and, blind leading the blind, both fall into 306 J NANA YOGA the ditch." Thus say your Vedas. You are Vedan- tins, you are very orthodox, are you not? Aye, what I want to do is to make you more orthodox. The more really orthodox you are the more sensible, and the more you think of modern orthodoxy the more foolish you are. Go back to your old orthodoxy, for in those days every sound that came from these books, every pulsation, was out of a strong, steady, and sincere heart; every note was true. After that came degradation in art, in science, in religion, in every- thing, national degradation. Go back, go back, to the old days, when there was strength and vitality. Be strong once more, drink deep out of this fountain of yore, for that is the only condition of life in India. It has been a hard nut to crack all over the world that the idea of individuality which we have to-day is an illusion. Tell a man that he is not an individual in the ordinary sense of the word and forthwith he becomes afraid that his individuality (whatever that may be) will be lost. But the Advaitin says there never has been a finite individuality; you as a finite being have been changing every moment of your life. You have been a child, and thought in one way, you are a man, and think another way, you will be an old man, and will think yet another way. Everybody is thus changing. If so, where is your individuality? Certainly not in the body, nor in the mind, nor in thought. And beyond that is the Atman, and says the Advaitin: "This Atman is the Brahman Itself. There cannot be two Infinites. There is only One Individual and It is Infinite. In plain words, we are rational beings, and we want to reason. And what is rea- VEDANTA IN ALL ITS PHASES 307 son? More or less of classification, until you cannot go any farther. And the finite can only find its ulti- mate rest when it is classified into the Infinite. Go on taking up a finite and finding its reasons, and you will find rest nowhere until you reach the ultimate or Infinite; and that Infinite says the Advaitin, is what alone exists. Everything else is Maya, everything else has no real existence. Whatever of existence is in any material thing is this Brahman; we are this Brahman, and name, shape, and everything else is Maya. Take off the name and form and you and I are all one. But we have to guard against the misuse of the word "I." Generally people say: ''If I am the Brahman why cannot I do this or that?" But they are using the word "I" in two different senses. You think you are a body, or a man, and as soon as you do this you are bound; no more are you Brahman, the Self, Who wants nothing. Whose light is within. All His pleasure and bliss are within, perfectly satis- fied with Himself He wants nothing, expects nothing, is perfectly fearless, perfectly free. That is Brahman. That is the meaning of the real 'T." In that we are all one.
Now this seems to be the great point of difference between the dualist and the Advaitin. You find even great commentators, like Sankaracharya, making meanings of texts, which, to my mind, sometimes do not seem to be justified. Sometimes you find Rama- nuja dealing with texts in a way that is not very clear. The idea has been even among our pandits that only one of these views can be true; the rest mxust be false. Yet they find in their Srutis the most wonderful 308 JNANA YOGA idea that India has to give to the world, "Ekam sat vipra bahudhd vadanti," "That which exists is One, sages call it by various names." That has been the theme, and the working out of the whole of this life- problem of the nation is the working out of that theme: "That which exists is One, sages call it by various names." Yet, except a very few spiritual men in India, we all forget this. We forget this great idea, and you will find there are those among the pandits who are of opinion that only the Advaitin is right, or that only the Visishtadvaitin is right, or that only the Dvaitin can have the Truth. But a few years ago there came to India one whose life was the explana- tion of all these differences, whose life was the work- ing out of the harmony that is the background of all the different sects of India. I mean Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. It is his life that explains that all of these are necessary; that dualism is the natural idea of the senses. As long as we are bound by the senses we are bound to see a God who is personal, and noth- ing but personal; we are bound to see the world as it appears. Just as says Ramanuja: "As long as you think you are a body, or think you are a mind, or think you are a Jiva, every act of perception will give you the three, God and Nature and something as see- ing both." But yet even the idea of the body grows dimmer where the mind itself becomes finer and finer, until it has almost all disappeared; and when all the different things that bind us down to this body-life, all the things that make us fear, that make us weak, have disappeared, then comes the realization of One- ness. The Bhagavad Gitd says: "Even in this life VEDANTA IN ALL ITS PHASES 309 they have conquered heaven, whose minds are firmly fixed on this sameness of everything; for God is pure, and the same to all; therefore, such are said to be living in God." And again: "Thus seeing the same Lord everywhere he, the sage, does not hurt the Self by the self and thus goes to the highest goal."
XVII VEDANTA (Lecture delivered at Lahore, India.)
Two worlds there are in which we live, one the external, the other the internal. Human progress has been, from time immemorial, along parallel lines in both these worlds. The search began in the external, and man at first sought to get answers for all the deep problems from external nature. He wanted to satisfy his thirst for the beautiful and the sublime from all that surrounded him; he wanted to express himself and all that was within him in the language of the concrete; and grand indeed were the answers — most marvellous ideas of God and worship, most rapturous expressions of the beautiful, most sublime conceptions came from the external world. But the other, opening out for humanity later, laid out before him a universe yet sublimer, yet more beautiful, and infinitely more expansive. In the Karma Kanda (doctrines and ceremonies) portion of the Vedas we find most Wonderful ideas about an over-ruling Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of this universe presented before us in language which is at times soul-stirring. Most of you, perhaps, remember that wonderful pas- sage in the Rig Veda Samhita, where you get a descrip- VEDANTA 311 VEDANTA 311 tion of chaos, possibly the subHmest that has ever been attempted by man. In spite of all this, we find it is only a painting of the sublime external, that it is still gross, that something of matter yet clings to it. It is only the expression of the Infinite in the language of matter, in the language of the finite, it is the infinite of the muscles and not of the mind. It is the infinite of space and not of thought. Therefore in the second portion of the Vedas, or J nana Kanda (philosophy), we find the method of procedure altogether different. The first attempt was to search out from external nature the truths of the universe; to get the solution of all the deep problems of life from the material world. There arose the cry — ''When a man dies, what becomes of him? Some say that he exists, others that he is gone, say, O king of Death, what is truth?" The Indian mind has discovered what was to be got from the external world, but it did not feel satisfied with that; it wanted to search more deeply, to dig in its own interior, to seek from its own soul, and the answer came.
Upanishads, or Vedanta, or Aranyakas, is the name of this portion of the Vedas. Here we perceive at once that religion has got rid of all external formalities, that spiritual things are told not in the language of matter, but that spirituality is preached in the language of the spirit, the superfine in the language of the super- fine. No more is any grossness apparent in it, no more is there any compromise with things that concern us. Bold, brave beyond our conception at the present day, stand the giant minds of the sages of the Upan- ishads, declaring the noblest truths that have been 312 J NANA YOGA preached unto humanity, without compromise, without fear. This, my countrymen, I want to lay before you.
Even the Jndna Kanda of the Vedas is a vast ocean; many lives are necessary to understand even a little of it. Truly has it been said by Rdmdnuja that the Vedanta is the head, the shoulders, the crested form of the Vedas, and surely enough the Upanishads that teach it have become the Scriptures of modern India. The Hindus have the greatest respect for the Karma Kanda of the Vedas, but for all practical pur- poses we know that for ages Shruti (sacred revela- tion) has meant the Upanishads and the Upanishads alone. We know that all our great philosophers, either Vyasa or Patanjali, or Gautama, or even the great father of all philosophy, the celebrated Kapila himself, when ever they wanted an authority for what they wrote, every one of them drew it from the Upanishads and from no other source, for therein are the truths that remain forever.
There are truths that are true only in a certain line, in a certain direction, under certain circumstances and for certain times, those that are founded on the insti- tutions of the time. There are other truths that are based on the nature of man himself that must endure as long as man himself endures. These are the truths that alone can be universal, and in spite of all the changes that we are sure must have come in India, as to our social surroundings, our methods of dress, our manner of eating, our modes of worship, these universal truths of the Shrutis, the marvellous Vedan- tic ideas, stand out in their own sublimity, immovable, unvanquishable, deathless and immortal. Yet the VEDANTA 313 germs of all the ideas that are developed in the Upan- ishads have been taught already in the Karma Kanda. The idea of the cosmos which all sects of Vedantins take for granted, the psychology which has formed the common basis of all Indian schools of thought had there been worked out and presented before the world. A few words therefore about the Karma Kanda are necessary before we start into the spiritual portion of the Vedanta, and I want first to make clear my use of the word Vedanta. Unfortunately there is a mistake common in modern India, that the word Vedanta has reference only to the Advaita system, but you must always remember that in modern India there are the three Prasthanas (authorities) for man to study. First of all there are the Revelations (the Shrutis), by which I mean the Upanishads. Secondly, among our philosophies, the Sutras of Vyasa have always held great prominence on account of their being the summation of all the preceding systems of philos- ophy; not that these systems are contradictory to one another, but the one is based on the other. There is a gradual unfolding of the theme which culminates in the Sutras of Vyasa; and between the Upanishads and the Sutras, which are the systematizing of the marvellous truths of the Vedanta, comes the divine commentary of the Vedanta Sri Bhagavad Gtfd. The Upanishads, the Git a, and the Vyasa Sutras therefore have been taken up by every sect in India which has wished to claim authority as orthodox, whether Dvaitist, or Vaishnavist, or Advaitist it matters little, the authorities of each and every one are these three. We find that a Sankardchdrya, or a Rdmdnuja, or a 314 J NANA YOGA Madhvdchdrya, or a Chaitanya — any one who wanted to propound a new theory — had to take up these three sys- tems and write only a new commentary on them. There- fore it would be wrong to confine the word Vedanta only to one system which has arisen out of the Upanishads. All these systems are covered by the word Vedanta. The Ramanujist has as much right to be called a Vedantist as the Advaitist; in fact I will go a little further and say that what we really mean by the word Hindu is the word Vedantist; the word Vedantist will express that too. One idea more I wish you to note, that these three systems have been current in India almost from time immemorial; for you must not believe that Sankara was the inventor of the Ad- vaitist system; it existed ages before Sankara was born; he was one of its last representatives. So with the Ramanujist system, it existed ages before Rdmd- nuja appeared, as we already know by the commen- taries that were written. This is true of all the dualistic systems that have existed side by side with the others, and with my little knowledge I have come to the conclusion that they do not contradict each other. Just as in the case of our six Darsanas (systems of philosophy), we find that they are a grand unfolding of the highest principles, the theme beginning far back, with the uncertain utterances of early investigators, and ending in the trimuphant blast of the Advaita, so also in these three main systems we trace the gradual working up of the human mind towards higher and higher ideals, until everything is merged in that won- derful unity which is reached in the Advaita. There- fore these three are not contradictory. But I am bound VEDANTA 315 to tell you that this mistake has been committed by not a few. We find an Advaitist preacher keeping entire those texts which teach Advaitism especially, and getting hold of the dualistic or qualified-dualistic texts and trying to wrest them into his own meaning; We find dualistic teachers leaving alone those passages that are expressly dualistic and getting hold of Advaitic texts and trying to force them into a dualistic meaning. They have been great men, our Gurus, yet there is such a saying as ''even the faults of a Guru must be told." I am of the opinion that in this only were these great teachers mistaken. We need not go into text torturing, we need not go into any sort of religious dishonesty, we need not go into any kind of grammatical twaddle, we need not go about trying to put our own ideas into texts which were never meant for those ideas, but the work is plain and it becomes easier once you under- stand the marvellous doctrine of Adhikara Vedas. It is true that the Upanishads have one theme before them. "What is that, knowing which we know every- thing else?" In modern language the theme of the Upanishads, like the theme of every other knowledge, is to find the ultimate unity of things, for you must remember that knowledge is nothing but discovering unity in the midst of diversity. Each science is based upon this; all human knowledge is based upon the finding of unity in the midst of diversity; and if it be the task of those small fragments of human knowledge which we call our sciences, to find unity in the midst of a few different phenomena, the effort becomes stu- pendous when the theme before us is to find unity in the midst of this marvellously diversified universe, 3l6 J NANA YOGA differing in name and form, differing in matter and spirit, differing in everything, each thought differing from every other thought, each form differing from every other form. Yet, to harmonize these many planes, unending lokas — in the midst of this infinite variety to find unity, this is the theme of the Upan- ishads; this is the task those great sages set themselves. To show a man the Pole Star, one takes the nearest star which is bigger than the Pole Star and more brilliant, and leads him to fix his mind on that, until at last he comes to the Pole Star. This is the task before us, and to prove my idea I have simply to show you the Upanishads, and you will see it. Nearly every chapter begins with dualistic teachings. Later on God is taught as some one who is the Creator of the Universe, its Preserver, unto whom everything goes at last. He is one to be worshipped, the Ruler, the Guide of nature, external and internal. One step further, and we find the same teacher showing that this God is not outside nature, but immanent in nature. And at last both ideas are discarded and whatever is real is He; there is no difference. That immanent One is at last declared to be the same that is in the human soul. ''Tat tvam asi Svetaketo." "Svetaketu, That thou art." Here is no compromise; here is no fear of others' opinions. Truth, bold truth, has been taught in bold language, and we need not fear to preach the truth in the same bold language to-day, and by the grace of God I hope at least to be the one who dares to be that bold preacher.
To go back to our preliminaries. There are first two things to be understood, one the psychological VEDANTA 317