VEDA NT A 329 marry, and whom you shall not. And great ideas of this kind have been behind the system of child- marriage here, what they call the astrological jati of the bride and bridegroom. And in passing I may remark that according to Manu a child who is born of lust is not an Aryan. The child whose very con- ception and whose death is according to the rules of Vedas, such is an Aryan. Yes, and less of these Aryan children are being produced in every country, and the result is the mass of evil which we call Kali Yuga (Black Age). But we have lost these ideals, we cannot carry these ideas to the fullest length now. It is perfectly true that we have made almost a caric- ature of som.e of them. It is lamentably true that fathers and mothers are not what they were in the old times, neither is society so educated as it used to be, neither has society that love for individuals that it used to have. But however faulty the working out may be, the principle is sound; and if its application has become defective, if one method has failed, take up the principle and work it out better; why kill the principle? The same applies to the food question, the work and details are bad, very bad indeed, but that does not affect the principle. The principle is eternal and must be kept. Work it out afresh, and make a reform application.
This great idea of the atman is the one in India which every one of our sects has got to believe; only, as we will find, the dualists preach that this atman by evil works becomes sankocha, that is, all its powers and its nature become contracted, and by good works its nature again expands. The Advaitist, on the other 330 J NANA YOGA 330 J NANA YOGA hand, says that the atman never expands or contracts, but only seems to do so; it appears to have become contracted. That is the only difference; but all have the one idea that the dtman has all power already; that nothing will come to it from outside, that nothing will drop into it from the skies. Mark you, your Vedas are not inspired, but expired; they come not from somewhere outside, but are eternal laws living in every soul. The Vedas are in the soul of the ant, in the soul of the god. The ant has only to evolve and get the body of a sage or a Rishi, and the Vedas will come out, eternal laws expressing themselves. This is the one great idea to understand, that our power is already ours, our salvation is already within us. Say either that it has become contracted, or say that it has been covered with the evil of mdyd, it mat- ters little; the idea is there; you must believe in that, believe in the possibilities of everybody, that even in the lowest man there is the same possibility as in the Buddha. This is doctrine of the dtman.
But now comes a tremendous fight. Here are the Buddhists, who equally analyze the body into a material stream, and as equally analyze the mind into another. About this dtman, however, they state that it is unneces- sary; that we need not assume the dtman at all. What use of a substance and qualities inhering in the sub- stance? Why not say gunas, qualities, and qualities alone? It is illogical to assume two causes where one will explain the whole thing. And the fight went on, and all the theories which held the doctrine of sub- stance were thrown to the ground by the Buddhists. There was a break up all along the line of those who VEDANTA 331 held to the doctrine of substance and qualities, that you have a soul, and I have a soul, and every one has a soul separate from the mind and body — and each one individual. So far we have seen that the idea of dualism is all right, for there is the body, there is then the fine mind, there is this dtman, and in and through all the dtmans is that Paramatinan, God. The difficulty is here, that this dtman and Paramdtman are both so-called substance, in which the mind and body inhere like so many qualities. Nobody has ever seen substance, none can ever conceive it; what is the use of thinking of this substance? Why not say that what- ever exists is this succession of mental currents and nothing more. They do not inhere in each other, they do not form a unit, one is chasing the other, like waves in the ocean, never complete, never forming one unit whole. Man is a succession of waves, and when one goes away it generates another, and so on, and the cessation of these wave forms is what is called Nirvana. You see that dualism is mute before this, it is impos- sible that it can bring up any argument, and the dualistic God also cannot be retained here. The idea of a God that is omnipresent, and yet is a person who creates without hands, and moves without feet, and who has created the universe as a kumbhakara (potter) creates a ghata (pot), the Buddhist declares is childish, and that if this be God he is going to deny and not worship Him. This universe is full of misery; if it be the work of a God, we are going to fight Him. And secondly, this God is illogical and impossible, as all of you are aware. We need not go into the defects of the design theory, nor into all the arguments against 332 J NANA YOGA the Idea of a personal God. Truth and nothing but truth can prevail. The Advaitist watchword is: Satayameva jayati — "Truth alone triumphs, and not untruth." Through truth alone the way to Devayanam lies. Everybody marches forward under that banner; but it is not meant to crush the weak man's position.
You come with your dualistic idea of God to pick a quarrel with a poor man who is worshipping an image, and you think you are wonderfully rational. You can confound him, but if he turns round and shatters your own personal God, and calls that an imaginary ideal, where are you? You fall back on faith, or raise up the cry of atheism, the old cry of weak man — whosoever defeats him is an atheist. If you are to be rational, be rational all along the line; and if not, allow others the same privilege which you ask for yourselves. How can you prove the existence of this God? On the other hand, it can be almost disproved. There is not a shadow of proof as to His existence, and there are very strong arguments to the contrary. How will you prove His existence, with your God, and his gunas, and an infinite number of souls which are substance and each soul an indi- vidual? In what are you an individual? You are not as a body, for you know to-day better even than the Buddhists of old knew that what may have been matter in the sun has just now become matter in you, and shortly will go out and become matter in the plants, where is your individuality, you Mr. So and So? You have one thought to-night and another to-morrow. You do not think the same way that you thought when a child, and old men do not think as they did VEDANTA 333 when they were young. Where is your individuality? Do not say it is in consciousness, this ahankara, because this only covers a small part of your existence. While I am talking to you all my organs are working and I am not conscious of it. If consciousness is the proof of existence they do not exist then, because I am not conscious of them. Where are you then with your personal God theories? How can you prove such a God?
Again, the Buddhists will stand up and declare, not only is it illogical, but immoral, for it teaches man to be a coward and to seek assistance outside, and nobody can give him such help. Here is the universe, man made it, why, then, depend on an imaginary being outside, whom nobody ever saw or felt, or got help from? Why then do you make cowards of yourselves, and teach your children that the highest state of man is to be a dog, to go crawling before this imaginary being, saying that you are weak and impure, and that you are everything vile in this universe? On the other hand, the Buddhists may urge not only that you are telling a lie, but that you are bringing a tremendous amount of evil upon your children, for, mark you, this world is one of hypnotization. Whatever you tell yourself that you believe. Almost the first words the great Buddha uttered were: "What you think, that you are; what you will think, that you will be." If this be true — and who can deny it — do not teach yourselves that you are nothing, and that you cannot do anything unless you are helped by somebody who does not live here, who sits above the damp clouds. The result will be that you will be more and more 334 J NANA YOGA 334 J NANA YOGA weakened every day; and by constantly repeating: "We are very impure; Lord, make us pure," you will hypnotize yourselves into all sorts of vices.
The Buddhists say that ninety per cent, of the vices that are found in every society arise from this idea of inferiority and become as a dog before God; this awful idea of the human being that the end and aim of this expression of life, this wonderful expression of life, is to become like a worm of the dust. Says the Buddhist to the Vaishnavist, if your ideal, your aim and goal is to go to a place called Vaikunta, where God lives, and there stand before Him with folded hands all through eternity, it is better to commit suicide. The Buddhist may even urge that it is better to believe in annihilation to escape this.
I am putting these ideas before you as a Buddhist just for the time being, because nowadays all these Advaitic ideas are said to make you immoral, and I am trying to tell you how the other side looks. Let us face both sides boldly and bravely. We have seen first of all that the Buddhists claim that the idea of personal God creating the world cannot be proved; is there any child that can believe this to-day? Because a kumhhakara creates a ghata, therefore a God created the world. If this be so, then your kumh- hakara is a god also, and if any one tells you that he acts w^ithout head and hands you may take him to a lunatic asylum. Has your God, the Creator of the world, your personal God, to whom you cry all your life, ever helped you, and what help have you received is the next challenge from modern science?
They will prove that any help you have had could VEDANTA 335 have been obtained by your own exertion, and better still, you need not have spent your energy in that crying, you could have done it all without weeping or crying at all. We have seen that along with this idea of a personal God comes tyranny and priestcraft. Tyranny and priestcraft have prevailed wherever this idea existed, and until the lie is knocked on the head, say the Buddhists, tyranny will not cease. So long as man thinks he has to cower before a supernatural being, so long there will be priests to claim rights and privileges and to make men cower before them, while these poor men will continue to ask some priest to stand as interceder for them. You may knock the Brahmin on the head, but mark me that those who do so will stand in his place, and will be worse; because these ancient Brahmins have a certain amount of gen- erosity in them, and upstarts are always the worst tyrants. If a beggar gets wealth, he thinks the whole world is a bit of straw. So priests there will be, as long as this personal God idea continues, and it will be impossible to think of any great morality in society. Priestcraft and tyranny will go hand in hand as long as the need of mediation is felt by mankind. It is the idea of a thunderer, who kills every one who does not obey him. Next the Buddhist says, you have been so rational up to this point that you say that every- thing is the result of the law of Karma. You believe in an infinity of souls and the belief in the law of Karma is perfectly logical no doubt. There cannot be a cause without an eflFect, the present must have had its cause in the past, and will have its effect in the future. The Hindu says the karma is jada (non- 33^ J NANA YOGA intelligent) and not chaitanya (intelligent), therefore some chaitanya is necessary to bring this cause to fruition. Is it that chaitanya is necessary to bring the plant to fruition? If I add water and plant the seed, no chaitanya is necessary. You may say there was some original chaitanya, but the souls themselves were the chaitanya, none else is necessary. If human souls have it too, what necessity is there for a God, as say the Jains, who, unlike the Buddhists, believe in souls and do not believe in God. Where are you logical, where are you moral? And when you try to maintain that Advaita will make for immorality, just read a little of what has been done in India by dualistic sects, and what has been brought before law courts. If there have been ten thousand Advaitist black- guards, there will be twenty thousand Dvaitist black- guards. Generally speaking, there will be more Dvaitist blackguards, because it takes a better ♦lype of mind to understand Advaita, and they can scarcely be frightened into anything. What stands for you then? There is no escape from the arguments of the Buddhist. You may quote the Vedas, but he does not believe in them. He will say: "My Tripetakas say otherwise, and they are without beginning or end, not even written by Buddha, for Buddha says he is only reciting them, they are eternal." And he adds that yours are wrong and his are the true Vedas, yours are manufactured by the Brahmin priests, therefore out with them. How do you escape?
Here is the Avay out. Take up the first objection, the metaphysical one, that substance and qualities are different. Says the Advaitist they are not. There is VEDANTA 337 no difference between substance and qualities. You know the old illustration, how the rope is taken for the snake, and when you see the snake you do not sec the rope at all, the rope has vanished. Dividing the thing into substance and quality is a metaphysical something in the brains of philosophers, never can it Jiave an objective reality. You see substance if you are an ordinary man, and qualities if you are a great yogi, but you never see both at the same time. So, Buddhists, your quarrel about substance and qualities has been but a quibble which does not exist in fact. But, if substance is qualified, there can only be one. If you take qualities from the soul, and show that these qualities are in the mind, really superimposed on the soul, then there can never be two souls, for it is quali- fication that makes the difference between one soul and another. How do you know that one soul is dif- ferent from another? Owing to certain differentiating marks, certain qualities. And where qualities do not exist, how can there be differentiations? Therefore there are not two souls, there is but One, and your Paramdtman is unnecessary, it is this very soul. That one is called Paramdtman, that very one is also called jivdtman, and so on, and you dualists, such as Sdnkhya and others, who say that the soul is omnipresent, vibhu,, tell me, how can there be two Infinites? There can be only one. What else? This one is the one Infinite Atman, everything else is Its manifestation. There the Buddhist stops, but there it does not end.
The Advaitist position is not merely a weak one of criticism. The Advaitist criticises others when they come too near him, just throws them away, that 338 J NANA YOGA is all, but he propounds his own position. He is the only one that criticises, and does not stop with criticism and showing books. You say the universe is a thing of continuous motion. In vyashti everything is mov- ing, you are moving, the table is moving, motion every- where, samsdra: continuous motion, this is jagat (the universe). Therefore there cannot be individuality in this jagat, because individuality means that which does not change; there cannot be any changeful individual- ity, it is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as individuality in this little world of ours, the jagat. Thought and feeling, mind and body, plants and animals and so on, are in a continuous state of flux. But suppose you take the universe as a unit whole; can it change or move? Certainly not. Motion is possible only in comparison with something which is a little less in motion, or entirely motionless. The universe as a whole, therefore, is motionless, unchangeable. You are, therefore, an individual then and then alone, when you are the whole of it, when you realize: 'T am the universe." That is why the Vedantist says that so long as there are two, fear does not cease. It is only when one does not see another^ does not feel another that fear ceases; then alone death vanishes, then alone samsdra disappears. Advaita teaches us therefore that man is individual in being universal, and not in being particular. You are immortal only when you are the whole. You are fearless and deathless when you are the universe, and then that which you call the iiniverse is the same as that which you call God. It is the same undivided existence which is taken to be many by people having the same state of mind as we have.
VEDANTA 339 looking upon this universe as we see it, suns, and moons, and so on. People who have made a little better karma and have another state of mind, when they die look upon it as svarga (Heaven), and see Indras and so forth. People still higher will see the very same thing as Brahma Loka, and the perfect ones will neither see the earth nor the heavens, nor any loka at all. This universe will have vanished, and Brahman will be in its stead.
Can we know this Brahman? I have told you of the painting of the infinite in the Samhita. Here we shall find another side taken, the infinite internal. That was the infinite of the muscles. Here we shall have the infinite of thought. There the attempt was made to paint the infinite in positive language here that lan- guage failed, and the attempt has been made to paint it in negative language. Here is this universe, and even admitting that it is Brahman, can we know it? No! No! You must understand this one thing very clearly. Again and again this doubt will come to you, if this be Brahman, how can we know it? "By what, O Maitreyi, can the knower be known; how can the knower be known?" The eyes see everything; can they see themselves? They cannot, because the very fact of knowledge is a degradation. Children of Aryas you must remember this, for herein lies a great error. All the Western temptations that come to you, have their metaphysical basis in that one claim — ^that there is nothing higher than sense knowledge. In the East, we say in our Veda's that this knowledge is lower than the thing itself, because it is always a limitation. When you want to know a thing, it imme- 340 J NANA YOGA diately becomes limited by your mind. They cite that instance of the oyster making pearls to show how knowledge is limitation, gathering a thing, bringing it into consciousness, and not knowing it as a whole. This is true about all knowledge, and can it be less so about the infinite? Can you thus limit Him who is the Substance of all knowledge. Him who is the Sdkshi, the Witness, without whom you cannot have any knowl- edge. Him who has no qualities, who is the Witness of the whole tmiverse, the Witness in our souls? How can you know Him? By what means can you encom- pass Him? Everything, the whole universe, is a false attempt to do so. As it were this infinite Atman is trying to see his own face, and all from the lowest animal to the highest of gods, are like so many mir- rors to reflect himself in, and he is taking up still others, finding them insufficient, and so on, until in the human body he comes to know that it is finite of the finite, that all is finite; that there cannot be any expression of the infinite in the finite. Then comes the retrograde march, and this is what is called renun- ciation, vairdgyam. Back from the senses, back: do not go to the senses, is the watchword of vairdgyam. This is the watchword of all morality, this is the watchword of all well-being, for you must remember that the imiverse begins in tapasya, in renunciation; and as you go back and back all the forms are being mani- fested before you, and they are left aside one after the other until you remain what you really are. This is moksha, or liberation.