Thus the Vedanta philosophy is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It voices both these views and takes things as they are; it admits that this world is a mixture of good and evil, happiness and misery; and that to increase the one, of necessity must increase the other. There will never be a good world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms; nor can there be a bad world. The great secret revealed by this analysis is this, that good and bad are not two 64 JNANA YOGA cut-and-dried, separate existences. There is not one thing in this world of ours which you can label as good, and good alone, and there is not one thing in the universe which you can label as bad, and bad alone. The very same phenomenon which is appear- ing to be good now, may appear to be bad to-morrow. The same thing which is producing misery in one, may produce happiness in another. The fire that burns the child may cook a good meal for a starving man. The same nerves that carry the sensations of misery carry also the sensations of happiness. The only way to stop evil, therefore, is to stop the good also; there is no other way that is sure. To stop death, we shall have to stop life also. Life without death, and happi- ness without misery, are contradictions, and neither can be found alone, because each of them is but a different manifestation of the same thing. What I thought to be good yesterday, I do not think to be good now. In all my life, when I look back upon it, and see what were my ideals at different times, I find this to be so. At one time my ideal was to drive a strong pair of horses. I do not hold that ideal now. At another time, when I was a little child, I thought if I could make a certain kind of sweetmeat I should be perfectly happy. At another time I imagined that I should be entirely satisfied if I had a wife and children and plenty of money. To-day, I laugh at all these ideals as mere childish nonsense. The Vedanta says, there must come a time when we look back and laugh at these ideals of ours which make us afraid of giving up our individuality. Each one wants to keep this body and not give it up, and our idea is that MAYA AND ILLUSION 65 if we can keep the body for an indefinite time we shall be very happy, but there will come a time when we shall laugh at that too. Now, if such be the state of things, we are in a state of helpless contradiction, neither existence, nor non-existence, but a mixture of them both; neither misery, nor happiness, but a mixture of them both. What, then, is the use of Vedanta, and all other philosophies and religions? And, above all, what is the use of doing good work? This is the question that comes to the mind. If this be the truth, that whenever you try to do good the same evil remains, and whenever you try to create happiness there will always be mountains high of misery, people will always ask you — what is the use of doing right? The answer is, in the first place, that we must work in the way of lessening misery, for that is the only way of making ourselves happy. Every one of us finds it out sooner or later in our lives. The bright ones find it out a little earlier, and the dull ones a little later. The dull ones pay very dearly for the discovery and the bright ones less dearly. In the second place, apart from that, although we know there never will come a time when this universe will be full of happiness and without misery, still this is the work to be done; although misery increases, we must do our part at the same time. Both these forces will make the universe live until there will come a time when we shall awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud-pies, which we are doing all the time, for it is true that it is only a building of mud-pies. That one lesson we shall have to learn. It will take a long, long time to learn it.
66 JNANA YOGA Attempts have been made in Germany to build a system of philosophy on the basis that the Infinite has become the finite. Such attempts are made even in England now, and the analysis of the position of these philosophers is this, that the Infinite is trying to express Itself in this universe. The mistake is that they imagine there will come a time when the Infinite will succeed in expressing itself. In that case the absolute state would be a lower one than the mani- fested, because in the manifested state, the Absolute expresses itself, and we are to help this expression more and more, until the Infinite pours itself out on this side as the finite. This is all very nice, and we have used the words infinite and manifestation and expression, and so on, but philosophers naturally ask for a logical, fundamental basis for the statement that the finite can fully express the Infinite. The Absolute and the Infinite can become this universe only by limi- tation. Everything here, therefore, must be limited, everything that comes out of the senses, or through the mind, or through the intellect, must of necessity be limited, and for the limited to be the unlimited is simply absurd, and can never be.
The Vedanta, on the other hand, says that it is true that the Absolute, or the Infinite, is trying to express itself in the finite, but there will come a time when it will find that it is impossible, and it will then have to beat a retreat, and this beating a retreat is the real beginning of religion. It is very hard for modern people to talk of renunciation. I stand, as it was said of me in America, as a man coming out of a world that has been dead and buried these five thousand MAYA AND ILLUSION •6'J years, and talking of renunciation. So says, perhaps, the English philosopher. Yet it is true that that is the only path to religion — renounce and give up. Struggle hard and try your best to find any other way. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to be perfect. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream, and longs for some satisfying reality. It finds the truth of the statement: "Desires are never satisfied by the enjoyment of desires they only increase the more, as butter poured upon the fire increases the flame the more." This is true of all sense enjoy- ments, of all intellectual enjoyments, and of all the enjoyments of which the human soul is capable. They are all without real value, they are within mdyd, within this net-work beyond which we cannot go. We may run therein through infinite time and find no end, and whenever we struggle to get a little bit of enjoyment, a mass of misery will be on our back. How awful is this state of things! And when I think of all this, I cannot but think that this theory of mdyd, this statement that it is all mdyd, is the best and only explanation. What an amount of misery there is in this world, and if you travel among various nations you will find that one nation has attempted to cure its evils by one means, and another by enother. Evil has been taken up by the various races, and attempts have been made in various ways to check it, yet no nation has succeeded. If it has been minimized in one point, a mass of evil has been crowded into another point. Thus it goes. The Hindus, to pro- 68 J NANA YOGA duce a little chastity in the race, have sanctioned child- marriage, which in the long run has degraded the race. At the same time, I cannot deny that this child- marriage makes the race more chaste. What would you have? If you want the nation to be more chaste, you weaken men and women physically by child- marriage. On the other hand, are you in England any safer? No, because chastity is the life of a nation. Do you not find in history that the first death-sign of a nation has been unchastity? When that has entered, the end of the race is in sight. Where shall we get a solution of these miseries then? If parents select husbands and wives for their children, will this evil be prevented? The daughters of India are more practical than sentimental. Very little of poetry remains in their lives. Again, if people select their own husbands and wives, that does not seem to bring much happiness, if the records of the divorce court are to be trusted. The Indian woman is very happy; there is scarcely a case of quarrelling between husband and wife. On the other hand, in the United States, where the greatest liberty obtains, the number of unhappy homes and marriages is very large. Unhap- piness is here, there and everywhere. What does it show? That, after all, not much happiness has been gained by all these ideals. We all struggle for hap- piness, and before we get a little on one side on the other side there begins unhappiness.
Shall we not work to do good then? Yes, with more zest than ever, but what this knowledge will do for us is to break down our fanaticism. The Englishman will no more become a fanatic to curse MAYA AND ILLUSION 69 the Hindu. He will have learned to respect the cus- toms of different nations. There will be less fanati- cism and more real work; fanatics cannot work, they waste three-fourths of their energy. It is the level- headed, calm, practical man who works. Mere ranting fanatics do not do much. So the power to work will increase from this idea. Knowing that this is the state of things, there will be more patience. The sight of misery or of evil will not be able to throw us off our balance and make us run after shadows. Therefore, patience will come to us, knowing that the world will have to go on in this way. Say, for instance, that all men will have become good, then the animals will have become men, and will have to go through the same state, and so the plants. But only one thing is certain; the mighty river is rush- ing towards the ocean, and there are bits of straw and paper in the stream, which are trying to get back, but we are sure that the time will come when each one of these pieces will be drawn into that boundless ocean. So, in this life, with all its miseries and sor- rows, its joys and smiles and tears, one thing is certain, that all things are rushing towards their goal and it is only a question of time when you and I, and plants and animals, and every particle of life that exists must go into the Infinite Ocean of perfection, must attain unto freedom, unto God.
Let me repeat, once more, because the mistake is constantly being made, that the Vedantic position is neither pessimism nor optimism. It does not say that this world is all evil or all good. It says that our evil is of no less value than our good, and our good 70 J NANA YOGA of no more value than our evil. They are all bound together. This is the world, and knowing this you work with patience. What for? Why should we work? If this is the state of things what shall we do? Why not become agnostics? The modern agnostics also know that there is no solution of this problem, no getting out of this evil, or this mdyd, as we should say in our language; therefore, they tell us to be satis- fied and enjoy life. Here, again, is a mistake, a tre- mendous mistake, a most illogical mistake. And it is this. What do you mean by life? Do you mean only the life of the senses? In this, every one of us differs only slightly from the brutes. I am sure that no one is present here whose life is only in the senses. Then this present life means something more than that. Our feelings and thoughts and aspirations are all part and parcel of our life, and is not the struggle towards the great ideal, towards perfection, one of the most important components of what we call life? According to the agnostics, we must enjoy life as it is. But this life means, above all, this tremendous search after the ideal; the backbone of life is going towards perfection. We must have that, and, there- fore, we cannot be agnostics, or take the world as it appears. The agnostic position takes this life minus this latter component, to be all that exists, and this he claims cannot be known, wherefore he must give up the search. This is what is called Maya, this Nature, this Universe. This according to the Vedan- tist is Nature.
All religions are more or less attempts to get beyond nature, the crudest, or the most developed, expressed MAYA AND ILLUSION 7I through mythology, or symbology, or through the abstractions of philosophy, through stories of gods, or angels, or demons; through stories of saints, or seers, or great men, or prophets, all have that one object, all are trying to get beyond these limitations, to find something better and higher. In one word, they are all struggling towards freedom. Man feels, consciously or unconsciously, that he is bound; that he is not what he wants to be. It was taught to him at the very moment he began to look around; that very instant he learned that he was bound, and he also found that there was something in him which wanted to fly beyond, where the body could not follow, some- thing which was as yet chained down by this limita- tion. Even in the lowest of religious ideas, where departed ancestors, and other spirits, mostly violent and cruel, lurking about the houses of their friends, fond of bloodshed and strong drink — even there we find that one common factor, that of freedom. The man who wants to worship the gods, sees in them above all things greater freedom than in himself. If a door is closed, he imagines that the gods can get through walls and so on; the walls have no limitations for them. This one idea of liberty is increasing, until it comes to the ideal of a Personal God, of which the central concept is that God is a Being beyond the limi- tation of Nature, of mayd. I hear, as it were, a voice, before me, I feel as if this question were being dis-) cussed by those ancient sages of India, in some of^' those forest retreats, and in one of them even the oldest and the holiest fail to reach the solution, but a young boy is standing up in the midst of them and 72 JNANA YOGA declaring: *'Hear ye children of immortality, hear ye who live in the highest places, I have found the way. There is a way out beyond the darkness by knowing Him who is beyond this darkness."
This mdya is everywhere, it is terrible; to work through mdyd is impossible. If a man says I will sit beside this great river and I wiU ford the river when all the water has run down into the ocean, that man would be as likely to succeed as the man who says he will work till this world has become all good, and then he will enjoy this world. Great Ganges herself might sooner run dry than the world become all good! The way is not with mdyd but against mdyd. This is another fact to learn. We are not born helpers of Nature, but competitors with Nature. We are the bondmasters, and we are trying to bind ourselves down. Why is this house here? Nature did not give it. Nature says go and live in the forest. Man says I will build a house and fight with Nature, and he does. The whole history of humanity is a continuous fight against the so-called laws of Nature, and man gains in the end. Coming to the internal world, there, too, the same fight is going on, this fight between the animal man and the spiritual man, between light and darkness, and here, too, man becomes victorious. He, as it were, cuts his way out of Nature to his idea of freedom. We have seen so far, then, that here is a statement of mdyd, and beyond this mdyd the Vedantic philosophers find something which is not bound by mdyd, and if we can get where that stands, certainly we shall be beyond mdyd. This, in some form or other, is the common property of all MAYA AND ILLUSION 73 religions, and is what is called Theism. But with the Vedanta, it is the beginning of religion and not the end. The idea of a personal God, the Ruler and Creator of this Universe, as He has been styled, the Ruler of mdyd, or Nature, is not the end of these Vedantic ideas, it is only the beginning, and the idea grows and grows until the Vedantist finds that He who was standing outside was he himself, and was in reality inside. It was the very one who is free, who through limitation thought he was bound.
MAYA AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPTION OF GOD We have seen how the idea of Mdydj which forms, as it were, one of the basic doctrines of the Advaita Vedanta, is, in its germ, found even in the Samhitas, and that in reaHty all the ideas which are developed in the Upanishads are to be found already in the Samhitas in some form or other. Most of you are by this time perfectly acquainted with the idea of Maya, and know that it is sometimes very erroneously explained as illusion, so that when the universe is said to be Maya, that also would have to be explained as being illusion. The translation of the word is neither happy nor correct. Maya is not a theory, it is simply a statement of facts about the universe as it exists, and to understand Maya we must go back to the Samhitas and begin with the conception in the germ. We have seen how the ideas of the Devas came. At the same time these Devas were at first only powerful beings, nothing more. Most of you are horrified when reading the old scriptures, whether of the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Persians, or others, to find that the ancient gods sometimes did things which, to us, are very repugnant, but when reading these books, we entirely forget that we are persons of 74 74 MAYA AND EVOLUTION OF CONCEPTION OF GOD 75 the nineteenth century, and these gods were beings existing thousands of years ago, and we also forget that the people who worshipped these gods found nothing incongruous in their characters, found nothing to frighten them in depicting their gods as they did, because they were very much like them themselves. I may also remark that this is the one great lesson we have to learn throughout our lives. In judging others we always judge them by our own ideals. That is not as it should be. Every one must be judged according to his own ideal, and not by that of any one else. In all our dealings with our fellow-beings we constantly labor under this mistake, and I am of the opinion that the vast majority of our quarrels with our fellow-beings arise simply from this one cause, that we are always trying to judge other gods by our own, other ideals by our ideals, and others* motives from our motives. Under certain circum- stances I might do a certain thing, and when I see another person taking the same course I think he has also the same motive actuating him, little dreaming that although the effect may be the same, yet many thousands of causes may produce the same effect. He may have performed the action with quite a dif- ferent motive from what would impel me to do the same thing. So in judging of those ancient religions we must not take the ordinary standpoint to which we incline in our judgment of others, but must throw ourselves, as it were, into the position of thought in those early times.