Il8 J NANA YOGA harmony between them. He worked out, rationalized and placed before men a wonderful, coherent whole.
Materialism prevails in Europe to-day. You may pray all the world over for the salvation of these sceptics, but they do not yield, they want reason. The salvation of Europe depends on a rationalistic religion, and Advaita — the non-duality, the Oneness, the idea of the impersonal God — is the only religion that can keep any hold on intellectual people. It comes whenever religion seems to disappear, and irre- ligion seems to prevail, and that is why it is gaining ground in Europe and America. One thing more has to be added to it. In the old Upanishads we find sublime poetry; these "Seers of Truth" were poets. Plato says, inspiration comes to people through poetry, and it seemed as if these ancient Rishis were raised above humanity to show these truths through poetry. They never preached, nor philosophized, nor wrote. Strains of music came out of their lips. In Buddha we had the great, universal heart, infinite patience making religion practical, bringing it to every one's door; in Sankaracharya we saw tremendous intellec- tual power, throwing the scorching light of reason over everything. We want to-day that bright sun of intellectuality, and joined to it the heart of Buddha, that wonderful, infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy. Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends. This will be the religion of the future, and if we can work it out, we may be sure that it will be for all times and profes- sions. This is the one way that will be acceptable THE ABSOLUTE AND MANIFESTATION II9 to modern science, for it has almost fallen into it. When a great scientific teacher asserts that all things are the manifestation of one force, does it not remind you of the God of whom you hear in the Upanishads: "As the one fire entering into the universe is express- ing itself in various forms, and yet is infinitely more besides, even so that one Soul is expressing itself in every soul and yet is infinitely more besides." Do you not see how science is going? The Hindu nation proceeded through the study of the mind, through metaphysics and logic. The European nations start from external nature, and now they^ too, are coming to the same results. We find that searching through the mind we at last come to that Oneness, that Uni- versal One, the Internal Soul of everything, the Essence, the Reality of everything, the Ever-Free, the Ever-Blissful, the Ever-Existing. Through mate- rial science we come to the same Oneness. Science to-day is telling us that all things are but the mani- festation of one energy, which is the sum-total of everything which exists, and the trend of humanity is towards freedom, and not towards bondage. Why should men be moral? Because through morality is the path towards freedom, and immorality leads to bondage.
Another peculiarity of the Advaita system is that from its very start it is non-destructive. That is another glory, that boldness to preach: "Do not disturb the faith of any, even of those who through ignorance have attached themselves to lower forms of worship." That is what it says: "Do not disturb, but help every one to get higher and higher; include all humanity."
I20 J NANA YOGA This philosophy preaches a God who is a sum-total. If you seek a universal religion which can apply to every one, that religion must not be partial and one- sided, it must always be the sum-total and be able to include all degrees of religious development.
This idea is not clearly found in any other religious system. They are all parts which have not yet grasped the idea of absolute Unity. The existence of the part is merely for this, that it is always struggling to attain to the whole. So, from the very first Advaita had no antagonism with the various sects existing in India. There are dualists existing to-day, and their number is by far the largest in India, because dualism naturally appeals to less educated minds. It is a very handy, natural, common-sense explanation of the uni- verse. But with these dualists, Advaita has no quarrel. The one thinks the God of the universe is outside the universe, somewhere in heaven, and the other that the God of the universe is his own soul, and that it would be a blasphemy to call Him anything more distant. Any idea of separation would be terrible. We can only be the nearest of the near. There are not words in any language to express this nearness, except this one word — Oneness. With any other idea the Advaitist is frightened, just as the dualist is frightened with the concept of the Advaita, and thinks it blasphemy. At the same time the Advaitist knows why these other ideas must be and so has no quarrel with the dualist; the latter is on the right road. From his standpoint, as soon as he looks from the part, he will have to see many. Any view of God looked at from a part of this universe can only be that project- THE ABSOLUTE AND MANIFESTATION 121 ing outside. It is the constitutional necessity of the duaHstic standpoint. Let them have it. The Advai- tist knows that whatever may be their defects or mistakes, they are all going to the same goal. There he differs entirely from the dualist, who is forced by his very point of view to believe that all opposing views are wrong. The dualists all the world over naturally believe in a personal God who is purely anthropomorphic; and just as a great potentate here is pleased with some and displeased with others, the same idea attaches to the personal God of the dualist. He is arbitrarily pleased with some person, or race, and showers blessings upon them. Naturally the dualist comes to the conclusion that God has certain favorites, and hopes to be one of them. You will find in almost every religion the idea that "we are the favorites of our God, and only by believing as we do can you be taken into favor with Him." Some dualists are so narrow as to insist that only the few who have been predestined to the favor of that God can be saved, the rest may try ever so hard, but they cannot come in. I challenge you to show one dualistic rehgion which has not more or less of this exclusive- ness. And because of it, they are in the nature of things bound to fight and quarrel with each other, and this they have ever been doing. Again, these dualists win popular favor, for the vanity of the unedu- cated is appealed to. They like to feel that they enjoy exclusive privileges. The dualist thinks you cannot have morality until you have a God with a rod in his hand, ready to punish you. The unthinking masses are generally dualists, and they, poor fellows, 122 J NANA YOGA have been persecuted for thousands of years in every country, therefore their idea of salvation is absence from the fear of punishment. I have been asked by a clergyman in America: "What, no devil in your religion? How can that be?" But, on the other hand, we find that the best and greatest men that have been born in the world have worked with that high impersonal idea. It is the Man who says in the New Testament, "I and my Father are One," whose power descends unto millions. For thousands of years it has worked for good. And we know that the same Man, because he was a non-dualist, was merciful to others. To the masses who cannot conceive of anything higher than a personal God, he says: "Pray to your Father in heaven." To others, who could grasp a higher idea, he said: "I am the Vine, ye are the branches;" but to his disciples to whom he revealed himself more fully he proclaimed the highest truth: "I and my Father are One."
It was the great Buddha, in India, who never cared for the dualist gods, and who has been called an atheist and a materialist, who yet was ready to give up his body for a poor goat. That man set in motion the highest moral ideas any nation can have..Wher- ever there is a moral code, it is a ray of light from that man. We cannot force the great hearts of the world into little narrow limits and keep them there, especially at this time in the history of humanity, when there is a degree of intellectual development such as was never dreamed of, even a hundred years ago; a wave of scientific knowledge which nobody, even fifty years ago, would have dreamed of. Do THE ABSOLUTE AND MANIFESTATION I23 you want to kill people by forcing them into narrow limits? It is impossible until you degrade them into animals and unthinking masses. What is now wanted is a combination of the highest intellectuality with the greatest heart expansion, infinite love and infinite knowledge. The Vedantist gives no other attribute to God except these three, that He is Infinite Exist- ence, Infinite Knowledge, Infinite Bliss; and he regards these three as One. Existence without knowledge and love cannot be. Knowledge without love cannot be, and Love without knowledge cannot be. That is what we want, that harmony of Existence, Knowledge and Bliss. Infinite. Our goal is that perfection of Exist- ence, Knowledge, and Bliss. We want harmony, not one-sided development. It is possible to have the intellect of a Sankara with the heart of a Buddha, and I hope we shall all struggle to attain to that blessed combination.
VIII UNITY IN DIVERSITY "The Self -Existent One projected the senses out- wards and therefore a man looks outward, not within himself. A certain wise one, desiring immortality, with inverted senses perceived the Self within." As we have been saying, the first inquiry that we find in the Samhita, and in the other books, was concerning outward things, and then a new idea came, that the reality of things is not to be found in the external world; not by looking out, as it were, but by turning the eyes, as it is literally expressed, inwards. And the word used for the soul is very significant, it is "He who has gone inward," the innermost reality of our being, the heart centre, the core, from which, as it were, everything comes out; the central sun, of which the mind, the body, the sense organs, and everything else that we have, are but rays going out- wards. "Men of childish intellect, ignorant persons, run after desires, which are external, and enter the trap of far-reaching death, but the wise, understanding immortality, never seek for the eternal in this life of finite things." The same idea is here made clear, that in this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must alone be sought in that which is infinite, UNITY IN DIVERSITY 125 and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor the world we see around us, not even our thoughts, are infinite. They all have beginning in time and finish in time. The Seer, He to whom they all belong, the soul of man. He who is awake in the internal man, alone is infinite, and to seek for the infinite cause of this whole universe we must go there; in the infinite soul alone can we find it. ''What is here is there too, and what is there is here also. He who sees the manifold is going from death to death." We have seen how at first there was the desire to go to heaven. When these ancient Aryans became dis- satisfied with the world around them naturally they thought that after death they would go to some place where there would be all happiness without any mis- eries; these places they multiplied and called Svargas — the word may be translated as heavens — where there would be joy for ever; the body would become perfect, and also the mind, and there they would live with their forefathers. But as soon as philosophy came, men found that this was impossible and absurd. The very idea of an infinite in place would be a contradiction in terms. A place must begin and continue in time, therefore they had to give that up. They found out that the gods who lived in these heavens had once been human beings on earth, and through their good works, or something else, had become gods, and the godhoods, as they called them, were different states, different positions; none of the gods spoken of in the Vedas are permanent individuals.
For instance, Indra and Varuna are not the names 126 JNANA YOGA of certain persons, but the names of conditions, as governors and so on. The Indra who had been before is not the same person as the Indra of the present day; according to them, he has passed away, and another man from earth has gone up and filled the place of Indra. So with all the gods. They are cer- tain positions, which are filled successively by human souls, who have raised themselves to the condition of gods, and yet — even they die. In the old Rig Veda we find the word immortality used with regard to these gods, but later on it is dropped entirely, for they found that immortality, which is beyond time and space, cannot be spoken of with regard to any physical form, however subtle it may be. However fine it may be it must have a beginning in time and space, for the necessary factors that enter into the production of form are in space. Try to think of having form without space; it is impossible. Space is one of the materials, as it were, which makes up the form, and this is continually changing. Space and time are in Maya, and this idea is related in the line — "What is here, that is there too." If there are these gods they must be bound by the same laws that apply here, and the one end of all laws, in their development, involves destruction and renewal again and again. These laws are taking the whole of matter to pieces, as it were moulding out of it different forms, and inversely crushing them out into matter again. Everything born must die, and so, if there are heavens, the same laws must hold good there.
In this world we find that all happiness is followed by some sort of misery as its shadow. Life has its UNITY IN DIVERSITY 12/ shadow death. They must go together, because they are not contradictory, not two separate existences, but different manifestations of the same unit factor, life and death, sorrow and happiness, good and evil. The dualistic conception that good and evil are two separate identities, and that they are both going on eternally, is absurd on the face of it. They are the diverse man- ifestations of one and the same fact, at one time appearing as bad, and at another time as good. The difference does not exist in kind, but only in degree. They differ from each other in degree of intensity. We find as a fact that the same nerve systems carry good and bad sensations alike, and when the nerves are injured neither sensation comes to us. If a certain nerve is paralyzed, we do not get the pleasurable feelings that used to come along that wire, and at the same time we do not get the painful feelings either. They are never two, but the same. Again, the same thing produces pleasure and pain at different times of life. The same phenomenon will produce pleasure in one, and give pain to another. The eating of meat produces pleasure to the man, but pain to the animal which is being eaten. There has never been anything which has pleased every one alike. Some are pleased, others displeased. So it goes on. There- fore, on the face of it, this duality of existence is denied, and what follows from this? I told you in my last lecture that we can never ultimately have everything good on this earth and nothing bad. This may have disappointed and frightened some, but I cannot help it and I am open to conviction when I am shown the contrary; but until that can be 128 J NANA YOGA proved to me, and I can find that it is true, I cannot say so.
The general argument against my statement and apparently a very convincing one, is this, that in the course of evolution, all that is evil in what we see around us is gradually being eliminated, and the result is that if this elimination continues after millions of years a time will come when all the evil will have been eliminated, and the good alone will remain. This is apparently a very sound argument, would to God it were true, but there is a fallacy, and it is this, that it takes for granted that good and evil both are quantities that are eternally fixed. It takes for granted that there is a definite mass of evil which may be repre- sented by 100, and likewise of good, and that this mass of evil is being diminished every day, leaving only the good remaining. But is this so? The his- tory of the world shows that evil is a continuously increasing quantity as well as good. Take the lowest man; he lives in the forest. His sense of enjoyment is very small, and so also is his power to suffer. His misery is entirely on this sense plane. If he does not get plenty of food he is miserable, give him plenty of food and freedom to rove and to hunt, and he is per- fectly happy. His happiness consists only in the senses, and his misery also. See that man increasing in knowledge; his happiness is increasing, intellect is opening to him, sense enjoyment is evolving into intellectual enjoyment. He now feels wonderful pleasure in reading a beautiful poem. A mathematical problem takes up his whole life, and he is absorbed in the intense pleasure of it. But, with that, the finer UNITY IN DIVERSITY 1 29 nerves are becoming more and more susceptible to intense miseries of which the savage did not think, and he suffers mental pain. The sense of separation when the husband does not love the wife, quarrels, and in a dozen things intense desires seize upon him, causing pain which was unknown to the savage. Take a very simple illustration. In Thibet there is no mar- riage, and there is no jealousy; yet we know that marriage is a much higher state. The Thibetans have not known the wonderful enjoyment, the blessing of chastity, the happiness of having a chaste, virtuous wife, and a chaste, virtuous husband. These people cannot feel that. And similarly they do not feel the intense jealousy of the unchaste wife or husband, of unfaithfulness on either side, with all the heart-burn- ings and miseries which believers in chastity experi- ence. On one side the latter gain happiness, but on the other they gain misery too.
Take your country, which is the richest the world ever knew, and which is more luxurious than any other country, and see how intense is the misery, how many more lunatics you have, compared with other races, only because the desires are so keen. A man must keep up a high standard. The amount of money you spend in one year would be a fortune to a man in India, and you cannot preach to him because the sur- roundings are such, that that man must have so much money or he is crushed. The wheel of society is rolling on; it stops not for widows' tears or orphans' wails. You must move on, or you will be crushed under it. That is the state of things everywhere. Your sense of enjoyment is developed, your society .130 J NANA YOGA is very much more beautiful than some others. You have so many more things to enjoy. But those who have fewer have much less misery than you have in this country. You can argue thus throughout. The higher the ideal you have in the brain, the greater is your enjoyment, and the more profound your misery. One is like the shadow of the other, so to say; that evils are being eliminated may be true, but if so, the good also must be dying out. But are not evils multi- plying fast, and diminishing on the other side, if I may so put it? If good increases in arithmetical pro- portion, evil increases in geometrical proportion. And this is Maya. It means that it is neither optimism nor pessimism. It is not the position of Vedanta that this world is a miserable world. That would be a lie. At the same time we say it is not true, it is a mistake to say that this world is full of happiness and blessings. So it is useless to tell children that this world is all good, all flowers, and milk and honey. That is what we have all dreamed. At the same time it is erroneous to think because one man has suffered more than another that all is evil. It is this duality, this play of good and evil, that misleads us. We must always remember the warning of Vedanta not to think that good and evil are two, not to believe that good and evil are two separate essences, for they are one and the same thing appearing in different degrees and in different guises, and producing differ- ences of feeling in the same mind. So, the first thought of Vedanta is the finding of unity in the external, the One Existence manifesting Itself, how- ever different It may appear in manifestation. Think