I'he next is He who is woishijiped in vaiious foims, the lavoinile ideal of men as well as of women, the ideal of thildicn, as well as of giovvn-up men. I moan He whom the wiilci of the lihagavad-Hita was not content to call an Incarnation but says, “ The othei IiK.arnations weic but paits of the f.oid. He, Kiishna was the Loid Himsell.” And it is not stiange that such adjectives arc applied to him when W'e marvel at the many-sidedness of his charactci. He was the most vvondeiful .Sannyasin, and the most vvondeiful householder in one; he had the most wonderful amount of Ea/tn, [lOwer, and was at the same lime living in the midst of the most w'ondeiful renunciation. Kiishna can never be undci stood until you have studied the Gila, for he was the embodiment of his own leaching. Kvery one of these Incarnations came as a living illustration ot what they came to picach. Kiishna, the preacher of the Gita, was all his life the embodiment of that Song Celestial; he was the great illustialion of non-attachment. He gives up his ihione and never cares for it. He, the leader of India, at whose word kings come down fiom theii thrones, never wants to be a king. He is the simple Kii.shna, ever the same Kiishna who played with the Gopis. Ah, that most maivellous passage of his life, the most difficult to understand, and which none ought to attempt to understand until he has become perfectly chaste and pure, that most marvellous expansion of love, allegorised and expie.ssed in that beautiful play at Bnndavan, which none can understand but he who has become mad with, and diunk deep of, the cup of love! Who can understand the throes of the love of the Gopis — the very ideal of love, love that wants nothing, love that even does not care for heaven, love that does not care for anything in this world, or the world to come? And here, my friends, through this love of the Gopis has been found the only solution of the conflict between the Personal and the Impersonal God. We know how the Personal God is the highest point of human life; w'e know ibat it is philosophical to believe in an Impersonal God, immanent in the universe, of 86 LECTURES -FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA whom everything is but a manifestation. At the same time our souls hanker after something concrete, something which we want to grasp, at whose feet we can pour out our soul, aud so on. 'i'he Personal God is lliercfore the highest conception of human natuie. Yet reason stands aghast at such an idea. It is the same old, old question which you find discussed in the Brahma Sutras, which you find Diaupadi discussing with Yudhisihiia in the forest, ~-if there is a Personal God, Jtll- meiciful, all-powerful, why is this hell of an eaith heie, wh;^|ftlid He create this; He must be a partial God. Theie was no solution, and the/C.solution that can be lound is what you read about the love of the Gcy^Jp T'...ted 'vciy adjec- tive that was applied to Kiishna; they did not cate to kpm as...Loid of creation, they did not care to know that he was ahjjj^lity.:y d''’ ot care to know that he was omnipotent, and so foith. The only thfiljj lOocI was, that he was infinite Love, that was all. The Gopis undeistooi ^ only as the Krishna of Biindavan. lie, the leader of the hosts, the king c*- jfKo them was the shepherd, and the shepheid for ever. “ I do not want wei ^^mor many people, nor do I want learning; no, not even do 1 want to go < ffeaven. Let me be bom again and again, but Loicl, grant me this, that I mo; ha*' love for Thee, and that for love’s sake.” A great landmark in the histoiy of religion is here, the ideal of love for love’s sake, work for work’s sake, duty for du'^ s sake, and it for the fiist time fell from the lips of the greatest of Incai nations, Krishna, and for the first time in the history of humanity, upon the soil of India. The leligions of fear and of temptations weie gone for ever, and in spite of the fear of hell, and temptation to enjoyment in heaven, came the grandest of ideals, love foi love's sake, duty foi duty’s sake, work for woik’s sake.
And what a love! I have told you just now that it is very difficult to understand the love of the Gopis. There aie not weanling fools, even in the midst of us, who cannot understand the rnaivellous significance of that most mai- vellous of all episodes. There are, let me repeat, iinpiuc fools, even born of our blood, who tiy to shri^ fiom that as if fioin something impure. To them I have only to say, fiist mak^youi selves pure; and you must remember that he w'ho tells the history of the love )f the Gopis is none else but Suka Deva. The historian who lecoids this maivelK is love of the Gopis is one w'ho was born pure, the eternally puie Suka, the s i of Vyasa. So long as there is selfishness in the heait, so long is love of* (jod i 'i^sihle; it is nothing but shopkeeping. I give you something, Oh Loid, you gi sdmething in letuin. And says the f.ord, if you do not do this I will take good cf you when you die. I wll roast you all the rest of your lives, perhaps, and so So long as such ideas aie in the brain how can one undeistand the mad throes o^.lhe Gopis’ love.? ‘'Oh for one, one kiss of those lips, one who has been kissed "hec, his thirst for Thee increases for ever, all sonows vanish, and we forget ’ove for everything else but for Thee and Thee alone.” Aye! foiget first the love.^or gold, and name and fame, and for this little trumpery world of ours. Then, ’Ofity then, you will understand the love of the Gopis, too holy to be attempted \Uiout giving up everything, too sacred to be understood until the soul has I me perfectly pure. People w'ith ideas of sex, and of money, aud of fame, bul ig up every minute in the heart, daring to criticise and undeistand the love " the Gopis! That is the very essence of the Krishna incarnation. Even the Gita, the great philosophy itself, does not compare with that madness, for in the Gita the disciple is taught slowly how to walk towards the goal, but heie is the madness of enjoyment, the drunkenness of love, where THE SAGES OF INDIA ?7 disciples and teachers and teachings and books, and all these things have become one, even the ideas of fear and (}od, and heaven. Everything has been thrown away. What remains is the madness of love. It is foigeifulness of everything, and the lover sees nothing in the woild except that Kiishna, and Krishna alone, when the face of eveiy being become.s a Kiishna, when his own face looks like Kiishna, when his own soul has become tinged with ih^viishna colour. That was the great Kiishna!
Do not waste you?fimc upon little details. Take up the fiamework, the essence of the life. Theie may be many lustoiial discicpancies, there many be inteipolations in the life of Kirshna. All these things may be tiiie, but, at the same time, there must have been a basis, a foundaltou for this new and tremendous departure. Taking the life of any olhei.sage oi piophet, we find that that piojihet is only the evolution of what had gone before him, we lind that that piophet is only pleaching the ideas that had Ireen scalleied about his own countiy even in his own tunes. (Irent doubts may exist even as to whelhei that piophet existed or not. But hcie, I challenge any one to show whether these things, these ideals— woik for work's sake, love for love's sake, duly for duty'.s sake, weie not oiiginal ideas with Krishna, and as such, theie must have been someone with whom these ideas oiigiiuted. They could not have been boi rowed fiom anybody else. They were not tioalmg about in the alinospheie when KTi.shna was boin. But the Loid Krishna was the hist preacher of this; his disciple Vyasa took it up and preached it unto mankind. This is the highest idea to picture. The lugliest thing we can get out of him is Gopijanavallava, the Beloved of the Gopis of Biindavan. When that madness comes in youi biam, when you under- stand the blessed Gopis, then you will undei stand what love is. When the whole woild will vanish, when all other considerations will have died out, w'hen you will become pure-heaited with no other aim, not even the seaich after liiith, then and then alone will lush befoie you the madness of that love, the stiength and the power cl that infinite love which the Gopis had, that love for love’s sake. That is the goal. When you have got that you have got cvciything.
To come down to the lower stratum, — Kiishna, the preacher of the Gita. Aye, there is an attempt in India now which is like putting the cait before the horse. Many of our people think that Kiishna as the lover of the Gopis is something rather uncanny, and the Europeans do not like it much. Dr. So-and-so does not like it. Cer- tainly then, the Gopis have to go! Without the sanction of Europeans how can Kiishna live? He cannot! In the Mahabhaiata there is no mention oi the Gopi.s except in one or two places, and those not vciy remarkable places. In the prayer of Diaupadi there is mention of a Biindavan life, and in the speech of Sisupal there i.s again mention of this Biindavan. All the.se are inteipolations! What the Europeans do not want must be thrown oil! They are interpolations, the mention of the Gopis and of Kri.shna too! Well, with these men, steeped in commeicialism, where even the ideal of religion has become commercial, they are all trying to go to heaven by doing.something here; the Bunya wants compound interest, wants to lay by some thing here and enjoy it there. Certainly the Gopis have no place in such a system of thought. From that ideal lover we come down to the lower stratum of Krishna, the preacher of the Gita. Than the Gita no better commentary on the Vedas has been written or can be written. The essence of the Srutis, or of the Upanishads, is hard to be understood, seeing that there arc so many commentators, each one trying to inteipret in his own way. Then the Loid Himself comes, He who is the inspiier of the Srutis, to show us the meaning of them, as the preachei of the Gita, and to-day 88 LECTCR KS—FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA India wants nothing belter, the woikl wants nothing bcllei than that method of inter- pietation. It is a wondei that subsequent inieipieieis of the Sciipluies, even commenting upon the Gita, many tunes could not catch the meaning, many times could not catch the diift. Foi what do you lind in the Gita, and what even in modern commentators? One non-dnalislic commentator takes up an Upanisliad, theie aie so many dualislic passages, and he twists and toitnres them into some meaning, and wants to bring tiiem all into a meaning of his own. If a dualistic cominenlalor comes, thcie aie so many dualistic texts which he begins to torture, to bring them all lound to dualistic meaning. liut you find in the Gita theie is no attempt at toituimg any one of them. 'I'he} aie all light, says the Loid; for slowly and giadu- ally the human soul uses up and up, step after step, fiom the gioss to the fine, liom the line to the liner, until it teaches the Absolute, the goal. That is what is in the Gita. Even the Kaima Kanda is taken up, and it is shown that although it cannot give salvation direct, but only indiiectly, yet that is aKo valid; images aie valid indiieclly; ceieiiionies, ioims, cvciitbmg is valid only with one condition, puiity of the lieait. For woiship is valid, and leads to the goal, if the heait is pure and the heait is sinceie; and all these vaiious modes of woiship aie nccessaiy, else, why should they be hcic Religions and sects aie not the woik of hypociiles and wicked people, who iiuenled all these to gel a little money, as some of our modem men want to think. However icasonablc that explanation may seem, it is not tiue, and they weic not invented (hat way at all. Tliey ate the outcome of the necessity of the human soul. They aie all heie to satisfy the hankeiiug and llmst of diftcicnt classes of human minds, and )Oii need not pieach against them, 'I'he day when that necessity will cease they will vanish along with the cessation of that necessity, and so long as that necessity remains they must be theic, in spile of your picaching, in spite of youi ciiticisms. You may bung the svvoid or the gun into play, you may deluge 1 he vv 01 Id with huinaii blood, but so long as iheic is a necessil) foi idols, they must leiuaiu. 'I'hese lotms, and all llie vaiious steps in leligioii will leinain, and we uiulei stand fiom the f.oid.Sri Kiishna why they slumhl A latliei sailtlei chaplei of India’s hisloiy comes now. In the Gila we already hcai the distant sound of the (.onlluis of sects, and the Loid comes in the middle to haimomse ihc'in all; He the gieat pieachei of hainiouy, tlie greatest teacher of liaimony, Fold Kiishna Himself, He s\v s, “ In Me they aie all strung like peails upon a ihiead.” We alieady heai the distant sounds, the miiimurs of the conflict, and po.ssibly llieie was a pel loil of liai mon\ and calmness, when it bioke out anew, not only on ichgious giounds, but most possibly on caste giouiuls, — the fight between the two powciful faclois in our community, the kings and the piiests. And fiom the topmost ciest of the wave that deluged India foi iiea'lv a thousand yeais, wc sec another gldi tons figuie, and that was cm Gautama Sakyamuni. You all know about his teachings and pieachmgs. We worship Him as God incainate, the giealesl, the boldest pieacher of morality that the woild evei saw, the giealest Kaima Yogi; as a disciple of himself, as it wcie, the same Kiishna came to show how to make his theoiics practical. I’hcie came once again the same voice that in the Gita preached, “ Even the least bit done of this leligion saves from great fear.” ‘‘ Women, or Vais) as, oi even Sudias, all leach the highest goal.’' Bieaking the bondages of all, the chains of all, dcclaiing liberty to all to reach the highest goal, come the woids of the Gila, mils like thunder the mighty voice of Kiishna — ” Plveii in this life they have conqueied heaven whose minds aic fiimly fixed upon the sameness, loi God THE SAGES OE IXDI A Is pure and the same to all, therefore such are said to be living in God." “ Thus seeing the same T.ord equally present everywhere, the sage does not injme the Self by the self, and thus reaches the highest goal.” As it were to give a living example of this preaching, as it were to make at least one part of it practical, the preacher himself Came in another foim, and this was Sakyamuni, the preacher to the poor and the miserable, he who rejected even the language of the gods to speak in the language of the people, so that he might leach the hearts of the people; he who gave up a throne to live with beggars, and the poor, and the downcast; he who pressed the Pariah to his breast like a second Ruma.
You all know about his great work, his grand character. But the work had one great defect, and for that we are sulTeiing even to-day. No blame atiaches to the J.ord. He is pure and gloiious, but unfortunately such high iiioals could not be well assimilated by the different uncivilised and uncultured laccs of mankind who flocked within the fold of the Ary.uis. These laces, with vaiiclies of superstition and hideous woiship, rushed within the fold of the Aryan, and for a time appeared as if they had become cnilised, Imt befoie a cenlury had passed they brought out their snakes, their ghosts, and all the other things their ancesiois used to worship, and thus the n hole of India became one degraded mass of supeistition. The cailiei Buddhists in their rage against the killing of animals, had denounced the sacrilices of the V'odas; and these saciilice-ii vised to be held in cvciy house. Thcic was a fire binning, and that was all the paraphernalia of woiship. These.saciifices were obliterated, and in Iheii place came goigeous temples, gorgeous ceiemonies, and goigcons piicsts, and all that > oil see in India in modern times. 1 smile when I lead books wiitten by.some modern people who ought to have kmnvn belter, that the Buddha was the destioyer of Hi ahmanical idolatry. Lillie do they know that Buddhism cieatcd Biahinamsm and i(lolati) in India. Theie was a book wiitten a year or two ago by a Russian gentleman, who claimed to have found out a veiy cuiious lilc of Jesus ( hiisl, and in one part of the book he says, that Chi ist went to the Temple of Jagannath to study with the BiAhmans, but became disgusted with then exclusiveness and their idols, and so he wont to the J.amas of Thibet instead, became peifcct, and w'cnl home. To any man who knows anything about Indian histoiy, that veiy statement proves that the whole thing was a fiaud, because the Temple of Jagamulh is an old BuddliisUc Temi/ic, We took this and others over and re-Ilinduised them. Wc shall ha\e to do many things like that yet. That is Jagannath, and there vvas not one Biahman iheie them, and >et w-e ate told ih.al Jcsiis Chiist came to study with theBrahmans thcic. So sa>s our gioal Russian aicli.Tologist. Thus, in spile of the preaching of mcicy to animals, in spite of the sublime ethical religion, in spile of the hair-splitting discus- sions about the existence, or non-e.\istcnce of a permanent soul, the whole building of Buddlusm tumbled down piecemeal; and the ruin was simjily hideous. I have neither the lime nor the inclination to describe Jto you the hidoousness that came in the wake of Buddlusm. The most hideous ceremonies, the most horrible, the most obscene books that human hands ever wiote, or the human biain ever conceived, the most bestial fonns that ever passed under the name of religion, have all been the creation of degraded Buddhism.
But India has to live, and the.spii it of the Lord descended again. He who clcclaied that “ I wall come whenever viituc subsides ” came again, and this lime the manifestation was in the South, and up rose that young Brahman of whom it has L LECTURES--FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA 90 been declared that at the age of sixteen he had completed all his writings; the marvellous boy Sankaracharya arose. The writings of this boy of sixteen are the wonders of the modern world, and so was the boy. He wanted to bring back the Indian world to its pristine purity, but think of the amount of the task before him. I have told you a few points about the state of things that existed in India. All these horrors that you are trying to reform are the outcome of that reign of degrada- tion. The Taitars and the Belluchis and all the hideous races of mankind came Jto India and became Buddhists, and assimilated with us, and brought their national customs, and the whole of our national life became a huge page of the most horrible and the most bestial customs. That was the inheritance which that boy got from the Buddhists, and from that time to this, the whole world in India is a re-conquest of this Buddhistic degradation, by the Vedanta. It is still going on, it is not yet ' ‘finished. Sankara came, a great philosopher, and showed that the real essence of Buddhism and that of the Vedanta are not very different, but that the disciples did not undci stand the Master, and have degraded themselves, denied the existence of the soul and of God, and have become Atheists. That was what Sankara showed, and all the Buddhists began to come back to the old religion. But then they had become accustomed to all these forms; what could be done?
Then came the brilliant Ramanuja. Sankara, with his great intellect, I am afraid, had not as great a heart. Ramanuja’s heart was greater. He felt for the down-trodden, he sympathised with them. He took up the ceremonies, the accretions that had gathered, made them pure so far as they could be, and instituted new ceremonies, new methods of worship, for the people who absolutely requited them. At the same time he opened the door to the highest spiritual worship, from the Brahman to the Pariah. That was Ramanuja’s work. That work rolled on, invaded the North, was taken up by some gieat leaders there, but that was much later, during the INIahommedan rule, and the brightest of these prophets of comparatively modern times in the North was Cluitanya. You may mark one characteristic since the time of Ramanuja, — the opening of the door of spirituality to everyone. That has been the watchword of all prophets succeeding Ramanuja, as it had been the watchword of all the prophets before Sankaia. I do not know why Sankara should be represented as rather exclusive; I do not find anything in his writings which is exclusive. As in the case of the declarations of the Lord Buddha, this exclusiveness that has been attributed to Sankara’s teachings is most possibly not due to his teachings, but to the incapacity of his disciples. This one great noithern sage, Chaitanya, represented the mad love of the Gopis. Himself a Bruhman, boi n of one of the most rationalistic families of the day, himself a professor of logic, fighting and gaining a word-victory, — ■ for, this he had learnt from his childhood as the highest ideal of lite, — and yet through the mercy of some sage the whole life of that man became changed, he gave up his fight, his quarrels, his professorship of logic, and became one of the greatest teachers of Bhakti the world has ever known, — mad Chaitanya. His Bhakti rolled over the whole land of Bengal, bringing solace to every one. His love knew no bounds. The saint or the sinner, the Hindu or the Mahommedan, the pure or the impure, the prostitute, the street-walker — all had a share in his love, all had a share in his mercy, and even to the present day, although greatly degenerated, as everything does become in lime, yet his sect is the refuge of the poor, of the down-trodden, of the outcast, of the weak, of those who have been rejected by all society. But at the same time I must remark for truth’s sake that we find this. In the philosophic T^E SAGES OF INDIA 91 sects we find wonderful liberalism. There is not a man who follows Sankara who will say that all the different sects of India are really different. At the same time he was a tremendous upholder of exclusiveness as regards caste. But with every Vaishnavite preacher we find a wonderful liberalism as to the teaching of caste questions, but exclusiveness as regards religious questions.
The one had a great head, the other a large heart, and the time was ripe for one to be born, the embodiment of both this head and heart; the time was ripe for one to be born, who in one body would have the brilliant intellect of Sankara and the wonder- fully expansive, infinite heart of Chaitanya; one who would see in every sect the same spirit working, the same God; one who would see God in every being, one whose heart would weep for the poor, for the weak, for the outcast, for the down- trodden, for every one in this woild, inside India or outside India; and at the same time whose grand brilliant intellect would conceive of such noble thoughts as woulci. harmonise all conflicting sects, not only in India but outside of India, and bring a marvellous harmony, the universal religion of head and heart into existence; such a man w'as born, and I had the good fortune to sit at his feet for years. The time was lipe, it was necessary that such a man should be born, and he came; and the most wonderful part of it was, that his life's work was just near a city which was full of Western thought, a city which had run mad after these occidental ideas, a city which had become more Europeanised than any other city in India. There he lived, without any book-learning whatsoever; this great intellect nevci leaint even to write his own name, but the most brilliant graduates of our university found in him an intellectual giant. lie was a strange man, this Sii Ramakii.shna Paramahamsa. It is a long, long story, and I have no time to toll anything about him to-night. Let me now only mention the great Sii Ramakrishna, the fulfilment of the Indian sages, the sage for the time, one whose teaching is just now, in the present time, most beneficial. And maik the Divine power working behind the man. The son of a poor priest, born in an out-of-the-way village, unknown and unthought of, to-day is worshipped literally by thousands in Kuiope and America, and to-morrow will be worshipped by thousands more. Who knows the plans of the Loid 1 Now, my brothers, if you do not sec the hand, the finger of Piovidcnce, it is because you are blind, born blind indeed. If time comes, and another opportunity, I will speak to you more fully about him. Only let me say now, that if I have told you one word of truth it was