or to let it go for evci. and icmain indopcnclent and liee ihioughout all eternity. The goal of the soul is freedom. That is no peculiaiity of our religion. We also have heavens, and hells too, but these are not infimte, for in the very nature of things they cannot be. If there were any heavens, they would be only repetitions LECTURES— FRO^f COLOMBO TO ALMORA i6 of this woiM of outs on a l»isger bcale, with a little more happiness, and a little more eiijo) iMcnt, but that is all the woise tor the soul. There are many of these heavens. I’eibuns who ilo /,^ooxl woiks heie with the thou/^ht of lewaul, when tliey die, are born a^ain as ^-odsin one of these heavens, as Indra and others. 7'hese g:ods are the names of certain slates. 'Phey also had been men, and by good work they have bec( gotls, and those dirteient names that you read of, such as Indra, and so on, are. the names of the same person. There will be thousands of Indias. Nahusha a gieat king, and when he died he became Indra. It is a position; one soul become;’^" high and lakes the India position, and remains in it only a ceitain time; he then dies and is boin again as man. But the human body is the highest of all. Some of the gods may liy to go higher and give up all ideas of enjoyment in heavens, but, as in this woikl, wealth anti position and enjoyment delude the vast majoiily, so, do most ot the gods become deluded also, and after wot king out then good Kaiina, they fall down and become human beings again. This eailh, thciefoie, is the Karma Bhumi; it IS this cailh fiom which we attain to liberation. So. even these heavens aie not worth attaining to. Wh.il is then w'orlh having } Atakli, freedom. Even in the highest of heavens, says oui Sciiptuie, you aie a slave; what inalteis it if you aie a king foi tw'eiity thousand )eais? So long as you have a body, so long as yon arc a slave to happiness, so long as time woi ks on }ou, space woiks on you, you aie a slave. The ulea, tlierefoie, is to be fiee of exleinal and internal natuie. Nature must fall at }oui feel, and \ou niiist tiample on it, and be fiee and gloiious, by going be}'ond. No inoie is theie life, tlierefoie, no moie is tliere death; no more enjoy- ment, theiefoie, no moie niiseiy. It is bliss unspeakable, indestiuclible, beyond everything. What we call happiness and good heie, are but pailicles of that ctcinal Bliss And this eternal bliss is oui goal.
'Plu' soul IS also.sexless; we cannot say of xhcA/ma?! that it is a man or a woman. Sox belongs to the body alone. All such ideas, therefore, as man oi woman, aie a delusion when sjioken with regaid to the Self, and aie only piojiei when sjioken of the body. So aie the ideas of age; It never ages; the ancient One is ahvays the same. IIow' did It come down to eaith.'* There is but one answ’cr to that in our Scrijituios. Ignoiance is the cause of all this bondage. It is through ignorance that we have become bound; knowledge will cure i^, by taking us to the othei side. IIow' will that knowledge come? Through love, Bhakti. By the w^oishiji of God, by loving all beings as the temples of God; He resides w’ithin them. 'I'hus, with that intense love will come knowledge, and ignoiance wil' disajipear, the bonds will bleak, and the soul will be free. 'Phere are two ideas of God in our Sciiptures; the one, the personal, and the olhei, the impersonal. The idea of the Personal God i.s, that He is the oinnipiesent cieator, jneserver, and destroyer of everything, the eternal Ikulier and ^Mother of the univer.se, but One who is eternally separate from us and fioin all souls; and liberation consists in coming near to Him and living in Him.
Then there is l^e other idea ot the Impersonal, where all those adjectives are taken away as supeilluous, as illogical, and tlieie remains an impersonal, omnipresent Being who cannot be calleil a knowing being, because knowledge only belongs to the human mind. He cannot be called a thinking being, because that is a process of the weak only. He cannot be called a reasoning being, because rea.soning is a sign of weakness. He cannot be called a creating being, because none creates except in bondage. What boiulagc has He? None works except forHhe fulfilment of desires; what dcbiico has He None works except it is to tupjrfy. somi^ wants; what wants y^D.Lvr/sj/ if hds He? In the Vedas it is not the word “ He ” that is used, but tt’; fdr “ He would make an invidious distinction, as if He were a man. “ It ” the impersonlai, is used, and this impersonal “It,” Is pfeached. This system is called the Advaita.
And vi^hat ire oiir relatidris with this Impersonal Being? That we arc rie. We and He ire dne. Every one is but a manifestation of that Impersonal, the basis of all being, and iitisefy ednsists in thinking of ourselves as different from this Infinite, Impersonal Being; atnd liberation consists in knowing our unity with this wonderful Impersonality. These, in shdrt, are the two ideas of God that we find in our Scrip- tures. Some remarks ought to be made here. It Is only through the idea ot the Impersonal God that you can have any system of ethics. In every nation the truth has been preached from the most ancient tunes— love your fellow-beings as your- selves—I mean love human beings as yourselves. Iil India it has be'e'd Jyreached, ‘ love all beings as yourselves ’; we make no distinction between men and animals. But no reason was forthcoming, no one knew why it would be good to love other beings as ourselves. And the reason why is there, in the idea of the Impersonal God; you understand it — when you learn that the whole world is one—the oneness of the uni- verse— the solidarity of all life,— that in hurling any one I am hinting myself, in loving any one 1 am loving myself. Hence we understand why it is that we ought not to hurt others. The reason for ethics, therefore, can' only be had from this ideal of the Impersonal God. Then there is the question of the position of the l^crsonal God in Iti I understand the wonderful flow of love that conies from the idea of a Personal God, I thoroughly appreciate the power and potency of Bhakli on men to suit the needs of different times. What we now want in our country, however, is not so much of weeping, but a little strength. What a mine of strength is in this Impersonal God, when all superstitions have been thiown overboard, and man stands on liis feet with the knowledge that I am the Impersonal Being of the woild! What can make me afraid? I care not even for nature’s laws. Death is a joke to me. Man stands on the glory of his own Soul, the Infinite, the Kteinal, the Deathless — that Soul which no instruments can pierce, which no heslt can dry, or fire burn, no water melt, the Infinite, the Birfehless^ the Deathless, without beginning and without end, before whose magnitude the suns and moons and all iheii systems appear like drops in the ocean, before whose glory space melts away into nothingness, and time vanishes into non-existence. This glorious Soul we must believe in. Out of that will come power. Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think your- selves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be; if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be. This teaches us not to think oui selves as weak, but as strong, omnipotent, omniscient. No matter that I have not expressed it yet; it is in me. All knowledge is in me, all power, all purity, and all freedom. Why cannot I express this knowledge? Because I do not believe in it. Let me believe in il*and it must and will come out. This is what the idea of the Impersonal teaches. Make your children strong from their very childhood, teach them not weakness, nor forms, but make them strong, let them stand on their feet, bold, all-conquering, all-suffering, and first of all, let them learn of the glory of the Soul. That, you get alone in the Vedanta, — and there alone. It has ideas of love and worship and other things which we have in other religions, and more besides; but this idea of the Soul is the life-giving thought, the most wonderful. There and there alone, is the great thought IKCTCI^nS—FROM COtOAfRO TO AIMORA t3 that is. [^oing to revolutionise the World and reconcile the knowledge of the iiialeiial \\oild \Mth leligion.
Thus 1 have tiied to biing before you the salient points of our religion — the pnmjples. I have only to say a few words about the practice and the application. A*, we have seen, under the circumstances e.xisting in India, naturally many -"ts must apj»car. As a lact, we Hud that there arc so many sects in India, and at same tune wc know this mysterious fact that these sects do not quarrel with e i olhei. 'I'hc Suite does not say that every V’‘aishnavile is going to be damned, llie N'aishnaMle that eveiy Suite will be damned. The Sivite sa)S, this is my path, and \ou have vouis: at the end we must come together. They all know that in India. 'J'hu is the Ihcoiy of Ish/atn. It has been recognised in the most ancient times that iheie aie vaiious foims of woi shipping (iod. It is also recognised that different naluies lequiie diHeient methods. Voui method of coming to (lod may not be my method, po'^sthiy il might hint me. Such an idea as lliat there is but one way for evetybody is iiijmioiis, meaningless, and entirely to be avoided. Woe unto the world wlien eveivone is of the same lehgious opinion and takes to the same path, 'riicn all leligions and all ttiought will he destioyed. Variety is the very soul of life. When iL dies out ciUiicly cieation will die. When this vaiiation in thought is kept up, we must exist, and vve.weed not quairel because of that vaiiely. Your waj is vei),£>oml loi von, hut not loi me..My way is good foi me but not for you, l\Iy way IS called in bauskiu, my Av///aw. Mmd you, we Iravc no (juairel with any religion 111 the vvoild. Wc h.ivc e.ich our JshUnH, But when we sec men coming and saving, “ this is the Old) way," and trving to force it on us in India, wc have a word to say; wc laugh at tlieni. Foi such people who want to destioy their brothers because thev seem to tollovv addteient path tovvaids God,— for them to talk of love is absurd. 'J'heii love does not count for much, flow can they preach of love who cannot bear anolhci man to tollovv a difleient path fiom thcii own > If that is love, what is halted? We have no (piaiiel with any religion in the woild. whether il teaches men to worship Chiist, Buddha oi Mahomet, 01 any other piophel. “Welcome, my brolhei," the Hindu savs, “ I am going to lielp you; but you must allow me to follow my way too. 'I'liat is my lOifam. Vciir way is very good, no doubt, but il may be dangerous for me. My own expciiencc tells me what food is good for me, and no army of doctors can tell me that. So 1 know from my own experience what path is the best for me.” Thai is the goal, the hhfam, and iheicfore we say that if a temple, or a symbol, oi an image. Iielps you to realise *hc Divinity within, you are welcome to it. Have two lumdied images if you like. If certain forms and foimularies help you to realise the Divine, God speed you; have, by all means, whatever forms, and whatever temples, and whatever ceremonies biing you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them; the moment you quarrel, you are not going God- waid, you arc going backward, towards the brutes.
'I'hese ire a few ideas in our religion. It is one of inclusion of every one, exclusion of none. Though our castes and our institutions are apparently linked with our icligion, they are not so. These institutions have been necessary to protect us as a nation” and when this necessity for self-preservation will no more exist, they will die a natural death. But, the older I grow, the better I seem to think of these time-honoured institutions of India. There was a time when I used to think that fnany of them weie useless and woithless, but the older I grow, the more I seem to feel a diffidence m cuising any one of them, for each one of them is the embodiy*^I)AXr/SAf y*^I)AXr/SAf Weht of the experience of centuries. A child of but yesterday, destined to die the day after to-morrow, comes to me and asks me to change all my pl.tns. and it I l)ear the advice of that baby and change all my surroundings accoidmg to liis ideas, I myself should be a fool, and no one else. Much of the advice that is coming to us from different countries is similar to this. Tell these wise.acres: I will heai >ou when you have made a stable society yourselves. You cannot hold on to one idea for two days, you quarrel and fail; you are horn like moths in the spimg and die like them ill five minutes. You come up like bubbles.and bin si like bubbles too. P'iist form a stable society like ours. First make laws and institutions that remain iiiuli- minished in their power through scores of centuries. 'Phen will be the time to talk on the subject with you, but till then, my friend, you arc only a giildy child.
I have finished what I had to say about oiir religion. I will end by reminding you of the one pressing necessity of the day. Praise be to Vyasa, the great author of the Mahabharata, that in this there is one great woilc. The y\f/>ijs and the other hard Yogas that were practised in other do not woik now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others. What is meant liy? The highest of gifts is the giving of spiiitual knowledge, the next, is the giving of secular knowledge, and the next, is the saving of hie; the last, is gi\ing food and dunk. He who gives spiritual knowledge, saves the -soul from many and many a hiith. lie who gives secular knowledge opens the eyes of Ininian beings towards spiiitual knowledge, and far below lliese, rank all other gifts, even the sating of life. 'I'liere- foie, it IS necessary that you learn this, and note that all otliei kinds of woik aie of much less value than that of imparting spiiitual knowdedge. 'The highest anil gieatest help is that given in the dissemin.ilion of spiritual knowledge. 'I'lieie is an eternal fountain of spiiitualiiy iii oui.Sciiptures, and nowheie on eaith except in lliis land of renunciation do we lind such noble ex.imples of pi.ntical spiiitualltv. 1 have had a little expeiience of the world, Ikheve me, theie is much talking m other lands, but the practical man of religion, who has cariicd it into Ins hie. is lieie and here alone. Talking is not leligion; parrots may talk, machines ma\ talk nowadays. But show me the life of reuimdalion, of spiiitualily, of.all-sulkiiiig, of love infinite. This kind of life indicates a spiritual man. Wiili such ide.is and such noble practical examples in our country, it would he a great pitv if the treasuies iu the brains and licarts of all these great Yogins, were not hrouglii out to become the common property of every one, lich and poor, high and low; not onlv in India, but they must he thrown hioadcast all over the woild. Tins is one of our gieatest duties, and you will lind that the more you woik to lielp olheis, the moie you help )ouiselves. 'Phe one vital duty incumheul on you if ^ cm really love our leligion, if you really love your couiUiy, is that you must snuggle haul to he up and doing, w'ith this one great idea of bringing out the tieasuics fiom ^mi closed books, and delivering them over to their iightful heirs. And above aU, one thing is necessary. Aye, for ages we have been saturated with awful jealousy; we aie always getting jealous of each other. Why has tins man a little precedence, and not I; even in the worship of God we want precedence, to such a stale of slaveiy have we come. This is to be avoided. If there is any crying sin in India at this time it is this slavery. Everyone wants to command and no one wants to ohev: and this is owing to the absence of that wondeiful Brahmacharya of yore. Phi si, learn to obey. The command will gome by itself. Aiwa) s fust leain to be a servant, ami 20 Colombo to almora then you will be fit to be a master. Avoid this jealousy, and you will do great w'orks fhitt have yet to be done. Our ancestors did most wonderful works, and we look back upon their work with veneration and pride. But we also are going to do great deeds, and let others look back with blessings and pride upon us, as their ancestors. With the blessing of the Lord every one here will yet do such deeds that will **''’ipse those of our ancestors, great and glorious as they may have been. ^ REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME AT PAMBAN.
On the arri\al of Swami Vivekananda at Pamban, he was met In Ills Ilijflmess the Raja of Ramnad, who accorded him a hearty welcome. Piepaiaiions had been made at the landing whaif for a formal leccption, and heie, under a pandal which was decorated with great taste, the following address on behalt of the Pamban people w'as jead May IT PTKvsK York ITolinkss.
We greatly rejoice to welcome Your Holiness with heaits full of deepest grati- tude and highest veneration— giatitude for having so leadily and giacioush consented to pay us a flying visit in spite of the numerous calls on von, and veneration for the mail) noble and excellent qualities that ton possess and foi ilie great woik )ou have so nobly undci taken to do, and winch you have been dischaiging with conspicuous ability, utmost zeal and eainestnefes.
We truly rejoice to see that the efforts of Your Holiness in sowing the seeds of Hindu philosophy in the cultuicd minds of the great Western nation, are being crowned with so much success, that we already see all aioiind, the blight and cheer- ful aspect of the bearing of excellent fiuits in great abundance, and most humbly pray that Your Holiness will, dining your sojourn in Ar}avartha. be giaciously pleased to exert yourself even a little more than you did in the West, to awaken the minds of your brethren in this our motherland, fiom their dieary life-long slumber and make then) recall to their inimls the long-forgotten gospel of truth.
Our hearts are so full of the sincerest affection, greatest reverence, and highest admiration for Your Holiness -our great spiritual leader, that we verilv find it im- possible to adequately express our feelings, and therefore beg to conclude with an earnest and united prayer to the merciful Providence, to bless Your Holiness with a long life of usefulness, and to grant you every thing that may tend to bring about the long-lost feelings of universal broiherhooij.
The Raja added to tins a brief pei'^onal welcome, which was remaikable for its depth of feeling, and then the Sw'ami replied to the following eftect: - Our sacred motherland is a land of religion and philosophy — the birthplace of spiritual giants — the land of renunciation, vvheie and where alone, from the most ancient to the most modern times, there has been the highest ideal of life open to man.
I have been in the countries of the West; have travelled through many lands, 9f many races, and each race and each nation appears to me to have a particular ideal — a prominent ideal running through its whole life, and this ideal* is the back- bone of the national life. Not politics nor niilitar> power, not commercial supremacy nor mechanical genius, furnishes India with that backbone, but religion, and religion alone, is all that we have and mean to have..Spiiituality has been always in India.
Great indeed are the manifestations of muscular power, and marvellous the mani- festations of intellect expressing themselves through machines bv the appliances 2m INSTI T' iT: Of. Ill TilUC -I ' 22 LECTURKS-FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA of science; yet, none of these are more potent than the influence which spirit exerts upon the world.
The history of our race shows that India has always been most active. To-day, we are taught by men, who ought to know better, that the Hindu is mild and passive, and this has become a sort of pioverb with the people of other lands. I ''ard the idea that India was ever passive. Nowhere has activity been more prone t ed than in this blessed land of ours, and the great proof of this activity is tha Air most ancient and magnanimous race still lives, and at every decade in its glor.ous career seems to take on fresh youth-undying and imperishable, 'rhis activity manifests here in leligion; but it is a peculiar fact in human nature, that it judges others according to its own standard of activity. 'lake, for instance, a shoemaker. He understands only shoemaking and thinks theie is nothing in this life except the manu- facturing of shoes. A bricklayer understands nothing but bricklaying and proxes this alone in his life fiom day to day. And there is anollier reason which explains this. When the vibi aliens of light arc very intense, we do not see them, because we are so constituted that we cannot go beyond our own plane of vision, llul the Yogi with his spiritual introspection is able to see through the materialistic veil of the vulgar crowds.
The eyes of the whole world are now turneef towards this land of India for spiritual food, and India has to provide it for all the races. Heie alone is the best ideal for mankind, and Western scholais are now striving to understand lliis ideal which is enshrined in our Sanskiit Idterature and Philosophy, and which has been the characteristic of India all through ihe ages.
Since the dawn of history, no missionary xvent out of India to propagate the Hindu doctrines and dogmas, but noxv a w'onderful change is coming over us. Sri Bhagavan Krishna says, “ Whenever virtue subsides and immorality prevails, then I come again and again to help the w'orld.” Religious researches disclose to us the fact, that there is not a country possessing a good ethical code but has borrow’cd something of it from us, and there is not one religion possessing good ideas of the immortality of the soul but has derived it directly or indirectly from us.
There never was a time in the world’s history when there was so much robbery and high-handedness, and tyranny of the stiong over the weak, as at this latter end of the nineteenth centuiy. Everybody should know that there is no salvation except through the conquering of desires, and that no man is free w’ho is subject to the bondage of matter. This ^reat truth all nations are c’owly coining to understand and appreciate. As soon as the disciple is in a position to grasp this truth, the words of the Guru come to his help. The Lord sends help to His own children' in His Infinite mercy which never ceaseth and is ever flowing in all creeds. Our Lord IS the Lord of all religions. This idea belongs to India alone, and I challenge any one of you to find it in any other Scripture of the world.
We Hindus have now been placed, undei God’s providence, in a very critical and responsible position. The nations of the West are coming to us for spiritual help. A great moral obligation rests on the sons of India to fully equip themselves for the work of enlightening the world on the problems of human existence. One thing we may note, that whereas you will find that good and great men of other countries lake pride in tracing back their descent to some robber-baron who lived in a mountain fortress and emerged from time to time to plunder passing w-ayfarers, we Hindus, on the other hand, take pride in being the descendants of Rishis and O.Y REAL WORSHIP 23 sages, who lived on roots and fruits in mountains and caves, meditating on the Supreme. We may be degraded and dcgeneiated now, hut however degraded and degenerated we may be, we can become gieat if we only begin to work in right earnest on behalf of our religion.
Accept my hcaity thanks for the kind and cordial reception you have given me. It is impossible for me to express my gratitude to H. H. the Raja of Ramnad for his love towards me. If any good work has been done by me and thiough me, India owes much to this good man, for it was he who conceived the idea of my going to Chicago, and it was he who put tliat idea into my head and persistently urged me on to accomplish it. Standing beside me, he with all his old enthusiasm is still hoping foi me to do more and moie work. 1 w'ish there were half a dozen inoie such Rajas to take interest in our dear motherland, and woik for her amelioi- aium m the spiritual line.
ADDRESS AT THE RAMESVARAxM TEMPLE ON REAL WORSHIP.
A visit w'as subsequently paid to the'Ramesvaram Temple, 'where the Swami was asked to addiess a few words to the crow'd of people who had assembled there. This he did in the following terms: — It IS m love that religion exists and not in ceremony; in the pure and sincere love in the heart. Unless a man is pure in body and mind, his coming into a temple and worshipping.Siva is useless. 'I'he prayers of those that are pure in mind and body will be answered by.Siva, and those that are impure, and yet tiy to teach religion to olheis, will fail in the end. External worship is only a symbol of internal worship; but internal worship and purity are the real things. Without them, external worship would be of no avail. Therefoie, you must all try to remember this. People have become so degraded in this Kali Fuga that they think they can do anything, and then they can go to a holy place, and their sins will be forgiven. If a man goes with an impure mind into a temple, he adds to the.sins that he had already, and goes home a worse man than what he left it. Tirlha (place of pilgrimage) is a place which is full of holy things and holy men. But if holy people live in a certain place, and if there is no temple there, even that is a Tirlha. If unholy people live in a place where there may be a hundred temples, the Tirlha has vanished from that place. And it is most difficult to live in a Tirlha, for if sin is committed in any ordinary