Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda - Vol-4
THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION
(Delivered at Alameda, California, on April 18, 1900*)
We read many books, many scriptures. We get various ideas from
our childhood, and change them every now and then. We understand
what is meant by theoretical religion. We think we understand
what is meant by practical religion. Now I am going to present
to you my idea of practical religion.
We hear all around us about practical religion, and analysing
all that, we find that it can be brought down to one conception
- charity to our fellow beings. Is that all of religion? Every
day we hear in this country about practical Christianity - that
a man has done some good to his fellow beings. Is that all?
What is the goal of life? Is this world the goal of life?
Nothing more? Are we to be just what we are, nothing more? Is
man to be a machine which runs smoothly without a hitch
anywhere? Are all the sufferings he experiences today all he can
have, and doesn't he want anything more?
The highest dream of many religions is the world. ... The vast
majority of people are dreaming of the time when there will be
no more disease, sickness, poverty, or misery of any kind. They
will have a good time all around. Practical religion, therefore,
simply means. "Clean the streets! Make it nice!" We see how all
enjoy it.
Is enjoyment the goal of life? Were it so, it would be a
tremendous mistake to become a man at all. What man can enjoy a
meal with more gusto than the dog or the cat? Go to a menagerie
and see the [wild animals] tearing the flesh from the bone. Go
back and become a bird! . . . What a mistake then to become a
man! Vain have been my years - hundreds of years - of struggle
only to become the man of sense-enjoyments.
Mark, therefore, the ordinary theory of practical religion, what
it leads to. Charity is great, but the moment you say it is all,
you run the risk of running into materialism. It is not
religion. It is no better than atheism - a little less. ... You
Christians, have you found nothing else in the Bible than
working for fellow creatures, building . . . hospitals? . . .
Here stands a shopkeeper and says how Jesus would have kept the
shop! Jesus would neither have kept a saloon, nor a shop, nor
have edited a newspaper. That sort of practical religion is
good, not bad; but it is just kindergarten religion. It leads
nowhere. . . . If you believe in God, if you are Christians and
repeat every day, "Thy will be done", just think what it means!
You say every moment, "Thy will be done", really meaning, "My
will be done by Thee, O God." The Infinite is working His own
plans out. Even He has made mistakes, and you and I are going to
remedy that! The Architect of the universe is going to be taught
by the carpenters! He has left the world a dirty hole, and you
are going to make it a beautiful place!
What is the goal of it all? Can senses ever be the goal? Can
enjoyment of pleasure ever be the goal? Can this life ever be
the goal of the soul? If it is, better die this moment; do not
want this life! If that is the fate of man, that he is going to
be only the perfected machine, it would just mean that we go
back to being trees and stones and things like that. Did you
ever hear a cow tell a lie or see a tree steal? They are perfect
machines. They do not make mistakes. They live in a world where
everything is finished. ...
What is the ideal of religion, then, if this cannot be practical
[religion]? And it certainly cannot be. What are we here for? We
are here for freedom, for knowledge. We want to know in order to
make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for
freedom. What is the reason the . . . plant grows from the seed,
overturning the ground and raising itself up to the skies? What
is the offering for the earth from the sun? What is your life?
The same struggle for freedom. Nature is trying all around to
suppress us, and the soul wants to express itself. The struggle
with nature is going on. Many things will be crushed and broken
in this struggle for freedom. That is your real misery. Large
masses of dust and dirt must be raised on the battlefield.
Nature says, "I will conquer." The soul says, "I must be the
conqueror." Nature says, "Wait! I will give you a little
enjoyment to keep you quiet." The soul enjoys a little, becomes
deluded a moment, but the next moment it [cries for freedom
again]. Have you marked the eternal cry going on through the
ages in every breast? We are deceived by poverty. We become
wealthy and are deceived with wealth. We are ignorant. We read
and learn and are deceived with knowledge. No man is ever
satisfied. That is the cause of misery, but it is also the cause
of all blessing. That is the sure sign. How can you be satisfied
with this world? . . . If tomorrow this world becomes heaven, we
will say, "Take this away. Give us something else."
The infinite human soul can never be satisfied but by the
Infinite itself.... Infinite desire can only be satisfied by
infinite knowledge - nothing short of that. Worlds will come and
go. What of that? The soul lives and forever expands. Worlds
must come into the soul. Worlds must disappear in the soul like
drops in the ocean. And this world to become the goal of the
soul! If we have common sense, we cannot he satisfied, though
this has been the theme of the poets in all the ages, always
telling us to be satisfied. And nobody has been satisfied yet!
Millions of prophets have told us, "Be satisfied with your lot";
poets sing. We have told ourselves to be quiet and satisfied,
yet we are not. It is the design of the Eternal that there is
nothing in this world to satisfy my soul, nothing in the heavens
above, and nothing beneath. Before the desire of my soul, the
stars and the worlds, upper and lower, the whole universe, is
but a hateful disease, nothing but that. That is the meaning.
Everything is an evil unless that is the meaning. Every desire
is evil unless that is the meaning, unless you understand its
true importance, its goal. All nature is crying through all the
atoms for one thing - its perfect freedom.
What is practical religion, then? To get to that state -
freedom, the attainment of freedom. And this world, if it helps
us on to that goal, [is] all right; if not - if it begins to
bind one more layer on the thousands already there, it becomes
an evil. Possessions, learning, beauty, everything else - as
long as they help us to that goal, they are of practical value.
When they have ceased helping us on to that goal of freedom,
they are a positive danger. What is practical religion, then?
Utilise the things of this world and the next just for one goal
- the attainment of freedom. Every enjoyment, every ounce of
pleasure is to be bought by the expenditure of the infinite
heart and mind combined.
Look at the sum total of good and evil in this world. Has it
changed? Ages have passed, and practical religion has worked for
ages. The world thought that each time the problem would be
solved. It is always the same problem. At best it changes its
form. ... It trades consumption and nerve disease for twenty
thousand shops. . . . It is like old rheumatism: Drive it from
one place, it goes to another. A hundred years ago man walked on
foot or bought horses. Now he is happy because he rides the
railroad; but he is unhappy because he has to work more and earn
more. Every machine that saves labour puts more stress upon
labour.
This universe, nature, or whatever you call it, must be limited;
it can never be unlimited. The Absolute, to become nature, must
be limited by time, space, and causation. The energy [at our
disposal] is limited. You can spend it in one place, losing it
in another. The sum total is always the same. Wherever there is
a wave in one place, there is a hollow in another. If one nation
becomes rich, others become poor. Good balances evil. The person
for the moment on top of the wave thinks all is good; the person
at the bottom says the world is [all evil]. But the man who
stands aside sees the divine play going on. Some weep and others
laugh. The latter will weep in their turn and the others laugh.
What can we do? We know we cannot do anything. ...
Which of us do anything because we want to do good? How few!
They can be counted on the fingers. The rest of us also do good,
but because we are forced to do so. ... We cannot stop. Onward
we go, knocked about from place to place. What can we do? The
world will be the same world, the earth the same. It will be
changed from blue to brown and from brown to blue. One language
translated into another, one set of evils changed into another
set of evils - that is what is going on. ... Six of one, half a
dozen of the other. The American Indian in the forest cannot
attend a lecture on metaphysics as you can, but he can digest
his meal. You cut him to pieces, and the next moment he is all
right. You and I, if we get scratched, we have to go to the
hospital for six months. ...
The lower the organism, the greater is its pleasure in the
senses. Think of the lowest animals and the power of touch.
Everything is touch. ... When you come to man, you will see that
the lower the civilization of the man, the greater is the power
of the senses. ... The higher the organism, the lesser is the
pleasure of the senses. A dog can eat a meal, but cannot
understand the exquisite pleasure of thinking about metaphysics.
He is deprived of the wonderful pleasure which you get through
the intellect. The pleasures of the senses are great. Greater
than those is the pleasure of the intellect. When you attend the
fine fifty-course dinner in Paris, that is pleasure indeed. But
in the observatory, looking at the stars, seeing . . . worlds
coming and developing - think of that! It must be greater, for I
know you forget all about eating. That pleasure must be greater
than what you get from worldly things. You forget all about
wives, children, husbands, and everything; you forget all about
the sense-plane. That is intellectual pleasure. It is common
sense that it must be greater than sense pleasure. It is always
for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical
religion - the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce!
Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. What is the
foundation of society? Morality, ethics, laws. Renounce.
Renounce all temptation to take your neighbour's property, to
put hands upon your neighbour, all the pleasure of tyrannising
over the weak, all the pleasure of cheating others by telling
lies. Is not morality the foundation of society? What is
marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not
marry. Man marries because he renounces. So on and on. Renounce!
Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But
to get the higher. But who can do this? You cannot, until you
have got the higher. You may talk. You may struggle. You may try
to do many things. But renunciation comes by itself when you
have got the higher. Then the lesser falls away by itself.
This is practical religion. What else? Cleaning streets and
building hospitals? Their value consists only in this
renunciation. And there is no end to renunciation. The
difficulty is they try to put a limit to it - thus far and no
farther. But there is no limit to this renunciation.
Where God is, there is no other. Where the world is, there is no
God. These two will never unite. [Like] light and darkness. That
is what I have understood from Christianity and the life of the
Teacher. Is not that Buddhism? Is not that Hinduism? Is not that
Mohammedanism? Is not that the teaching of all the great sages
and teachers? What is the world that is to be given up? It is
here. I am carrying it all with me. My own body. It is all for
this body that I put my hand voluntarily upon my fellow man,
just to keep it nice and give it a little pleasure; [all for
this body] that I injure others and make mistakes. ...
Great men have died. Weak men have died. Gods have died. Death -
death everywhere. This world is a graveyard of the infinite
past, yet we cling to this [body]: "I am never going to die".
Knowing for sure [that the body must die] and yet clinging to
it. There is meaning in that too [because in a sense we do not
die]. The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the
spirit that is really immortal.
You are all materialists, because you believe that you are the
body. If a man gives me a hard punch, I would say I am punched.
If he strikes me, I would say I am struck. If I am not the body,
why should I say so? It makes no difference if I say I am the
spirit. I am the body just now. I have converted myself into
matter. That is why I am to renounce the body, to go back to
what I really am. I am the spirit - the soul no instrument can
pierce, no sword can cut asunder, no fire can burn, no air can
dry. Unborn and uncreated, without beginning and without end,
deathless, birthless and omnipresent - that is what I am; and
all misery comes just because I think this little lump of clay
is myself. I am identifying myself with matter and taking all
the consequences.
Practical religion is identifying myself with my Self. Stop this
wrong identification! How far are you advanced in that? You may
have built two thousand hospitals, built fifty thousand roads,
and yet what of that, if you, have not realised that you are the
spirit? You die a dog's; death, with the same feelings that the
dog does. The dog howls and weeps because he knows that he is
only matter and he is going to be dissolved.
There is death, you know, inevitable death, in water, in air, in
the palace, in the prison - death everywhere. What makes you
fearless? When you have realised what you are - that infinite
spirit, deathless, birthless. Him no fire can burn, no
instrument kill, no poison hurt. Not theory, mind you. Not
reading books. . . . [Not parroting.] My old Master used to say,
"It is all very good to teach the parrot to say, 'Lord, Lord,
Lord' all the time; but let the cat come and take hold of its
neck, it forgets all about it" [You may] pray all the time, read
all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there
are, [but] unless you realise the soul there is no freedom. Not
talking, theorising, argumentation, but realisation. That I call
practical religion.
This truth about the soul is first to be heard. If you have
heard it, think about it. Once you have done that, meditate upon
it. No more vain arguments! Satisfy yourself once that you are
the infinite spirit. If that is true, it must be nonsense that
you are the body. You are the Self, and that must be realised.
Spirit must see itself as spirit. Now the spirit is seeing
itself as body. That must stop. The moment you begin to realise
that, you are released.
You see this glass, and you know it is simply an illusion. Some
scientists tell you it is light and vibration. ... Seeing the
spirit must be infinitely more real: than that, must be the only
true state, the only true sensation, the only true vision. All
these [objects you see], are but dreams. You know that now. Not
the old idealists alone, but modern physicists also tell you
that light is there. A little more vibration makes all the
difference. ...
You must see God. The spirit must be realised, and that is
practical religion. It is not what Christ preached that you call
practical religion: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the Kingdom of Heaven." Was it a joke? What is the practical
religion you are thinking, of? Lord help us! "Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." That means
street-cleaning, hospital-building, and all that? Good works,
when you do them with a pure mind. Don't give the man twenty
dollars and buy all the papers in San Francisco to see your
name! Don't you read in your own books how no man will help you?
Serve as worship of the Lord Himself in the poor, the miserable,
the weak. That done, the result is secondary. That sort of work,
done without any thought of gain, benefits the soul. And even of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. He is there. He is the soul
of all souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical
religion. That is freedom. Let us ask each other how much we are
advanced in that: how much we are worshippers of the body, or
real believers in God, the spirit; how much we believe ourselves
to be spirit. That is selfless. That is freedom. That is real
worship. Realise yourself. That is all there is to do. Know
yourself as you are - infinite spirit. That is practical
religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else
will vanish. That alone will never vanish. It Is eternal.
Hospitals will tumble down. Railroad givers will all die. This
earth will be blown to pieces, suns wiped out. The soul endureth
forever.
Which is higher, running after these things which perish or. . .
. worshipping that which never changes? Which is more practical,
spending all the energies of life in getting things, and before
you have got them death comes and you have to leave them all? -
like the great [ruler] who conquered all, [who when] death came,
said, "Spread out all the jars of things before me." He said
"Bring me that big diamond." And he placed it on his breast and
wept. Thus weeping, he died the same as the dog dies.
Man says, "I live." He knows not that it is [the fear of] death
that makes him cling slavishly to life. He says "I enjoy." He
never dreams that nature has enslaved him.
Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you
get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when
you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all
the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel
goes round.
Therefore to realise the spirit as spirit is practical religion.
Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand
idea. That [realization] is to be attained by renunciation, by
meditation - renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots,
the chains that bind us down to matter. "I do not want to get
material life, do not want the sense-life, but something
higher." That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation,
undo the mischief that has been done.
We are at the beck and call of nature. If there is sound
outside, I have to hear it. If something is going on, I have to
see it. Like monkeys. We are two thousand monkeys concentrated,
each one of us. Monkeys are very curious. So we cannot help
ourselves, and call this "enjoying". Wonderful this language! We
are enjoying the world! We cannot help enjoying it. Nature wants
us to do it. A beautiful sound: I am hearing it. As if I could
choose to hear it or not! Nature says, "Go down to the depths of
misery." I become miserable in a moment. ... We talk about
pleasures [of the senses] and possessions. One man thinks me
very learned. Another thinks, "He is a fool." This degradation,
this slavery, without knowing anything! In the dark room we are
knocking our heads against each other.
What is meditation? Meditation is the power which enables us to
resist all this. Nature may call us, "Look there is a beautiful
thing!" I do not look. Now she says, "There is a beautiful
smell; smell it! " I say to my nose, "Do not smell it", and the
nose doesn't. "Eyes, do not see!" Nature does such an awful
thing - kills one of my children, and says, "Now, rascal, sit
down and weep! Go to the depths!" I say, "I don't have to." I
jump up. I must be free. Try it sometimes. ... [In meditation],
for a moment, you can change this nature. Now, if you had that
power in yourself, would not that be heaven, freedom? That is
the power of meditation.
How is it to be attained? In a dozen different ways. Each
temperament has its own way. But this is the general principle:
get hold of the mind. The mind is like a lake, and every stone
that drops into it raises waves. These waves do not let us see
what we are. The full moon is reflected in the water of the
lake, but the surface is so disturbed that we do not see the
reflection clearly. Let it be calm. Do not let nature raise the
wave. Keep quiet, and then after a little while she will give
you up. Then we know what we are. God is there already, but the
mind is so agitated, always running after the senses. You close
the senses and [yet] you whirl and whirl about. Just this moment
I think I am all right and I will meditate upon God, and then my
mind goes to London in one minute. And if I pull it away from
there, it goes to New York to think about the things I have done
there in the past. These [waves] are to be stopped by the power
of meditation.
Slowly and gradually we are to train ourselves. It is no joke -
not a question of a day, or years, or maybe of births. Never
mind! The pull must go on. Knowingly, voluntarily, the pull must
go on. Inch by inch we will gain ground. We will begin to feel
and get real possessions, which no one can take away from us -
the wealth that no man can take, the wealth that nobody can
destroy, the joy that no misery can hurt any more. ...
All these years we have depended upon others. If I have a little
pleasure and that person goes away, my pleasure is gone. ... See
the folly of man: he depends for happiness upon men! All
separations are misery. Naturally. Depending upon wealth for
happiness? There is fluctuation of wealth. Depending upon health
or upon anything except the unchangeable spirit must bring
misery today or tomorrow.
Excepting the infinite spirit, everything else is changing.
There is the whirl of change. Permanence is nowhere except in
yourself. There is the infinite joy, unchanging. Meditation is
the gate that opens that to us. Prayers, ceremonials, and all
the other forms of worship are simply kindergartens of
meditation. You pray, you offer something. A certain theory
existed that everything raised one's spiritual power. The use of
certain words, flowers, images, temples, ceremonials like the
waving of lights brings the mind to that attitude, but that
attitude is always in the human soul, nowhere else. [People] are
all doing it; but what they do without knowing it, do knowingly.
That is the power of meditation. All knowledge you have - how
did it come? From the power of meditation. The soul churned the
knowledge out of its own depths. What knowledge was there ever
outside of it? In the long run this power of meditation
separates ourselves from the body, and then the soul knows
itself as it is - the unborn, the deathless, and birthless
being. No more is there any misery, no more births upon this
earth, no more evolution. [The soul knows itself as having] ever
been perfect and free.
Writings: Prose
IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL?
(The Swamiji's contribution to the discussion of this
question, carried on in the pages of The New York Morning
Advertiser.)
"None has power to destroy the unchangeable." - Bhagavad-Gitâ.
In the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahâbhârata, the story is told
how the hero, Yudhishthira, when asked by Dharma to tell what
was the most wonderful thing in the world, replied, that it was
the persistent belief of mankind in their own deathlessness in
spite of their witnessing death everywhere around them almost
every moment of their lives. And, in fact, this is the most
stupendous wonder in human life. In spite of all arguments to
the contrary urged in different times by different schools, in
spite of the inability of reason to penetrate the veil of
mystery which will ever hang between the sensuous and the super
sensuous worlds, man is thoroughly persuaded that he cannot die.
We may study all our lives, and in the end fail to bring the
problem of life and death to the plane of rational
demonstration, affirmative or negative. We may talk or write,
preach or teach, for or against the permanency or impermanency
of human existence as much as we like; we may become violent
partisans of this side or that; we may invent names by the
hundred, each more intricate than its predecessor, and lull
ourselves into a momentary rest under the delusion of our having
solved the problem once for all; we may cling with all our
powers to any one of the curious religious superstitions or the
far more objectionable scientific superstitions - but in the
end, we find ourselves playing an external game in the bowling
alley of reason and raising intellectual pin after pin, only to
be knocked over again and again.
But behind all this mental strain and torture, not infrequently
productive of more dangerous results than mere games, stands a
fact unchallenged and unchallengeable - the fact, the wonder,
which the Mahabharata points out as the inability of our mind to
conceive our own annihilation. Even to imagine my own
annihilation I shall have to stand by and look on as a witness.
Now, before trying to understand what this curious phenomenon
means, we want to note that upon this one fact the whole world
stands. The permanence of the external world is inevitably
joined to the permanence of the internal; and, however plausible
any theory of the universe may seem which asserts the permanence
of the one and denies that of the other, the theorist himself
will find that in his own mechanism not one conscious action is
possible, without the permanence of both the internal and the
external worlds being one of the factors in the motive cause.
Although it is perfectly true that when the human mind
transcends its own limitations, it finds the duality reduced to
an indivisible unity, on this side of the unconditioned, the
whole objective world - that is to say, the world we know - is
and can be alone known to us as existing for the subject, and
therefore, before we would be able to conceive the annihilation
of the subject we are bound to conceive the annihilation of the
object.
So far it is plain enough. But now comes the difficulty. I
cannot think of myself ordinarily as anything else but a body.
My idea of my own permanence includes my idea of myself as a
body. But the body is obviously impermanent, as is the whole of
nature - a constantly vanishing quantity.
Where, then, is this permanence?
There is one more wonderful phenomenon connected with our lives,
without which "who will be able to live, who will be able to
enjoy life a moment?" - the idea of freedom.
This is the idea that guides each footstep of ours, makes our
movements possible, determines our relations to each other -
nay, is the very warp and woof in the fabric of human life.
Intellectual knowledge tries to drive it inch by inch from its
territory, post after post is snatched away from its domains,
and each step is made fast and ironbound with the railroadings
of cause and effect. But it laughs at all our attempts, and, lo,
it keeps itself above all this massive pile of law and causation
with which we tried to smother it to death! How can it be
otherwise? The limited always requires a higher generalization
of the unlimited to explain itself. The bound can only be
explained by the free, the caused by the uncaused. But again,
the same difficulty is also here. What is free? The body or even
the mind? It is apparent to all that they are as much bound by
law as anything else in the universe.
Now the problem resolves itself into this dilemma: either the
whole universe is a mass of never-ceasing change and nothing
more, irrevocably bound by the law of causation, not one
particle having a unity of itself, yet is curiously producing an
ineradicable delusion of permanence and freedom, or there is in
us and in the universe something which is permanent and free,
showing that the basal constitutional belief of the human mind
is not a delusion. It is the duty of science to explain facts by
bringing them to a higher generalization. Any explanation,
therefore that first wants to destroy a part of the fact given
to be explained, in order to fit itself to the remainder, is not
scientific, whatever else it may be.
So any explanation that wants to overlook the fact of this
persistent and all-necessary idea of freedom commits the
above-mentioned mistake of denying a portion of the fact in
order to explain the rest, and is, therefore, wrong. The only
other alternative possible, then, is to acknowledge, in harmony
with our nature, that there is something in us which is free and
permanent.
But it is not the body; neither is it the mind. The body is
dying every minute. The mind is constantly changing. The body is
a combination, and so is the mind, and as such can never reach
to a state beyond all change. But beyond this momentary
sheathing of gross matter, beyond even the finer covering of the
mind is the Âtman, the true Self of man, the permanent, the ever
free. It is his freedom that is percolating through layers of
thought and matter, and, in spite of the colourings of name and
form, is ever asserting its unshackled existence. It is his
deathlessness, his bliss, his peace, his divinity that shines
out and makes itself felt in spite of the thickest layers of
ignorance. He is the real man, the fearless one, the deathless
one, the free.
Now freedom is only possible when no external power can exert
any influence, produce any change. Freedom is only possible to
the being who is beyond all conditions, all laws, all bondages
of cause and effect. In other words, the unchangeable alone can
be free and, therefore, immortal. This Being, this Atman, this
real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable is beyond all
conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death.
"Without birth or death, eternal, ever-existing is this soul of
man."
REINCARNATION
(Contributed to the Metaphysical Magazine, New York, March,
1895)
"Both you and I have passed through many births; you know them
not, I know them all." - Bhagavad-Gitâ
Of the many riddles that have perplexed the intellect of man in
all climes and times, the most intricate is himself. Of the
myriad mysteries that have called forth his energies to struggle
for solution from the very dawn of history, the most mysterious
is his own nature. It is at once the most insoluble enigma and
the problem of all problems. As the starting-point and the
repository of all we know and feel and do, there never has been,
nor will be, a time when man's own nature will cease to demand
his best and foremost attention.
Though through hunger after that truth, which of all others has
the most intimate connection with his very existence, though
through an all-absorbing desire for an inward standard by which
to measure the outward universe though through the absolute and
inherent necessity of finding a fixed point in a universe of
change, man has sometimes clutched at handfuls of dust for gold,
and even when urged on by a voice higher than reason or
intellect, he has many times failed rightly to interpret the
real meaning of the divinity within - still there never was a
time since the search began, when some race, or some
individuals, did not hold aloft the lamp of truth.
Taking a one-sided, cursory and prejudiced view of the
surroundings and the unessential details, sometimes disgusted
also with the vagueness of many schools and sects, and often,
alas, driven to the opposite extreme by the violent
superstitions of organised priest craft - men have not been
wanting, especially among advanced intellects, in either ancient
or modern times, who not only gave up the search in despair, but
declared it fruitless and useless. Philosophers might fret and
sneer, and priests ply their trade even at the point of the
sword, but truth comes to those alone who worship at her shrine
for her sake only, without fear and without shop keeping.
Light comes to individuals through the conscious efforts of
their intellect; it comes, slowly though, to the whole race
through unconscious percolations. The philosophers show the
volitional struggles of great minds; history reveals the silent
process of permeation through which truth is absorbed by the
masses.
Of all the theories that have been held by man about himself,
that of a soul entity, separate from the body and immortal, has
been the most widespread; and among those that held the belief
in such a soul, the majority of the thoughtful had always
believed also in its pre-existence.
At present the greater portion of the human race, having
organised religion, believe in it; and many of the best thinkers
in the most favoured lands, though nurtured in religions
avowedly hostile to every idea of the preexistence of the soul,
have endorsed it. Hinduism and Buddhism have it for their
foundation; the educated classes among the ancient Egyptians
believed in it; the ancient Persians arrived at it; the Greek
philosophers made it the corner-stone of their philosophy; the
Pharisees among the Hebrews accepted it; and the Sufis among the
Mohammedans almost universally acknowledged its truth.
There must be peculiar surroundings which generate and foster
certain forms of belief among nations. It required ages for the
ancient races to arrive at any idea about a part, even of the
body, surviving after death; it took ages more to come to any
rational idea about this something which persists and lives
apart from the body. It was only when the idea was reached of an
entity whose connection with the body was only for a time, and
only among those nations who arrived at such a conclusion, that
the unavoidable question arose: Whither? Whence?
The ancient Hebrews never disturbed their equanimity by
questioning themselves about the soul. With them death ended
all. Karl Heckel justly says, "Though it is true that in the Old
Testament, preceding the exile, the Hebrews distinguish a
life-principle, different from the body, which is sometimes
called 'Nephesh', or 'Ruakh', or 'Neshama', yet all these words
correspond rather to the idea of breath than to that of spirit
or soul. Also in the writings of the Palestinean Jews, after the
exile, there is never made mention of an individual immortal
soul, but always only of a life-breath emanating from God,
which, after the body is dissolved, is reabsorbed into the
Divine 'Ruakh'."
The ancient Egyptians and the Chaldeans had peculiar beliefs of
their own about the soul; but their ideas about this living part
after death must not be confused with those of the ancient
Hindu, the Persian, the Greek, or any other Aryan race. There
was, from the earliest times, a broad distinction between the
Âryas and the non-Sanskrit speaking Mlechchhas in the conception
of the soul. Externally it was typified by their disposal of the
dead - the Mlechchhas mostly trying their best to preserve the
dead bodies either by careful burial or by the more elaborate
processes of mummifying, and the Aryas generally burning their
dead.
Herein lies the key to a great secret - the fact that no
Mlechchha race, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, or Babylonian, ever
attained to the idea of the soul as a separate entity which can
live independent of the body, without he help of the Aryas,
especially of the Hindus.
Although Herodotus states that the Egyptians were the first to
conceive the idea of the immortality of the soul, and states as
a doctrine of the Egyptians "that the soul after the dissolution
of the body enters again and again into a creature that comes to
life; then, that the soul wanders through all the animals of the
land and the sea and through all the birds, and finally after
three thousand years returns to a human body," yet, modern
researches into Egyptology have hitherto found no trace of
metempsychosis in the popular Egyptian religion. On the other
hand, the most recent researches of Maspero, A. Erman, and other
eminent Egyptologists tend to confirm the supposition that the
doctrine of palingenesis was not at home with the Egyptians.
With the ancient Egyptians the soul was only a double, having no
individuality of its own, and never able to break its connection
with the body. It persists only so long as the body lasts; and
if by chance the corpse is destroyed, the departed soul must
suffer a second death and annihilation. The soul after death was
allowed to roam freely all over the world, but always returning
at night to where the corpse was, always miserable, always
hungry and thirsty, always extremely desirous to enjoy life once
more, and never being able to fulfil the desire. If any part of
its old body was injured, the soul was also invariably injured
in its corresponding part. And this idea explains the solicitude
of the ancient Egyptians to preserve their dead. At first the
deserts were chosen as the burial-place, because the dryness of
the air did not allow the body to perish soon, thus granting to
the departed soul a long lease of existence. In course of time
one of the gods discovered the process of making mummies,
through which the devout hoped to preserve the dead bodies of
their ancestors for almost an infinite length of time, thus
securing immortality to the departed ghost, however miserable it
might be.
The perpetual regret for the world, in which the soul can take
no further interest, never ceased to torture the deceased. "O.
my brother," exclaims the departed "withhold not thyself from
drinking and eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all
enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put
not sorrow within thy heart, for, what are the years of man upon
earth? The West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place
wherein the inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in
their mummy forms, never more waking to see their brethren;
never more to recognise their fathers and mothers, with hearts
forgetful of their wives and children The living water, which
earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me stagnant and
dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me
it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. Since I
came into this funeral valley I know not where nor what I am.
Give me to drink of running water . . . let me be placed by the
edge of the water with my face to the North, that the breeze may
caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow."
Among the Chaldeans also, although they did not speculate so
much as the Egyptians as to the condition of the soul after
death, the soul is still a double and is bound to its sepulchre.
They also could not conceive of a state without this physical
body, and expected a resurrection of the corpse again to life;
and though the goddess Ishtar, after great perils and
adventures, procured the resurrection of her shepherd, husband,
Dumuzi, the son of Ea and Damkina, "The most pious votaries
pleaded in rain from temple to temple, for the resurrection of
their dead friends."
Thus we find, that the ancient Egyptians or Chaldeans never
could entirely dissociate the idea of the soul from the corpse
of the departed or the sepulchre. The state of earthly existence
was best after all; and the departed are always longing to have
a chance once more to renew it; and the living are fervently
hoping to help them in prolonging the existence of the miserable
double and striving the best they can to help them.
This is not the soil out of which any higher knowledge of the
soul could spring. In the first place it is grossly
materialistic, and even then it is one of terror and agony.
Frightened by the almost innumerable powers of evil, and with
hopeless, agonised efforts to avoid them, the souls of the
living, like their ideas of the souls of the departed - wander
all over the world though they might - could never get beyond
the sepulchre and the crumbling corpse.
We must turn now for the source of the higher ideas of the soul
to another race, whose God was an all-merciful, all-pervading
Being manifesting Himself through various bright, benign, and
helpful Devas, the first of all the human race who addressed
their God as Father "Oh, take me by the hands even as a father
takes his dear son"; with whom life was a hope and not a
despair; whose religion was not the intermittent groans escaping
from the lips of an agonised man during the intervals of a life
of mad excitement; but whose ideas come to us redolent with the
aroma of the field and forest; whose songs of praise -
spontaneous, free, joyful, like the songs which burst forth from
the throats of the birds when they hail this beautiful world
illuminated by the first rays of the lord of the day - come down
to us even now through the vista of eighty centuries as fresh
calls from heaven; we turn to the ancient Aryas.
"Place me in that deathless, undecaying world where is the light
of heaven, and everlasting lustre shines"; "Make me immortal in
that realm where dwells the King Vivasvân's son, where is the
secret shrine of heaven"; "Make me immortal in that realm where
they move even as they list"; "In the third sphere of inmost
heaven, where worlds are full of light, make me immortal in that
realm of bliss"- These are the prayers of the Aryas in their
oldest record, the Rig-Veda Samhitâ.
We find at once a whole world of difference between the
Mlechchha and the Aryan ideals. To the one, this body and this
world are all that are real, and all that are desirable. A
little life-fluid which flies off from the body at death, to
feel torture and agony at the loss of the enjoyments of the
senses, can, they fondly hope, be brought back if the body is
carefully preserved; and thus a corpse became more an object of
care than the living man. The other found out that, that which
left the body was the real man; and when separated from the
body, it enjoyed a state of bliss higher than it ever enjoyed
when in the body. And they hastened to annihilate the corrupted
corpse by burning it.
Here we find the germ out of which a true idea of the soul could
come. Here it was - where the real man was not the body, but the
soul, where all ideas of an inseparable connection between the
real man and the body were utterly absent - that a noble idea of
the freedom of the soul could rise. And it was when the Aryas
penetrated even beyond the shining cloth of the body with which
the departed soul was enveloped, and found its real nature of a
formless, individual, unit principle, that the question
inevitably arose: Whence?
It was in India and among the Aryas that the doctrine of the
pre-existence, the immortality, and the individuality of the
soul first arose. Recent researches in Egypt have failed to show
any trace of the doctrines of an independent and individual soul
existing before and after the earthly phase of existence. Some
of the mysteries were no doubt in possession of this idea, but
in those it has been traced to India.
"I am convinced", says Karl Heckel, "that the deeper we enter
into the study of the Egyptian religion, the clearer it is shown
that the doctrine of metempsychosis was entirely foreign to the
popular Egyptian religion; and that even that which single
mysteries possessed of it was not inherent to the Osiris
teachings, but derived from Hindu sources."
Later on, we find the Alexandrian Jews imbued with the doctrine
of an individual soul, and the Pharisees of the time of Jesus,
as already stated, not only had faith in an individual soul, but
believed in its wandering through various bodies; and thus it is
easy to find how Christ was recognised as the incarnation of an
older Prophet, and Jesus himself directly asserted that John the
Baptist was the Prophet Elias come back again. "If ye will
receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come." - Matt. XI.
14.
The ideas of a soul and of its individuality among the Hebrews,
evidently came through the higher mystical teachings of the
Egyptians, who in their turn derived it from India. And that it
should come through Alexandria is significant, as the Buddhistic
records clearly show Buddhistic missionary activity in
Alexandria and Asia Minor.
Pythagoras is said to have been the first Greek who taught the
doctrine of palingenesis among the Hellenes. As an Aryan race,
already burning their dead and believing in the doctrine of an
individual soul, it was easy for the Greeks to accept the
doctrine of reincarnation through the Pythagorean teachings.
According to Apuleius, Pythagoras had come to India, where he
had been instructed by the Brâhmins.
So far we have learnt that wherever the soul was held to be an
individual, the real man, and not a vivifying part of the body
only, the doctrine of its pre-existence had inevitably come, and
that externally those nations that believed in the independent
individuality of the soul had almost always signified it by
burning the bodies of the departed. Though one of the ancient
Aryan races, the Persian, developed at an early period and
without any; Semitic influence a peculiar method of disposing of
the bodies of the dead, the very name by which they call their
"Towers of silence", comes from the root Dah, to burn.
In short, the races who did not pay much attention to the
analysis of their own nature, never went beyond the material
body as their all in all, and even when driven by higher light
to penetrate beyond, they only came to the conclusion that
somehow or other, at some distant period of time, this body will
become incorruptible.
On the other hand, that race which spent the best part of its
energies in the inquiry into the nature of man as a thinking
being - the Indo-Aryan - soon found out that beyond this body,
beyond even the shining body which their forefathers longed
after, is the real man, the principle, the individual who
clothes himself with this body, and then throws it off when worn
out. Was such a principle created? If creation means something
coming out of nothing, their answer is a decisive "No". This
soul is without birth and without death; it is not a compound or
combination but an independent individual, and as such it cannot
be created or destroyed. It is only travelling through various
states.
Naturally, the question arises: Where was it all this time? The
Hindu philosophers say, "It was passing through different bodies
in the physical sense, or, really and metaphysically speaking,
passing through different mental planes."
Are there any proofs apart from the teachings of the Vedas upon
which the doctrine of reincarnation has been founded by the
Hindu philosophers? There are, and we hope to show later on that
there are grounds as valid for it as for any other universally
accepted doctrine. But first we will see what some of the
greatest of modern European thinkers have thought about
reincarnation.
I. H. Fichte, speaking about the immortality of the soul, says:
"It is true there is one analogy in nature which might be
brought forth in refutation of the continuance. It is the
well-known argument that everything that has a beginning in time
must also perish at some period of time; hence, that the claimed
past existence of the soul necessarily implies its
pre-existence. This is a fair conclusion, but instead of being
an objection to, it is rather an additional argument for its
continuance. Indeed, one needs only to understand the full
meaning of the metaphysico-physiological axiom that in reality
nothing can be created or annihilated, to recognise that the
soul must have existed prior to its becoming visible in a
physical body."
Schopenhauer, in his book, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,
speaking about palingenesis, says:
"What sleep is for the individual, death is for the 'will'. It
would not endure to continue the same actions and sufferings
throughout an eternity without true gain, if memory and
individuality remained to it. It flings them off, and this is
Lethe, and through this sleep of death it reappears fitted out
with another intellect as a new being; a new day tempts to new
shores. These constant new births, then, constitute the
succession of the life-dreams of a will which in itself is
indestructible, until instructed and improved by so much and
such various successive knowledge in a constantly new form, it
abolishes and abrogates itself.... It must not be neglected that
even empirical grounds support a palingenesis of this kind. As a
matter of fact, there does exist a connection between the birth
of the newly appearing beings and the death of those that are
worn out. It shows itself in the great fruitfulness of the human
race which appears as a consequence of devastating diseases.
When in the fourteenth century the Black Death had for the most
part depopulated the Old World, a quite abnormal fruitfulness
appeared among the human race, and twin-births were very
frequent. The circumstance was also remarkable that none of the
children born at this time obtained their full number of teeth;
thus nature, exerting itself to the utmost, was niggardly in
details. This is related by F. Schnurrer in his Chronik der
Seuchen, 1825. Casper, also, in his Ueber die Wahrscheinliche
Lebensdauer des Menschen, 1835, confirms the principle that the
number of births in a given population has the most decided
influence upon the length of life and mortality in it, as this
always keeps pace with mortality; so that always and everywhere
the deaths and the births increase and decrease in like
proportion, which he places beyond doubt by an accumulation of
evidence collected from many lands and their various provinces.
And yet it is impossible that there can be physical, causal
connection between my early death and the fruitfulness of a
marriage with which I have nothing to do, or conversely. Thus
here the metaphysical appears undeniable, and in a stupendous
manner, as the immediate ground of explanation of the physical.
Every new-born being comes fresh and blithe into the new
existence, and enjoys it as a free gift; but there is and can be
nothing freely given. Its fresh existence is paid for by the old
age and death of a worn-out existence which has perished, but
which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new
existence has arisen; they are one being."
The great English philosopher Hume, nihilistic though he was,
says in the sceptical essay on immortality, "The metempsychosis
is therefore the only system of this kind that philosophy can
listen to." The philosopher Lessing, with a deep poetical
insight, asks, "Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because
it is the oldest, because the human understanding, before the
sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it,
lighted upon it at once? . . . Why should not I come back as
often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh
experience? Do I bring away so much from once that there is
nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?"
The arguments for and against the doctrine of a preexisting soul
reincarnating through many lives have been many, and some of the
greatest thinkers of all ages have taken up the gauntlet to
defend it; and so far as we can see, if there is an individual
soul, that it existed before seems inevitable. If the soul is
not an individual but a combination of "Skandhas" (notions), as
the Mâdhyamikas among the Buddhists insist, still they find
pre-existence absolutely necessary to explain their position.
The argument showing the impossibility of an infinite existence
beginning in time is unanswerable, though attempts have been
made to ward it off by appealing to the omnipotence of God to do
anything, however contrary to reason it may be. We are sorry to
find this most fallacious argument proceeding from some of the
most thoughtful persons.
In the first place, God being the universal and common cause of
all phenomena, the question was to find the natural causes of
certain phenomena in the human soul, and the Deus ex machina
theory is, therefore, quite irrelevant. It amounts to nothing
less than confession of ignorance. We can give that answer to
every question asked in every branch of human knowledge and stop
all inquiry and, therefore, knowledge altogether.
Secondly, this constant appeal to the omnipotence of God is only
a word-puzzle. The cause, as cause, is and can only be known to
us as sufficient for the effect, and nothing more. As such we
have no more idea of an infinite effect than of an omnipotent
cause. Moreover, all our ideas of God are only limited; even the
idea of cause limits our idea of God. Thirdly, even taking the
position for granted, we are not bound to allow any such absurd
theories as "Something coming out of nothing", or "Infinity
beginning in time", so long as we can give a better explanation.
A so-called great argument is made against the idea of
pre-existence by asserting that the majority of mankind are not
conscious of it. To prove the validity of this argument, the
party who offers it must prove that the whole of the soul of man
is bound up in the faculty of memory. If memory be the test of
existence, then all that part of our lives which is not now in
it must be non-existent, and every, person who in a state of
coma or otherwise loses his memory must be non-existent also.
The premises from which the inference is drawn of a previous
existence, and that too on the plane of conscious' action, as
adduced by the Hindu philosophers, are chiefly these:
First, how else to explain this world of inequalities? Here is
one child born in the province of a just and merciful God, with
every circumstance conducing to his becoming a good and useful
member of the human race, and perhaps at the same instant and in
the same city another child is born under circumstances every
one of which is against his becoming good. We see children born
to suffer, perhaps all their lives, and that owing to no fault
of theirs. Why should it be so? What is the cause? Of whose
ignorance is it the result? If not the child's, why should it
suffer for its parents' actions?
It is much better to confess ignorance than to try to evade the
question by the allurements of future enjoyments in proportion
to the evil here, or by posing "mysteries". Not only undeserved
suffering forced upon us by any agent is immoral - not to say
unjust - but even the future-makingup theory has no legs to
stand upon.
How many of the miserably born struggle towards a higher life,
and how many more succumb to the circumstances they are placed
under? Should those who grow worse and more wicked by being
forced to be born under evil circumstances be rewarded in the
future for the wickedness of their lives? In that case the more
wicked the man is here, the better will be his deserts
hereafter.
There is no other way to vindicate the glory and the liberty of
the human soul and reconcile the inequalities and the horrors of
this world than by placing the whole burden upon the legitimate
cause - our own independent actions or Karma. Not only so, but
every theory of the creation of the soul from nothing inevitably
leads to fatalism and preordination, and instead of a Merciful
Father, places before us a hideous, cruel, and an ever-angry God
to worship. And so far as the power of religion for good or evil
is concerned, this theory of a created soul, leading to its
corollaries of fatalism and predestination, is responsible for
the horrible idea prevailing among some Christians and
Mohammedans that the heathens are the lawful victims of their
swords, and all the horrors that have followed and are following
it still.
But an argument which the philosophers of the Nyâya school have
always advanced in favour of reincarnations and which to us
seems conclusive, is this: Our experiences cannot be
annihilated. Our actions (Karma) though apparently disappearing,
remain still unperceived (Adrishta), and reappear again in their
effect as tendencies (Pravrittis). Even little babies come with
certain tendencies - fear of death, for example.
Now if a tendency is the result of repeated actions, the
tendencies with which we are born must be explained on that
ground too. Evidently we could not have got them in this life;
therefore we must have to seek for their genesis in the past.
Now it is also evident that some of our tendencies are the
effects of the self-conscious efforts peculiar to man; and if it
is true that we are born with such tendencies, it rigorously
follows that their causes were conscious efforts in the past -
that is, we must have been on the same mental plane which we
call the human plane, before this present life.
So far as explaining the tendencies of the present life by past
conscious efforts goes, the reincarnationists of India and the
latest school of evolutionists are at once; the only difference
is that the Hindus, as spiritualists, explain it by the
conscious efforts of individual souls, and the materialistic
school of evolutionists, by a hereditary physical transmission.
The schools which hold to the theory of creation out of nothing
are entirely out of court.
The issue has to be fought out between the reincarnationists who
hold that all experiences are stored up as; tendencies in the
subject of those experiences, the individual soul, and are
transmitted by reincarnation of that unbroken individuality -
and the materialists who hold that the brain is the subject of
all actions and the theory of the transmission through cells.
It is thus that the doctrine of reincarnation assumes an
infinite importance to our mind, for the fight between
reincarnation and mere cellular transmission is, in reality, the
fight between spiritualism and materialism. If cellular
transmission is the all-sufficient explanation, materialism is
inevitable, and there is no necessity for the theory of a soul.
If it is not a sufficient explanation, the theory of an
individual soul bringing into this life the experiences of the
past is as absolutely true. There is no escape from the
alternative, reincarnation or materialism. Which shall we
accept?
ON DR. PAUL DEUSSEN
(Written for the Brahmavâdin, 1896.)
More than a decade has passed since a young German student, one
of eight children of a not very well-to-do clergyman, heard on a
certain day Professor Lassen lecturing on a language and
literature new - very new even at that time - to European
scholars, namely, Sanskrit. The lectures were of course free;
for even now it is impossible for anyone in any European
University to make a living by teaching Sanskrit, unless indeed
the University backs him.
Lassen was almost the last of that heroic band of German
scholars, the pioneers of Sanskrit scholarship in Germany.
Heroic certainly they were - what interest except their pure and
unselfish love of knowledge could German scholars have had at
that time in Indian literature? The veteran Professor was
expounding a chapter of Shakuntalâ; and on that day there was no
one present more eagerly and attentively listening to Lassen's
exposition than our young student. The subject-matter of the
exposition was of course interesting and wonderful, but more
wonderful was the strange language, the strange sounds of which,
although uttered with all those difficult peculiarities that
Sanskrit consonants are subjected to in the mouths of
unaccustomed Europeans, had strange fascination for him. He
returned to his lodgings, but that night sleep could not make
him oblivious of what he had heard. A glimpse of a hitherto
unknown land had been given to him, a land far more gorgeous in
its colours than any he had yet seen, and having a power of
fascination never yet experienced by his young and ardent soul.
Naturally his friends were anxiously looking forward to the
ripening of his brilliant parts, and expected that he would soon
enter a learned profession which might bring him respect, fame,
and, above all, a good salary and a high position. But then
there was this Sanskrit! The vast majority of European scholars
had not even heard of it then; as for making it pay - I have
already said that such a thing is impossible even now. Yet his
desire to learn it was strong.
It has unfortunately become hard for us modern Indians to
understand how it could be like that; nevertheless, there are to
be met with in Varanasi and Nadia and other places even now,
some old as well as young persons among our Pandits, and mostly
among the Sannyasins, who are mad with this kind of thirst for
knowledge for its own sake. Students, not placed in the midst of
the luxurious surroundings and materials of the modern
Europeanised Hindu, and with a thousand times less facilities
for study, poring over manuscripts in the flickering light of an
oil lamp, night after night, which alone would have been enough
to completely destroy the eye-sight of the students of any other
nation; travelling on foot hundreds of miles, begging their way
all along, in search of a rare manuscript or a noted teacher;
and wonderfully concentrating all the energy of their body and
mind upon their one object of study, year in and year out, till
the hair turns grey and the infirmity of age overtakes them -
such students have not, through God's mercy, as yet disappeared
altogether from our country. Whatever India now holds as a proud
possession, has been undeniably the result of such labour on the
part of her worthy sons in days gone by; and the truth of this
remark will become at once evident on comparing the depth and
solidity as well as the unselfishness and the earnestness of
purpose of India's ancient scholarship with the results attained
by our modern Indian Universities. Unselfish and genuine zeal
for real scholarship and honest earnest thought must again
become dominant in the life of our countrymen if they are ever
to rise to occupy among nations a rank worthy of their own
historic past. It is this kind of desire for knowledge which has
made Germany what she is now - one of the foremost, if not the
foremost, among the nations of the world.
Yes, the desire to learn Sanskrit was strong in the heart of
this German student. It was long, uphill work - this learning of
Sanskrit; with him too it was the same world-old story of
successful scholars and their hard work, their privations and
their indomitable energy - and also the same glorious conclusion
of a really heroic achievement. He thus achieved success; and
now - not only Europe, but all India knows this man, Paul
Deussen, who is the Professor of Philosophy in the University of
Kiel. I have seen professors of Sanskrit in America and in
Europe. Some of them are very sympathetic towards Vedantic
thought. I admire their intellectual acumen and their lives of
unselfish labour. But Paul Deussen - or as he prefers to be
called in Sanskrit, Deva-Sena - and the veteran Max Müller have
impressed me as being the truest friends of India and Indian
thought. It will always be among the most pleasing episodes in
my life - my first visit to this ardent Vedantist at Kiel, his
gentle wife who travelled with him in India, and his little
daughter, the darling of his heart - and our travelling together
through Germany and Holland to London, and the pleasant meetings
we had in and about London.
The earliest school of Sanskritists in Europe entered into the
study of Sanskrit with more imagination than critical ability.
They knew a little, expected much from that little, and often
tried to make too much of what little they knew. Then, in those
days even, such vagaries as the estimation of Shakuntala as
forming the high watermark of Indian philosophy were not
altogether unknown! These were naturally followed by a
reactionary band of superficial critics, more than real scholars
of any kind, who knew little or nothing of Sanskrit, expected
nothing from Sanskrit studies, and ridiculed everything from the
East. While criticising the unsound imaginativeness of the early
school to whom everything in Indian literature was rose and
musk, these, in their turn, went into speculations which, to say
the least, were equally highly unsound and indeed very
venturesome. And their boldness was very naturally helped by the
fact that these over-hasty and unsympathetic scholars and
critics were addressing an audience whose entire qualification
for pronouncing any judgment in the matter was their absolute
ignorance of Sanskrit. What a medley of results from such
critical scholarship! Suddenly, on one fine morning, the poor
Hindu woke up to find that everything that was his was gone; one
strange race had snatched away from him his arts, another his
architecture, and a third, whatever there was of his ancient
sciences; why, even his religion was not his own! Yes - that too
had migrated into India in the wake of a Pehlevi cross of stone!
After a feverish period of such treading-on-each-other's-toes of
original research, a better state of things has dawned. It has
now been found out that mere adventure without some amount of
the capital of real and ripe scholarship produces nothing but
ridiculous failure even in the business of Oriental research,
and that the traditions in India are not to be rejected with
supercilious contempt, as there is really more in them than most
people ever dream of.
There is now happily coming into existence in Europe a new type
of Sanskrit scholars, reverential, sympathetic, and learned -
reverential because they are a better stamp of men, and
sympathetic because they are learned. And the link which
connects the new portion of the chain with the old one is, of
course, our Max Müller. We Hindus certainly owe more to him than
to any other Sanskrit scholar in the West, and I am simply
astonished when I think of the gigantic task which he, in his
enthusiasm, undertook as a young man and brought to a successful
conclusion in his old age. Think of this man without any help,
poring over old manuscripts, hardly legible to the Hindus
themselves, and in a language to acquire which takes a lifetime
even in India - without even the help of any needy Pandit whose
"brains could be picked", as the Americans say, for ten
shillings a month, and a mere mention of his name in the
introduction to some book of "very new researches" - think of
this man, spending days and sometimes months in elucidating the
correct reading and meaning of a word or a sentence in the
commentary of Sâyana (as he has himself told me), and in the end
succeeding in making an easy road through the forest of Vedic
literature for all others to go along; think of him and his
work, and then say what he really is to us! Of course we need
not all agree with him in all that he says in his many writings;
certainly such an agreement is impossible. But agreement or no
agreement, the fact remains that this one man has done a
thousand times more for the preservation, spreading, and
appreciation of the literature of our forefathers than any of us
can ever hope to do, and he has done it all with a heart which
is full of the sweet balm of love and veneration.
If Max Müller is thus the old pioneer of the new movement,
Deussen is certainly one of its younger advance-guard.
Philological interest had hidden long from view the gems of
thought and spirituality to be found in the mine of our ancient
scriptures. Max Müller brought out a few of them and exhibited
them to the public gaze, compelling attention to them by means
of his authority as the foremost philologist. Deussen,
unhampered by any philological leanings and possessing the
training of a philosopher singularly well versed in the
speculations of ancient Greece and modern Germany, took up the
cue and plunged boldly into the metaphysical depths of the
Upanishads, found them to be fully safe and satisfying, and then
- equally boldly declared that fact before the whole world.
Deussen is certainly the freest among scholars in the expression
of his opinion about the Vedanta. He never stops to think about
the "What they would say" of the vast majority of scholars. We
indeed require bold men in this world to tell us bold words
about truth; and nowhere, is this more true now than in Europe
where, through the fear of social opinion and such other causes,
there has been enough in all conscience of the whitewashing and
apologising attitude among scholars towards creeds and customs
which, in all probability, not many among them really believe
in. The greater is the glory, therefore, to Max Müller and to
Deussen for their bold and open advocacy of truth! May they be
as bold in showing to us our defects, the later corruptions in
our thought-systems in India, especially in their application to
our social needs! Just now we very much require the help of such
genuine friends as these to check the growing virulence of the
disease, very prevalent in India, of running either to the one
extreme of slavish panegyrists who cling to every village
superstition as the innermost essence of the Shâstras, or to the
other extreme of demoniacal denouncers who see no good in us and
in our history, and will, if they can, at once dynamite all the
social and spiritual organizations of our ancient land of
religion and philosophy.
ON PROFESSOR MAX MÜLLER
(Written for the Brahmâvadin, from London, June 6, 1896.)
Though the ideal of work of our Brahmavâdin should always be
"कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन - To work thou hast the
right, but never to the fruits thereof", yet no sincere worker
passes out of the field of activity without making himself known
and catching at least a few rays of light.
The beginning of our work has been splendid, and the steady
earnestness shown by our friends is beyond all praise. Sincerity
of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day; and
even a small minority, armed with these, is surely destined to
prevail against all odds.
Keep away from all insincere claimants to supernatural
illumination; not that such illumination is impossible, but, my
friends, in this world of ours "lust, or gold, or fame" is the
hidden motive behind ninety per cent of all such claims, and of
the remaining ten per cent, nine per cent are cases which
require the tender care of physicians more than the attention of
metaphysicians.
The first great thing to accomplish is to establish a character,
to obtain, as we say, the प्रतिष्ठिता प्रज्ञा (established
Wisdom). This applies equally to individuals and to organised
bodies of individuals. Do not fret because the world looks with
suspicion at every new attempt, even though it be in the path of
spirituality. The poor world, how often has it been cheated! The
more the संसार that is, the worldly aspect of life, looks
at any growing movement with eyes of suspicion, or, even better
still, presents to it a semi-hostile front, so much the better
is it for the movement. If there is any truth this movement has
to disseminate, any need it is born to supply, soon will
condemnation be changed into praise, and contempt converted into
love. People in these days are apt to take up religion as a
means to some social or political end. Beware of this. Religion
is its own end. That religion which is only a means to worldly
well-being is not religion, whatever else it may be; and it is
sheer blasphemy against God and man to hold that man has no
other end than the free and full enjoyment of all the pleasure
of his senses.
Truth, purity, and unselfishness - wherever these are present,
there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor
thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the
whole universe in opposition.
Above all, beware of compromises. I do not mean that you are to
get into antagonism with anybody, but you have to hold on to
your own principles in weal or woe and never adjust them to
others' "fads" through the greed of getting supporters. Your
Âtman is the support of the universe - whose support do you
stand in need of? Wait with patience and love and strength; if
helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we
be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in
its almost unperceived beginnings.
Whoever could have thought that the life and teachings of a boy
born of poor Brâhmin parents in a wayside Bengal village would,
in a few years, reach such distant lands as our ancestors never
even dreamed of? I refer to Bhagavan Ramâkrishna. Do you know
that Prof. Max Müller has already written an article on Shri
Ramakrishna for the Nineteenth Century, and will be very glad to
write a larger and fuller account of his life and teachings if
sufficient materials are forthcoming? What an extraordinary man
is Prof. Max Müller! I paid a visit to him a few days ago. I
should say, that I went to pay my respects to him, for whosoever
loves Shri Ramakrishna, whatever be his or her sect, or creed,
or nationality, my visit to that person I hold as a pilgrimage.
"मद्भक्तानां च ये भक्तास्ते मे भक्ततमा मताः - They who are
devoted to those who love Me - they are My best devotees." Is
that not true?
The Professor was first induced to inquire about the power
behind, which led to sudden and momentous changes in the life of
the late Keshab Chandra Sen, the great Brâhmo leader; and since
then, he has been an earnest student and admirer of the life and
teachings of Shri Ramakrishna. "Ramakrishna is worshipped by
thousands today, Professor", I said. "To whom else shall worship
be accorded, if not to such", was the answer. The Professor was
kindness itself, and asked Mr. Sturdy and myself to lunch with
him. He showed us several colleges in Oxford and the Bodleian
library. He also accompanied us to the railway station; and all
this he did because, as he said, "It is not every day one meets
a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa."
The visit was really a revelation to me. That nice little house
in its setting of a beautiful garden, the silverheaded sage,
with a face calm and benign, and forehead smooth as a child's in
spite of seventy winters, and every line in that face speaking
of a deep-seated mine of spirituality somewhere behind; that
noble wife, the helpmate of his life through his long and
arduous task of exciting interest, overriding opposition and
contempt, and at last creating a respect for the thoughts of the
sages of ancient India - the trees, the flowers, the calmness,
and the clear sky - all these sent me back in imagination to the
glorious days of Ancient India, the days of our Brahmarshis and
Râjarshis, the days of the great Vânaprasthas, the days of
Arundhatis and Vasishthas.
It was neither the philologist nor the scholar that I saw, but a
soul that is every day realising its oneness with the Brahman, a
heart that is every moment expanding to reach oneness with the
Universal. Where others lose themselves in the desert of dry
details, he has struck the well-spring of life. Indeed his
heartbeats have caught the rhythm of the Upanishads "तमेवैकं
जानथ आत्मानमन्या वाचो विमुञ्चथ - Know the Atman alone, and leave
off all other talk."
Although a world-moving scholar and philosopher, his learning
and philosophy have only led him higher and higher to the
realisation of the Spirit, his परा विद्या (lower knowledge) has
indeed helped him to reach the परा विद्या (higher knowledge).
This is real learning. विद्या ददाति विनयम् - "Knowledge gives
humility." Of what use is knowledge if it does not show us the
way to the Highest?
And what love he bears towards India! I wish I had a hundredth
part of that love for my own motherland! Endued with an
extraordinary, and at the same time intensely active mind, he
has lived and moved in the world of Indian thought for fifty
years or more, and watched the sharp interchange of light and
shade in the interminable forest of Sanskrit literature with
deep interest and heartfelt love, till they have all sunk into
his very soul and coloured his whole being.
Max Müller is a Vedantist of Vedantists. He has, indeed, caught
the real soul of the melody of the Vedanta, in the midst of all
its settings of harmonies and discords - the one light that
lightens the sects and creeds of the world, the Vedanta, the one
principle of which all religions are only applications. And what
was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa? The practical demonstration of this
ancient principle, the embodiment of India that is past, and a
foreshadowing of the India that is to be, the bearer of
spiritual light unto nations. The jeweller alone can understand
the worth of jewels; this is an old proverb. Is it a wonder that
this Western sage does study and appreciate every new star in
the firmament of Indian thought, before even the Indians
themselves realise its magnitude?
"When are you coming to India? Every heart there would welcome
one who has done so much to place the thoughts of their
ancestors in the true light", I said. The face of the aged sage
brightened up - there was almost a tear in his eyes, a gentle
nodding of the head, and slowly the words came out: "I would not
return then; you would have to cremate me there." Further
questions seemed an unwarrantable intrusion into realms wherein
are stored the holy secrets of man's heart. Who knows but that
it was what the poet has said-
तच्चेतसा स्मरति नूनमबोधपूर्वं ।
भावस्थिराणि जननान्तरसौहृदानि ॥
-"He remembers with his mind the friendships of former births,
firmly rooted in his heart."
His life has been a blessing to the world; and may it be many,
many years more, before he changes the present plane of his
existence!