Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda - Vol-8
SECOND LESSON
(These lessons are composed of notes of class talks given by Swami
Vivekananda to an intimate audience in the house of Mrs. Sara C.
Bull, a devoted American disciple, and were preserved by her and
finally printed in 1913 for private circulation - Ed.)
This Yoga is known as the eightfold Yoga, because it is divided
into eight principal parts. These are:
First - Yama. This is most important and has to govern the whole
life; it has five divisions:
1st. Not injuring any being by thought, word, or deed.
2nd. Non-covetousness in thought, word, or deed.
3rd. Perfect chastity in thought, word, or deed.
4th. Perfect truthfulness in thought, word, or deed.
5th. Non-receiving of gifts.
Second - Niyama. The bodily care, bathing daily, dietary, etc.
Third - Âsana, posture. Hips, shoulders, and head must be held
straight, leaving the spine free.
Fourth - Prânâyâma, restraining the breath (in order to get
control of the Prâna or vital force).
Fifth - Pratyâhâra, turning the mind inward and restraining it
from going outward, revolving the matter in the mind in order to
understand it.
Sixth - Dhâranâ, concentration on one subject.
Seventh - Dhyâna, meditation.
Eighth - Samâdhi, illumination, the aim of all our efforts.
Yama and Niyama are for lifelong practice. As for the others, we
do as the leech does, not leave one blade of grass before firmly
grasping another. In other words, we have thoroughly to understand
and practise one step before taking another.
The subject of this lesson is Pranayama, or controlling the Prana.
In Raja-Yoga breathing enters the psychic plane and brings us to
the spiritual. It is the fly-wheel of the whole bodily system. It
acts first upon the lungs, the lungs act on the heart, the heart
acts upon the circulation, this in turn upon the brain, and the
brain upon the mind. The will can produce an outside sensation,
and the outside sensation can arouse the will. Our wills are weak;
we do not realise their power, we are so much bound up in matter.
Most of our action is from outside in. Outside nature throws us
off our balance, and we cannot (as we ought) throw nature off her
balance. This is all wrong; the stronger power is really within.
The great saints and teachers were those who had conquered this
world of thought within themselves and so spake with power. The
story (For the story see Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol.
I.) of the minister confined in a high tower, who was released
through the efforts of his wife who brought him a beetle, honey, a
silken thread, a cord, and a rope, illustrates the way we gain
control of our mind by using first the physical regulation of the
breath as the silken thread. That enables us to lay hold on one
power after another until the rope of concentration delivers us
from the prison of the body and we are free. Reaching freedom, we
can discard the means used to bring us there.
Pranayama has three parts:
1st. Puraka - inhaling.
2nd. Kumbhaka - restraining.
3rd. Rechaka - exhaling.
There are two currents passing through the brain and circulating
down the sides of the spine, crossing at the base and returning to
the brain. One of these currents, called the "sun" (Pingalâ),
starts from the left hemisphere of the brain, crosses at the base
of the brain to the right side of the spine, and re-crosses at the
base of the spine, like one-half of the figure eight.
The other current, the "moon" (Idâ), reverses this action and
completes this figure eight. Of course, the lower part is much
longer than the upper. These currents flow day and night and make
deposits of the great life forces at different points, commonly
known as "plexuses"; but we are rarely conscious of them. By
concentration we can learn to feel them and trace them over all
parts of the body. These "sun" and "moon" currents are intimately
connected with breathing, and by regulating this we get control of
the body.
In the Katha Upanishad the body is described as the chariot, the
mind is the reins, the intellect is the charioteer, the senses are
the horses, and the objects of the senses their road. The self is
the rider, seated in the chariot. Unless the rider has
understanding and can make the charioteer control his horses, he
can never attain the goal; but the senses, like vicious steeds,
will drag him where they please and may even destroy him. These
two currents are the great "check rein" in the hands of the
charioteer, and he must get control of this to control the horses.
We have to get the power to become moral; until we do that, we
cannot control our actions. Yoga alone enables us to carry into
practice the teachings of morality. To become moral is the object
of Yoga. All great teachers were Yogis and controlled every
current. The Yogis arrest these currents at the base of the spine
and force them through the centre of the spinal column. They then
become the current of knowledge, which only exists in the Yogi.
Second Lesson in Breathing: One method is not for all. This
breathing must be done with rhythmic regularity, and the easiest
way is by counting; as that is purely mechanical, we repeat the
sacred word "Om" a certain number of times instead.
The process of Pranayama is as follows: Close the right nostril
with the thumb and then slowly inhale through the left nostril,
repeating the word "Om" four times.
Then firmly close both nostrils by placing the forefinger on the
left one and hold the breath in, mentally repeating "Om" eight
times.
Then, removing the thumb from the right nostril, exhale slowly
through that, repeating "Om" four times.
As you close the exhalation, draw in the abdomen forcibly to expel
all the air from the lungs. Then slowly inhale through the right
nostril, keeping the left one closed, repeating "Om" four times.
Next close the right nostril with the thumb and hold the breath
while repeating "Om" eight times. Then unclose the left nostril
and slowly exhale, repeating "Om" four times, drawing in the
abdomen as before. Repeat this whole operation twice at each
sitting, that is, making four Pranayamas, two for each nostril.
Before taking your seat it is well to begin with prayer.
This needs to be practiced a week; then gradually increase the
duration of breathing, keeping the same ratio, that is, if you
repeat "Om" six times at inhalation, then do the same at
exhalation and twelve times during Kumbhaka. These exercises will
make us more spiritual, more pure, more holy. Do not be led aside
into any byways or seek after power. Love is the only power that
stays by us and increases. He who seeks to come to God through
Raja-Yoga must be strong mentally, physically, morally, and
spiritually. Take every step in that light.
Of hundreds of thousands only one soul will say, "I will go
beyond, and I will penetrate to God." Few can face the truth; but
to accomplish anything, we must be willing to die for Truth.
THIRD LESSON
(These lessons are composed of notes of class talks given by Swami
Vivekananda to an intimate audience in the house of Mrs. Sara C.
Bull, a devoted American disciple, and were preserved by her and
finally printed in 1913 for private circulation - Ed.)
Kundalini: Realise the soul not as matter, but as it is. We are
thinking of the soul as body, but we must separate it from sense
and thought. Then alone can we know we are immortal. Change
implies the duality of cause and effect, and all that changes must
be mortal. This proves that the body cannot be immortal, nor can
the mind, because both are constantly changing. Only the
unchangeable can be immortal, because there is nothing to act upon
it.
We do not become it, we are it; but we have to clear away the veil
of ignorance that hides the truth from us. The body is objectified
thought. The "sun" and "moon" currents bring energy to all parts
of the body. The surplus energy is stored at certain points
(plexuses) along the spinal column commonly known as nerve
centres.
These currents are not to be found in dead bodies and can only be
traced in a healthy organism.
The Yogi has an advantage; for he is able not only to feel them,
but actually to see them. They are luminous in his life, and so
are the great nerve centres.
There is conscious as well as unconscious action. The Yogis
possess a third kind, the super conscious, which in all countries
and in all ages has been the source of all religious knowledge.
The super conscious state makes no mistakes, but whereas the
action of the instinct would be purely mechanical, the former is
beyond consciousness.
It has been called inspiration, but the Yogi says, "This faculty
is in every human being, and eventually all will enjoy it."
We must give a new direction to the "sun" and "moon" currents and
open for them a new passage through the centre of the spinal cord.
When we succeed in bringing the currents through this passage
called "Sushumnâ", up to the brain, we are for the time being
separated entirely from the body.
The nerve centre at the base of the spine near the sacrum is most
important. It is the seat of the generative substance of the
sexual energy and is symbolised by the Yogi as a triangle
containing a tiny serpent coiled up in it. This sleeping serpent
is called Kundalini, and to raise this Kundalini is the whole
object of Raja-Yoga.
The great sexual force, raised from animal action and sent upward
to the great dynamo of the human system, the brain, and there
stored up, becomes Ojas or spiritual force. All good thought, all
prayer, resolves a part of that animal energy into Ojas and helps
to give us spiritual power. This Ojas is the real man and in human
beings alone is it possible for this storage of Ojas to be
accomplished. One in whom the whole animal sex force has been
transformed into Ojas is a god. He speaks with power, and his
words regenerate the world.
The Yogi pictures this serpent as being slowly lifted from stage
to stage until the highest, the pineal gland, is reached. No man
or woman can be really spiritual until the sexual energy, the
highest power possessed by man, has been converted into Ojas.
No force can be created; it can only be directed. Therefore we
must learn to control the grand powers that are already in our
hands and by will power make them spiritual instead of merely
animal. Thus it is clearly seen that chastity is the corner-stone
of all morality and of all religion. In Raja-Yoga especially,
absolute chastity in thought, word, and deed is a sine qua non.
The same laws apply to the married and the single. If one wastes
the most potent forces of one's being, one cannot become
spiritual.
All history teaches us that the great seers of all ages were
either monks and ascetics or those who had given up married life;
only the pure in life can see God.
Just before making the Prânâyâma, endeavour to visualise the
triangle. Close your eyes and picture it vividly in your
imagination. See it surrounded by flames and with the serpent
coiled in the middle. When you can clearly see the Kundalini,
place it in imagination at the base of the spine, and when
restraining the breath in Kumbhaka, throw it forcibly down on the
head of the serpent to awaken it. The more powerful the
imagination, the more quickly will the real result be attained and
the Kundalini be awakened. Until it does, imagine it does: try to
feel the currents and try to force them through the Sushumna. This
hastens their action.
FOURTH LESSON
(These lessons are composed of notes of class talks given by Swami
Vivekananda to an intimate audience in the house of Mrs. Sara C.
Bull, a devoted American disciple, and were preserved by her and
finally printed in 1913 for private circulation - Ed.)
Before we can control the mind we must study it. We have to seize
this unstable mind and drag it from its wanderings and fix it on
one idea. Over and over again this must be done. By power of will
we must get hold of the mind and make it stop and reflect upon the
glory of God.
The easiest way to get hold of the mind is to sit quiet and let it
drift where it will for a while. Hold fast to the idea, "I am the
witness watching my mind drifting. The mind is not I." Then see it
think as if it were a thing entirely apart from yourself. Identify
yourself with God, never with matter or with the mind.
Picture the mind as a calm lake stretched before you and the
thoughts that come and go as bubbles rising and breaking on its
surface. Make no effort to control the thoughts, but watch them
and follow them in imagination as they float away. This will
gradually lessen the circles. For the mind ranges over wide
circles of thought and those circles widen out into
ever-increasing circles, as in a pond when we throw a stone into
it. We want to reverse the process and starting with a huge circle
make it narrower until at last we can fix the mind on one point
and make it stay there. Hold to the idea, "I am not the mind, I
see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act", and each day
the identification of yourself with thought and feeling will grow
less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the
mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself.
When this is done, the mind is your servant to control as you
will. The first stage of being a Yogi is to go beyond the senses.
When the mind is conquered, he has reached the highest stage.
Live alone as much as possible. The seat should be of comfortable
height; put first a grass mat, then a skin (fur), next a silken
cover. It is better that the seat has no back and it must stand
firm.
Thoughts being pictures, we should not create them. We have to
exclude all thought from the mind and make it a blank; as fast as
a thought comes we have to banish it. To be able to accomplish
this, we must transcend matter and go beyond our body. The whole
life of man is really an effort to do this.
Each soul has its own meaning: In our nature these two things are
connected.
The highest ideal we have is God. Meditate on Him. We cannot know
the Knower, but we are He.
Seeing evil, we are creating it. What we are, we see outside, for
the world is our mirror. This little body is a little mirror we
have created, but the whole universe is our body. We must think
this all the time; then we shall know that we cannot die or hurt
another, because he is our own. We are birthless and deathless and
we ought only to love.
"This whole universe is my body; all health, all happiness is
mine, because all is in the universe." Say, "I am the universe."
We finally learn that all action is from us to the mirror.
Although we appear as little waves, the whole sea is at our back,
and we are one with it. No wave can exist of itself.
Imagination properly employed is our greatest friend; it goes
beyond reason and is the only light that takes us everywhere.
Inspiration is from within and we have to inspire ourselves by our
own higher faculties.
FIFTH LESSON
(These lessons are composed of notes of class talks given by Swami
Vivekananda to an intimate audience in the house of Mrs. Sara C.
Bull, a devoted American disciple, and were preserved by her and
finally printed in 1913 for private circulation - Ed.)
Pratyâhâra and Dhâranâ: Krishna says, "All who seek me by whatever
means will reach me", "All must reach me." Pratyahara is a
gathering toward, an attempt to get hold of the mind and focus it
on the desired object. The first step is to let the mind drift;
watch it; see what it thinks; be only the witness. Mind is not
soul or spirit. It is only matter in a finer form, and we own it
and can learn to manipulate it through the nerve energies.
The body is the objective view of what we call mind (subjective).
We, the Self, are beyond both body and mind; we are "Atman", the
eternal, unchangeable witness. The body is crystallised thought.
When the breath is flowing through the left nostril, it is the
time for rest; when through the right, for work; and when through
both, the time to meditate. When we are calm and breathing equally
through both nostrils, we are in the right condition for quiet
meditation. It is no use trying to concentrate at first. Control
of thought will come of itself.
After sufficient practice of closing the nostrils with the thumb
and forefinger, we shall be able to do it by the power of will,
through thought alone.
Prânâyâma is now to be slightly changed. If the student has the
name of his "Ishta" (Chosen Ideal), he should use that instead of
"Om" during inhalation and exhalation, and use the word "Hum"
(pronounced Hoom) during Kumbhaka.
Throw the restrained breath forcibly down on the head of the
Kundalini at each repetition of the word Hum and imagine that this
awakens her. Identify yourself only with God. After a while
thoughts will announce their coming, and we shall learn the way
they begin and be aware of what we are going to think, just as on
this plane we can look out and see a person coming. This stage is
reached when we have learnt to separate ourselves from our minds
and see ourselves as one and thought as something apart. Do not
let the thoughts grasp you; stand aside, and they will die away.
Follow these holy thoughts; go with them; and when they melt away,
you will find the feet of the Omnipotent God. This is the super
conscious state; when the idea melts, follow it and melt with it.
Haloes are symbols of inner light and can be seen by the Yogi.
Sometimes we may see a face as if surrounded by flames and in them
read the character and judge without erring. We may have our Ishta
come to us as a vision, and this symbol will be the one upon which
we can rest easily and fully concentrate our minds.
We can imagine through all the senses, but we do so mostly through
the eyes. Even imagination is half material. In other words, we
cannot think without a phantasm. But since animals appear to
think, yet have no words, it is probable that there is no
inseparable connection between thought and images.
Try to keep up the imagination in Yoga, being careful to keep it
pure and holy. We all have our peculiarities in the way of
imaginative power; follow the way most natural to you; it will be
the easiest.
We are the results of all reincarnations through Karma: "One lamp
lighted from another", says the Buddhist - different lamps, but
the same light.
Be cheerful, be brave, bathe daily, have patience, purity, and
perseverance, then you will become a Yogi in truth. Never try to
hurry, and if the higher powers come, remember that they are but
side-paths. Do not let them tempt you from the main road; put them
aside and hold fast to your only true aim-God. Seek only the
Eternal, finding which we are at rest for ever; having the all,
nothing is left to strive for, and we are forever in free and
perfect existence - Existence absolute, Knowledge absolute, Bliss
absolute.
SIXTH LESSON
(These lessons are composed of notes of class talks given by Swami
Vivekananda to an intimate audience in the house of Mrs. Sara C.
Bull, a devoted American disciple, and were preserved by her and
finally printed in 1913 for private circulation - Ed.)
Sushumnâ: It is very useful to meditate on the Sushumna. You may
have a vision of it come to you, and this is the best way. Then
meditate for a long time on that. It is a very fine, very
brilliant thread, this living passage through the spinal cord,
this way of salvation through which we have to make the Kundalini
rise.
In the language of the Yogi, the Sushumna has its ends in two
lotuses, the lower lotus surrounding the triangle of the Kundalini
and the top one in the brain surrounding the pineal gland; between
these two are four other lotuses, stages on the way:
6th. Pineal Gland.
5th. Between the Eyes.
4th. Bottom of the Throat.
3rd. Level with the Heart.
2nd. Opposite the Navel.
1st. Base of Spine.
We must awaken the Kundalini, then slowly raise it from one lotus
to another till the brain is reached. Each stage corresponds to a
new layer of the mind.
WOMEN OF INDIA
(Delivered at the Shakespeare Club House, in Pasadena, California,
on January 18, 1900)
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: "Some persons desire to ask questions about
Hindu Philosophy before the lecture and to question in general
about India after the lecture; but the chief difficulty is I do
not know what I am to lecture on. I would be very glad to lecture
on any subject, either on Hindu Philosophy or on anything
concerning the race, its history, or its literature. If you,
ladies and gentlemen, will suggest anything, I would be very
glad."
QUESTIONER: "I would like to ask, Swami, what special principle in
Hindu Philosophy you would have us Americans, who are a very
practical people, adopt, and what that would do for us beyond what
Christianity can do."
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: "That is very difficult for me to decide; it
rests upon you. If you find anything which you think you ought to
adopt, and which will be helpful, you should take that. You see I
am not a missionary, and I am not going about converting people to
my idea. My principle is that all such ideas are good and great,
so that some of your ideas may suit some people in India, and some
of our ideas may suit some people here; so ideas must be cast
abroad, all over the world."
QUESTIONER: "We would like to know the result of your philosophy;
has your philosophy and religion lifted your women above our
women?"
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: "You see, that is a very invidious question: I
like our women and your women too."
QUESTIONER: "Well, will you tell us about your women, their
customs and education, and the position they hold in the family?"
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: "Oh, yes, those things I would be very glad to
tell you. So you want to know about Indian women tonight, and not
philosophy and other things?"
THE LECTURE
I must begin by saying that you may have to bear with me a good
deal, because I belong to an Order of people who never marry; so
my knowledge of women in all their relations, as mother, as wife,
as daughter and sister, must necessarily not be so complete as it
may be with other men. And then, India, I must remember, is a vast
continent, not merely a country, and is inhabited by many
different races. The nations of Europe are nearer to each other,
more similar to each other, than the races in India. You may get
just a rough idea of it if I tell you that there are eight
different languages in all India. Different languages - not
dialects - each having a literature of its own. The Hindi
language, alone, is spoken by 100,000,000 people; the Bengali by
about 60,000,000, and so on. Then, again, the four northern Indian
languages differ more from the southern Indian languages than any
two European languages from each other. They are entirely
different, as much different as your language differs from the
Japanese, so that you will be astonished to know, when I go to
southern India, unless I meet some people who can talk Sanskrit, I
have to speak to them in English. Furthermore, these various races
differ from each other in manners, customs, food, dress, and in
their methods of thought.
Then, again, there is caste. Each caste has become, as it were, a
separate racial element. If a man lives long enough in India, he
will be able to tell from the features what caste a man belongs
to. Then, between castes, the manners and customs are different.
And all these castes are exclusive; that is to say, they would
meet socially, but they would not eat or drink together, nor
intermarry. In those things they remain separate. They would meet
and be friends to each other, but there it would end.
Although I have more opportunity than many other men to know women
in general, from my position and my occupation as a preacher,
continuously travelling from one place to another and coming in
contact with all grades of society - (and women, even in northern
India, where they do not appear before men, in many places would
break this law for religion and would come to hear us preach and
talk to us) - still it would be hazardous on my part to assert
that I know everything about the women of India.
So I will try to place before you the ideal. In each nation, man
or woman represents an ideal consciously or unconsciously being
worked out. The individual is the external expression of an ideal
to be embodied. The collection of such individuals is the nation,
which also represents a great ideal; towards that it is moving.
And, therefore, it is rightly assumed that to understand a nation
you must first understand its ideal, for each nation refuses to be
judged by any other standard than its own.
All growth, progress, well-being, or degradation is but relative.
It refers to a certain standard, and each man to be understood has
to be referred to that standard of his perfection. You see this
more markedly in nations: what one nation thinks good might not be
so regarded by another nation. Cousin-marriage is quite
permissible in this country. Now, in India, it is illegal; not
only so, it would be classed with the most horrible incest.
Widow-marriage is perfectly legitimate in this country. Among the
higher castes in India it would be the greatest degradation for a
woman to marry twice. So, you see, we work through such different
ideas that to judge one people by the other's standard would be
neither just nor practicable. Therefore we must know what the
ideal is that a nation has raised before itself. When speaking of
different nations, we start with a general idea that there is one
code of ethics and the same kind of ideals for all races;
practically, however, when we come to judge of others, we think
what is good for us must be good for everybody; what we do is the
right thing, what we do not do, of course in others would be
outrageous. I do not mean to say this as a criticism, but just to
bring the truth home. When I hear Western women denounce the
confining of the feet of Chinese ladies, they never seem to think
of the corsets which are doing far more injury to the race. This
is just one example; for you must know that cramping the feet does
not do one-millionth part of the injury to the human form that the
corset has done and is doing - when every organ is displaced and
the spine is curved like a serpent. When measurements are taken,
you can note the curvatures. I do not mean that as a criticism but
just to point out to you the situation, that as you stand aghast
at women of other races, thinking that you are supreme, the very
reason that they do not adopt your manners and customs shows that
they also stand aghast at you.
Therefore there is some misunderstanding on both sides. There is a
common platform, a common ground of understanding, a common
humanity, which must be the basis of our work. We ought to find
out that complete and perfect human nature which is working only
in parts, here and there. It has not been given to one man to have
everything in perfection. You have a part to play; I, in my humble
way, another; here is one who plays a little part; there, another.
The perfection is the combination of all these parts. Just as with
individuals, so with races. Each race has a part to play; each
race has one side of human nature to develop. And we have to take
all these together; and, possibly in the distant future, some race
will arise in which all these marvellous individual race
perfections, attained by the different races, will come together
and form a new race, the like of which the world has not yet
dreamed. Beyond saying that, I have no criticism to offer about
anybody. I have travelled not a little in my life; I have kept my
eyes open; and the more I go about the more my mouth is closed. I
have no criticism to offer.
Now, the ideal woman in India is the mother, the mother first, and
the mother last. The word woman calls up to the mind of the Hindu,
motherhood; and God is called Mother. As children, every day, when
we are boys, we have to go early in the morning with a little cup
of water and place it before the mother, and mother dips her toe
into it and we drink it.
In the West, the woman is wife. The idea of womanhood is
concentrated there - as the wife. To the ordinary man in India,
the whole force of womanhood is concentrated in motherhood. In the
Western home, the wife rules. In an Indian home, the mother rules.
If a mother comes into a Western home, she has to be subordinate
to the wife; to the wife belongs the home. A mother always lives
in our homes: the wife must be subordinate to her. See all the
difference of ideas.
Now, I only suggest comparisons; I would state facts so that we
may compare the two sides. Make this comparison. If you ask, "What
is an Indian woman as wife?", the Indian asks, "Where is the
American woman as mother? What is she, the all-glorious, who gave
me this body? What is she who kept me in her body for nine months?
Where is she who would give me twenty times her life, if I had
need? Where is she whose love never dies, however wicked, however
vile I am? Where is she, in comparison with her, who goes to the
divorce court the moment I treat her a little badly? O American
woman! Where is she?" I will not find her in your country. I have
not found the son who thinks mother is first. When we die, even
then, we do not want our wives and our children to take her place.
Our mother! - we want to die with our head on her lap once more,
if we die before her. Where is she? Is woman a name to be coupled
with the physical body only? Ay! The Hindu mind fears all those
ideals which say that the flesh must cling unto the flesh. No, no!
Woman! thou shalt not be coupled with anything connected with the
flesh. The name has been called holy once and for ever, for what
name is there which no lust can ever approach, no carnality ever
come near, than the one word mother? That is the ideal in India.
I belong to an Order very much like what you have in the Mendicant
Friars of the Catholic Church; that is to say, we have to go about
without very much in the way of dress and beg from door to door,
live thereby, preach to people when they want it, sleep where we
can get a place - that way we have to follow. And the rule is that
the members of this Order have to call every woman "mother"; to
every woman and little girl we have to say "mother"; that is the
custom. Coming to the West, that old habit remained and I would
say to ladies, "Yes, mother", and they are horrified. I could not
understand why they should be horrified. Later on, I discovered
the reason: because that would mean that they are old. The ideal
of womanhood in India is motherhood - that marvellous, unselfish,
all-suffering, ever-forgiving mother. The wife walks behind-the
shadow. She must imitate the life of the mother; that is her duty.
But the mother is the ideal of love; she rules the family, she
possesses the family. It is the father in India who thrashes the
child and spanks when there is something done by the child, and
always the mother puts herself between the father and the child.
You see it is just the opposite here. It has become the mother's
business to spank the children in this country, and poor father
comes in between. You see, ideals are different. I do not mean
this as any criticism. It is all good - this is what you do; but
our way is what we have been taught for ages. You never hear of a
mother cursing the child; she is forgiving, always forgiving.
Instead of "Our Father in Heaven", we say "Mother" all the time;
that idea and that word are ever associated in the Hindu mind with
Infinite Love, the mother's love being the nearest approach to
God's love in this mortal world of ours. "Mother, O Mother, be
merciful; I am wicked! Many children have been wicked, but there
never was a wicked mother" - so says the great saint Râmprasâd.
There she is - the Hindu mother. The son's wife comes in as her
daughter; just as the mother's own daughter married and went out,
so her son married and brought in another daughter, and she has to
fall in line under the government of the queen of queens, of his
mother. Even I, who never married, belonging to an Order that
never marries, would be disgusted if my wife, supposing I had
married, dared to displease my mother. I would be disgusted. Why?
Do I not worship my mother? Why should not her daughter-in-law?
Whom I worship, why not she? Who is she, then, that would try to
ride over my head and govern my mother? She has to wait till her
womanhood is fulfilled; and the one thing that fulfils womanhood,
that is womanliness in woman, is motherhood. Wait till she becomes
a mother; then she will have the same right. That, according to
the Hindu mind, is the great mission of woman - to become a
mother. But oh, how different! Oh, how different! My father and
mother fasted and prayed, for years and years, so that I would be
born. They pray for every child before it is born. Says our great
law-giver, Manu, giving the definition of an Aryan, "He is the
Aryan, who is born through prayer". Every child not born through
prayer is illegitimate, according to the great law-giver. The
child must be prayed for. Those children that come with curses,
that slip into the world, just in a moment of inadvertence,
because that could not be prevented - what can we expect of such
progeny? Mothers of America, think of that! Think in the heart of
your hearts, are you ready to be women? Not any question of race
or country, or that false sentiment of national pride. Who dares
to be proud in this mortal life of ours, in this world of woes and
miseries? What are we before this infinite force of God? But I ask
you the question tonight: Do you all pray for the children to
come? Are you thankful to be mothers, or not? Do you think that
you are sanctified by motherhood, or not? Ask that of your minds.
If you do not, your marriage is a lie, your womanhood is false,
your education is superstition, and your children, if they come
without prayer, will prove a curse to humanity.
See the different ideals now coming before us. From motherhood
comes tremendous responsibility. There is the basis, start from
that. Well, why is mother to be worshipped so much? Because our
books teach that it is the pre-natal influence that gives the
impetus to the child for good or evil. Go to a hundred thousand
colleges, read a million books, associate with all the learned men
of the world - better off you are when born with the right stamp.
You are born for good or evil. The child is a born god or a born
demon; that is what the books say. Education and all these things
come afterwards - are a mere bagatelle. You are what you are born.
Born unhealthful, how many drug stores, swallowed wholesale, will
keep you well all through your life? How many people of good,
healthy lives were born of weak parents, were born of sickly,
blood-poisoned parents? How many? None - none. We come with a
tremendous impetus for good or evil: born demons or born gods.
Education or other things are a bagatelle.
Thus say our books: direct the pre-natal influence. Why should
mother be worshipped? Because she made herself pure. She underwent
harsh penances sometimes to keep herself as pure as purity can be.
For, mind you, no woman in India thinks of giving up her body to
any man; it is her own. The English, as a reform, have introduced
at present what they call "Restitution of conjugal rights", but no
Indian would take advantage of it. When a man comes in physical
contact with his wife, the circumstances she controls through what
prayers and through what vows! For that which brings forth the
child is the holiest symbol of God himself. It is the greatest
prayer between man and wife, the prayer that is going to bring
into the world another soul fraught with a tremendous power for
good or for evil. Is it a joke? Is it a simple nervous
satisfaction? Is it a brute enjoyment of the body? Says the Hindu:
no, a thousand times, no!
But then, following that, there comes in another idea. The idea we
started with was that the ideal is the love for the mother -
herself all-suffering, all-forbearing. The worship that is
accorded to the mother has its fountain-head there. She was a
saint to bring me into the world; she kept her body pure, her mind
pure, her food pure, her clothes pure, her imagination pure, for
years, because I would be born. Because she did that, she deserves
worship. And what follows? Linked with motherhood is wifehood.
You Western people are individualistic. I want to do this thing
because I like it; I will elbow everyone. Why? Because I like to.
I want my own satisfaction, so I marry this woman. Why? Because I
like her. This woman marries me. Why? Because she likes me. There
it ends. She and I are the only two persons in the whole, infinite
world; and I marry her and she marries me - nobody else is
injured, nobody else responsible. Your Johns and your Janes may go
into the forest and there they may live their lives; but when they
have to live in society, their marriage means a tremendous amount
of good or evil to us. Their children may be veritable
demons-burning, murdering, robbing, stealing, drinking, hideous,
vile.
So what is the basis of the Indian's social order? It is the caste
law. I am born for the caste, I live for the caste. I do not mean
myself, because, having joined an Order, we are outside. I mean
those that live in civil society. Born in the caste, the whole
life must be lived according to caste regulation. In other words,
in the present-day language of your country, the Western man is
born individualistic, while the Hindu is socialistic - entirely
socialistic. Now, then, the books say: if I allow you freedom to
go about and marry any woman you like, and the woman to marry any
man she likes, what happens? You fall in love; the father of the
woman was, perchance, a lunatic or a consumptive. The girl falls
in love with the face of a man whose father was a roaring
drunkard. What says the law then? The law lays down that all these
marriages would be illegal. The children of drunkards,
consumptives, lunatics, etc., shall not be married. The deformed,
humpbacked, crazy, idiotic - no marriage for them, absolutely
none, says the law.
But the Mohammedan comes from Arabia, and he has his own Arabian
law; so the Arabian desert law has been forced upon us. The
Englishman comes with his law; he forces it upon us, so far as he
can. We are conquered. He says, "Tomorrow I will marry your
sister". What can we do? Our law says, those that are born of the
same family, though a hundred degrees distant, must not marry,
that is illegitimate, it would deteriorate or make the race
sterile. That must not be, and there it stops. So I have no voice
in my marriage, nor my sister. It is the caste that determines all
that. We are married sometimes when children. Why? Because the
caste says: if they have to be married anyway without their
consent, it is better that they are married very early, before
they have developed this love: if they are allowed to grow up
apart, the boy may like some other girl, and the girl some other
boy, and then something evil will happen; and so, says the caste,
stop it there. I do not care whether my sister is deformed, or
good-looking, or bad-looking: she is my sister, and that is
enough; he is my brother, and that is all I need to know. So they
will love each other. You may say, "Oh! they lose a great deal of
enjoyment - those exquisite emotions of a man falling in love with
a woman and a woman falling in love with a man. This is a sort of
tame thing, loving each other like brothers and sisters, as though
they have to." So be it; but the Hindu says, "We are socialistic.
For the sake of one man's or woman's exquisite pleasure we do not
want to load misery on hundreds of others."
There they are - married. The wife comes home with her husband;
that is called the second marriage. Marriage at an early age is
considered the first marriage, and they grow up separately with
women and with their parents. When they are grown, there is a
second ceremony performed, called a second marriage. And then they
live together, but under the same roof with his mother and father.
When she becomes a mother, she takes her place in turn as queen of
the family group.
Now comes another peculiar Indian institution. I have just told
you that in the first two or three castes the widows are not
allowed to marry. They cannot, even if they would. Of course, it
is a hardship on many. There is no denying that not all the widows
like it very much, because non-marrying entails upon them the life
of a student. That is to say, a student must not eat meat or fish,
nor drink wine, nor dress except in white clothes, and so on;
there are many regulations. We are a nation of monks - always
making penance, and we like it. Now, you see, a woman never drinks
wine or eats meat. It was a hardship on us when we were students,
but not on the girls. Our women would feel degraded at the idea of
eating meat. Men eat meat sometimes in some castes; women never.
Still, not being allowed to marry must be a hardship to many; I am
sure of that.
But we must go back to the idea; they are intensely socialistic.
In the higher castes of every country you will find the statistics
show that the number of women is always much larger than the
number of men. Why? Because in the higher castes, for generation
after generation, the women lead an easy life. They "neither toil
nor spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
them". And the poor boys, they die like flies. The girl has a
cat's nine lives, they say in India. You will read in the
statistics that they outnumber the boys in a very short time,
except now when they are taking to work quite as hard as the boys.
The number of girls in the higher castes is much larger than in
the lower. Conditions are quite opposite in the lower castes.
There they all work hard; women a little harder, sometimes,
because they have to do the domestic work. But, mind you, I never
would have thought of that, but one of your American travellers,
Mark Twain, writes this about India: "In spite of all that Western
critics have said of Hindu customs, I never saw a woman harnessed
to a plough with a cow or to a cart with a dog, as is done in some
European countries. I saw no woman or girl at work in the fields
in India. On both sides and ahead (of the railway train)
brown-bodied naked men and boys are ploughing in the fields. But
not a woman. In these two hours I have not seen a woman or a girl
working in the fields. In India, even the lowest caste never does
any hard work. They generally have an easy lot compared to the
same class in other nations; and as to ploughing, they never do
it. "
Now, there you are. Among the lower classes the number of men is
larger than the number of women; and what would you naturally
expect? A woman gets more chances of marriage, the number of men
being larger.
Relative to such questions as to widows not marrying: among the
first two castes, the number of women is disproportionately large,
and here is a dilemma. Either you have a non-marriageable widow
problem and misery, or the non-husband-getting young lady problem.
To face the widow problem, or the old maid problem? There you are;
either of the two. Now, go back again to the idea that the Indian
mind is socialistic. It says, "Now look here! we take the widow
problem as the lesser one." Why? "Because they have had their
chance; they have been married. If they have lost their chance, at
any rate they have had one. Sit down, be quiet, and consider these
poor girls-they have not had one chance of marriage." Lord bless
you! I remember once in Oxford Street, it was after ten o'clock,
and all those ladies coming there, hundreds and thousands of them
shopping; and some man, an American, looks around, and he says,
"My Lord! how many of them will ever get husbands, I wonder!" So
the Indian mind said to the widows, "Well, you have had your
chance, and now we are very, very sorry that such mishaps have
come to you, but we cannot help it; others are waiting."
Then religion comes into the question; the Hindu religion comes in
as a comfort. For, mind you, our religion teaches that marriage is
something bad, it is only for the weak. The very spiritual man or
woman would not marry at all. So the religious woman says, "Well,
the Lord has given me a better chance. What is the use of
marrying? Thank God, worship God, what is the use of my loving
man?" Of course, all of them cannot put their mind on God. Some
find it simply impossible. They have to suffer; but the other poor
people, they should not suffer for them. Now I leave this to your
judgment; but that is their idea in India.
Next we come to woman as daughter. The great difficulty in the
Indian household is the daughter. The daughter and caste combined
ruin the poor Hindu, because, you see, she must marry in the same
caste, and even inside the caste exactly in the same order; and so
the poor man sometimes has to make himself a beggar to get his
daughter married. The father of the boy demands a very high price
for his son, and this poor man sometimes has to sell everything
just to get a husband for his daughter. The great difficulty of
the Hindu's life is the daughter. And, curiously enough, the word
daughter in Sanskrit is "duhitâ". The real derivation is that, in
ancient times, the daughter of the family was accustomed to milk
the cows, and so the word "duhita" comes from "duh", to milk; and
the word "daughter" really means a milkmaid. Later on, they found
a new meaning to that word "duhita", the milkmaid - she who milks
away all the milk of the family. That is the second meaning.
These are the different relations held by our Indian women. As I
have told you, the mother is the greatest in position, the wife is
next, and the daughter comes after them. It is a most intricate
and complicated series of gradation. No foreigner can understand
it, even if he lives there for years. For instance, we have three
forms of the personal pronoun; they are a sort of verbs in our
language. One is very respectful, one is middling, and the lowest
is just like thou and thee. To children and servants the last is
addressed. The middling one is used with equals. You see, these
are to be applied in all the intricate relations of life. For
example, to my elder sister I always throughout my life use the
pronoun âpani, but she never does in speaking to me; she says tumi
to me. She should not, even by mistake, say apani to me, because
that would mean a curse. Love, the love toward those that are
superior, should always be expressed in that form of language.
That is the custom. Similarly I would never dare address my elder
sister or elder brother, much less my mother or father, as tu or
tum or tumi. As to calling our mother and father by name, why, we
would never do that. Before I knew the customs of this country, I
received such a shock when the son, in a very refined family, got
up and called the mother by name! However, I got used to that.
That is the custom of the country. But with us, we never pronounce
the name of our parents when they are present. It is always in the
third person plural, even before them.
Thus we see the most complicated mesh-work in the social life of
our men and our women and in our degree of relationship. We do not
speak to our wives before our elders; it is only when we are alone
or when inferiors are present. If I were married, I would speak to
my wife before my younger sister, my nephews or nieces; but not
before my elder sister or parents. I cannot talk to my sisters
about their husbands at all. The idea is, we are a monastic race.
The whole social organisation has that one idea before it.
Marriage is thought of as something impure, something lower.
Therefore the subject of love would never be talked of. I cannot
read a novel before my sister, or my brothers, or my mother, or
even before others. I close the book.
Then again, eating and drinking is all in the same category. We do
not eat before superiors. Our women never eat before men, except
they be the children or inferiors. The wife would die rather than,
as she says, "munch" before her husband. Sometimes, for instance,
brothers and sisters may eat together; and if I and my sister are
eating, and the husband comes to the door, my sister stops, and
the poor husband flies out.
These are the customs peculiar to the country. A few of these I
note in different countries also. As I never married myself, I am
not perfect in all my knowledge about the wife. Mother, sisters -
I know what they are; and other people's wives I saw; from that I
gather what I have told you.
As to education and culture, it all depends upon the man. That is
to say, where the men are highly cultured, there the women are;
where the men are not, women are not. Now, from the oldest times,
you know, the primary education, according to the old Hindu
customs, belongs to the village system. All the land from time
immemorial was nationalised, as you say - belonged to the
Government. There never is any private right in land. The revenue
in India comes from the land, because every man holds so much land
from the Government. This land is held in common by a community,
it may be five, ten, twenty, or a hundred families. They govern
the whole of the land, pay a certain amount of revenue to the
Government, maintain a physician, a village schoolmaster, and so
on.
Those of you who have read Herbert Spencer remember what he calls
the "monastery system" of education that was tried in Europe and
which in some parts proved a success; that is, there is one
schoolmaster, whom the village keeps. These primary schools are
very rudimentary, because our methods are so simple. Each boy
brings a little mat; and his paper, to begin with, is palm leaves.
Palm leaves first, paper is too costly. Each boy spreads his
little mat and sits upon it, brings out his inkstand and his books
and begins to write. A little arithmetic, some Sanskrit grammar, a
little of language and accounts - these are taught in the primary
school.
A little book on ethics, taught by an old man, we learnt by heart,
and I remember one of the lessons:
"For the good of a village, a man ought to give up his family;
For the good of a country, he ought to give up his village;
For the good of humanity, he may give up his country;
For the good of the world, everything."
Such verses are there in the books. We get them by heart, and they
are explained by teacher and pupil. These things we learn, both
boys and girls together. Later on, the education differs. The old
Sanskrit universities are mainly composed of boys. The girls very
rarely go up to those universities; but there are a few
exceptions.
In these modern days there is a greater impetus towards higher
education on the European lines, and the trend of opinion is
strong towards women getting this higher education. Of course,
there are some people in India who do not want it, but those who
do want it carried the day. It is a strange fact that Oxford and
Cambridge are closed to women today, so are Harvard and Yale; but
Calcutta University opened its doors to women more than twenty
years ago. I remember that the year I graduated, several girls
came out and graduated - the same standard, the same course, the
same in everything as the boys; and they did very well indeed. And
our religion does not prevent a woman being educated at all. In
this way the girl should be educated; even thus she should be
trained; and in the old books we find that the universities were
equally resorted to by both girls and boys, but later the
education of the whole nation was neglected. What can you expect
under foreign rule? The foreign conqueror is not there to do good
to us; he wants his money. I studied hard for twelve years and
became a graduate of Calcutta University; now I can scarcely make
$5.00 a month in my country. Would you believe it? It is actually
a fact. So these educational institutions of foreigners are simply
to get a lot of useful, practical slaves for a little money - to
turn out a host of clerks, postmasters, telegraph operators, and
so on. There it is.
As a result, education for both boys and girls is neglected,
entirely neglected. There are a great many things that should be
done in that land; but you must always remember, if you will
kindly excuse me and permit me to use one of your own proverbs,
"What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." Your
foreign born ladies are always crying over the hardships of the
Hindu woman, and never care for the hardships of the Hindu man.
They are all weeping salt tears. But who are the little girls
married to? Someone, when told that they are all married to old
men, asked, "And what do the young men do? What! are all the girls
married to old men, only to old men?" We are born old - perhaps
all the men there.
The ideal of the Indian race is freedom of the soul. This world is
nothing. It is a vision, a dream. This life is one of many
millions like it. The whole of this nature is Maya, is phantasm, a
pest house of phantasms. That is the philosophy. Babies smile at
life and think it so beautiful and good, but in a few years they
will have to revert to where they began. They began life crying,
and they will leave it crying. Nations in the vigour of their
youth think that they can do anything and everything: "We are the
gods of the earth. We are the chosen people." They think that God
Almighty has given them a charter to rule over all the world, to
advance His plans, to do anything they like, to turn the world
upside down. They have a charter to rob, murder, kill; God has
given them this, and they do that because they are only babes. So
empire after empire has arisen - glorious, resplendent - now
vanished away - gone, nobody knows where; it may have been
stupendous in its ruin.
As a drop of water upon a lotus leaf tumbles about and falls in a
moment, even so is this mortal life. Everywhere we turn are ruins.
Where the forest stands today was once the mighty empire with huge
cities. That is the dominant idea, the tone, the colour of the
Indian mind. We know, you Western people have the youthful blood
coursing through your veins. We know that nations, like men, have
their day. Where is Greece? Where is Rome? Where that mighty
Spaniard of the other day? Who knows through it all what becomes
of India? Thus they are born, and thus they die; they rise and
fall. The Hindu as a child knows of the Mogul invader whose
cohorts no power on earth could stop, who has left in your
language the terrible word "Tartar". The Hindu has learnt his
lesson. He does not want to prattle, like the babes of today.
Western people, say what you have to say. This is your day.
Onward, go on, babes; have your prattle out. This is the day of
the babies, to prattle. We have learnt our lesson and are quiet.
You have a little wealth today, and you look down upon us. Well,
this is your day. Prattle, babes, prattle - this is the Hindu's
attitude.
The Lord of Lords is not to be attained by much frothy speech. The
Lord of Lords is not to be attained even by the powers of the
intellect. He is not gained by much power of conquest. That man
who knows the secret source of things and that everything else is
evanescent, unto him He, the Lord, comes; unto none else. India
has learnt her lesson through ages and ages of experience. She has
turned her face towards Him. She has made many mistakes; loads and
loads of rubbish are heaped upon the race. Never mind; what of
that? What is the clearing of rubbish, the cleaning of cities, and
all that? Does that give life? Those that have fine institutions,
they die. And what of institutions, those tinplate Western
institutions, made in five days and broken on the sixth? One of
these little handful nations cannot keep alive for two centuries
together. And our institutions have stood the test of ages. Says
the Hindu, "Yes, we have buried all the old nations of the earth
and stand here to bury all the new races also, because our ideal
is not this world, but the other. Just as your ideal is, so shall
you be. If your ideal is mortal, if your ideal is of this earth,
so shalt thou be. If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be.
Behold! Our ideal is the Spirit. That alone exists, nothing else
exists; and like Him, we live forever."
MY LIFE AND MISSION
(Delivered at the Shakespeare Club of Pasadena, California, on
January 27, 1900)
Now, ladies and gentlemen, the subject for this morning was to
have been the Vedanta Philosophy. That subject itself is
interesting, but rather dry and very vast.
Meanwhile, I have been asked by your president and some of the
ladies and gentlemen here to tell them something about my work and
what I have been doing. It may be interesting to some here, but
not so much so to me. In fact, I do not quite know how to tell it
to you, for this will have been the first time in my life that I
have spoken on that subject.
Now, to understand what I have been trying to do, in my small way,
I will take you, in imagination, to India. We have not time to go
into all the details and all the ramifications of the subject; nor
is it possible for you to understand all the complexities in a
foreign race in this short time. Suffice it to say, I will at
least try to give you a little picture of what India is like.
It is like a gigantic building all tumbled down in ruins. At first
sight, then, there is little hope. It is a nation gone and ruined.
But you wait and study, then you see something beyond that. The
truth is that so long as the principle, the ideal, of which the
outer man is the expression, is not hurt or destroyed, the man
lives, and there is hope for that man. If your coat is stolen
twenty times, that is no reason why you should be destroyed. You
can get a new coat. The coat is unessential. The fact that a rich
man is robbed does not hurt the vitality of the man, does not mean
death. The man will survive.
Standing on this principle, we look in and we see - what? India is
no longer a political power; it is an enslaved race. Indians have
no say, no voice in their own government; they are three hundred
millions of slaves - nothing more! The average income of a man in
India is two shillings a month. The common state of the vast mass
of the people is starvation, so that, with the least decrease in
income, millions die. A little famine means death. So there, too,
when I look on that side of India, I see ruin-hopeless ruin.
But we find that the Indian race never stood for wealth. Although
they acquired immense wealth, perhaps more than any other nation
ever acquired, yet the nation did not stand for wealth. It was a
powerful race for ages, yet we find that that nation never stood
for power, never went out of the country to conquer. Quite content
within their own boundaries, they never fought anybody. The Indian
nation never stood for imperial glory. Wealth and power, then,
were not the ideals of the race.
What then? Whether they were wrong or right - that is not the
question we discuss - that nation, among all the children of men,
has believed, and believed intensely, that this life is not real.
The real is God; and they must cling unto that God through thick
and thin. In the midst of their degradation, religion came first.
The Hindu man drinks religiously, sleeps religiously, walks
religiously, marries religiously, robs religiously.
Did you ever see such a country? If you want to get up a gang of
robbers, the leader will have to preach some sort of religion,
then formulate some bogus metaphysics, and say that this method is
the clearest and quickest way to get God. Then he finds a
following, otherwise not. That shows that the vitality of the
race, the mission of the race is religion; and because that has
not been touched, therefore that race lives.
See Rome. Rome's mission was imperial power, expansion. And so
soon as that was touched, Rome fell to pieces, passed out. The
mission of Greece was intellect, as soon as that was touched, why,
Greece passed out. So in modern times, Spain and all these modern
countries. Each nation has a mission for the world. So long as
that mission is not hurt, that nation lives, despite every
difficulty. But as soon as its mission is destroyed, the nation
collapses.
Now, that vitality of India has not been touched yet. They have
not given up that, and it is still strong - in spite of all their
superstitions. Hideous superstitions are there, most revolting
some of them. Never mind. The national life - current is still
there - the mission of the race.
The Indian nation never will be a powerful conquering people -
never. They will never be a great political power; that is not
their business, that is not the note India has to play in the
great harmony of nations. But what has she to play? God, and God
alone. She clings unto that like grim death. Still there is hope
there.
So, then, after your analysis, you come to the conclusion that all
these things, all this poverty and misery, are of no consequence -
the man is living still, and therefore there is hope.
Well! You see religious activities going on all through the
country. I do not recall a year that has not given birth to
several new sects in India. The stronger the current, the more the
whirlpools and eddies. Sects are not signs of decay, they are a
sign of life. Let sects multiply, till the time comes when every
one of us is a sect, each individual. We need not quarrel about
that.
Now, take your country. (I do not mean any criticism). Here the
social laws, the political formation - everything is made to
facilitate man's journey in this life. He may live very happily so
long as he is on this earth. Look at your streets - how clean!
Your beautiful cities! And in how many ways a man can make money!
How many channels to get enjoyment in this life! But, if a man
here should say, "Now look here, I shall sit down under this tree
and meditate; I do not want to work", why, he would have to go to
jail. See! There would be no chance for him at all. None. A man
can live in this society only if he falls in line. He has to join
in this rush for the enjoyment of good in this life, or he dies.
Now let us go back to India. There, if a man says, "I shall go and
sit on the top of that mountain and look at the tip of my nose all
the rest of my days", everybody says, "Go, and Godspeed to you!"
He need not speak a word. Somebody brings him a little cloth, and
he is all right. But if a man says, "Behold, I am going to enjoy a
little of this life", every door is closed to him.
I say that the ideas of both countries are unjust. I see no reason
why a man here should not sit down and look at the tip of his nose
if he likes. Why should everybody here do just what the majority
does? I see no reason.
Nor why, in India, a man should not have the goods of this life
and make money. But you see how those vast millions are forced to
accept the opposite point of view by tyranny. This is the tyranny
of the sages. This is the tyranny of the great, tyranny of the
spiritual, tyranny of the intellectual, tyranny of the wise. And
the tyranny of the wise, mind you, is much more powerful than the
tyranny of the ignorant. The wise, the intellectual, when they
take to forcing their opinions upon others, know a hundred
thousand ways to make bonds and barriers which it is not in the
power of the ignorant to break.
Now, I say that this thing has got to stop. There is no use in
sacrificing millions and millions of people to produce one
spiritual giant. If it is possible to make a society where the
spiritual giant will be produced and all the rest of the people
will be happy as well, that is good; but if the millions have to
be ground down, that is unjust. Better that the one great man
should suffer for the salvation of the world.
In every nation you will have to work through their methods. To
every man you will have to speak in his own language. Now, in
England or in America, if you want to preach religion to them, you
will have to work through political methods - make organisations,
societies, with voting, balloting, a president, and so on, because
that is the language, the method of the Western race. On the other
hand, if you want to speak of politics in India, you must speak
through the language of religion. You will have to tell them
something like this: "The man who cleans his house every morning
will acquire such and such an amount of merit, he will go to
heaven, or he comes to God." Unless you put it that way, they will
not listen to you. It is a question of language. The thing done is
the same. But with every race, you will have to speak their
language in order to reach their hearts. And that is quite just.
We need not fret about that.
In the Order to which I belong we are called Sannyâsins. The word
means "a man who has renounced". This is a very, very, very
ancient Order. Even Buddha, who was 560 years before Christ,
belonged to that Order. He was one of the reformers of his Order.
That was all. So ancient! You find it mentioned away back in the
Vedas, the oldest book in the world. In old India there was the
regulation that every man and woman, towards the end of their
lives, must get out of social life altogether and think of nothing
except God and their own salvation. This was to get ready for the
great event - death. So old people used to become Sannyasins in
those early days. Later on, young people began to give up the
world. And young people are active. They could not sit down under
a tree and think all the time of their own death, so they went
about preaching and starting sects, and so on. Thus, Buddha, being
young, started that great reform. Had he been an old man, he would
have looked at the tip of his nose and died quietly.
The Order is not a church, and the people who join the Order are
not priests. There is an absolute difference between the priests
and the Sannyasins. In India, priesthood, like every other
business in a social life, is a hereditary profession. A priest's
son will become a priest, just as a carpenter's son will be a
carpenter, or a blacksmith's son a blacksmith. The priest must
always be married. The Hindu does not think a man is complete
unless he has a wife. An unmarried man has no right to perform
religious ceremonies.
The Sannyasins do not possess property, and they do not marry.
Beyond that there is no organisation. The only bond that is there
is the bond between the teacher and the taught - and that is
peculiar to India. The teacher is not a man who comes just to
teach me, and I pay him so much, and there it ends. In India it is
really like an adoption. The teacher is more than my own father,
and I am truly his child, his son in every respect. I owe him
obedience and reverence first, before my own father even; because,
they say, the father gave me this body, but he showed me the way
to salvation, he is greater than father. And we carry this love,
this respect for our teacher all our lives. And that is the only
organisation that exists. I adopt my disciples. Sometimes the
teacher will be a young man and the disciple a very old man. But
never mind, he is the son, and he calls me "Father", and I have to
address him as my son, my daughter, and so on.
Now, I happened to get an old man to teach me, and he was very
peculiar. He did not go much for intellectual scholarship,
scarcely studied books; but when he was a boy he was seized with
the tremendous idea of getting truth direct. First he tried by
studying his own religion. Then he got the idea that he must get
the truth of other religions; and with that idea he joined all the
sects, one after another. For the time being he did exactly what
they told him to do - lived with the devotees of these different
sects in turn, until interpenetrated with the particular ideal of
that sect. After a few years he would go to another sect. When he
had gone through with all that, he came to the conclusion that
they were all good. He had no criticism to offer to any one; they
are all so many paths leading to the same goal. And then he said,
"That is a glorious thing, that there should be so many paths,
because if there were only one path, perhaps it would suit only an
individual man. The more the number of paths, the more the chance
for every one of us to know the truth. If I cannot be taught in
one language, I will try another, and so on". Thus his benediction
was for every religion.
Now, all the ideas that I preach are only an attempt to echo his
ideas. Nothing is mine originally except the wicked ones,
everything I say which is false and wicked. But every word that I
have ever uttered which is true and good is simply an attempt to
echo his voice. Read his life by Prof. Max Muller. (Ramakrishna:
His Life and Sayings, first published in London in 1896. Reprinted
in 1951 by Advaita Ashrama.)
Well, there at his feet I conceived these ideas - there with some
other young men. I was just a boy. I went there when I was about
sixteen. Some of the other boys were still younger, some a little
older - about a dozen or more. And together we conceived that this
ideal had to be spread. And not only spread, but made practical.
That is to say, we must show the spirituality of the Hindus, the
mercifulness of the Buddhists, the activity of the Christians, the
brotherhood of the Mohammedans, by our practical lives. "We shall
start a universal religion now and here," we said, "we will not
wait".
Our teacher was an old man who would never touch a coin with his
hands. He took just the little food offered, just so many yards of
cotton cloth, no more. He could never be induced to take any other
gift. With all these marvellous ideas, he was strict, because that
made him free. The monk in India is the friend of the prince
today, dines with him; and tomorrow he is with the beggar, sleeps
under a tree. He must come into contact with everyone, must always
move about. As the saying is, "The rolling stone gathers no moss".
The last fourteen years of my life, I have never been for three
months at a time in any one place - continually rolling. So do we
all.
Now, this handful of boys got hold of these ideas, and all the
practical results that sprang out of these ideas. Universal
religion, great sympathy for the poor, and all that are very good
in theory, but one must practice.
Then came the sad day when our old teacher died. We nursed him the
best we could. We had no friends. Who would listen to a few boys,
with their crank notions? Nobody. At least, in India, boys are
nobodies. Just think of it - a dozen boys, telling people vast,
big ideas, saying they are determined to work these ideas out in
life. Why, everybody laughed. From laughter it became serious; it
became persecution. Why, the parents of the boys came to feel like
spanking every one of us. And the more we were derided, the more
determined we became.
Then came a terrible time - for me personally and for all the
other boys as well. But to me came such misfortune! On the one
side was my mother, my brothers. My father died at that time, and
we were left poor. Oh, very poor, almost starving all the time! I
was the only hope of the family, the only one who could do
anything to help them. I had to stand between my two worlds. On
the one hand, I would have to see my mother and brothers starve
unto death; on the other, I had believed that this man's ideas
were for the good of India and the world, and had to be preached
and worked out. And so the fight went on in my mind for days and
months. Sometimes I would pray for five or six days and nights
together without stopping. Oh, the agony of those days! I was
living in hell! The natural affections of my boy's heart drawing
me to my family - I could not bear to see those who were the
nearest and dearest to me suffering. On the other hand, nobody to
sympathise with me. Who would sympathise with the imaginations of
a boy - imaginations that caused so much suffering to others? Who
would sympathise with me? None - except one.
That one's sympathy brought blessing and hope. She was a woman.
Our teacher, this great monk, was married when he was a boy and
she a mere child. When he became a young man, and all this
religious zeal was upon him, she came to see him. Although they
had been married for long, they had not seen very much of each
other until they were grown up. Then he said to his wife, "Behold,
I am your husband; you have a right to this body. But I cannot
live the sex life, although I have married you. I leave it to your
judgment". And she wept and said, "God speed you! The Lord bless
you! Am I the woman to degrade you? If I can, I will help you. Go
on in your work".
That was the woman. The husband went on and became a monk in his
own way; and from a distance the wife went on helping as much as
she could. And later, when the man had become a great spiritual
giant, she came - really, she was the first disciple - and she
spent the rest of her life taking care of the body of this man. He
never knew whether he was living or dying, or anything. Sometimes,
when talking, he would get so excited that if he sat on live
charcoals, he did not know it. Live charcoals! Forgetting all
about his body, all the time.
Well, that lady, his wife, was the only one who sympathised with
the idea of those boys. But she was powerless. She was poorer than
we were. Never mind! We plunged into the breach. I believed, as I
was living, that these ideas were going to rationalise India and
bring better days to many lands and foreign races. With that
belief, came the realisation that it is better than a few persons
suffer than that such ideas should die out of the world. What if a
mother or two brothers die? It is a sacrifice. Let it be done. No
great thing can be done without sacrifice. The heart must be
plucked out and the bleeding heart placed upon the altar. Then
great things are done. Is there any other way? None have found it.
I appeal to each one of you, to those who have accomplished any
great thing. Oh, how much it has cost! What agony! What torture!
What terrible suffering is behind every deed of success in every
life! You know that, all of you.
And thus we went on, that band of boys. The only thing we got from
those around us was a kick and a curse - that was all. Of course,
we had to beg from door to door for our food: got hips and haws -
the refuse of everything - a piece of bread here and there. We got
hold of a broken-down old house, with hissing cobras living
underneath; and because that was the cheapest, we went into that
house and lived there.
Thus we went on for some years, in the meanwhile making excursions
all over India, trying to bring about the idea gradually. Ten
years were spent without a ray of light! Ten more years! A
thousand times despondency came; but there was one thing always to
keep us hopeful - the tremendous faithfulness to each other, the
tremendous love between us. I have got a hundred men and women
around me; if I become the devil himself tomorrow, they will say,
"Here we are still! We will never give you up!" That is a great
blessing. In happiness, in misery, in famine, in pain, in the
grave, in heaven, or in hell who never gives me up is my friend.
Is such friendship a joke? A man may have salvation through such
friendship. That brings salvation if we can love like that. If we
have that faithfulness, why, there is the essence of all
concentration. You need not worship any gods in the world if you
have that faith, that strength, that love. And that was there with
us all throughout that hard time. That was there. That made us go
from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from the Indus to the
Brahmaputra.
This band of boys began to travel about. Gradually we began to
draw attention: ninety per cent was antagonism, very little of it
was helpful. For we had one fault: we were boys - in poverty and
with all the roughness of boys. He who has to make his own way in
life is a bit rough, he has not much time to be smooth and suave
and polite - "my lady and my gentleman", and all that. You have
seen that in life, always. He is a rough diamond, he has not much
polish, he is a jewel in an indifferent casket.
And there we were. "No compromise!" was the watchword. "This is
the ideal, and this has got to be carried out. If we meet the
king, though we die, we must give him a bit of our minds; if the
peasant, the same". Naturally, we met with antagonism.
But, mind you, this is life's experience; if you really want the
good of others, the whole universe may stand against you and
cannot hurt you. It must crumble before your power of the Lord
Himself in you if you are sincere and really unselfish. And those
boys were that. They came as children, pure and fresh from the
hands of nature. Said our Master: I want to offer at the altar of
the Lord only those flowers that have not even been smelled,
fruits that have not been touched with the fingers. The words of
the great man sustained us all. For he saw through the future life
of those boys that he collected from the streets of Calcutta, so
to say. People used to laugh at him when he said, "You will see -
this boy, that boy, what he becomes". His faith was unalterable:
"Mother showed it to me. I may be weak, but when She says this is
so - She can never make mistakes - it must be so.
"So things went on and on for ten years without any light, but
with my health breaking all the time. It tells on the body in the
long run: sometimes one meal at nine in the evening, another time
a meal at eight in the morning, another after two days, another
after three days - and always the poorest and roughest thing. Who
is going to give to the beggar the good things he has? And then,
they have not much in India. And most of the time walking,
climbing snow peaks, sometimes ten miles of hard mountain
climbing, just to get a meal. They eat unleavened bread in India,
and sometimes they have it stored away for twenty or thirty days,
until it is harder than bricks; and then they will give a square
of that. I would have to go from house to house to collect
sufficient for one meal. And then the bread was so hard, it made
my mouth bleed to eat it. Literally, you can break your teeth on
that bread. Then I would put it in a pot and pour over it water
from the river. For months and months I existed that way - of
course it was telling on the health.
Then I thought, I have tried India: it is time for me to try
another country. At that time your Parliament of Religions was to
be held, and someone was to be sent from India. I was just a
vagabond, but I said, "If you send me, I am going. I have not much
to lose, and I do not care if I lose that." It was very difficult
to find the money, but after a long struggle they got together
just enough to pay for my passage - and I came. Came one or two
months earlier, so that I found myself drifting about in the
streets here, without knowing anybody.
But finally the Parliament of Religions opened, and I met kind
friends, who helped me right along. I worked a little, collected
funds, started two papers, and so on. After that I went over to
England and worked there. At the same time I carried on the work
for India in America too.
My plan for India, as it has been developed and centralised, is
this: I have told you of our lives as monks there, how we go from
door to door, so that religion is brought to everybody without
charge, except, perhaps, a broken piece of bread. That is why you
see the lowest of the low in India holding the most exalted
religious ideas. It is all through the work of these monks. But
ask a man, "Who are the English?" - he does not know. He says
perhaps, "They are the children of those giants they speak of in
those books, are they not?" "Who governs you?" "We do not know."
"What is the government?" They do not know. But they know
philosophy. It is a practical want of intellectual education about
life on this earth they suffer from. These millions and millions
of people are ready for life beyond this world - is not that
enough for them? Certainly not. They must have a better piece of
bread and a better piece of rag on their bodies. The great
question is: How to get that better bread and better rag for these
sunken millions.
First, I must tell you, there is great hope for them, because, you
see, they are the gentlest people on earth. Not that they are
timid. When they want to fight, they fight like demons. The best
soldiers the English have are recruited from the peasantry of
India. Death is a thing of no importance to them. Their attitude
is "Twenty times I have died before, and I shall die many times
after this. What of that?" They never turn back. They are not
given to much emotion, but they make very good fighters.
Their instinct, however, is to plough. If you rob them, murder
them, tax them, do anything to them, they will be quiet and
gentle, so long as you leave them free to practice their religion.
They never interfere with the religion of others. "Leave us
liberty to worship our gods, and take everything else!" That is
their attitude. When the English touch them there, trouble starts.
That was the real cause of the 1857 Mutiny - they would not bear
religious repression. The great Mohammedan governments were simply
blown up because they touched the Indians' religion.
But aside from that, they are very peaceful, very quiet, very
gentle, and, above all, not given to vice. The absence of any
strong drink, oh, it makes them infinitely superior to the mobs of
any other country. You cannot compare the decency of life among
the poor in India with life in the slums here. A slum means
poverty, but poverty does not mean sin, indecency, and vice in
India. In other countries, the opportunities are such that only
the indecent and the lazy need be poor. There is no reason for
poverty unless one is a fool or a blackguard - the sort who want
city life and all its luxuries. They will not go into the country.
They say, "We are here with all the fun, and you must give us
bread". But that is not the case in India, where the poor fellows
work hard from morning to sunset and somebody else takes the bread
out of their hands, and their children go hungry. Notwithstanding
the millions of tons of wheat raised in India, scarcely a grain
passes the mouth of a peasant. He lives upon the poorest corn,
which you would not feed to your canary-birds.
Now there is no reason why they should suffer such distress -
these people; oh, so pure and good! We hear so much talk about the
sunken millions and the degraded women of India - but none come to
our help. What do they say? They say, "You can only be helped, you
can only be good by ceasing to be what you are. It is useless to
help Hindus." These people do not know the history of races. There
will be no more India if they change their religion and their
institutions, because that is the vitality of that race. It will
disappear; so, really, you will have nobody to help.
Then there is the other great point to learn: that you can never
help really. What can we do for each other? You are growing in
your own life, I am growing in my own. It is possible that I can
give you a push in your life, knowing that, in the long run, all
roads lead to Rome. It is a steady growth. No national
civilisation is perfect yet. Give that civilisation a push, and it
will arrive at its own goal: do not strive to change it. Take away
a nation's institutions, customs, and manners, and what will be
left? They hold the nation together.
But here comes the very learned foreign man, and he says, "Look
here; you give up all those institutions and customs of thousands
of years, and take my tomfool tin pot and be happy". This is all
nonsense.
We will have to help each other, but we have to go one step
farther: the first thing is to become unselfish in help. "If you
do just what I tell you to do, I will help you; otherwise not." Is
that help?
And so, if the Hindus want to help you spiritually, there will be
no question of limitations: perfect unselfishness. I give, and
there it ends. It is gone from me. My mind, my powers, my
everything that I have to give, is given: given with the idea to
give, and no more. I have seen many times people who have robbed
half the world, and they gave $20,000 "to convert the heathen".
What for? For the benefit of the heathen, or for their own souls?
Just think of that.
And the Nemesis of crime is working. We men try to hoodwink our
own eyes. But inside the heart, He has remained, the real Self. He
never forgets. We can never delude Him. His eyes will never be
hoodwinked. Whenever there is any impulse of real charity, it
tells, though it be at the end of a thousand years. Obstructed, it
yet wakens once more to burst like a thunderbolt. And every
impulse where the motive is selfish, self-seeking - though it may
be launched forth with all the newspapers blazoning, all the mobs
standing and cheering - it fails to reach the mark.
I am not taking pride in this. But, mark you, I have told the
story of that group of boys. Today there is not a village, not a
man, not a woman in India that does not know their work and bless
them. There is not a famine in the land where these boys do not
plunge in and try to work and rescue as many as they can. And that
strikes to the heart. The people come to know it. So help whenever
you can, but mind what your motive is. If it is selfish, it will
neither benefit those you help, nor yourself. If it is unselfish,
it will bring blessings upon them to whom it is given and infinite
blessings upon you, sure as you are living. The Lord can never be
hoodwinked. The law of Karma can never be hoodwinked.
Well then, my plans are, therefore, to reach these masses of
India. Suppose you start schools all over India for the poor,
still you cannot educate them. How can you? The boy of four years
would better go to the plough or to work, than to your school. He
cannot go to your school. It is impossible. Self-preservation is
the first instinct. But if the mountain does not go to Mohammed,
then Mohammed can come to the mountain. Why should not education
go from door to door, say I. If a ploughman's boy cannot come to
education, why not meet him at the plough, at the factory, just
wherever he is? Go along with him, like his shadow. But there are
these hundreds and thousands of monks, educating the people on the
spiritual plane; why not let these men do the same work on the
intellectual plane? Why should they not talk to the masses a
little about history - about many things? The ears are the best
educators. The best principles in our lives were those which we
heard from our mothers through our ears. Books came much later.
Book-learning is nothing. Through the ears we get the best
formative principles. Then, as they get more and more interested,
they may come to your books too. First, let it roll on and on -
that is my idea.
Well, I must tell you that I am not a very great believer in
monastic systems. They have great merits, and also great defects.
There should be a perfect balance between the monastics and the
householders. But monasticism has absorbed all the power in India.
We represent the greatest power. The monk is greater than the
prince. There is no reigning sovereign in India who dares to sit
down when the "yellow cloth" is there. He gives up his seat and
stands. Now, that is bad, so much power, even in the hands of good
men - although these monastics have been the bulwark of the
people. They stand between the priest craft and knowledge. They
are the centres of knowledge and reform. They are just what the
prophets were among the Jews. The prophets were always preaching
against the priests, trying to throw out superstitions. So are
they in India. But all the same so much power is not good there;
better methods should be worked out. But you can only work in the
line of least resistance. The whole national soul there is upon
monasticism. You go to India and preach any religion as a
householder: the Hindu people will turn back and go out. If you
have given up the world, however, they say, "He is good, he has
given up the world. He is a sincere man, he wants to do what he
preaches." What I mean to say is this, that it represents a
tremendous power. What we can do is just to transform it, give it
another form. This tremendous power in the hands of the roving
Sannyasins of India has got to be transformed, and it will raise
the masses up.
Now, you see, we have brought the plan down nicely on paper; but I
have taken it, at the same time, from the regions of idealism. So
far the plan was loose and idealistic. As years went on, it became
more and more condensed and accurate; I began to see by actual
working its defects, and all that.
What did I discover in its working on the material plane? First,
there must be centres to educate these monks in the method of
education. For instance, I send one of my men, and he goes about
with a camera: he has to be taught in those things himself. In
India, you will find every man is quite illiterate, and that
teaching requires tremendous centres. And what does all that mean?
Money. From the idealistic plane you come to everyday work. Well,
I have worked hard, four years in your country, and two in
England. And I am very thankful that some friends came to the
rescue. One who is here today with you is amongst them. There are
American friends and English friends who went over with me to
India, and there has been a very rude beginning. Some English
people came and joined the orders. One poor man worked hard and
died in India. There are an Englishman and an Englishwoman who
have retired; they have some means of their own, and they have
started a centre in the Himalayas, educating the children. I have
given them one of the papers I have started - a copy you will find
there on the table - The Awakened India. And there they are
instructing and working among the people. I have another centre in
Calcutta. Of course, all great movements must proceed from the
capital. For what is a capital? It is the heart of a nation. All
the blood comes into the heart and thence it is distributed; so
all the wealth, all the ideas, all the education, all spirituality
will converge towards the capital and spread from it.
I am glad to tell you I have made a rude beginning. But the same
work I want to do, on parallel lines, for women. And my principle
is: each one helps himself. My help is from a distance. There are
Indian women, English women, and I hope American women will come
to take up the task. As soon as they have begun, I wash my hands
of it. No man shall dictate to a woman; nor a woman to a man. Each
one is independent. What bondage there may be is only that of
love. Women will work out their own destinies - much better, too,
than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come
because men undertook to shape the destiny of women. And I do not
want to start with any initial mistake. One little mistake made
then will go on multiplying; and if you succeed, in the long run
that mistake will have assumed gigantic proportions and become
hard to correct. So, if I made this mistake of employing men to
work out this women's part of the work, why, women will never get
rid of that - it will have become a custom. But I have got an
opportunity. I told you of the lady who was my Master's wife. We
have all great respect for her. She never dictates to us. So it is
quite safe.
That part has to be accomplished.