SELECTIONS FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS OF

SWAMI VIVEKANADA

Publisher: Advaita Ashrama

Summary: Satyendra N. Dwivedi

“Each soul is potentially divine.

The Goal is to manifest this divinity, by controlling nature, external and
internal.
Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy – by
one, or more, or all of these – and be free.

This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or

temples, or forms, are but secondary details.”
- Swami Vivekananda

PART IV

THE SAGES OF INDIA

The sages of India have been most innumerable, for what has the Hindu nation
being doing for thousands of years except producing sages?

The eternal relations which deal with the nature of the soul, and of God, and the
relations between souls and God, are embodied in what we call the ‘Shrutis’, the
Vedas.

Our religion preaches an Impersonal Personal God. It preaches any amount of

impersonal laws plus any amount of personality, but the very fountain-head of
our religion is in the Shrutis, the Vedas, which are perfectly impersonal; the
persons all come in the Smritis and Puranas, the great ‘Avatars’, Incarnations of
God, prophets and so fourth.

Krishna is not the authority of the Vedas, but the Vedas are the authority of
Krishna himself. His glory is that he is the greatest preacher of the Vedas that
ever existed. So with the other incarnations; so with all our sages. Our first
principle is that all that is necessary for the perfection of man and for attaining
unto freedom is there, in the Vedas.

We find the word ‘Rishi’ again and again mentioned in the Vedas; it has become
a common word at the present time. The Rishi is the great authority. The
definition is that Rishi is the ‘Mantra-drashta’, the seer of thought.

Being is not identical with consciousness, but consciousness is only one part of
Being. Beyond consciousness is where the bold search. Consciousness is bound

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by the senses. Beyond that, beyond the senses, men must go, in order to arrive
at truths of the spiritual world, and there are even now persons who succeed in
going beyond the bounds of the senses. These are called Rishis, because they
come face to face with spiritual truths.

Religion is not in books, nor in theories, nor in dogmas, nor in talking, nor even in
reasoning. It is being and becoming. Let us say in the language of the Vedanta,
“This Atman is not to be reached by too much talk, no, not by the highest
intellect, no, not even by the study of the Vedas themselves.” [Kathopanishad
1.2.23; Mundakopanishad 3.2.3]

When you have known God your very face will be changed, your voice will be
changed, your whole appearance will be changed. You will be a blessing to
mankind; none will be able to resist the Rishi. This is Rishi-hood, the ideal of our
religion.

The other incarnations were but parts of the Lord. Krishna was the Lord Himself.
He was the most wonderful ‘Sanyasin’ and the most wonderful house-holder in
one; he had the most wonderful amount of Rajas, power, and was at the same
time living in the midst of the most wonderful renunciation. Krishna can never be
understood until you have studied the Gita, for he was the embodiment of his
own teaching.

India has to live, and the spirit of the Lord descended again. He who declared, “I
will come whenever virtue subsides”, came again, and this time the manifestation
was in the South, and up arose that young Brahmin of whom it has been
declared that at the age of sixteen he had completed all his writings; the
marvelous boy Shankaracharya arose. The writings of this boy of sixteen are the
wonders of the modern world, and so was the boy. He wanted to bring back the
Indian world to its pristine purity.

Then came the brilliant Ramanuja. Shankara with his great intellect, I am afraid,
had not as great a heart. Ramanuja’s heart was greater. He felt for the down-
trodden, he sympathized with them. He took up the ceremonies, the accretions
that had gathered, made them pure so far as they could be, and instituted new
ceremonies, new methods of worship, for the people who absolutely required
them. At the same time he opened the door to the highest spiritual worship from
the Brahmin to the Pariah.

This one great northern sage, Chaitanya, represented the mad love of the Gopis.
Himself a Brahmin, born of one of the most rationalistic families of the day,
himself a professor of logic fighting and gaining a world-victory, through the
mercy of some sage, became one of the greatest teachers of Bhakti the world
has ever known – mad Chaitanya. His Bhakti rolled over the whole land of
Bengal, bringing solace to every one.

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MY MASTER

To the Oriental, the world of spirit is as real as to the Occidental is the world of
senses. In the spiritual, the Oriental finds everything he wants or hopes for; in it
he finds all that makes life real to him. To the Occidental he is a dreamer; to the
Oriental the Occidental is a dreamer playing with ephemeral toys, and he laughs
to think that grown-up men and women should make so much of a handful of
matter which they will have to leave sooner or later.

That man alone, who is the Lord of his mind, can become happy, and none
else.

It is true that external nature is majestic, with its mountains, and oceans, and
rivers, and with its infinite powers and varieties. Yet there is a more majestic
internal nature of man, higher than the sun, moon, and stars, higher than this
earth of ours, higher than the physical universe, transcending these little lives of
ours, and it affords another field of study.

The Indian nation cannot be killed. Deathless it stands, and it will stand so long
as that spirit shall remain as the background, so long as her people do not give
up their spirituality. In India, even an Emperor on the throne wants to trace his
descent from some beggar-sage in the forest, from a man who wore the bark of a
tree, lived upon the fruits of the forest and communed with God. That is the type
of descent we want; and so long as holiness is thus supremely venerated, India
cannot die.

Life is but momentary, whether you have the knowledge of an angel or the
ignorance of an animal. Life is but momentary, whether you have the poverty of
the poorest man in rags or the wealth of the richest living person. Life is but
momentary, whether you are a down-trodden man living in one of the big streets
of the big cities of the west or a crowned Emperor ruling over millions. Life is but
momentary, whether you have the best of health or the worst. Life is but
momentary, whether you have the most poetical temperament or the most cruel.
There is but one solution of life, says the Hindu, and that solution is what they
call God and religion. Facts have to be perceived, and we have to perceive
religion to demonstrate it to ourselves. We have to sense God to be convinced
that there is God.

The idea took possession of the boy and his whole life became concentrated
upon that. Day after day he would weep and say, “Mother, is it true that thou
existest, or is it all poetry?” Is the Blissful Mother an imagination of poets and
misguided people, or is there such a reality? We must have seen that of books,
of education in our sense of the word, he had none, and so much the more
natural, so much the more healthy was his mind, so much the power his
thoughts, undiluted by drinking in the thoughts of others.

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Man is a soul, and the soul is sexless, neither man nor woman. The idea of sex
and the idea of money were the two things, he thought, that prevented him from
seeing the Mother. This whole universe is the manifestation of the Mother, and
she lives in every woman’s body. “Every woman represents the Mother; how can
I think of woman in mere sex relation?” That was the idea: Every woman was his
Mother, he must bring himself to the state when he would see nothing but Mother
in every woman. And he carried it out in his life.

“Do you think that a man, firmly persuaded that there is a Reality behind all these
appearances, that there is God, that there is One who never dies, One who is
infinite bliss, a bliss compared with which these pleasures of the senses are
simply playthings, can rest contended without struggling to attain it? Can he
cease his efforts for a moment? No, he will become mad with longing.”

“My son, blessed is the man upon whom such madness comes. The whole of
this universe is mad – some for wealth, some for pleasure, some for fame, some
for a hundred other things. They are mad for gold, or husbands, or wives, or
other trifles, mad to tyrannize over somebody, mad to become rich, mad for
every foolish thing except God.”

Blessed is the man who is mad after God.

He went to all the sects he could find, and whatever he took up he went into with
his whole heart. He did exactly as he was told, and in every instance he arrived
at the same result. Thus from actual experience, he came to know that the goal
of every religion is the same, the difference being in method and still more in
language.

“They worship Me best who worship my worshippers. These are all My children
and your privilege is to serve them” – is the teaching of Hindu scriptures.

He had not the least idea that he was a great teacher, he thought that it was
Mother who was doing everything and not he. He always said, “If any good
comes from my lips, it is the Mother who speaks, what have I to do with it.”

“When the lotus opens, the bees come of their own accord to seek the honey; so
let the lotus of your character be full-blown, and the results will follow.”

All teaching implies giving and taking, the teacher gives and the taught receives,
but the one must have something to give, and the other must be open to receive.

“As different rivers, taking their start from different mountains, running crooked or
straight, all come and mingle their waters in the ocean, so the different sects,
with their different point of view, at last come unto Thee.”

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The only true teacher is he who can immediately come down to the level of the
student, and transfer his soul to the student’s soul and see through the student’s
eye and hear through his ears and understand through his mind.

He was a triumphant example, a living realization of the complete conquest of

lust and of desire for money. He was beyond all ideas of either, and such men
are necessary for this century.

The other idea of his life was intense love for others. The first part of my Master’s
life was spent in acquiring spirituality, and the remaining years in distributing it.

It is through this appreciation of spirituality in others that spirituality is produced.

Whatever man wants and appreciates, he will get; and it is the same with
nations.

This man from a remote village of Bengal, without education, by the sheer force
of his own determination, realized the truth and gave it to others, leaving only a
few young boys to keep it alive.

Today the name of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahansa is known all over India to its
millions of people. Nay, the power of that man has spread beyond India; and if
there has ever been a word of truth, a word of spirituality, that I have spoken
anywhere in the world, I owe to my Master; only mistakes are mine.

This is the message of Shri Ramakrishna to the modern world: “Do not care for
doctrines, do not care for dogma, or sects, or churches, or temples; they count
for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is
spirituality; and the more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for
good. Earn that first, acquire that, and criticize no one, for all doctrines and
creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean
words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realization. Only those can
understand who have felt. Only those who have attained to spirituality can
communicate it to others, can be great teachers of mankind. They alone are
powers of light.”

Therefore my Master’s message to mankind is:

“Be spiritual and realize truth for yourself.”

LORD BUDDHA

Buddhism is one of our sects. It was founded by the great man called ‘Gautama’,
who became disgusted with the eternal metaphysical discussions of his day, and
the cumbrous rituals and more especially with the caste system.
He preached a religion in which there was no motive power, and was perfectly
agnostic about metaphysics or theories about God.

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Buddha said, “None can help you; help yourself; work out your own salvation.”
He said about himself, “Buddha is the name of infinite knowledge, infinite as the
sky; I, Gautama, have reached that state; you will all reach that too if you
struggle for it.”

He stands as the perfection of the active type, and the very height to which he
attained shows that through the power of work we can also attain to the highest
spirituality.

Buddha may or may not have believed in God; that does not matter to me. He
reached the same state of perfection to which others come by Bhakti – love of
God, Yoga or Jnana. Perfection comes through the disinterested performance of
action.

THOUGHTS ON THE GITA

Gita is like truths beautifully arranged together in their proper places – like a fine
garland or a bouquet of choicest flowers. The Upanishads deal elaborately with
‘Shraddha’ at many places, but hardly mention Bhakti. In the Gita, on the other
hand, the subject of Bhakti is not only again and again dealt with, but in it, the
innate spirit of Bhakti has attained its culmination.

Though before its advent, Yoga, Jnana, Bhakti, etc. had each its strong
adherents, they all quarreled among themselves, each claiming superiority for his
own chosen path; no one ever tried to seek for reconciliation among those
different paths. It was the author of the Gita who for the first time tried to
harmonize these. He took the best from what all sects then existing had to offer,
and threaded them in the Gita.

The reconciliation of the different paths of Dharma, and work without desire or
attachment – these are the two special characteristics of the Gita.

Hate not the most abject sinner, look not to his exterior. Turn your gaze inward
where resides the ‘Parmatman’. Proclaim to the whole world with trumpet voice:

“There is no sin in thee, there is no misery in thee; thou art the reservoir of
omnipotent power. Arise, awake, and manifest the Divinity within.”

If one reads the following shloka, he gets all the merits of reading the entire Gita;
for in this one shloka lies embedded the whole message of the Gita:

“Yield not to unmanliness, O son of Pritha; it doth not befit you. Cast off this faint-
heartedness and arise, O scorcher of foes.”

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INTERVIEWS

When you have men who are ready to sacrifice their everything for their country,
sincere to the backbone – when such men arise, India will become great in every
respect.

Each nation has a theme; everything else is secondary. India’s theme is religion.
Social reform and everything else is secondary.

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down
by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by it.

We have to learn from Englishmen, the idea of prompt obedience to leaders, the
absence of jealousy, the indomitable perseverance, and the underlying faith in
himself.

India has to learn from Europe the conquest of external nature and Europe
has to learn from India the conquest of internal nature.

Unless a man chooses for himself, the very spirit of Hinduism is destroyed. The
essence of our faith consists simply in the freedom of the ‘Ishta’.

Shri Ramakrishna used to say that to pick out one thorn which has struck in the
foot, another thorn is requisitioned, and when the thorn is taken out, both are
thrown away. So the bad tendencies are to be countered by the good ones, but
after that, the good tendencies have also to be conquered.

God’s infinitude refers to the unlimited-ness of a purely spiritual entity, and as

such, does not suffer in the least by expressing itself in a human form.

INSPIRED TALKS

All pleasures of the senses or even of mind are evanescent, but within ourselves
is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free, it
is bliss. The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. The pleasure of
the self is what we call religion.

Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing;
do not merely endure, be unattached.

We are what our thoughts have made us, so take care of what you think.
The Lord has hidden himself best and his work is best; so he, who hides himself
best, accomplishes most. Conquer yourself and the whole universe is yours.

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Temples have no hold on Hindu religion; if they were all destroyed, religion would
not be affected a grain.
Perception is our only real knowledge or religion.

Concentration of the powers of the mind is our only instrument to help us see
God. If you know one soul (your own), you know all souls, past, present, and to
come. The will concentrates the mind; certain things excite and control this will,
such as reason, love, devotion, breathing. The concentrated mind is a lamp that
shows us every corner of the soul.

Three gifts we have – first, a human body. (The human mind is the nearest
reflection of God; we are ‘His own image’.) Second, the desire to be free. Third,
the help of a noble soul who has crossed the ocean of delusion, as a teacher.
When you have these three, bless the Lord; you are sure to be free.

God alone is true. All else is false. The soul never kills or is killed. Live alone or in
the company of holy ones.

‘Drinking the cup of desire, the world becomes mad’. Day and night never come
together, so desire and the Lord can never come together. Give up desire.

Intellect ends where religion begins. Inspiration is much higher than reason, but it
must not contradict it. Reason is the rough tool to do the hard work; inspiration is
the bright light that shows us all truth.

CONVERSATIONS

The conviction has grown in my mind after my travels in various lands that no
great cause can succeed without an organization. When with the spread of
education the masses in our country grow more sympathetic and liberal, when
they learn to have their thoughts expanded beyond the limits of sect or pathy,
then it will be possible to work on the democratic basis of organization. For this
reason it is necessary to have a dictator for this society.

He who believes not, believes not even after seeing, and thinks that it is all
hallucination, or dream and so on.

The limits of all reasoning and arguing is in realm of Maya; it lies within the
categories of time, space and causation. But He is beyond these categories. We
speak of His law; still He is beyond all law.

Put yourself to work, and you will find such tremendous power coming to you that
you will feel it hard to bear. Even the least work done for others awakens the
power within; even thinking the good of others gradually instills into the heart the
strength of a lion. The essential thing is renunciation. Without renunciation none

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can pour out his heart in working for others. The man of renunciation sees all
with an equal eye and devotes himself to the service of all.

Realize in your own life this knowledge of Brahman which comprehends all
theories and is the rationale of all truth, and preach it to the world. This will
conduce to your own good and the good of others.

Speak of this Atman to all, even to the lowest. By continued speaking, your own
intelligence will also clear up. And all repeat the great mantras, and have the
courage of a lion in the heart:
• ‘Tattvamasi’ - “Thou are That”
• ‘Sohamasmi’ – “I’m That”
• ‘Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma’ – “All this is very Brahman”

The body is an outer covering of the mind and whatever the mind will
dictate to it, it will have to carry out.

It is very difficult to understand why in this country so much difference is made

between men and women, whereas the Vedanta declares that one and the same
conscious Self is present in all beings.

All nations have attained greatness by paying proper respect to the women. That
country and that nation which do not respect the women have never become
great, nor will ever be in future. The principal reason why your race has so much
degenerated is that you had no respect for these living images of Shakti. Manu
says, “Where women are respected, there the gods delight; and where they
are not, there all works and efforts come to a naught.”

I never objected to the worship of women, who are embodiments of Divine

Mother, whose external manifestations, appealing to the senses, have
maddened, but whose internal manifestations, such as knowledge, devotion,
discrimination, and dispassion make man omniscient, of unfailing purpose, and a
knower of Brahma. “She when pleased, becomes propitious and the cause of
freedom of man.”

Vedanta says that within man is all knowledge – even in a boy it is so – and it
requires only an awakening, and that much is the work of a teacher.

The use of higher education is to find out how to solve the problems of life, and
this is what is engaging profound thought of modern civilized world, but it was
solved in our country thousands of years ago.

All the soul-elevating ideas and the different branches of knowledge that exist in
the world are found on proper investigation to have their roots in India.

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By education I do not mean the present system, but something in the line of
positive teaching. Mere book-learning won’t do. We want that education by which
character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and
by which one can stand on one’s own feet.
ESSAYS

INDIA: THE LAND OF RELIGIONS

In religion lies the vitality of India, and so long as the Hindu race does not forget
the great inheritance of their forefathers, there is no power on earth to destroy
them.

The great seers of ancient India saw so far ahead of their time that the world has
to await centuries yet to appreciate their wisdom, and it is this very inability on
the part of their own descendants to appreciate the full scope of this wonderful
plan, and that is one and only cause of the degeneration of India.

IN DEFENCE OF HINDUISM

Both ‘Jnana’ and ‘Bhakti’ are everywhere preached to be unconditional, and as

such there is not one authority who lays down the conditions of cast or creed or
nationality in attaining ‘Moksha’.

The one idea the Hindu religions differ in from every other in the world, the one
idea to express which the sages almost exhaust the vocabulary of the Sanskrit
language, is that man must realize God even in this life. And the Advaita texts
very logically add, “To know God is to become God.”

Nishchaldasa, a Tyagi of the Dadupanthi sect, boldly declared in his

‘Vicharasagara’: “He who has known Brahman has become Brahman. His words
are Vedas, and they will dispel the darkness of ignorance, either expressed in
Sanskrit or any popular dialect.”

Thus to realize God or Brahman, as the Dvaitins say, or to become Brahman, as

the Advaitins say – is the aim and end of the whole teaching of the Vedas, and
every other teaching therein contained represents a stage in the course of our
progress thereto. And the great glory of Bhagavan Bhashyakara Shankaracharya
is that it was his genius that gave the most wonderful expression to the ideas of
Vyasa.

As absolute, Brahman alone is true; as relative truth, all the different sects,
standing upon different manifestations of the same Brahman, either in India or
elsewhere, are true. Only some are higher than others.

And as the Vedas are the only scriptures which treats that this absolute God of
which all other ideas of God, are but minimized and limited versions; as the

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Shruti takes the devotee gently by hand, and leads him from one stage to
another, through all the stages that are necessary for him to travel to reach the
absolute; and as all other religions represent one or other of these stages in a
unprogressive and crystallized form – all the other religions of the world are
included in the nameless, limitless, eternal Vedic religion.

Let us take our stand on the one central truth in our religion, the common
heritage of the Hindus, the Buddhists, and Jains alike – the Spirit of man, the
Atman of man, the immortal, birth-less, all-pervading, eternal Soul of man, whose
glories the Vedas cannot themselves express, before whose majesty the
universe with its galaxy after galaxy of suns and stars and nebulae is as a drop.
Every man or woman, nay, from the highest Devas to the worm that crawls under
your feet, is such a Spirit evoluted or involuted. The difference is not in kind, but
in degree.

The infinite power of the Spirit, brought to bear upon matter evolves material
development, made to act upon thought evolves intellectuality and made to act
upon Itself makes of man a God.

LETTERS

The life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who
live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.

I am thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by holding

itself apart from the community of others, and whenever such an attempt
has been made under false ideas of greatness, policy or holiness, the
result has always been disastrous to the secluding one.

Liberty is the first condition of growth. Just as man must have liberty to think and
speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress and marriage, and in every other
thing, so long as he does not injure others.

“Youth and beauty vanish, life and wealth vanish, even the mountains crumble
into dust. Friendship and love vanish. Truth alone abides. God of Truth, be Thou
alone my guide.”

“Without fear, without shop-keeping, caring neither for friend nor foe, do thou
hold on to truth, Sanyasin, and from this moment give up this world and the next
and all that are to come – their enjoyments and their vanities. Truth, be Thou
alone my guide.”

Neither numbers nor powers nor wealth nor learning nor eloquence nor anything
else will prevail, but ‘purity’, ‘living the life’, in one word, ‘Anubhuti’, realization.
Let there be but a dozen such lion-souls in each country, lions who have
broken their bonds, who have touched the infinite, whose soul is gone to

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Brahman, who care neither for wealth nor power nor fame, and there will be
enough to shake the world.

Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga: “When a man rejects all
superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue.” He sees God. He
becomes God and helps others to become God.

There is but one basis of well-being, social, political, or spiritual, to know that I
and my brother are one. This is true for all countries and all people.

Expansion is the sign of life, and we must spread over the world with our spiritual
ideas.

“A kindred spirit is or will be born out of the limitless time and populous earth to
accomplish the work.”

No work is petty. Everything in this world is like a banyan-seed, which though

appearing tiny as a mustard-seed, has yet the gigantic banyan tree latent within
it. He indeed is intelligent who notices this and succeeds in making all work truly
great.

I want each of my children to be hundred times greater than I could ever be.
Every one of you must be a giant – must, that is my word. Obedience, readiness,
and love for the cause – if you have these three, nothing can hold you back.

The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under
control and become fruitful is called ‘education’.

To advance oneself towards freedom, physical, mental, and spiritual, and

help others to do so is the supreme prize of man. Those social rules which
stand in the way of unfoldment of this freedom are injurious, and steps should be
taken to destroy them speedily. Those institutions should be encouraged by
which men advance in the path of freedom.

“I am free. I am Mother’s child. She works, She plays. Why should I plan? What
should I plan? Things came and went, just as She liked, without my planning. We
are Her automata. She is the wire-puller.”

“Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great, great distance in the
interior of my own heart. They seem like faint, distant whispers, and peace is
upon everything, sweet, sweet peace, like that one feels for a few moments just
before falling into sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows – without

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fear, without love, without emotion. Peace that one feels alone surrounded with
statues and pictures. I come, Lord, I come.”

Summary: Satyendra N. Dwivedi

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