The Vedanta Philosophy

26. It is true that we create a system, but have to admit that it is not perfect, because the reality must be beyond all systems. We are ready to compare it with other systems, and are ready to show that this is the only rational system that can be; but it is not perfect because reason is not perfect. It is, however, the only possible rational system that the human mind can conceive. It is true to a certain extent that a system must disseminate itself to be strong. No system has disseminated itself so much as the Vedanta. It is the personal contact that teaches even now. This mass of reading does not make men; those who were real men were made by personal contact. It is true that there are very few of these real men, but they will increase. Yet you cannot believe that there will come a day when we shall all be philosophers. We do not believe that there will come a time when there will be all happiness and no unhappiness.

27. The Vedanta philosophy is the foundation of Buddhism and everything else in India; but what we call the Adwaita philosophy of the modern school has a great many conclusions of the Buddhists. Of course the Hindus will not admit that—that is, the orthodox Hindus, because to them the Buddhists are heretics. But there is a conscious attempt to stretch out the whole doctrine to include the heretics also.

28. The Vedanta has no quarrel with Buddhism. The idea of the Vedanta is to harmonize all. With the northern Buddhists we have no quarrel at all. But the Burmese and Siamese and all the southern Buddhists say that there is a phenomenal world, and ask what right we have to create a noumenal world behind this. The answer of the Vedanta is that this is a false statement. The Vedanta never contended that there is a noumenal and a phenomenal. There is one. Seen through the senses it is phenomenal, but it is really the noumenal all the time. The man who sees the rope does not see the snake. It is either the rope or the snake; but never the two. So the Buddhistic statement of our position that we believe there are two worlds is entirely false. They have the right to say it is the phenomenal if they like, but no right to contend that other men have not the right to say it is the noumenal.

29. "Will." Buddhism does not want to have anything except phenomena. In phenomena alone is there desire. It is desire that is creating all this. Modern Vedantists do not hold this at all. We say there is something which has become the will. Will is a manufactured something, a compound, not a simple. There cannot be any will without an external object. We see that the very position, that will created this universe, is impossible. How could it? Have you ever known will without external stimulus? Desire cannot arise without stimulus, or, in modern philosophic language, of nerve stimulus.

Will is a sort of reaction of the brain, what the Sânkhya philosophers call Buddhi. This reaction must be preceded by action, and action presupposes an external universe. When there is no external universe, naturally there will be no will; and yet, according to your theory, it is will that created the universe. Who creates the will? Will is coexistent with the universe. Will is one phenomenon caused by the same impulse which created the universe. But philosophy must not stop there. Will is entirely personal; therefore we cannot go with Schopenhauer at all. Will is a compound mixture of the internal and the external. Suppose a man were born without any senses, he would have no will at all. Will requires something from outside, and the brain will get some energy from inside; therefore will is a compound, as much a compound as the wall or anything else.

We do not agree with the will of these German philosophers at all. Will itself is phenomenal, and cannot be the Absolute. It is one of the many projections. There is something which is not will, but is manifesting itself as will. That I can understand. But that will is manifesting itself as everything else, I do not understand, seeing that we cannot have any conception of will, as separate from the universe. When that freedom becomes will, it is caused by time, space, and causation. Take Kant's analysis. Will is within time, space, and causation. Then how can it be the Absolute? One cannot will without willing in time.

30. We cannot bring it to sense demonstration that Brahman is the only real thing; but we can point out that this is the only conclusion that can be come to. For instance, there must be this oneness in everything, even in common things. There is the human generalization, for example. We say that all the variety is created by name and form; yet when we want to grasp and separate it, it is nowhere. We can never see name or form or causes standing by themselves. So this phenomenon is Maya—something which depends on the noumenal and apart from it has no existence. Take a wave in the ocean. That wave exists as long as that quantity of water remains in a wave form; but as soon as the wave goes down and becomes the ocean, the wave ceases to exist. But the whole mass of water does not depend so much on its form. The ocean remains, while the wave form becomes absolute zero.

31. The real is one. It is the mind which makes it appear as many. When we perceive the diversity, the unity has gone; and as soon as we perceive the unity, the diversity has vanished. Just as in every-day life, when you perceive the unity, you do not perceive the diversity. At the beginning you start with unity. It is a curious fact that a Chinaman will not know the difference in appearance between one American and another; and you will not know the difference between different Chinamen.

32. It can be shown that it is the mind which makes things knowable. It is only things which have certain peculiarities that bring themselves within the range of the known and knowable. That which has no qualities is unknowable. For instance, there is some external world, X, unknown and unknowable. When I look at it, it is X plus mind. When I want to know the world, my mind contributes three-quarters of it. The internal world is Y plus mind, and the external world X plus mind. All differentiation in either the external or internal world is created by the mind, and that which exists is unknown and unknowable. It is beyond the range of knowledge, and that which is beyond the range of knowledge can have no differentiation. Therefore this X outside is the same as the Y inside, and therefore the real is one.

33. The personal God is the same Absolute looked at through the haze of Maya. When we approach Him with the five senses, we can only see Him as the personal God. The Idea is that the Self cannot be objectified. How can the knower know himself? But it can cast a shadow, as it were, if that can be called objectification. So the highest form of that shadow, that attempt at objectifying itself, is the personal God. The Self is the eternal subject, and we are struggling all the time to objectify that Self. And out of that struggle has come this phenomenal universe and what we call matter, and so on. But these are very weak attempts, and the highest objectification of the Self possible to us is the personal God. This objectification is an attempt to reveal our own nature. According to the Sânkhya, nature is showing all these experiences to the soul, and when it has got real experience it will know its own nature. According to the Adwaita Vedantist, the soul is struggling to reveal itself. After long struggle, it finds that the subject must always remain the subject; and then begins non-attachment, and it becomes free.

When a man has reached that perfect state, he is of the same nature as the personal God. "I and My Father are One." He knows that he is one with Brahman, the Absolute, and projects himself as the personal God does. He plays—as even the mightiest of kings may sometimes play with dolls.

34. Some imaginations help to break the bondage of the rest. The whole universe is imagination, but one set of imagination will cure another set. Those which tell us that there is sin and sorrow and death in the world are terrible. But the other set—thou art holy, there is God, there is no pain—these are good, and help to break the bondage of the others. The highest imagination that can break all the links of the chain is that of the personal God.

35. Now and then we know a moment of supreme bliss—when we ask nothing, give nothing, know nothing but bliss. Then it passes, and we again see the panorama of the universe moving before us; and we know that it is but a mosaic work set upon God, who is the background of all things.

The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality. Having eyes, we must see the apparent, but all the time we know what it is; we have found out its true nature. It is the screen that hides the Self, which is unchanging. The screen opens, and we find the Self behind it. All change is in the screen. In the saint the screen is thin, and the reality can almost shine through. In the sinner the screen is thick, and we are apt to lose sight of the truth that the Atman is there, as well as behind the saint's screen. When the screen is wholly removed, we find it really never existed—that we were the Atman and nothing else, even the screen is forgotten.

36. The two phases of this distinction in life are, first, that the man who knows the real Self, will not be affected by anything; secondly, that that man alone can do good to the world. That man alone will have seen the real motive of doing good to others, because there is only one. It cannot be called the egoistic, because that would be differentiation. It is the only self-less-ness. It is the perception of the universal, not of the individual.

Every case of love and sympathy is an assertion of this universal. "Not I, but thou." Help another because I am in him and he in me, is the philosophical way of putting it. The real Vedantist alone will give up his life for a fellow man without any compunction, because he knows he will not die. As long as there is one insect left in the world, he is living; as long as one mouth eats, he eats. So he goes on doing good to others, and is never hindered by the modern ideas of caring for the body.

When a man reaches this point of abnegation, he goes beyond the moral struggle, beyond everything. He sees in the most learned priest, in the cow, in the dog, in the most miserable places, neither the learned man, nor the cow, nor the dog, nor the miserable place, but the same divinity manifesting itself in them all. He alone is the happy man; and the man who has conquered that sameness even in this life, has conquered all the heavens.

God is pure; therefore such a man is said to be living in God. Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I am." That means that these are already free spirits; and Jesus of Nazareth took human form, not by the compulsion of his past actions, but just to do good to mankind. It is not that when a man becomes free, he will stop and become a dead lump; but he will be more active than any other being, because every other being acts only under compulsion, he alone through freedom.

37. "Individuality." If we are inseparable from God, have we no individuality? Oh, yes: that is God. Our individuality is God. This is not individuality you have now; you are coming towards that. Individuality means what cannot be divided. How can you call this individuality? One hour you are thinking one way, and the next hour another way, and two hours after another way. Individuality is that which changes not, beyond all things changeless. It would be tremendously dangerous for this state to remain in eternity, because then the thief would always remain a thief, and the blackguard a blackguard. If a baby dies, he would have to remain a baby. The real individuality is that which never changes, and will never change; and that is the God within us.

38: God does not reason. Why should you reason if you know? It is a sign of weakness, that we have to go on, crawling like worms, to get a few facts, and then the whole thing tumbles down again. The spirit is reflected in mind and in everything. It is the light of the spirit that makes the mind sentient. Everything is an expression of the spirit; the minds are so many mirrors. What you call love and fear, hatred, virtue, and vice, are all reflections of the spirit. When the reflector is base, the reflection is bad.

39. We have been low animals once. We think they are something different from us. I hear Western people say: "The world was created for me." If tigers could write books, they would say man was created for them, and that man is a most sinful animal, because he does not allow him (the tiger) to catch him easily. The worm that crawls under your feet to-day is a God to be.

40. I disagree with the idea that freedom is obedience to the laws of nature. I do not understand what it means. According to the history of human progress, it is disobedience to nature that has constituted that progress. It may be said that the conquest of lower laws was through the higher. But even there, the conquering mind was only trying to be free; and as soon as it found that the struggle was also through law, it wanted to conquer that also. So the ideal was freedom in every case.

The trees never disobey law. I never saw a cow steal. An oyster never told a lie. Yet they are not greater than man. This life is a tremendous assertion of freedom; and this obedience to law, carried far enough, would make us simply matter—either in society, or in politics, or religion.

Too many laws are a sure sign of death. Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die. If you study the characteristics of India, you will find that no nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus, and the national death is the result. But the Hindus had one peculiar idea—they never made any doctrines or dogmas in religion; and the latter has had the greatest growth. Eternal law cannot be freedom, because to say the eternal is inside law is to limit it.

41. There is no purpose in view with God, because if there were some purpose, he would be nothing better than a tree. Why should He need any purpose? If He had any, He would be bound by it. There would be something besides Him which was greater. For instance, the carpet weaver makes a piece of carpet. The idea was outside of him, something greater. Now where is the idea to which God would adjust Himself?

Just as the greatest emperors sometimes play with dolls, so He is playing with this nature; and what we call law is this. We call it law because we can only see little bits which run smoothly. All our ideas of law are within the little bit. It is nonsense to say that law is infinite, that throughout all time stones will fall. If all reason be based upon experience, who was there to see if stones fell five millions of years ago?

So law is not constitutional in man. It is a scientific assertion as to man that where we begin, there we end. As a matter of fact, we get gradually outside of law, until we get out altogether, but with the added experience of a whole life. In God and freedom we began and freedom and God will be the ultimate. These laws are in the middle state through which we have to pass.

Our Vedanta is the assertion of freedom always. The very idea of law will frighten the Vedantist; and eternal law is a very dreadful thing for him, because there would be no escape. If there is to be an eternal law binding him all the time, where is the difference between him and a bit of grass? We do not believe in that abstract idea of law.

42. We say that it is freedom that we are to seek, and that that freedom is God. It is the same happiness as in everything else; but when man seeks it in something which is finite, he gets only a spark of it. The thief when he steals gets the same happiness as the man who finds it in God; but the thief gets only a little spark, with a mass of misery. The real happiness is God. Love is God, freedom is God; and everything that is bondage is not God.

43. The real existence is without manifestation. We cannot conceive it, because we should have to conceive through the mind, which is itself a manifestation. Its glory is that it is inconceivable.

We must remember that in life the lowest and highest vibrations of light we do not see, but they are the opposite poles of existence of light. There are certain things which we do not know, but which we can know. It is through our ignorance that we do not know them. There are certain things which we can never know, because they are much higher than the highest vibrations of knowledge. But we are the Eternal all the time, although we cannot know it. Knowledge will be impossible there.

The very fact of the limitations of the conception is the basis for its existence. For instance, there is nothing so certain in me as myself; and yet I can only conceive of it as a body and mind, as happy or unhappy, as a man or a woman. At the same time, I try to conceive of it as it really is, and find that there is no other way but by dragging it down; yet I am sure of that reality.

"No one, O beloved, loves the husband for the husband's sake, but because the Self is there. It is in and through the Self that she loves the husband. No one, O beloved, loves the wife for the wife's sake, but in and through the Self."

And that reality is the only thing we know, because in and through it we know everything else; and yet we cannot conceive of it. How can we know the knower? If we knew it, it would not be the knower, but the known; it would be objectified.

44. We need reason to drive out all the old superstitions; and what remains is Vedantism. There is a beautiful poem in which the sage says to himself:

"Why weepest thou, my friend? There is no fear of death for you. Why weepest thou? There is no misery for thee, for thou art like the infinite blue sky, unchangeable in thy nature. Clouds of all colours come before it, play for a moment, and pass away; it is the same sky. Thou hast only to drive away the clouds."

We have to open the gates and clear the way. The water will rush in and fill in by its own nature, because it is there already.

45. Man is a good deal conscious, partly unconscious—and there is a possibility of getting beyond consciousness. It is only when we become men that we can go beyond all reason. The words higher or lower can be used only in the phenomenal world. To say them of the noumenal world is simply contradictory, because there is no differentiation there. Man-manifestation is the highest in the phenomenal world. The Vedantist says he is higher than the Devas. The gods will all have to die and will become men again, and in the man-body alone they will become perfect.

46. Man has freedom already, but he will have to discover it. He has it, but every moment forgets it. That discovering, consciously or unconsciously, is the whole life of everyone. But the difference between the sage and the ignorant man is, that one does it consciously, and the other unconsciously. Everyone is struggling for freedom—from the atom to the stars. The ignorant man is satisfied if he can get freedom within a certain limit—if he can get rid of the bondage of hunger, or of being thirsty. But the sage feels that there is a stronger bondage which has to be thrown off. He would not consider the freedom of the Red Indian as freedom at all.

47. According to our philosophers, freedom is the goal. Knowledge cannot be the goal, because knowledge is a compound. It is a compound of power and freedom, and it is freedom alone that is desirable. That is what men struggle after. Simply the possession of power would not be knowledge. For instance, a scientist can send an electric shock to a distance of a mile; but nature can send it an unlimited distance. Why do we not build statues to nature then?

It is not law that we want, but ability to break law. We want to be outlaws. If you are bound by laws, you will be a lump of clay. Whether you are beyond law or not is not the question; but the thought that we are beyond law—upon that is based the whole history of humanity. For instance, a man lives in a forest, and never has had any education or knowledge. He sees a stone falling down—a natural phenomenon happening—and he thinks it is freedom. He thinks it has a soul, and the central idea in that is freedom. But as soon as he knows that it must fall, he calls it nature, dead, mechanical action.

I may or may not go into the street. In that is my glory as a man. If I am sure that I must go there, I give myself up and become a machine. Nature with its infinite power is only a machine; freedom alone constitutes sentient life.

The Vedanta says that the idea of the man in the forest is the right one; his glimpse is right, but the explanation is wrong. He holds to this nature as freedom, and not as governed by law.

Only after all this human experience we will come back to think the same, but in a more philosophical sense. For instance, I want to go out into the street. I get the impulse of my will, and then I stop; and the time that intervenes between the will and going into the street, I am working uniformly. Uniformity of action is what we call law. This uniformity of my actions, I find, is broken into very short periods, and so I do not call my actions under law. I work through freedom. I walk for five minutes; but before those five minutes of walking, which are uniform, there was the action of the will, which gave the impulse to walk.

Therefore man says he is free, because all his actions can be cut up into small periods; and although there is sameness in the small periods, beyond the period there is not the same sameness. In this perception of non-uniformity is the idea of freedom. In nature we see only very large periods of uniformity; but the beginning and end must be free impulses. The impulse of freedom was given just at the beginning, and that has rolled on; but this, compared with our periods, is so much longer.

We find by analysis on philosophic grounds, that we are not free. But there will remain this factor, this consciousness that I am free. What we have to explain is, how that comes. We will find that we have these two impulses in us. Our reason tells us that all our actions are caused, and at the same time, with every impulse we are asserting our freedom. The solution of the Vedanta is that there is freedom inside, that the soul is really free—but that that soul's actions are percolating through body and mind, which are not free.

48. As soon as we react, we become slaves. A man blames me, and I immediately react in the form of anger. A little vibration which he created made me a slave. So we have to demonstrate our freedom.

"They alone are the sages who see in the highest, most learned man, or the lowest animal, or the worst and most wicked of mankind, neither a man nor a sage nor an animal, but the same God in all of them. Even in this life they have conquered heaven, and have taken a firm stand upon this equality. God is pure, the same to all. Therefore such a sage would be a living God."

This is the goal towards which we are going; and every form of worship, every action of mankind, is a method of attaining to it. The man who wants money is striving for freedom—to get rid of the bondage of poverty. Every action of man is worship, because the idea is to attain to freedom, and all action, directly or indirectly, tends to that.

Only those actions that deter are to be avoided. The whole universe is worshipping consciously or unconsciously, only it does not know that while even it is cursing it is in another form of worshipping the same God it is cursing, because those who are cursing are also struggling for freedom. They never think that in reacting from a thing they are making themselves slaves to it. It is hard to kick against the pricks.

49. If we could get rid of the belief in our limitations, it would be possible for us to do everything just now. It is only a question of time. If that is so, add power, and so diminish time. Remember the case of the professor who learned the secret of the development of marble, and who made marble in twelve years, while it took nature centuries.