Chapter 5.1b - The Second Lecture (on Practical Vedanta)

The second lecture on practical Vedanta was delivered in London, 12th November, 1986. In this lecture he stated that in Upanishads we get different stories of symbolic importance. Here Vivekananda showed us the practical methods of the Upanishadic teachers. Vivekananda relates to us a very ancient story from the Chhandoggy Upanishad. A young boy whose name was Satykama said to his mother that he was going to study the Vedas under a guru. So he asked his mother the name of his father and his caste. The mother was not a married woman and in India the child of a woman who has not been married is considered an outcast and he is not recognized by society and is not entitled to study the Vedas. The poor mother told the truth. Her name was Jabala. She said to her son that she did not know her husband’s name as well as her family name. Then the little child went to a sage and asked to be taken as a student. The sage asked him, what the name of his father and what was his caste. The boy repeated to him what he had heard from his mother. The sage at once said that none but a Brahmin could speak such a damaging truth about himself. The sage recognized the little boy as a Brahmin and decided to teach since the boy had not swerved from truth. So he kept the boy with him and educated him.

This teacher gave Satyakama four hundred lean, weak cows to take care of and sent him to the forest. The teacher ordered him to come back when the herd would increase to the number of one thousand. Satyakama obeyed the order of his master. After a few years one day Satyakama heard a big bull in the herd saying to him, ‘we are a thousand now; take us back to your teacher. I will teach you a little of Brahman’. Satyakama asked the bull to say whatever it wanted to say. Then the bull said that the East, West, South and North all are parts of Brahman. The four cardinal points are the four parts of Brahman. Then the bull said to Satyakama that fire would also teach him something of Brahman. In ancient India fire was a great symbol and every student had to procure fire and make offering. So on the following day Satyakama started for his teacher’s house. In the evening he had performed his oblation, and worshipped at the fire, and was sitting near it. Suddenly he heard a voice came from the fire ‘o satyakama’. Satyakama said, ‘Speak Lord’. Then fire said that he had come to teach a little of Brahman. Fire said to Satyakama that this earth, the sky, the ocean and the heaven are portions of Brahman. The fire again said Satyakama that a bird would also teach him something. Satyakama continued his journey. On the next day when he had performed his evening sacrifice a swan came to him and said that fire which is worshiped is a part of Brahman. The sun, the moon, the lightening all are parts of that Brahman. Another bird called Madgu told him that breathing, hearing all are parts of Brahman. Then the boy arrived at his teacher’s place. Looking at his shining face the teacher asked him ‘thy face shines like that of a knower of Brahman, who has taught thee?’ Satyakama replied that he is taught by beings other than man. But Satyakama wished to learn from his Guru. It is because he heard that knowledge which is learnt from a Guru alone led to the supreme good. Then the sage taught him the same knowledge which he had received from the Gods.

The idea of this story is that all voices of knowledge are inside us. In the story we can get two ideas-first that voices that instructed were really voices coming from within the hearer. The bulls and the other objects can not talk like man. Secondly, the truth is shown through everything the student is familiar within his everyday life. The great idea is that all voices of knowledge are inside us. Vedanta teaches us that human soul is the great store-house of knowledge and our soul is the best teacher of us. The second idea we get from the story that of making the knowledge of practical Brahman. Vedanta teaches us a very practical religion that God resides in each matter, each creature as all are parts of Brahman. Another practical import we get from the stories that, the Vedanta does not deny the world. But explains them by showing their real nature. Vedanta gives everything a higher meaning. Before we know Brahman, everything of the world for us is mere matter and some disunited parts of the earth. But as soon as we know Brahman as everything, then fire, earth, matter, life everything transformed into Brahman. A spiritual oneness is established. So according Vivekananda, Vedanta gives us a practical religion. The theme of Vedanta is to see Brahman in everything.

Vivekananda explains the practical nature of the Vedantic idea of salvation. He says that every religion deals with problem of destiny of man. Some religion holds that they who subscribe to their dogma will go to haven while rests are condemned to hell. At this point Vivekananda refers to Mohemmedans, Christians and Hindus. These religions distinguish between heaven and hell. According to the Mohemmedans, heaven is a place where there are gardens, beneath which rivers run. It is Vivekananda’s conviction that in the desert of Arabia water is very desirable, so the Mohammedan always conceives of his heaven as containing much water. It is because Arabia is recognized as holy place by the Mohemmedans. Again these heavens in the Samhita are described as eternal. It is described in the Samhita that the departed men get beautiful bodies and live with their forefathers, and are happy ever in the heaven. There they meet with their parents, children and other relatives, and lead very much the same sort of life as here, only much happier. All the difficulties and obstructions to happiness in this life have vanished, only its good parts and enjoyments remain.

But the Vedanta philosophy, according to Vivekananda, makes a distinction between going to heaven and attaining salvation. The idea of hell does not occur everywhere in the Vedas. According to it, Heavens are transitory. They cannot be permanent because everything that has name and form must die. They are only temporary regions for enjoyment and suffering according to one’s merits and demerits. After which one comes back to earth consciousness to struggle there for further evolution. As there cannot be an eternal heaven, on the same ground it can be said that there cannot be an eternal hell. Vivekananda says “Suppose I am a wicked man, doing evil every minute of my life. Still my whole life here, compared with my eternal life is nothing. If there be an eternal punishment, it will mean that there is an infinite effect produced by a finite cause, which cannot be. If I do good all my life, I cannot have an infinite heaven; it would be making the same mistake.”^[1] Thus there is no permanent heaven and hell. Just as heaven is transitory so also is the hell.

But the persons who have realized the impersonal absolute, the all-pervading existence-knowledge-Bliss, need not go away anywhere or wait for the falling of the body to attain salvation. They recognize their oneness with Brahman. Such person does not care whether he goes to heaven or hell. These things like heaven and hell ceased to have any meaning to that soul. It is because every place is the same. Not only this, every place is a temple of Lord and the presence of the Lord is all that is seen everywhere. A person who has come to this perception becomes free while living here, i.e. that person becomes free while living here or get salvation. Vedanta says that when a man has arrived at that perception, he has become free, and he is the only man who is fit to live in this world. Others are not. The man who sees evil, he cannot live in this world. His life is a mass of misery. The man who sees dangers, his life is a misery, again the man who sees death his life is a misery.

Vivekananda raised a very practical exposition that the idea of impersonal God of Vedanta is thrown away because it is against traditional religious institution and religious values. He says “Of course the impersonal idea is very destructive; it takes away all trade from the priests, churches, and temples. In India there is a feminine now, but there are temples in each one of which there are jewels worth a king’s ransom. If the priests taught this impersonal idea to the people their occupation would be gone.

Yet we have to teach it unselfishly without priest craft.”^[2] But according to him Impersonal conception of God can destroy the narrow and limited idea of personal God, which has been responsible for much of the fanaticism. The personal God is fashioned in such a way that it enforces ethics by fear of punishment. But true morality is motivated by love and fellow feeling. Universal love can flourish, only when we see the whole universe as one Being and that each oneself is involved in the selves of all.

Man had the conception of personal God in the Samhita and there we find the idea of fear entering, but as soon as we come to the Upanishads, the idea of fear vanishes and the impersonal idea takes its place. According to Vivekananda it is naturally the hardest thing for man to understand this impersonal idea. Because man is always clinging on the person. Even people who are thought to be great thinkers get disgusted at the idea of the impersonal God. But according to Vivekananda it is absurd to think of God as an embodied man. Here a question arises ‘which is the higher idea, a living God, or a dead God? A God whom nobody sees, nobody knows or a God known?’

In Vivekananda’s view the impersonal God is a living God, a principle. The difference between personal and impersonal is that the personal is only a man, and the impersonal idea is that he is the angel, the man, the animal, and yet something more which we cannot see. It is because impersonality includes all personalities, that is the sum total of everything in the universe.

Realizing this truth Vivekananda says ‘I have seen nothing but God all my life, nor have you’. According to him to see this chair we first see God, and then the chair in and through him. He is everywhere saying ‘I am’. The moment one feels ‘I am’ one is conscious of existence. We need not go to anywhere to see God until we cannot see him in our own hearts and in every living being. Vedanta says “Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the girl, and Thou art the boy. Thou art the old man tottering with the stick. Thou art the young man walking in the pride of his strength.”^[3] This seems to many to be a terrible contradiction to the traditional God who lives somewhere and whom nobody can see. The priests only give us an assurance that if we follow them, listen to their admonitions, then, when we die, they will give us a passport to enable us to see the face of god.

But according to Vivekananda nothing is more practical than worshipping man. The Mohammedan says, there is no God but Allah. The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God. The living God is within us, and yet we are building churches and temples and believing in all sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of course all animals are temples too, but man is the highest temple. If we cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. He says, “The moment I have realized god sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him-that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes and I am free.”^[4] To Vivekananda this is the most practical of all worship. It has nothing to do with theorizing and speculation.

Vivekananda was aware of the problem that impersonal idea of God may lead to a tremendous amount of difficulty. Some traditional religionists entertained fear that the Impersonal idea of God will destroy all their allegiance and devotion to their ideal of a personal God. Vivekananda, of course, rejects this view. According to him, the Impersonal conception will destroy their narrow and limited ideas of Him which have been responsible for much of the fanaticism that has marred the history of religions through the religious wars. Just as the Impersonal God includes everything in Him, so also it includes the personal gods of the theological religions. He says, “The whole universe is one person….God is personal and impersonal at the same time. And Man, The Infinite Impersonal Man, is manifesting Himself as person.”^[5] Thus by providing the personal conception of god with the unlimited and comprehensive background, the Impersonal conception saves it from degenerating into narrow and fanatical cults.

In his view morality can never be developed through fear. Where one sees another, where one hears another that is maya. And when one does not see another, when one does not hear another, when everything has become the man, no one sees other. It is all he and all ‘I’ at the same time. The soul has become pure. Then and then alone we understand what love is. Love cannot come through fear, its basis is freedom. When we really begin to love the world then we understand what is meant by brotherhood of mankind and not before. It is seen in the sermon of Buddha; Buddha sent a thought of Love towards the south, the north, the east and the west above and below, until the whole universe was filled with this love.

Vedanta taught that man should give up the small for the Infinite and should give up small enjoyments for infinite bliss. It is all ours, for the impersonal includes the personal. So God is personal and impersonal at the same time. We the infinite have limited ourselves into small parts. Infinity is our true nature; it will never vanish. But we are limiting ourselves by our karma which like a chain round our necks has dragged us into this limitation. We have to break that chain to become free. There is no law in human nature; there is no destiny, no fate. There cannot be any law in infinity. Freedom is its watch-word. Freedom is its nature, its birth right. If we attain freedom our position will be like an actor, who comes upon the stage and plays the part of a beggar. If we contrast him with the actual beggar walking in the streets we find similarities between the two. The scene is the same in both cases. Both are actor and both are beggar. Yet there are differences between the two. The one enjoys his begging, while the other is suffering misery from it. This difference made by the fact that the one is free and the other is bound. The actor knows his beggary is not true but that he has assumed it for play, while the real beggar thinks that it is his too familiar state and that he has to bear it whether he wills it or not. This is the law. To Vivekananda so long as we have no knowledge of our real nature we are beggars, jostled about by every force in nature. In such a situation we are made slaves by everything in nature. Then we cry all over the world for help, but help never comes to us. We cry to imaginary beings, and yet it never comes. But still we hope that help will come and thus in weeping, wailing and hoping, one life is passed and the same play goes on and on.

According to Vivekananda we should be free. We should not hope for nothing from anyone. He says if we look back upon our lives, we will find that we were always trying to get help from others which never come. All the help that has come was from within ourselves. We only had the fruits of what we ourselves worked for, and yet we were strangely hoping all the time for help. Vedanta asked us to give up hopes of getting help from others. It is because according to Vedanta we have everything. Since we have everything, so we should not hope to get others help. This position can be compared with a king who goes mad and runs about trying to find the king of his country. The king will never find him. For he is the king himself. He may go through every village and city in his own country in search of the king, but he will never find him, because he is the king himself. It is better that we know we are God and give up this fool’s search after him. And knowing that we are God we become happy and contended. So Vedanta asks us to give up all these mad pursuits, and to play our part in the universe, as an actor on the stage.

If we know the truth that we ourselves are God as well as the world where we are living is nothing but the same God the world will be a playground for us where we will enjoy it very freely. For a bound people the world is a tremendous place of torment, but to the eyes of the free the world is quite enjoyable. This present or the one life is the universal life, heavens and all those places are here. When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forests or in the cave. We shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning. Vivekananda says that we do not know the world yet; it is only through freedom that we see what it is, and understand its nature. We shall see then that this so called law, or fate, or destiny occupied only an infinitesimal part of our nature. According to Vivekananda it was only one side, but on the other side there was freedom all the time. We did not know this, and therefore we have been trying to save ourselves from evil by hiding our faces in the ground, like the hunted hare. Vivekananda says “Within ourselves is this eternal voice speaking of eternal freedom; its music is eternally going on. Part of this music of the soul has become the earth, the law, this universe, but it was always ours and always will be. In one word, the ideal of Vedanta is to know man as he really is, and this is its message, that if you cannot worship your brother man, the manifested God, how can you worship a God who is unmanifested?”{GL_NOTE::} In Bible also it is said that if we cannot love our brother whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen.

But according to Vivekananda, the other forms of worship are not errors. Point to be remembered here that those who worship God through ceremonials and forms, however crude we may think them to be are not in error. It is the journey from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth. It must always be born in mind that we should see others with eyes of love, with sympathy, knowing that they are going along the same path that we have trodden. We cannot see impurity without having it inside ourselves. This is one of the practical sides of Vedanta. In our whole life we have to carry this into practice, but the one great point we gain is that we shall work with satisfaction and contentment, instead of with discontent and dissatisfaction. For we know that truth is within us, we have it as our birth right. And we have only to manifest it, and make it tangible.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Ibid, p-320.

[2]:

Vivekananda, Swami, Practical Vedanta, p-49.

[3]:

[Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda] VOL.2, p-321.

[4]:

Tapasyananada,Swami(retold), Philosophical and Religious Lectures, p-11.

[5]:

[Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda] VOL.2, p-325-326.