What is Vedanta

Vedanta: The Culmination of the Vedas

The word Hindu, by which it is the fashion nowadays to style ourselves, has lost all its meaning, for this word merely meant those who lived on the other side of the river Indus (in Sanskrit, Sindhu). This name was murdered into Hindu by the ancient Persians, and all people living on the other side of the river Sindhu were called by them Hindus. Thus this word has come down to us, and during the Mohammedan rule we took up the word ourselves. There may not be any harm in using the word of course, but, as I have said, it has lost its significance, for you may mark that all the people who live on this side of the Indus in modern times do not follow the same religion as they did in ancient times.

The word, therefore, covers not only Hindus proper, but Mohammedans, Christians, Jains, and other people who live in India. I, therefore, would not use the word Hindu. What word should we use then? The other words which alone we can use are either the Vaidikas, followers of the Vedas, or better still, the Vedantists, followers of Vedanta. Most of the great religions of the world owe allegiance to certain books which they believe are the words of God or some other supernatural beings, and which are the basis of their religion. Now, of all these books, according to the modern savants of the West, the oldest are the Vedas of the Hindus.

A little understanding, therefore, is necessary about the Vedas. This mass of writing called the Vedas is not the utterance of persons. Its date has never been fixed, can never be fixed, and, according to us, the Vedas are eternal. There is one salient point I want you to remember, that all the other religions of the world claim their authority as being delivered by a Personal God or a number of personal beings, angels, or special messengers of God, unto certain persons, while the claim of the Hindus is that the Vedas do not owe their authority to anybody.

They are themselves the authority, being eternal—the knowledge of God. They were never written, never created. They have existed throughout time. Just as creation is infinite and eternal, without beginning and without end, so is the knowledge of God without beginning and without end. And this knowledge is what is meant by the Vedas (Vid, to know). The mass of knowledge called Vedanta was discovered by personages called rishis, and the rishi is defined as a mantra drashta, a seer of thought—not that the thought was his own. Whenever you hear that a certain passage of the Vedas came from a certain rishi, never think that he wrote it or created it out of his mind.

He was the seer of the thought which already existed—it existed in the universe eternally. This sage was the discoverer—the rishis were spiritual discoverers. This mass of writing, the Vedas, is divided principally into two parts, the karma kanda and the jnana kanda—the work portion and the knowledge portion, the ceremonial and the spiritual. The work portion consists of various sacrifices. Most of them of late have been given up as not practicable under present circumstances, but others remain to the present day in some shape or other. The main ideas of the karma kanda, which consists of the duties of man, the duties of the student, of the householder, of the recluse, and the various duties of the different stations of life, are followed more or less down to the present day.

But the spiritual portion of our religion is in the second part, the jnana kanda, the Vedanta, the end of the Vedas—the gist, the goal of the Vedas. The essence of the knowledge of the Vedas was called by the name Vedanta, which comprises the Upanishads. And all the sects of India—Dualists, Qualified-Monists, Monists, or the Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Shaktas, Sauras, Ganapatyas, each one that dares to come within the fold of Hinduism—must acknowledge the Upanishads of the Vedas. They can have their own interpretations and can interpret them in their own way, but they must obey the authority. That is why we want to use the word Vedantist instead of Hindu. All the philosophers of India who are orthodox have to acknowledge the authority of Vedanta.

Complete Works (III. 118-120)

The Vedas: Without Beginning or End

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called rishis, and we honor them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women. Here it may be said that these laws, as laws, may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable.

Everything mutable is a compound, and every compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die—whichis absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation. If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and Creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, running parallel to each other. God is the ever active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time, and again destroyed. This is what the brahmin boy repeats every day: “The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and moons of previous cycles.”

Complete Works (I. 6-7)

Thoughts on the Vedas and Upanishads

The Vedic sacrificial altar was the origin of geometry. The invocation of the devas, or bright ones, was the basis of worship. The idea is that the one invoked is helped and helps. Hymns are not only words of praise but words of power, being pronounced with the right attitude of mind. Heavens are only other states of existence with added senses and heightened powers. All higher bodies also are subject to disintegration, as is the physical. Death comes to all forms of bodies in this and other lives. Devas are also mortal and can only give enjoyment.

Behind all devas there is the Unit Being—God—-as behind this body there is something higher that feels and sees. The powers of creation, preservation, and destruction of the universe, and the attributes, such as omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, make God of gods. On earth we die. In heaven we die. In the highest heaven we die. It is only when we reach God that we attain life and become immortal. The Upanishads treat of this alone. The path of the Upanishads is the pure path. Many manners, customs, and local allusions cannot be understood today.

Through them, however, truth becomes clear. Heavens and earth are all thrown off in order to come to Light. The Upanishads declare: “He, the Lord, has interpenetrated the universe. It is all His.” “He, the Omnipresent, the One without a second, the Onewithout a body, pure, the great Poet of the universe, whosemeter is the suns and stars, is giving to each what hedeserves.”^ “They are groping in utter darkness who try to reach the Light by ceremonials. And they who think this nature is all are in darkness. They who wish to come out of nature through this thought are groping in still deeper darkness.”^ Are then ceremonials bad?

No, they will benefit those whoare coming on. In one of the Upanishads [i.e., Katha] this question is askedby Nachikeia, a youth: “Some say of a dead man, ‘He is gone’; others, ‘He is still living.’ You are Yama, Death. You know the truth. Do answer me.” Yama replies: “Even the devas, many of them, know not—much less men. Boy, do not ask of me this answer.” But Nachiketa persists. Yama again replies: “Theenjoyments of the gods, even these I offer you. Do not insist upon your query.” But Nachiketa was firm as a rock. Then the god of death said: “My boy, you have declined, for the third time, wealth, power, long life, fame, family. You are braveenough to ask the highest truth. I will teach you. There are twoways: one of truth, one of enjoyment. You have chosen the former.”

Now note here the conditions of imparting the truth. First, purity— a boy, a pure, unclouded soul, asking the secret of the universe. Second, that he must take truth for truth’s sakealone. Until the truth has come through one who has had realization, from one who has perceived it himself, it cannot becomefruitful. Books cannot give it. Argument cannot establish it. Truth comes unto him who knows the secret of it. After you have received it, be quiet. Be not ruffled by vain argument. Come to your own realization. You alone can do it.

Neither happiness nor misery, vice nor virtue, knowledgenor nonknowledge is it [Truth]. You must realize it. How can I describe it to you? He who cries out with his whole heart, “O Lord, I want but Thee”—to him the Lord reveals Himself. Be pure, be calm. The mind when ruffled cannot reflect the Lord. ‘‘He whom the Vedas declare. He, to reach whom, we serve with prayer and sacrifice, Om is the sacred name of that indescribable One. This word is the holiest of all words. Hewho knows the secret of this word receives that which he desires.”''^ Take refuge in this word. Who so takes refuge in this word, to him the way opens.

Complete Works (VI. 86-88)

Children of Immortal Bliss

The human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of center from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back, from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions—a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause andeffect— a little moth placed under the wheel of causation, which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow’s tears or the orphan’s cry?

The heart sinks at the idea. Yet this is the law of nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape?—was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: “Hear, ye children of immortal bliss, even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One, who is beyond all darkness, all delusion. By knowing Him alone will you be saved from death over again/’'^ “Children of immortal bliss— what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name—heirs of immortal bliss. Yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners. Ye are the children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth—sinners! It is a sin to call a man so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep. You are souls immortal, spirits free, blest, and eternal. You are not matter, you are not bodies. Matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter. Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but that at the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One “by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain, and death stalks upon the earth.” And what is His nature? He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. “Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend. Thou art the source of all strength: give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe: help me bear the little burden of this life.” Thus sang the rishis of the Vedas. And how to worship Him? Through love. “He is to be worshipped as the one Beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.”

Complete Works (I. 10-11)

Freedom Is the Song of the Soul

A huge locomotive has rushed on over the line, and a small worm that was creeping upon one of the rails saved its life by crawling out of the path of the locomotive. Yet this little worm, so insignificant that it can be crushed in a moment, is a living something, while this locomotive, so huge, so immense, is only an engine, a machine. You say the one has life and the other is only dead matter, and all its powers and strength and speed are only those of a dead machine, a mechanical contrivance. Yet the poor little worm which moved upon the rail and which the least touch of the engine would have deprived of its life is a majestic being compared to that huge locomotive.

It is a small part of the Infinite, and therefore it is greater than this powerful engine. Why should that be so? How do we know the living from the dead? The machine mechanically performs all the movements its maker made it to perform; its movements are not those of life. How can we make the distinction between the living and the dead, then? In the living there is freedom, there is intelligence. In the dead, all is bound and no freedom is possible, because there is no intelligence. This freedom that distinguishes us from mere machines is what we are all striving for.

To be more free is the goal of all our efforts, for only in perfect freedom can there be perfection. This effort to attain freedom underlies all forms of worship, whether we know it or not. The child rebels against law as soon as it is born. Its first utterance is a cry, a protest against the bondage in which it finds itself. This longing for freedom produces the idea of a Being who is absolutely free. The concept of God is a fundamental element in the human constitution. In Vedanta, Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Knowledge-Bliss) is the highest concept of God possible to the mind.

It is the essence of knowledge and is, by its nature, the essence of bliss. We have been stifling that inner voice long enough, seeking to follow law and quiet the human nature, but there is that human instinct to rebel against nature’s laws. We may not understand what the meaning is, but there is that unconscious struggle of the human with the spiritual, of the lower with the higher mind, and the struggle attempts to preserve one’s separate life, what we call our “individuality.” Even hells stand out with this miraculous fact that we are born rebels.

And the first fact of life—the inrushing of life itself—against this we rebel and cry out, “No law for us.” As long as we obey the laws we are like machines, and the universe goes on and we cannot break it. Laws, as laws, become man’s nature. The first inkling of life on its higher level is in seeing this struggle within us to break the bonds of nature and to be free. “Freedom, oh, freedom! Freedom, oh, freedom!” is the song of the soul.

Complete Works (I. 333-35)

Dehypnotize Yourself

Shall we advise men to kneel down and cry, “O miserable sinners that we are!” No. Rather let us remind them of their divine nature. I will tell you a story. A lioness in search of prey came upon a flock of sheep, and as she jumped at one of them, she gave birth to a cub and died on the spot. The young lion was brought up in the flock, ate grass, and bleated like a sheep, and it never knew that it was a lion. One day another lion came across this flock and was astonished to see in it a huge lion eating grass and bleating like a sheep. At the sight of him the flock fled and the lion-sheep with them.

But the lion watched his opportunity and one day found the lion-sheep asleep. He woke him up and said, “You are a lion.” The other said, “No,” and began to bleat like a sheep. But the stranger-lion took him to a lake and asked him to look in the water at his own image and see if it did not resemble him, the stranger-lion. He looked and acknowledged that it did. Then the stranger-lion began to roar and asked him to do the same. The lion-sheep tried his voice and was soon roaring as grandly as the other. And he was a sheep no longer. That is it. We are lions in sheep’s clothing of habit.

We are hypnotized into weakness by our surroundings. And the province of Vedanta is the self-dehypnotization. If the room is dark, do you go about beating your chest and crying, “It is dark, dark, dark!” No. The only way to get light is to strike a light, and then the darkness goes. The only way to realize the light above you is to strike the spiritual light within you, and the darkness of sin and impurity will flee away. Think of your higher self, not of your lower.

Complete Works (I. 326-27, VIII. 257)

The Gospel of Strength

Men, men, these are wanted—everything else will be ready, but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized. The will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God and God Himself. A pure and strong will is omnipotent. What we want is strength, so believe in yourselves. We have become weak, and that is why occultism and mysticism come to us—these creepy things. There may be great truths in them, but they have nearly destroyed us.

Make your nerves strong. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want. And here is the test of truth: Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison. There is no life in it; it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity; truth is all-knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating.

Go back to your Upanishads—the shining, the strengthening, the bright philosophy—and part from all these mysterious things, all these weakening things. Take up this philosophy. The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence. The truths of the Upanishads are before you. Take them up; live up to them. Strength, strength is what the Upanishads speak to me from every page. This is the one great thing to remember. It has been the one great lesson I have been taught in my life. Strength, it says, strength, O man, be not weak.

Are there no human weaknesses?—says man. There are, say the Upanishads, but will more weakness heal them? Would you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness? Strength, O man, strength, say the Upanishads. Standup and be strong. Ay, it is the only literature in the world where you find the word abhih, “fearless”, used again and again. In no other scripture in the world is this adjective applied either to God or to man. Abhih, [be] fearlessl And in my mind rises from the past the vision of the great emperor of the West, Alexander the Great, and I see, as it were, in a picture, the great monarch standing on the bank of the Indus, talking to one of our sunnyasins [monks] in the forest—the old man he was talking to, perhaps naked, stark naked, sitting upon a block of stone, and the emperor, astonished at his wisdom, tempting him with gold and honor to come over to Greece.

And this man smiles at his gold, and smiles at his temptations, and refuses. Then the emperor, standing on his authority as an emperor, says, “I will kill you if you do not come,” and the man bursts into a laugh and says: ‘‘You never told such a falsehood in your life as you tell just now. Who can kill me? Meyou kill, emperor of the material world! Never! For I am Spirit, unborn and undecaying. Never was I born and never do I die. I am the Infinite, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient. And you kill me, child that you are!” The Upanishads are the great mine of strength.

Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world. The whole world can be vivified, made strong, energized, through them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds, and all sects to stand on their feet and be free. Freedom—physical freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom are the watchwords of the Upanishads.

Complete Works (III. 223-25, 237-38)

The Bold Message of the East

About fourteen hundred years before Christ, there flourished in India a great philosopher, Patanjali by name. He collected all the facts, evidences, and researches in psychology and took advantage of all experiences accumulated in the past. Remember, this world is very old. It was not created only two or three thousand years ago. It is taught here in the West that society began eighteen hundred years ago, with the NewTestament. Before that there was no society. That may be true with regard to the West, but it is not true for the whole world. Often, while I was lecturing in London, a very intellectual and intelligent friend of mine would argue with me, and one day after using all his weapons against me, he suddenly exclaimed, “But why did your rishis not come to England to teach us?”

I replied: “Because there was no England to come to. Would they preach to the forests?” “Fifty years ago,” said Ingersoll to me, “you would have been hanged in this country if you had come to preach. You would have been burnt alive or you would have been stoned out of the villages.” On some other occasions, I told you the definition of God and man. Man is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in one spot; and God is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is everywhere. He works through all hands, sees through all eyes, walks on all feet, breathes through all bodies, lives in all life, speaks through every mouth and thinks through every brain.

Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his center of self-consciousness. The great error in all ethical systems, without exception, has been the failure of teaching the means by which man could refrain from doing evil. All the systems of ethics teach, “Do not steal!’’ Very good. But why does a man steal? Because all stealing, robbing, and other evil actions, as a rule, have become automatic. The systematic robber, thief, liar, unjust man and woman, are all these in spite of themselves! It is really a tremendous psychological problem. We should look upon man in the most charitable light. It is not so easy to be good. What are you but mere machines until you are free? Should you be proud because you are good? Certainly not. You are good because you cannot help it. Another is bad because he cannot help it. If you were in his position, who knows what you would have been? The woman in the street, or the thief in the jail, is the Christ that is being sacrificed that you may be a good man. Such is the law of balance. All the thieves and the murderers, all the unjust, the weakest, the wickedest, the devils, they all are my Christ! I owe a worship to the God Christ and to the demon Christ! That is my doctrine—I cannot help it. My salutation goes to the feet of the good, the saintly, and to the feet of the wicked and the devilish! They are all my teachers, all are my spiritual fathers, all are my saviors. I may curse one and yet benefit by his failings; I may bless another and benefit by his good deeds. This is as true as that I stand here. I have to sneer at the woman walking in the street because society wants it! She, my savior, she, whose street-walking is the cause of the chastity of other women! Think of that. Think, men and women, of this question in your mind. It is a truth—a bare, bold truth! As I see more of the world, see more of men and women, this conviction grows stronger. Whom shall I blame? Whom shall I praise? Both sides of the shield must be seen.

Complete Works (II. 27, 33-34)