Swami Vivekananda

“ That is the real freedom of the soul. Men, [Pg 112] however sharp and intellectual, however clearly they see the force of the logic that nothing here can be free, are all compelled to think they are free; they cannot help. No work can go on until we begin to say we are free. It means that the freedom we talk about is the glimpse of the blue sky through the clouds, and that the real freedom—the blue sky itself,—is behind. True freedom cannot exist in the midst of this delusion, this hallucination, this nonsense of the world, this universe of the senses, body and mind. ”

“ How is this dream to be broken, how shall we wake up from this dream that we are little men and women, and all such things? We are the Infinite Being of the universe, and have become materialized into these little beings, men and women, depending upon the sweet word of one man, or the angry word of another man and so forth. What a terrible dependence, what a terrible slavery! I who am beyond all pleasure and pain, whose reflection is the whole universe, little bits of whose life are the suns and moons and stars,—I am held down as a terrible slave. ”

“ All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your reflection. God Himself is your image. “God created man after His own image.” That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god, and fall down at his feet and worship; and when this dream comes, we love it! ”

“ We will take for granted that there are many selves; each self is pure and perfect, but it is all these various divisions of gross matter and fine matter that are imposing on the self, and making it variously colored. Why is nature doing all this? Nature is undergoing all these changes for the improvement of the soul; all this creation is for the benefit of the soul, so that it may be free. This immense book which we call the universe is stretched before man so that he may read, and come out, as an omniscient and omnipotent being. ”

“ This body is a miniature universe, as it were; and through all the powers of the body, all the enjoyments of the mind, shines that effulgent One. That self-effulgent One who is in the body, He is the Âtman. “This world is so sweet to all beings, and every being is so sweet to it!” But the self-effulgent One, the Immortal is the bliss in this world. In us also, He is that bliss. He is the Brahman. “This air is so sweet to all beings, and all beings are so sweet to this air.” But He who is that self-effulgent immortal Being in the air, He is also in this body. ”

“ How much greater the pleasure when this whole universe is in our one body? If there be pleasure in these separate bodies, how much more when all bodies are one? The man who has realized this has attained to freedom, has gone beyond the dream and known himself in his real nature. This is the teaching of Advaita, the non-dualistic Vedânta.
These are the three steps which Vedânta philosophy has taken, and we cannot go beyond, because we cannot go beyond unity. When any science reaches a unity it cannot possibly go any farther. ”

“ The whole universe is you; this universe is your body; you are the universe, both formed and unformed. You are the soul of the universe, [Pg 92] its body also. You are God, you are the angels, you are man, you are the animals, you are the plants, you are the minerals, you are everything; all manifestation is you. Whatever exists is you—the real “You”—the one undivided Self—not the little, limited personality that you have been regarding as yourself. ”

“ A dream cannot be without a reality, and that reality is the one infinite Existence. You, as body, mind, or soul, are a dream, but what you really are is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Thus says the Advaitist. All these births and rebirths, this coming and going are but parts of the dream. You are infinite. Where can you go? The sun, moon, and the whole universe are but a drop in your nature. How can you be born or die? The Self was never born, never will be born, never had father or mother, friends or foes, for it is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. ”

“ According to Kapila there are many Purushas, not one. An infinite number of them, you are one, I am one, each is one; an [Pg 67] infinite number of circles, each one infinite, running through this universe. The Purusha is neither born nor dies. It is neither mind nor matter, and the reflex from it is all that we know. We are sure if it be omnipresent it knows neither death nor birth. Nature is casting her shadow upon it, the shadow of birth and death, but it is by its own nature eternal. So far we have found the theory of Kapila wonderful. ”

“ Kapila is one body, all that we see are the grosser bodies, and behind these are the finer bodies, and behind them, a universal egoism, and behind that a universal Intelligence, but all this is in Nature, all this is manifestation of Nature, not outside of Nature. Each one of us is a part of that cosmic consciousness. There is a sum-total of intelligence out of which we draw what we require, so there is a sum-total of mental force in the universe out of which we are drawing eternally, but the seed for the body must come from the parents. ”

“ When I reach that stage shall I know that Âtman, shall I reach the unconscious state and lose my individuality, or will the knowledge remain with me that I know Him? Will there be no one to recognize, no one to feel, no one to love, no one to hate? ”

“ As soon as he is free, he does not see good and evil. Who sees evil and good? He who has it in himself. Who sees the body? He who thinks he is the body. The moment you get rid of the idea that you are the body, you do not see the world at all. It vanishes forever. The Jnâni seeks to tear himself away from this bondage of matter by the force of intellectual conviction. ”

“ Suppose I love a woman; as soon as that woman is particularized, is separated, from that Âtman (the Self) , my love will not be eternal; it has become selfish and is likely to end in grief, but as soon as I see that woman as the Âtman, that Love becomes perfect, and will never suffer. So, as soon as you are attached to anything in the universe detaching it from the universe as a whole—from the Âtman—then comes a reaction. With everything that we love outside the Self, grief and misery will be the result. If we enjoy everything in the Self, and as the Self, no misery or reaction will come. ”

“ We know only the conscious. If a man says “I am a sinner,” he is foolish, because he does not know himself. He is the most ignorant of men about himself; one part only he knows, because the fact of knowledge covers only one part of the “mind-ground” he is in. So with this universe; it is possible to know only one part through reasoning, but Nature comprises the whole of it, the sub-conscious, the conscious and the super-conscious, the individual mahat and the universal Mahat with all their subsequent modifications, and these lie beyond reason. ”

“ When I look at Him from a little higher plane, yet through the same network, I see Him as an animal, a little higher as a man, a little higher as a god, but yet He is the One Infinite Being of the universe, and that Being we are. ”

“ We shall recognize them when we go beyond the universe and consciousness, and then the universe will stand explained. Until we do that all our fruitless striving will never explain the universe, because knowledge is the finding of similars, and this conscious plane gives us only a partial view. So with our idea of the universal Mahat, or what in our ordinary everyday language we call God. All that we have of God is only one perception, just as of the universe we see only one portion, and all the rest is cut off and covered by our human limitation. ”

“ The Yogi meditates upon various centres in his body and manipulates powers in his mind. The Jnâni says the mind does not exist, neither the body. This idea of the body and of the mind must go, must be driven off; therefore it is foolish to think of them. It would be like trying to cure one ailment by bringing in another. His meditation therefore is the most difficult one, the negative; he denies everything, and what is left is the Self. This is the most analytical way. The Jnâni wants to tear away the universe from the Self by the sheer force of analysis. ”

“ God is unchangeable, all these changes are in Nature; just as I am a soul and have a body, this body is not different from me in a sense, yet I, the real “I,” in fact am not this body. For instance, I am a child, I become a young man, an old man, but my soul has not changed. It remains the same soul. Similarly the whole universe comprises all Nature, and an infinite number of souls, or, as it were, the infinite body of God. He is interpenetrating the whole of it. He alone is unchangeable, but Nature changes and soul changes. In what way does Nature change? ”

“ The next morning I again began my march; there was the lake and the landscape, but with it immediately came the idea, “This is a mirage.” Once known it had lost its powers of illusion. So this illusion of the universe will break one day. The whole of this will vanish, melt away. [Pg 103] This is realization. Philosophy is no joke or talk. It will be realized; this body will vanish, this earth and everything will vanish, this idea that I am the body, or the mind, will for some time vanish, or if the Karma is ended it will disappear never to come back ”

“ The Yogi says: “I must be careful of the body so that I may go on steadily and finally attain liberation.” The Jnâni feels that he cannot wait, he must reach the goal this very moment. [Pg 140] He says: “I am free through eternity, I am never bound; I am the God of the universe through all eternity. Who shall make me perfect? I am perfect already.” When a man is perfect he sees perfection in others. When he sees imperfection, it is his own mind projecting itself. How can he see imperfection if he has not got it in himself? So the Jnâni does not care for perfection or imperfection. ”

“ Now comes the question, can religion really accomplish anything? It can. It brings to man eternal life. It has made man what he is and will make of this human animal a god. That is what religion can do. Take religion from human society and what will remain? Nothing but a forest of brutes. Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity; wisdom (Jnânam) is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses, and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than his rational [Pg 16] nature. ”

“ Let body go, and mind go, and gods go, and ghosts go. Let everything go but that One Existence. “Where one hears another, where one sees another, that is but small; where one does not hear another, where one does not see another, that is infinite.” ”

“ So far as the universe is concerned, existence is ruled by law, and beyond that is freedom. As long as you are in the network of time, space and causation, to say you are free is nonsense, because in that network all is under rigorous law, sequence and consequence. Every thought that you think is caused, every feeling has been caused; to say that the will is free is sheer nonsense. It is only when the infinite existence comes, as it were, into this network of Mâyâ that it takes the form of will. ”

“ That Absolute Existence which is limitless, which is unmixed, uncombined, which knows no change, is the free soul, and that Real Existence, when it gets mixed up, muddled up, as it were, with the elements of Nature is what we call human existence. It is limited and manifests as plant life, animal life, human life, just as infinite space is apparently limited by the walls of this room, or by any other enclosure. That Knowledge Absolute means not the knowledge we know, not intelligence, not reason, not instinct, but that which when it becomes manifested we call by these names. ”

“ So in the Cosmos, this universal Intelligence, Mahat, exists as instinct, as reason, and as super-reason.
Now comes a delicate question, which is always being asked. If a perfect God created [Pg 56] the universe, why is there imperfection in it? What we call the universe is what we see, and that is only this little plane of consciousness or reason, and beyond that we do not see at all. Now the very question is an impossible one. If I take up only a bit out of a mass and look at it, it seems to be imperfect. Naturally. The universe seems imperfect because we make it so. ”

“ The sky never moves, but the clouds move over the surface of the sky, and we may think that the sky itself moves. Just as you go into a railway train, and you think the land is moving. It is not so, but it is the train which is moving. You are where you are; this dream, these various clouds move. One dream follows another without connection. There is no such thing as law or connection in this world, but we are thinking that there is a great deal of connection. ”

“ Essentially, however, religion belongs to the supersensuous and not to the sense plane. It is beyond all reasoning and is not on the plane of intellect. It is a vision, an inspiration, a plunge into the unknown and unknowable, making the unknowable more than known, for it can never be “known.” This search has been in the human mind, as I believe, from the very beginning of humanity. There cannot have been human reasoning and intellect in any period of the [Pg 10] world’s history without this struggle, this search beyond. In our little universe, this human mind, we see a thought arise. ”

“ Babies judge the whole universe from their own standpoint, that of producing gingerbread, and so are the babies of the world. We must not judge of higher things [Pg 15] from a low standpoint. Everything must be judged by its own standard and the infinite must be judged by an infinite standard. Religion permeates the whole of man’s life, not only the present, but the past, present, and future. It is therefore the eternal relation between the eternal soul and the eternal God. ”

“ All these dreams, without beginning or end, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, ill-adjusted, broken, inharmonious, form our idea of this universe. In a dream, when you see a giant with twenty heads chasing you, and you are flying from him, you do not think it is inharmonious ”

“ There cannot be a single particle of will which is not a reaction. So many things are beyond will. It is only a manufactured something out of the ego, and the ego is a product of something still higher, the intelligence, and that is a modification of “indiscrete” Nature, or Prakriti.
It is very important to understand this mahat in man,—the intelligence. This intelligence itself is modified into what we call egoism, and this intelligence is the cause of all these motions in the body. This covers all the grounds of sub-consciousness, consciousness and super-consciousness. ”

“ But in human love there are limitations. I may love you one day, I may cease to love you the next. My love increases one day, decreases the next, because it is only a limited manifestation. The first thing therefore that we find against Kapila is that he conceives the soul to be a mere qualitiless, colorless, inactive something. Vedânta teaches that it is the essence of all Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss; infinitely [Pg 86] higher than all knowledge that we know, infinitely more blessed than any human love that we can think of, infinitely existing. ”