Karma Yoga

Author(s): Swami Vivekanand
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/011073/1

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125103

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MISSION INSTITUT TITUTE OF RIGHNA WIE LIBRARY CULTURES CALCUTTA CALOU

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KARMA-YOGA BY THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. SECOND EDITION. 158IAN INSTITUTE WUTE OF BISHNA MISE -- 1907. LIBRARY 11 01109 SHLOCH UTLA

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RMIC LIBRARY Apo. No.12503 29448 Clown No. ".. VIVO Dato' 14.9.821 18t (r. Can't . Cat. Bk. Card Checked Red PRINTED BY DONATE BHATTACHARYYA, AT THE NO INDIA PRINTING WORKS, HOWRAH. PUBLISHED BY The Hamakrishna Mission FROM UDBODHAN OFFICE, 14, Ramchandra Moitra's Lane, Shambazar Street, CALCUTTA. Presentes in hemory of Kama

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CONTENTS. PAGE. K'arma in its effect on character . "Each is great in his own place" . . 19 Unselfish charity is the secret of saving work 51 * Wkat is duty ? . . . . . . 73 We help ourselves, not the world . . 94 Non-attachment is complete self-abnegation . 115 Freedom . . . . . . . . 141 The ideal of Karma-Yoga . . .' . 168

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S ERIE Swami Vivekanandu.

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KARMA-YOGA. KARMA IN ITS EFFECT ON CHARACTER. * THE word Karma is derived from the Sanskrit "Kri" to do; everything that is done is Karma. Technically, this word also means the effects of actions. In connection with metaphysics it sometimes means the effects of which our past actions are the causes. But in Karma-Yoga we have simply to do with the word "Karma", as meaning work. The goal for all mankind to aim at is knowledge of truth; that is the one ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake of man to suppose that pleasure is the goal; the cause of all the miseries we have in the world is

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[ 2 ] that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal thing to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns to know the truth as well from good as from evil. As pleasure and pain pass before his soul they leave upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called man's "character." If you take the character of any man it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character; good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters that the world has produced it may be seen that, in the vast majority of cases, it was misery that taught them more than happiness; it was poverty that taught them more than wealth; blows brought out their inner fire, more than praise. *

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[ 3 ] Now. this knowledge, again, is inherent in a man; no knowledge comes from outside ; it is all inside. What we say a man "knows," in strict psychological language, should be what a man I discovers " or "unveils ;" what a man "learns" is really what he " discovers," by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge. We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting any-where in a corner waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind. The falling of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he studied his own mind; he. rearranged all the previous links of thought in his mind and discovered a new link among them, which we call the law of gravitation. It was not in the apple nor in anything in the centre of the

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[ 4 ] earth. So, all knowledge, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In many cases it is not discovered, but remains covered; and when the covering is being slowly taken off we say "we are learning," and all advance of knowledge is produced by the advance of this process of discovering. The man from whom this veil is being lifted is the knowing man; the man upon whom it lies thick is ignorant, and the man from whom it has entirely gone is all-knowing, omniscient. There have been omniscient men, and, I believe, will be yet; there will be myriads of them in the cycles to come. Like fire in a piece of flint, knowledge is existing in the mind; the suggestion is the friction that brings out that fire. So with all our feelings and actions-four tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter, our curses and our blessings, our praises and blames-every one of these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought out from within ourselves by so many blows dealt: The result is what we are; all these blows taken

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[ 5 ] together are called " Karma," work, action. Every mental and physical blow that is given to the soul to make it strike fire, discover its own power and knowledge, is Karma, this word being used in its widest sense; so we are all performing Karma all the time in our lives. I am talking to you; that is Karma. You are listening; that is Karma. We breathe; that is Karma. We walk; Karma. We talk; Karma. Everything we do, physical or mental is Karma, and it is steadily leaving its marks on us. , * There are certain works which are, as it were, the aggregate, the sum total, of a large number of smaller works. If we stand near the seashore and hear the waves dashing against the, shingle' we think it is such a great noise, and yet we know that one big wave is really composed of millions and millions of minute waves; each one of these is making a noise, and yet we do not catch its sound it is only when they become the big aggregate that we catch the loud sound. So every pulsation of the heart is contributing to the grand total of KHy

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[6 ] work; certain kinds of work we feel and they become tangible to us; they are, at the same time, the aggregate of a number of small works. "If you really want to judge of the character of a man look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man doing his most common actions ; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. * Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same 'wherever he be. Karma in its effect on character is the most tremendous power that man has to deal with. Man is as it were, a centre, and he is attracting all the powers of the universe towords himself, and in this centre he is fusing them all and ejecting them again in a big current. Such a centre is the real man, the almighty, the omniscient, and he draws the whole universe towards him; good and bad, imisery and happiness, all are running towards him,

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[7] and clinging round him; and out of them he fashions the mighty stream of tendency called character and throws it outwards. As he has the power of drawing in anything, he has also the power of throwing it out to act and fructify: Now, all the actions that we see in the world,. all the movements in human society, all the works that we have around us, are simply the display of thought, the manifestation of the will of man. Machines or instruments, or cities, or ships, or men-of-war, everything is simply the manifestation of the will of man; and this will is caused by character and character is manufactured by Karma. As is Karma, so is the manifestation of the will. The many men of mighty will whom the world has produced have all been tremendous workers-huge, gigantic men, with wide wills, powerful enough to overturn worlds ; and they got that kind of wilt by persistent work, through: ages and ages. Such a gigantic will as that of a Buddha or a Jesus cannot be got as the result of works in one life, for we know who

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[ 8 ] their fathers were. It is not known that their fathers ever spoke a word for the good of man. kind. millions and millions of carpenters like Joseph have gone; millions are still living. Millions and millions of petty kings like Buddha's father have been in the world. If it is only a case of hereditary transmission, how do you account for this little pretty prince, who was not, perhaps, obeyed by his own servants, producting this son, whom half a world worships? How do you account for this gap between the carpenter, and his son, whom millions of human beings worship as God? It cannot be accounted for by that theory of heredity. This gigantic will which Buddha, threw over the world, which rose out of Jesus, whence did it come? Whence came this accumulation of power? It must have been there through ages and ages, continually growing bigger and bigger, until it burst on society in a Buddha or a Jesus; and its influence has gone on rolling down even to the present day.

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[9] And all this is determined by Karma, work. No one can get anything unless he earns it; this is an eternal law; we may sometimes think it is not so, but in the long run we become perforce convinced that it is so.. A man may struggle all his life to become rich; he may cheat thousands, but. he finds at last that he did not deserve to become rich and his life becomes a trouble and. a nuisance to him. We may go on accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but only what we. really earn is ours. A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to read; and this deserving is produced by Karma. Our Karma. determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to become that we have the power to make of ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so

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[ 10 ] we have to know how to act. You will say, "What is the use of learning how to work? Every one works in some way or other in this world." But there is such a thing as frittering away our energies. With regard to this KarmaYoga, it is said in the Gita that it is doing work with cleverness and as a science: knowing how to do work--that will bring the greatest results. You must remember that all work is simply intended to bring out the power of the mind which is already there, to wake up the soul. The power is inside every man, and the knowledge is there; these different works are like blows to bring it out, to cause this giant to wake up. Man <Page #23
[ I ] no man gets a title until he is dead; and that is a better way, after all, than with us. When a man does something very good there, they give a title of nobility to his father, who is dead, or to his grandfather. Some people work for that. Some of the followers of certain Mohammedan sects work all their lives to have a big tomb built for them when they die. I know sects among whom as soon as a child is born, the men begin to prepare for his tomb; that is among them the most important work a man has to do, and the bigger and the finer the tomb the better off is the man supposed to be. Others do good work as a penance; they do all sorts of wicked things, then erect a temple, 'or give something to the priests to buy them off and obtain from them a passport to heaven. They think that this kind of beneficence will clear them and that they will go scotfree in spite of their sinfulness. Such are some of the various motives for work. Work for work's sake. There are some who are really the salt of the earth in every country and

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[ 12 ] who work for work's sake, who do not care for name, or fame, or even to get to heaven. They work just because good will come of it. There are others who do good to the poor and help mankind from still higher motives, because they believe it is good to do good and they love whatever is good. Now, to return to this matter of motives, those of name and fame. These motives seldom bring immediate result; name and fame, as a rule, come to us when we are old and have 'almost done with life. If I, all my life, work for fame, I generally find I get a little in the long run; if I work for name, struggle all my, life for it I find in the end that I get a little name; similarly if I'want anything material I get it in the long run, and there it stops. But if a man works without any selfish motive in view what becomes of him ? Does. he not gain anything? Yes, he becomes the highest gainer. Unselfishness is more paying, : only people have not the patience to practise it: : It is more paying in physical value also. Love, and truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral

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[ 13 ] figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. In the first place, a man who can work for five days, or even for five minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to do it, but in the heart of our hearts we know the value of it, and what good it brings. It is the greatest manifestation of power--this tremendous restraint; self-restraint is a higher manifestation of power than all outgoing action. A carriage with four horses may rush down a hill without restraint; 'or, the coachman may restrain the horses. Which is the.greater manifestation of power, to let them go or to restrain them? A ball flying through the air goes a long distance and then falls. Another is cut short in its flight by striking against a wall, and intense heat is generated. : "So, all this outgoing follows a selfish motive. and disappears sooner or later; it will not cause power to return to you, but if the

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[ 14 ] self is restrained the power will develop. Restraint of this kind will tend to produce a mighty will, that kind of character which makes a Christ or a Buddha. Foolish men do not know this secret"; "they nevertheless want to rule mankind. The fool does not know that even he may. rule 'the whole world if he works and waits. Wait a few years, restrain the foolish idea of governing; and when that idea is wholly gone, your will restrain the universe. Men run after a few dollars and do not think anything of cheating a fellow-being to get those dollars; but if they would restrain themselves, in a few years they would develop such characters as would bring them millions of dollars if they wanted them. But we are all such fools! The majority of us cannot see beyond a few years, just as some animals cannot see beyond a few steps. Just a little narrow circle ;.. that is our world. We have not the patience to look beyond it, and we thus become immoral and wicked. This is our weakness, our powerlessness.

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[ 15 ] Even the lowest forms of work are not to be despised. Let the man, who knows no better, work for selfish ends, for name and fame; but everyone has always to try to get towards higher and higher motives and to understand what such motives are. "To work we have. the right, but not to the fruits thereof." Leave the fruits alone, leave results alone. Who care for results? When you wish to help a man, never think about what the man's attitude should be towards you. Do not care to understand or to appreciate results. If you want to do a great or a good work, do not trouble yourself about what the results will be. There arises a difficult question for consideration in relation to this ideal of work. Intense activity is necessary; we must always work. We cannot live a minute without work. What then becomes of ideal rest? Here is one picture of life-struggle, work; in it we are whirled rapidly round in the current of social life. And here is another picture that of calm, retiring renuncia. tion; everything is peaceful around you, there is Jie

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[ 16 ] very little of noise and show, and all is only nature, animals and flowers and mountains. Neither of these is in itself a perfect picture. If an unfit man tries to live up to the ideal of renunciation, as soon as he is brought in contact with the surging whirlpool of the world he will be crushed by it; just as the fish, that lives in the deep sea, as soon as it comes to the surface, breaks into pieces; the weight of water on it had kept it together. So these men, who are always living in retirement and never attempt work, as soon as they are brought in contact with the world, break into pieces. Can a man who has been used to the turmoil and the rush of life live at all if he comes "intora quiet place? The only place he thence goes to, if alive, is the lunatic asylum. The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learned the secret of restraint ; he has controlled himself. He goes through the streets of a big city with all

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1 17. their traffic, and his mind is as calm as if he were in a cave, where not a sound could reach him; and he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal Karma-Yoga, and if you have attained to that you have really learned the secret of work. But we have to begin from the beginning, to take up the various kinds of work as they come to us and slowly make ourselves more and more unselfish every day. We must do the work that has fallen to our lot and find out the motive power that is behind it, prompting us to do the work; and, almost without exception, in the first years, we shall find that our motives are always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt away by our persistence, and at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really unselfish work, at least now and then. Then we all may hope that'some day or other, as we roll down the river of life, will come to us the time when we shall become perfectly unselfish; and the moment we become that, all our powers will get

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[ 18 ] concentrated, and the knowledge of truth which will then be ours will become at once quite manifest.

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CHAPTER II. " EACH IS GREAT IN HIS OWN PLACE." According to the Sankhya philosophy, there are in nature three kinds of forces called, in Sanskrit, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. These as manifested in the physical world are what we may call attraction, repulsion, and the control of the two. Sattva is what exercises the control, Rajas is the repulsion, while Famas is the attraction. Tamas is typified as darkness or inactivity; Rajas as activity, where each particle is trying to fly off from the attracting centre; and Sattva is the equilibrium of the two, giving a due balancing of both. . Now in every man there are these three forces ; in each of us we find that sometimes the Tamas prevails; we become lazy; we cannot move; we are inactive, bound down by certain ideas or by mere dulness. At other times activity will prevail in us, and at still other times that calm balancing

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[ 20 ] of both will prevail--the Sattva. Again, in different men, a different one of these forces is generally. predominant. The characteristic of one man is inactivity, dulness and laziness; the characteristic of another man is activity, power, manifestation of energy; and in still another man we find the sweetness, calmness and gentleness which are due to the balancing of both action and inaction. So in all creation-in animals, in plants and in men.we find the more or less typical manifestation of all these different tendencies or forces. . * Karma-Yoga has specially to deal with these three elements or tendencies of nature. By teaching us what they are and how we are to employ them it helps us to do our work in life the better. Human, society is a graded organization. It is an organism in which there are different grades and states. We all know about morality, and we all know about duty, but at the same time we find that in various countries the significance of morality differs greatly. What is regarded as moral in one country, in another may be perfectly

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[ 21 ] immoral. For instance, in one country cousins may marry; in another it is thought to be very immoral to do so; in one, men may marry their sisters-in-law; in another, it is regarded as immoral; in one country people may marry only once; in another, many times; and so forth. Similarly in all other departments, of morality we find that the standard varies greatly; yet we have the idea that there must be a universal standard of morality. So it is with duty. The idea of duty varies much among different nation : in one country, if a man does not do certain things, people will say he has acted wrongly; and if he does those very things in another country, people will still say that he did not act rightly; and yet we know that there must be some universal idea of duty. In the same way, one class of society thinks that certain things are among its duty, and another class thinks quite the opposite and would be horrified if it had to do those things. Two ways are left open to us either the way of the ignorant,

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: [ 22 ] who think that there is only one way to truth, and that all the rest are wrong ;-or the way of the wise, who admit that, according to our mental constitution or the different plane of existence in which we are, duty and morality may vary. Thus the important thing is to know that there are gradations of duty and of morality--that what is the duty of one state of life, in one set of circumstances will not and cannot be that of another. The following example will serve to illustrate this position :-All great teachers have taught "Resist not evil"-have taught that the nonresisting of evil is the highest moral ideal. We all know that, if every one of us living in this country, attempted to put that maxim fully into practice, the whole social fabric would fall to pieces, society would be destroyed, the violent and the wicked would take possession of our properties and our lives, and would do whatever they liked with us. Even if only one day of such non-resistance were practised it would lead to the utter dissolution of society. Yet, intuitively,. in

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[ 23 ] our heart of hearts we feel the truth of the teaching, "Resist not evil." This seems to us to be the highest ideal to aim at; yet to teach this doctrine only would be equivalent to condemning a vast proportion of mankind. Not only so, it would be making men feel that they were always doing wrong, cause in them scruples of conscience in regard to all their actions; it would weaken them, and that kind of constant self-disapproval would breed more vice than any other weakness. To the man who has begun to hate himself, the gate to degeneration has already become open, and this is true of nations as well. Our first duty is not to hate ourselves ; because to advance onwards. we must have faith in our. selves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have -faith in God. Therefore, the only alternative remaining to us is to recognize that duty and morality vary under different circumstances; not that the man who resists evil is doing what is always and in itself

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[ 24 ] wrong, but that in the different circumstances in which he is placed, it may become even his duty to resist evil. * Some of you have read, perhaps, the Bhagavad-Gita, and many of you in Western countries may have felt astonished at the first chapter, wherein our Sri Krishna calls Arjuna a hypocrite and a coward because of his refusal to fight, or offer resistance, as his adversaries were his friends and relatives, his refusal on the plea that nonresistance was the highest ideal of love. This is a great lesson for us all to learn, that in all matters the two extremes are alike; the extreme positive and the extreme negative are always similar: when the vibrations of light are too slow we do not see them, nor do we see them when they are too rapid. So with sound; when very low in pitch we do not hear it, when very high we do not hear it either. Of like nature is the difference between resistance and non-resistance. One man does not resist because he is weak, lazy, and cannot; not because he will not; the other man knows *

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[ 25 ] that he can strike an irresistible blow if he likes; yet he not only does not strike, but blesses his enemies. The one who resists not from weakness commits a sin, and as such he can not receive any benefit from his non-resistance; while the other would commit a sin by offering resistance. Buddha gave up his throne and renounced his position ; that was true renunciation ; but there cannot be any question of renunciation in the case of a beggar who has nothing to renounce. So we must always be careful about what we really mean when we speak of this non-resistance and ideal love. We must first take care to understand whether we have the power of resistance or not. Then, having the power, if we renounce it and do not resist, we are doing a grand act of love; but if we cannot resist, and yet, at the same time, try to deceive ourselves into the belief that we are actuated by motives of the highest love, we are doing the exact opposite. So Arjuna became a coward at the sight of the mightly array against him; his "love" made him

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[ 26 ] forget his duty towards his country and king That is why Sri Krishna told him that he was a hypocrite :-"Thou talkest like a wise man, but thy actions betray thee to be a coward ; therefore, stand up and fight!" Such is the central idea of Karma-Yoga. * The Karma-Yogin is the man who understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual possession, and that what is called the resisting of evil is but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely, non-resistance. Before reaching fittingly this highest ideal, man's duty is to resist evil; let him work, let him fight, tet him, strike straight from the shoulder. Then anly, when he has gained the power to resist, will non-resistance be a virtue. I once met a man in my country whom ! had known before as a very stupid, dull person who knew nothing and had not the desire to know anything, and was living the life of a brute.

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[ 27 He asked me what he should do to know God, how he was to get free. "Can you tell a lie ?" I asked him. "No," he replied. "Then you must learn to do so. It is better to tell a lie than to be a brute, or a log of wood; you are inactive; you are not certainly of the highest state, which is beyond all actions, calm and serene; you are too dull even to do something wicked." That was an . extreme case, of course, and I was in joke with him ; but what I meant was, that a man must be active, in order to pass through activity to perfect calmness. Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come. It is very easy to say. "Hate not anybody, resist not any evil," but we know what that kind of thing generally means in practice. When the eyes of society are turned towards us we may make a show of non-resistance, but in our hearts it is canker all the time. We feel the utter want of the

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[ 28 ] calm of non-resistance; we feel that it would be better for us to resist. If you desire wealth, and know at the same time that the whole world is of opinion that he who aims at wealth is a very wicked man, you, perhaps, will not dare to plunge into the struggle for wealth, yet all along your mind is running day and night after making money this is downright hypocrisy and will serve no purpose. Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness and serenity and selfsurrender. These ideas of serenity and renunciation have been preached for thousands of years; every body born has heard of them from childhood, and yet we see very few in the world that have

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29 ] really reached that calm stage in life. I do not know if I have seen twenty persons in my life who are really calm and non-resisting, and I have travelled over half the world. Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it; that is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish. For instance, we take a baby and at once give him the task of walking twenty miles ; either the baby dies, or one in a thousand will crawl along twenty miles, to reach the end exhausted and half-dead. That is like what we generally try to do with the world. All men and women, in any society, are not of the same mind, of the same capacity, or of the same power to do things; they must have different ideals, and we have no right to sneer at any ideal. Let every one do the best he can for realizing his own ideal. I should not be judged by your ideal, nor you by mine. The apple tree should not be judged by the standard of the oak, nor the oak: by that of the apple. ,,To judge the

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[ 30 ]. apple tree you must take the apple standard; and for the oak, there is its own standard; and so it is with all of us. 125103 Unity in variety is the plan of the creation. However men and women may vary individually, there is certainly unity in the background. Nevertheless, the different individual characters and classes of men and women are natural variations in the law of creation. Hence, we ought not to judge all of them by the same standard or put the same ideal before them. Such a course creates only an unnatural struggle, and the result is that man begins to hate himself and is hindered from becoming truly religious and good. Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live unto his own highest ideal, and strive at the same time to make this ideal as near as possible to the truth. C In the Hindu system of morality we find that this fact has been recognized from very ancient times; and in their scriptures and books on ethics different rules are laid down for the different classes

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[ 31 ] of men,--for the householder, for the Sannyasin (the man who has renounced the world), and for the student. The life of every individual in Karma, according to the Hindu scriptures has its peculiar duties apart from what belongs in common to universal humanity. The Hindu begins life as a student ; then he marries and becomes a householder-; then after becoming old he retires, and lastly he gives up the world and becomes a Sannyasin. To each of these stages of life certain duties are attached which are determined by its own nature. No one of these stages of life is superior to the other ; the life of the married man' is quite as great as that of the man who is not married, but has devoted himself to religious work. The king on his throne is as great and glorious as the scayenger in the street. Take him off his throne, make him do the work of the scavenger, and see how he: fares. Take up the scavenger and see how he will rule. It is useless to say that the man who lives out of . the world is a greater man than he who lives ing:

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[ 32 ] the world; it is much more difficult to live in the world and worship God than to give it up and live a free and easy life. The various stages of life have become shortened in India to two,--that of the householder and then of the preacher. The householder marries and carries on his duties as a citizen, and the duty of the man who gives up the world is to devote his energies wholly to religion, to preach and to worship God. Now you will see whose life is the more difficult one. As I read out to you a few beautiful passages from the Maha-Nirvana-Tantra, which treats of this subject, you will see that it is a very difficult task for a man to be a householder, and perform all his duties perfectly. "The householder should be devoted to God; the knowledge of God should be his goal of life. Yet he must work constantly, perform all his duties; whatever he does he must give it up to God." It is the most difficult thing to do in this-world, to work and not care for the result, to help a man

Page #45
[ 33 ] and never think that he ought to be grateful to you, to do some good work and at the same time never look to see whether it brings you name or fame, or brings nothing at all. Even the most arrant coward becomes a brave man when the world begins to praise him. A fool can do heroic deeds when the approbation of society is on him, but for a man to do constantly good works without courting or caring for the approbation of his fellow-men is indeed the highest sacrifice any man can perform. The great duty of the householder is to earn a living, but he must take care that he does not get it by telling lies, or by cheating, or by robbing others; and he must remember that his life is for the service of God, his life is for service of the poor and the needy. . i "Knowing that mother and father are the visible representatives of God, the householder always, and by all means, must please them. If the mother is pleased, and the father, God is pleased with that man. That child is really a good child who never speaks harsh words to his parents.

Page #46
. [ 34 ] "Before parents one must not utter jokes, nust not show restlessness, must not show anger or temper. Before mother, or father, a child must bow down low, and he must stand up in their presence, and must not take a seat until they order him to sit. "If the householder enjoys food and drink and clothes without first seeing that his mother and father, his children, his wife, and the poor, are supplied, he is committing a sin. The mother and the father are the causes of this body, so a man must undergo a thousand troubles in order to do good to them. . "Even so is his duty to his wife ; no man should. scold his wife, and he must always mainzain her as if she were his own mother. And even when he is in the greatest difficulties and troubles, ne must not show anger to his wife. "He who thinks of another woman besides his vife-if he touches her mentally with the least part of his mind-that man goes to dark hell. ven in private no man ought to touch another

Page #47
[ 35 ] woman, or her clothes; even when she is not there the clothes owned by any woman other than . his wife should not be touched. "Before women he must not talk improper language, and never brag of his powers. He must not say I have done this, and I have done that.' "The householder must always please his wife with wealth, clothes, love, faith, and words like nectar, and never do anything to disturb her. That man who has succeeded in getting the love of a chaste wife has succeeded in his religion and has all the virtues." The following are duties towards children :-- "A son should be well taken care of until he is four years of age ; after that he should be educated. When he is 20 years of age the father must not think of him as a little boy; he then is his own equal, being a householder himself. Exactly in the same manner the daughter should be brought up, and with the greatest care should be educated. And when she marries, the father ought to give her jeweis and wealth.

Page #48
[ 36 ] * "Then the duty of the man is towards his brothers and sisters, and towards the children of his brothers and sisters, if they are poor, and . towards his other relatives, his friends and his servants. Then his duties are towards the people of the same village, and the poor, and any one that comes to him for help. Having sufficient means, if the householder does not take care to give gifts to his relatives and to the poor, know him to be only a brute; he is not a human being. "Excessive care in food, in clothes, and in self-love, and taking excessive care in beautifying the body and parting the hair should be avoided. The householder must be pure in heart and clean body, always active and always ready for work. "To his 'enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist. That is the duty of a householder." He must not sit down in a corner and weep, and talk nonsense about non-resistance. If he does not show himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty. And to his friends and. relatives he must be as gentle as a lamb.

Page #49
[ 37 ] "It is the duty of the householder not to pay reverence to the wicked; because, if he reverences the wicked' people of the world, he patronises wickedness; and it will be a great mistake if he disregards those who are worthy of respect, the good people. He must not be gushing in his friendships ; he must not go out making friends everywhere; he' must watch actions of the men he wants to make friends with, and their dealings with other men, reason upon them, and then make friends. "These three things he must not talk of. He must not talk in public of his own fame; he must not preach his own name or his own powers; the must not talk of his wealth, or of anything that has been mentioned to him privately. "If he has committed some mistake, and if he has engaged himself in a work which is sure to fail, whether big or small, he must not talk of these things, or make them public." What is the use of talking of one's mistakes to the world? They cannot be undone. For what he has done

Page #50
[ 38 ] he must suffer ; he as a householder must try and do better. The world sympathises only with the strong and the powerful. "A man must not say he is poor, or that he is wealthy--he must not brag of his wealth. Let him keep his own counsel; this is his religious duty." This is not mere world-wisdom; if a man does not do so, he may be held to be immoral. The householder is the basis, the prop, of the whole society; he is the principal earner. Everybody--the poor, the weak, the children and the women who do not work--all live upon the householder ; so there must be certain duties that he has to perform, and these duties must make him feel strong to perform them, and not make him think that he is doing things beneath his ideal. Therefore, if he has done something weak, or has committed some mistake, he must not say so in public; and if he is engaged in some enterprise and knows he is sure to fail in it, he must not speak of it. Such self-exposure is not only uncalled for, but also unnerves the man and makes

Page #51
[ 39 ] him unfit for the performance of his legitimate duties in life. At the same time, he must struggle hard to acquire these things--firstly, knowledge, and secondly wealth. It is his duty, and if he does not do his duty he is nobody. A householder who does not struggle to get wealth is immoral. If he is lazy, and content to lead a lazy life, he is immoral, because upon him depend hundreds. If he gets riches hundreds of others will be thereby supported. If there were not in this city hundreds who had striven to become rich, and who had acquired wealth, where would all this civilisation, and these almshouses and great houses be? Going after wealth in such a case in not bad, because that wealth is for distribution. The householder is the centre of life and society. It is a worship for him to acquire and spend wealth nobly, for the householder who struggles to get rich by good means and for good purposes is doing practically the same thing for the attainment of salvation as the anchorite does in his cell when he

Page #52
[ 40 is praying, for in them we see only the 'diferent aspects of the same virtue of self-surrender and self-sacrifice prompted by the feeling of devotion to God and to all that is His. "He must struggle to acquire a good name by all means; and he must give up these things-he must not gamble; he must not move in the companionship of the wicked; he must not tell lies, and must not be the cause of trouble to others." Often people. enter into things they have not the means to accomplish, and the result is that they cheat others to attain their own ends. Then there is in all things the time factor to be taken into consideration ; what at one time might be a failure, would perhaps, at another time be a very great success. "The householder must speak truth, and speak gently, using words which people like, which will do good to others; neither must he brag of his own doings, nor talk of the business of other man. The householder by constructing reservoirs for holding water, by planting trees on the roadsides,

Page #53
[ 41 by establishing almshouses for men and animals, by making roads and building bridges, goes towards the same goal as the greatest Yogin." This is one part of the doctrine of KarmaYogam-activity, the duty of the householder. There is a line later on, where it says that "if the householder dies in battle, fighting for his country or his religion, he comes to the same goal as the Yogin by meditation," showing thereby that what is duty for one is not duty for another ; at the same time, it does not say that this duty is lowering and the other elevating ; each duty has its own place and fitness, and according to the circumstances in which we are placed, so must we perform our duties. . One idea comes out of all this, the condemnation of all weakness. This is a particular idea 'in all our teachings which I like, either in philosophy, or in religion, or in work. If you read the Vedas you will find this word always repeated--"fearlessness"-fear nothing. Fear is a sign of weakness. A man mast go about 'his F

Page #54
[ 42 ] duties without taking notice of the sneers and the ridicule of the world. If a man gives up and goes out of the world to worship God, he must not think that those. who live in the world and work for the good of the world, are not worshipping God; neither must those who live in the world, for wife and children, think that those who give up the world are low vagabonds. Each is great in his own place. This thought I will illustrate by a story. A certain king used to inquire of all the Sannyasins that came to his country, "Which is the greater man--he who gives up the world and becomes a Sannyasin, or he who lives in the world and performs his duties as a householder,?" Many wise men sought to solve the problem. Some asserted that the Sannyasin was the greater, upon which the`king demanded that they should prove their assertion. When they could not, he ordered them to marry and become householders. Then others came and said "The householder who performs his duties

Page #55
[ 43 ] is the greater man." Of them, too, the king demanded proofs. When they could not give them, he made them also settle down as householders. At last there came a young Sannyasin, and the king similarly inquired of him also. He answered, "Each, o king, is equally great in his place." "Prove this to me," asked the king. "I will prove it to you," said the Sannyasin, " but you must first come and live as I do for a few days, that I'may be able to prove to you, what I say." The king consented and followed the Sannyasin out of his own territory and passed . through many other territories until they came at last to another kingdom. In the capital of that kingdom a great ceremony was going on. The king and the Sannyasin heard the sound of drums and music, and heard also the criers, crying; the people were assembled in the streets in gala dress, and a great proclamation was being made. The king and the Sannyasin stood there to see what was going on. The crier was:

Page #56
[ 44.] proclaiming loudly that the princess, daughter of the king of that country, was going to choose a husband from among those assembled before her. It was an old custom in India for princesses to choose husbands in this way; and each one of them naturally had certain ideas of the sort of man she wanted for a husband; some would the handsomest man ; others would have only the most learned; others would have the richest, and so on. This princess, in the most splendid array, was being carried on a throne,, and the announcement was made by criers that the princess so-and-so was about to choose her husband. Then all the princes of the neighbourhood put on their bravest attire and presented themselves before her. Sometimes they too had their own criers to enumerate their advantages and the reasons why they hoped the princess would choose them. As the princess was taken round and looked at them and heard what they had to offer, if she was not pleased with what she saw and heard, slie said to her bearers, "Move

Page #57
[ 45 ] on," and no more notice was taken of the rejected suitors. If, however, the princess was pleased with any one of them she threw a garland of flowers upon him, and he became her husband. The princess of the country to which our king and the Sannyasin had come was having one of these interesting ceremonies. She was the most beautiful princess in the world, and the husband of the princess would be ruler of the kingdom after her father's death. The idea of this princess was to marry the handsomest man, but she could not for a long time, find the right one to please her. Several times these meetings had taken place, and yet the princess had not selected any one for her husband. This meeting was the most * splendid of all; more people than ever had come to it, and it was a most gorgeous scene. The princess came in on a throne, and the bearers carried her from place to place. She does not; seem to care for any one, and every one, becomes disappointed that this meeting also is to be broken. up without any one being chosen Just then

Page #58
[ 46 ] comes a young man, a Sannyasin, as handsome as if the sun had come down to the earth, and he stands in one corner of the assembly, watching what is going on. The throne with the princess comes near him, and as soon as she sees the beautiful Sannyasin, she stops and throws the garland over him. The young Sannyasin seizes the garland and throws it off, exclaiming, "What nonsense do you mean by that? I am a Sannyasin. What is marriage to me? The king of that country thinks that perhaps this man is poor, and so does not dare to marry the princess; he says to him, "With my daughter goes half my kingdom now, and the whole kingdom after my death!" and puts the garland again on the Sannyasin. The young man throws it off once more, saying, "What nonsense is this? I do not want to marry," and walks quickly away from the assembly. .. Now the princess had fallen so much in love with this young man that she said, "I must marry this man or I shall die;" and she went after

Page #59
[ 47 ] : him to bring him back. Then our other Sannyasin, who had brought our king there, said to him, "King, let'us follow this pair;" so they walked after them, but at a good distance behind. The young Sannyasin who had refused to marry the princess walked out into the country for several miles, when he came to a forest and struck into it; and the princess followed him, and the other two followed them. Now this young Sannyasin was well acquainted with that forest and knew all the intricate passages in it, and suddenly he jumped into one of these and disappeared, and the princess could not discover him. After trying for a long time to find him, she sat down under a tree and began to weep, for she did not know the way to get out of the forest again. Then our king and the other Sannyasin came up to her and said, "Do not weep; we will show you the way out of this forest, but it is too dark for us to find it now. Here is a big tree; let us rest under it, and in the morning we will go early and show you the road to get out."

Page #60
[ 48 ] Now a little bird and his wife and three little baby-birds lived on that tree, in a nest. This little bird looked down and saw the three people under the tree and said to his wife. "My dear, what shall be done ; here are some guests in the house, and it is winter, and we have no fire?" So he flew away and got a bit of burning firewood in his beak and dropped it before the guests, and they added fuel to it and made a blazing fire. But the little bird was not satisfied. He said again to his wife, "My dear, what shall we do? There is nothing to give these people to eat, and they are hungry, and we are householders ; it is our duty to feed any one who comes to the house. I must do what I can. I will give them my body." So he planged down into the midst of the fire and perished. The guests saw him falling and tried to save him, but he was too quick for them and dashed into the fire and was killed.. * The little bird's wife saw what her husband did, and she said, "Here are three persons and only one little bird for them to eat. It is not

Page #61
[ 49 ] enough; it is my duty as a wife not to let my husband's effort be in vain ; let them have my body also," and she plunged down into the fire and was burned to death. Then the three baby-birds, when they saw what was done, and that there was still not enough food for the three guests, said, "Our parents have done what they could and still it is not enough. It is our duty to carry on the work of our parents ; let our bodies go too." And they all dashed down into the fire also. The three people could not eat these birds, and they were amazed at what they saw. Some: how or other they passed the night without food, and in the morning the king and the Sannyasin showed the princess the way, and she went back to her father. Then the Sannyasin said to the king, "King, you have seen that each is great in his own place. If you want to live in the world live like those birds, ready at any moment to sacrifice yourself for others. If you want to renounce the world.be

Page #62
. [ 50 ] like that young man to whom the most beautiful woman and a kingdom were as nothing. If you want to be a householder hold your life a sacrifice for the welfare of others, and if you choose the life of renunciation do not even look at beauty, and money, and power. Each is great in his own place, but the duty of the one is not the duty of the other."

Page #63
CHAPTER III, UNSELFISH CHARITY IS 'THE SECRET OF SAVING WORK. Helping others physically, by relieving their physical needs, is indeed great; but the help is greater, according as the need is greater and according as the help is far reaching. If a man's want can be removed for an hour, it is helping him indeed; if his wants can be removed for a year it will be more help to him; if his wants can be removed for ever, it is surely the greatest help that can be given him. Spiritual knowledge is the only thing that can remove our miseries for ever; any other knowledge satisfies wants only for a time. If the nature of the man be changed, then alone all his wants will vanish for ever. It is only with the knowledge of the spirit that the faculty of want is annihilated for ever ; so helping man spiritually is the highest help that can be given, ko him ; he who gives *man spiritual knowledge

Page #64
[ 52 ] is the greatest benefactor of mankind, and therefore it is that we always find that those are the most powerful of men who have helped man in satisfying his spiritual needs; indeed spirituality is the true basis of all our activities in life. A spiritually strong and sound man will be strong in every other respect, if he so wishes; and until there is. spiritual strength in mankind even physical needs cannot be well satisfied. Next to spiritual help comes intellectual help; the gift of knowledge is far higher than the giving of food and clothes; it is even higher than giving life to a man, because the real life of man consists in acquision the of the knowledge of truth; ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, a life groping blindly through ignorance and misery. Next in order comes, of course, helping a man physically. Therefore, in considering the question of our helping others, we must always bear in mind not to commit the. mistake of thinking that physical help is the only help that can be given by man to man; physical C

Page #65
[ 53 ) help is the last and the least of its kind, because, there is, in regard to it, no permanent satisfaction. The misery that I feel when I am hungry.is satisfied by eating, but hunger returns again; my misery can cease altogether only when I am satisfied beyond all want. Then hunger will not make me miserable; no distress, no misery, no sorrow will be able to move me. That help which tends to make us strong spiritually is, of course, help of the highest value; next to it comes intellectual help, and after that physical help. The miseries of the world cannot be cured by simply offering physical help;' until man's nature changes, these physical needs will always arise, and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help given to the world will cure them completely. The only solution of the problem of all this evil and misery in the world is to make mankind pure. Ignorance is the mother of all the evil and all the misery we see. Let men have light, let them be spiritually strong; and if we can accomplish this, if all mankind becomes pure and

Page #66
[ 54 ] spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, and not before then, We may convert every house in the country into a charity asylum ; we may fill the land with hospitals, but the misery of man will still continue to exist until man's character changes, We read in the Bhagavat-Gita again and again that we must all work incessantly, and that all work is by nature composed of good and evil. We cannot do any work which has not some part of good somewhere; there cannot be any work which has not a tendency to cause some harm somewhere. Every work that is done must necessarily be a mixture of good and evil; yet we are commanded to work incessantly; the good and the evil will both have their results, will produce their Karma ; the good action will entail upon us good effect ; the bad action, bad effect; and good and bad, are both bondages of the soul. The solution reached in the Gita in regard to this bandage-producing nature of work is that, if we donat attach, ourselves to the work we do, it will

Page #67
[55] not have any binding effect on our soul. We shall try to understand what is meant by this ": nonattachment" to work. This is the one great central idea in the Gita; to do work incessantly, but to be not attached to it or its results. "Samskara" can be translated very nearly by inherent tendency. Using the simile of a lake for the mind, every ripple or every wave that rises in the mind, when it subsides, does not die out entirely, but leaves a mark behind; and there is the future possibility of that wave coming out again. This mark, whatever may be its nature, with the possibility of the wave reappearing, is what is called Samskara. Every work that we do, every movement of the body, every thought that we think, leaves such an impression on the mind-stuff, and even when such impressions are not obvious on the surface they are sufficiently strong to work beneath the surface, sub-consciously. What we are every moment is determined by the sum total of such previous impressions on the mind. What I am just at this

Page #68
( 56 ) moment is the effect of the sum total of all the impressions due to my past life. This is really what is meant by character ; each man's character is determined by the sum total of these impressions of past life and thought. If good impressions prevail, the character becomes good; if bad ones prevail, it becomes bad. If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions or marks; and they, unconsciously, will govern the tendency of his thought and work. In fact, these bad impressions are always working, and their expression in his case must be evil; and that man will be a bad man; he cannot help it; the sum total of these impressions in him create the strong motive power for the doing of bad actions ; he will be like a machine in the hands of his impressions, and they will force him to do evil. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of his motive-making mental impressions will be good; and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good even in spite of

Page #69
[ 57 himself. When a man has done so much good work and thought so many good thoughts that there is an irresistible tendency in his nature to do good, then, even if he wishes to do evil, his mind, in the sum total of its tendencies, will not allow him to do so; the tendencies will turn him back from evil; he cannot but be wholly under the influence of the good tendencies. When such is the case, a man's good character is said to be established. As the tortoise tucks his feet and head inside of his shell, and you may kill him and break him in pieces, and yet he will not come out, even so the character of that man who has control over his motive centres and organs is unchangeably established. He controls his own inner forces, and nothing can draw them out against his will. By this continuous reflex of good thoughts, good impressions moving over the surface of the mind, the tendency for doing good becomes strong and as the result we feel able to control the indriyas (the sensory and motor organs). Thus alone will ; H

Page #70
[ 58 ] 1 character be established; then alone you get to truth; such a man is safe for ever; he cannot do any evil; you may throw him anywhere ; you may place him in any company; there will be no danger for him. There is a still higher stage than having this good tendency, and that is the desire for liberation. You must remember that freedom of the soul is the goal of all our Indian Yogas, and each of them is equally productive of the same result. Just by work men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Fnani; Christ was a Bhakta, and the same goal was reached by both of them. "The difficulty is here. Liberation means entire freedom-freedom from the bondages of good, as well as from the boridages of evil. A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron one. There is a thorn in my finger, and I use another thorn to take the first thorn out, and when I have taken it out I throw both thorns aside; I have no necessity for keeping the second thorn, because both are thorns after all. So the bad tendencies

Page #71
[ 59 ] : are to be counteracted by the good tendencies, and the bad marks on the mind should be removed by the fresh waves of good impressions, until all that is evil almost disappears, or is subdued and held in control in a corner of the mind; but after that, the good tendencies have also to be conquered; only thus the "attached" becomes the "unattached." Work; but let not the action or the thought produce any strong impression on the mind; let the ripples come and go; let huge action proceed from the muscles and the brain, but let them not make any deep impression on your soul. How can this be done? We may see it easily enough that the impression of any action, to which we'attach ourselves, remains lastingly. I may meet hundreds of persons during the day, and among them meet also one whom I love; and when I retire at night I may try to think of all the faces I saw, but only that face comes before the mind--the face which I met perhaps only for one minute, and which I loyed; all the others have vanished. My attachment to this

Page #72
[ 60 ] particular person caused a deeper impression on my mind than all the other faces. Physiologically, the impressions have all been the same; every one of the faces that I saw got itself pictured on the retina, and the brain took the pictures in, and yet there was no similarity of effect upon the mind. But in the case of that man, of whom I caught, perhaps, only a glimpse, a deeper impression was made, because unlike his face, the other faces found no favourable association in my mind; most of them, perhaps, were entirely new faces about which I had never thought before, but that one face, of which I got only a glimpse, somehow found favourable associations inside. Perhaps I had pictured him in my mind for years, knew hundreds of things about him, and this one new vision of him found hundreds of kindred things inside my mind, and all these associations were aroused; this impression on my mental vision was a hundred times more than the seeing of all those different faces together, and, such being the case, a tremendous effect would be

Page #73
[ 1 ] at once and naturally produced by it upon the mind. Therefore, be "unattached;" let things work ; let brain centres.work; work incessantly, but let not even a single ripple conquer the mind. Work as if you were a stranger in this land, a sojourner ; work incessantly, but do not bind yourselves to the things of this world ; bondage is terrible. This world is not our habitation, it is only one of the many stages through which we are passing. Remember that great saying of the Sankhya. "The whole of nature is for the soul, not the soul for nature." The very reason of nature's existence is for the education of the soul; it has no other meaning; it is there because the soul must have knowledge, and through knowledge free itself. If * we remember this always, we shall never be attached to nature; we shall know that nature is a book in which we are to read, and that when we have gained the required knowledge, the book is of no more value to us. Instead of that, however, we are identifying ourselves with nature; we are

Page #74
[ 62 ] thinking that the soul is for nature, that the spirit is for the flesh, and, as the common saying has it, we think that man "lives to eat " and not 66 eats to live;" we are continually making this mistake; we are regarding nature as ourselves and are becoming attached to it; and as soon as this attachment comes, there is the deep impression on the soul, which binds us down and makes us work not for freedom but like slaves. The whole gist of this teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do slave's work. Do you not see how everybody works? Nobody can be altogether at rest; ninety-nine per cent. of mankind work like slaves, and the result is misery; it is all selfish work. Work through freedom! Work through love! The word love is very difficult to understand; love never comes until there is freedom. There is no true love possible in the slave. If you buy a slave and tie him down in chains and make him work for you, he will work like a drudge, but there will be no love in him. 2

Page #75
[ 63 1 So when we ourselves work for the things of the world as slaves, there can be no love in us, and our work is not true work. The same thing applies to the work done for relatives and friends, more to work done for our own selves. Selfish work is slave's work; and here is a proof whether any work is selfish or not. Every act of love brings happiness with it; there can be no true act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as the result of its reaction. Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected with one another, and in fact form three in one where one of them is, the others also must be; they are the three aspects of the one without a second-the Existence-KnowledgeBliss: When that existence becomes relative, we see it as the world; that knowledge becomes in its turn modified into the knowledge of the things of the world; and that bliss forms the foundation of all true love known to the heart of man. Therefore true love can never react so as to cause pain either to the lover or to the beloved.

Page #76
[ 64 ] Suppose'a man loves a woman ; he wishes to have her all to himself and feels extremely jealous about her every movement; he wants her to sit near him, to stand near him, and to eat and move at his bidding. He is a slave to her and wishes to have her as his slave. That is not love; it is a kind of morbid affection of the slave, falsely insinuating itself as love. It cannot be love, because it is painful; if she does not do what he wants, it brings him pain. With love there is no painful reaction ; love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love; we are then mistaking something else for love. When you have succeeded in loving your husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe, in such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then you are in a fit state to.be unattached. * Krishna says, "Look at me, Arjuna! If I stop from work for one moment the whole universe will die. Yet I have nothing to gain from the universe; I am the one Lord; I have nothing to

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[ 65 ] gain from work; but why do I work? Because I love the world." God is unattached because He loves ; that kind of real love makes us unattached. Wherever there is mere worldly attachment, the tremendous clinging to the things of the world, you must know that it is all physical, a sort of physical attraction between sets of particles of matter, something that attracts two bodies nearer and nearer all the time, and if they cannot get near enough produces pain; but where there is real love it does not rest on physical attachment at all. Loving persons may be a thousand miles away from one another, true love will be all the same; it does not die; and there will never be from it any painful reaction. * To attain this unattachment is almost a life. work, but as soon as we get to this point we attain the goal of love and become free; the bondage of nature falls from us, and we see nature as it is; nature forges no more chains for us; we stand entirely free and take not the results of work into .consideration ; who then cares for what the results

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66 may be? The man who works through freedom and love need not care for results, as he is himself altogether unselfish and his work cannot react so as to produce pain anywhere. Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have given them? It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends. Whatever you wish to do for a particular person, a city, or a state, do it by all means, but assume the same attitude as you have towards your T children-expect nothing in return. If you can incessantly take the position in which you are always the giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world, without any thought of any return, then will not your work bind you by attachment. Attachment comes only where we expect something in return for what we do. If working like slaves results in selfishness and attachment to results, working as masters of our own minds gives rise to the bliss of unattachment. We often talk of right and justice, but we find Zhang

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[.67 ] that in the world right and justice are dealt with like mere baby's talk. There are only two things that are positively active in guiding the conduct of men ; they are might and mercy. The exercise of might is invariably the exercise of selfishness. All men and women try to make the most of whatever power or advantage they have. Mercy is heaven itself; to be good we have all to be merciful. Even justice and right and might stand or mercy. All thought of obtaining any, return for the work we do hinders our spiritual progress; nay, in the end they bring much misery in their train. It is only work that is done as a free-will offering to humanity and to nature that does not bring with it any binding attachment. There is another way in which this idea of mercy and self, less charity can be put into practice; that is, by looking upon work as "worship" in case we believe in a personal God. Here we give up all the fruits of our work unto the Lord; and, worshipping Him thus, we have no right to expect , anything from mankind for the work we da The

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[ 68.] Lord himself works incessantly and is ever without attachment. Just as water cannot wet the lotus leaf, so work cannot bind the unselfish man by giving rise to attachment to results. The self-less and unattached man may go into the very heart of a crowded and sinful city; he will not thereby become mixed in sin. This idea of complete self-sacrifice is illustrated in the following story :-After the battle of Kurukshetra the five Pandava brothers performed a great sacrifice and made very large gifts to the poor. All the people expressed amazement at the greatness and richness of the sacrifice, and said that such a sacrifice the world had never seen before. But, after the ceremony, there came a little mungoose; half his body was golden, and the other half was brown; and he began to roll on the floor of the sacrificial hall. Then he said to those around, "You are all liars; this is no sacrifice." "What!" they exclaimed, " you say this is no sacrifice; do you not know how money and jewels were poured out upon the poor and

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[ 69 ] every one became rich and happy? This was the most wonderful sacrifice any man ever performed." But the mungoose said, "There was once a little village, and in it there dwelt a poor Brahmin, with his wife, his son and his son's wife. They were very poor and lived on alms gained by preaching and teaching, for which men made small gifts to them. There came in that land a three years' famine, and the poor Brahmin suffered more than ever. At last for five days the family starved, but on the sixth day the father brought home a little barley flour, which he had been fortunate enough to find, and he divided it into four parts, one for each member of the family. They prepared it for their meal, and just as they were about to eat it a knock came at the door. The father opened it, and there stood a guest. Now in India a guest is a sacred person ; he is as a god for the time being, and must be treated as such. So the poor Brahmin said, Come in, sir ; you are welcome.' He set before the guest his own portion of the food, and the

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[ 70 ] guest quickly ate it up, and then said, 'Oh, sir; you have killed me; I have been starving for ten days,' and this little bit has but increased my hunger.' Then the wife said to her husband, 'Give him my share,' but the husband said, 'Not $o.' The wife, however, insisted, saying, 'Here is a poor man, and it is our duty as householders to see that he is fed, and it is my duty as a wife to give him my portion, seeing that you have no more to offer him.' Then she gave her share to the guest, and he ate it up, and said he was still burning with hunger. So the son said, 'Take my portion also; it is the duty of a son to help his father to fulfil his obligations.' The guest ate that, but remained still unsatisfied; so the son's wife gave him her portion also. That was suffis cient, and the guest departed, blessing them. That night those four people died of starvation. A few granules of that flour had fallen on the floor, and when I rolled my body on them half of it became golden, as you see it. Since then I have been all over the world, hoping to find another

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[ 71 ) sacrifice like that, but nowhere have I found one ; nowhere else has the other half of my body been turned into gold. That is why I say this is no sacrifice." * This idea of charity is going out of India ; grand men are becoming less and less. When I was first learning English I read an English story book, where the first story was about a dutiful boy who had gone out to work and had giveni some of his money to his , old mother, and this was praised in three or four pages. What was that after all ? No Hindu boy can ever under: stand the great moral merit of that story. Now I understand it when I hear the Western ideaevery man for himself. And some men take everything for themselves, and fathers and mothers and wives and children go to the wall. That should never and nowhere be the ideal of the householder. " : Now you see what Karma-Yoga means ; even at the point of death to help any one, without asking questions. Be cheated millions of"times

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[ 72 ] and never ask a question, and never think of what you are doing. Never vaunt of your gifts to the poor or expect their gratitude, but rather be grateful to them for giving you the occasion of practising charity on them. Thus it is plain that to be an ideal householder is a much more difficult task than to be an ideal Sannyasin; the true life of work is indeed as hard as, if not harder than, the equally true life of renunciation. .

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CHAPTER IV. WHAT IS DUTY? It is necessary in the study of Karma-Yoga to know what work is, and with that comes naturally the question what duty is. If I have to do something I must first know my duty in regard to it, and then it is that I can do it well. The idea of duty, as already shewn, is so different in different nations. The Mohammedan says that what is written in his book, the Quran, is his duty; * the Hindu says that what is in his book, the Vedas, is his duty; and the Christian says that what is in his Bible is his duty. So we find that there are and must be varied ideas of duty, differing according to different states in life, and differing with different historical periods and with different nations. The term "duty," like every other universal abstract term, it: is impossible clearly to define; we can only get an idea of it by describing its surroundings and by knowing its

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[ 74 ] practical operations and results. When certain things occur before us we have all a natural or trained impulse to act in a certain manner towards them; when this impulse comes the mind begins to think about the situation; sometimes it thinks that it is good to act in a particular manner under the given conditions, at other times it thinks that it is wrong to act in the same manner even in the very same circumstances. The ordinary idea of duty everywhere is that every good man follows the dictates of his own mind, or conscience as it * is more frequently characterised. * But what is it that makes an act a duty ? If a Christian finds a piece of beef before him and does not eat it to save his own life, or will not give it to save the life of another man, he is sure to feel that he has not done his duty. But if a Hindu dares to eat that piece of beef 'or to give it to another Hindu, * he is equally sure to feel that, he too has not done his duty; the Hindu's training and education make him feel that way. In the last century there were recognised bands of robbers in India

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[ 75 ] called Thugs; they thought it was their duty to kill any man they could and take away all his money; the larger the number of men they killed * thus, the better they thought they were. Ordinarily if a man goes out into the street and shoots down another man, he is apt to feel sorry for it, thinking that he had done wrong, and that he had not clearly done his duty. But if the very same man, standing as a fighting soldier in the ranks of his regiment, kills not one man but twenty men by shooting them down, he is certain to feel glad and think that he did his duty re. markably well. Therefore it must be easy to see that it is not the thing done that defines a duty. "To give an objective definition of duty is thus entirely impossible; there is no such thing as an objectively defined duty. Yet there is duty from the subjective side ; any action that makes us go Godward is a good action, and is our duty; any action that makes us go downward is an evil action, and is not our duty. From the subjective stand-point we may see that certain acts have a

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[ 76 ] tendency to exalt and ennoble us, while certain other acts, have a tendency to degrade and to brutalise us. But it is not possible to make out with certainty which acts have which kind of tendency in relation to all persons of all sorts and conditions. There is, however, only one idea of duty which has been universally accepted by all mankind, of all ages and sects and countries, and that has been summed up in a Sanskrit aphorism thus :-"Do not injure any being; not injuring any being is virtue ; injuring any being is vice." This is the only universal and objective definition of duty that we can find. As to the subjective aspect of duty we cannot say more than that the spirit in which certain acts are done happens to be elevating and ennobling, while the spirit in which certain other acts are done tends to lower us often even in our own esteem. * The Bhagavad-Gita frequently alludes to duties dependent uporf birth, and position in life. Birth and position in life and in society largely determine the mental and moral attitude of

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[ 77 ] individuals towards the various activities of life. It is therefore our duty to do that work which will exalt and ennoble us in accordance with the ideals and activities of the society in which we are born. But it must be particularly remembered that the same ideals and activities do not prevail in all societies and countries; our ignorance of this is the main cause of much of the hatred of one nation against another. An American thinks that whatever an American does in accordance with the custom of his country is the best thing to do, and that whoever does not follow his custom must be a very wicked man. A Hindu thinks that his customs are the only right ones and are the best in the world, and that whosoever does not obey them must be the most wicked man living. This is quite a natural mistake into which we all fall easily. It is a very harmful mistake, and is the cause of more than half of the uncharitableness to be found in the world. When I came to this country and was going through the Chicago Fair, a man came behind me and gave a very

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[ 78 ] violent pull at my turban. I looked back and saw that he was a very gentlemanly-looking man, neatly dressed. I talked to him in English, and when I did that he became very much abashed, apparently because he did not think I could talk English. On another occasion in the same Fair another man gave me a push. When I asked him the reason why he did so, he also became abashed and at last stammered out an apology and said, "Why do you dress that way "The sympathies of these men were limited within the narrow range of their own language and their own fashion of dress. That very man who asked me why I did not dress as he did, and wanted to ill-treat me because of my dress is in all probability a very, good man; he may be a good father and a good citizen in every way; but the kindliness of his nature died out as soon as he saw a man in a different dress. Strangers are exploited in all countries, because they do not generally know how to defend themselves in the new situation; therefore they carry home false impressions of the *

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[ 79 ] peoples they see. Sailors, soldiers and traders behave in foreign lands in very queer ways, although they would not dream of doing any such thing in their own country; perhaps this is why the Chinese call Europeans and Americans "foreign devils." Therefore the one point we ought to remember is that we should always try to see the duty of others through their own eyes, and never wish to judge the customs of other races or other peoples by our own standard. "I am not the standard of the universe." This is the great lesson to learn. "I have to accommodate my self to the world, and not the world to me." Therefore we see that environments change the nature of our duties, and doing in the best way that duty, which is ours at any particular time, is the best thing we can do in this world. Let us do that duty which is ours by birth; and when we have done that, let us do the duty which is ours by our position in life and in society. Each man is placed in some position or other in life, and must do the duties of that

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( 80 ) position. There is, however, one great danger in human nature, viz, that man never looks clearly at himself. He thinks he is quite as fit to be on the throne as the king. Even if he is, he must first show that he has fully discharged the duty of his own position ; and when he has done that, higher duties will come to him. Let a man show to the world that he is strong enough to do well the little task that has been assigned to him; and when he has done that, another and a higher task will come to him. When we begin to work earnestly in the world, nature gives us blows right and left and soon enables us to find out our due position. No man can long occupy satisfactorily a position for which he is not fit. There is no use itf grumbling against nature's adjustment. He who does the lower work is not therefore a lower man. ' No man should be judged by the mere nature of his duties, but all are to be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform them. Later on we shall find that even this idea of duty has to be changed, and that the greatest and

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[ 81 ) the noblest work is done only when there is almost no motive urging us from behind. Yet it is work through the sense of duty that leads us to work without any idea of duty; when work will become worship-nay, something higher, then work will stand alone for its own sake. But that is the highest ideal, and the way to it lies through duty. We shall find that the philosophy behind all conceptions of duty, whether it be in the form of ethics or of love, is the same as in every kind of Yoga--the object being the attenuating of the lower self so that the real higher self may shine forth in glory; to circumscribe the frittering away of energies on the lower planes of existence, so that the soul may manifest itself on the higher and grander planes. This is accomplished by the continuous denial of low desires, which duty rigorously requires. The whole organization of society has thus been developed consciously or unconsciously on the land of actions and in the field of experience, where, by limiting the low desires of selfishness, we open the way to an k

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[ 82 ] unlimited expansion of the real higher nature of man. It is a well ascertained law of duty that, subjectively looked at, selfishness and sensuality lead to vice and wickedness, while unselfish love and self-control lead to the development of virtue. And duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; else it is a continuous friction. What parents can otherwise do their duties to their children? What children to their parents ? What husband to his wife? What wife to her husband? Do we not meet with cases of friction every day in our lives? Duty is sweet only through love, and love shines alone in freedom. Yet is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger, to jealousies and a hundred other petty things that must and do occur every day in human life? In all these little roughnesses that we meet with in life, the highest expression of freedom and of power is to forbear. Women, slaves to their own irritable, jealous tempers, are often apt to attribute blame to their husbands, and assert their own "freedom," as they think,

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[ 83 ] not knowing that they are only proving thus that they are slaves. So it is with husbands who are eternally finding fault with their wives. Chastity is the first virtue in man or woman, and the man who, however he may have strayed away, cannot be brought to the right path by a gentle and loving and chaste wife, is indeed very rare. This world is not yet as bad as that. I have heard much about brutal husbands all over the world and about the impurity of men, but my experience shows that there are quite as many brutal and impure women as men. 'If the women of America were as good and pure as their own constant assertions would lead a foreigner to believe, I am perfectly satisfied that there would not be one impure man' in this country.. With whom could men then become impure ? What brutality is there which purity and chastity cannot conquer ? A good, chaste wife, who thinks of every other man except her own husband as her child and has the attitude of a mother towards all men, will grow so great in the power of her purity.

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[ 84 ] that there cannot be a single man, however brutal, who will not breathe an atmosphere of holiness in her presence. Similarly every husband must look upon all women, except his own wife, in the light of his own mother or daughter or sister. That man, again, who wants to be a teacher of religion must look upon every woman as his mother, and always behave towards her as such. The position of the mother is the highest in the world, as it is the one place in which we are to learn and exercise the greatest unselfishness. The love of God is the only love that is higher than a mother's love; all other kinds of love are lower. It is the duty of the mother to think of her children first and then of herself. But, instead of that, if the parents are always thinking of themselves first, even in such small things as food, taking the best portions to themselves and fetting the children take what they can, the result is that the relation between parents and children becomes as good as the relation between birds and their young ones who, as soon as they are

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( 85 ) fledged, do not recognize any parents. Blessed, indeed, is the man who is able to look upon woman as the representative of the motherhood of God. Blessed, indeed, is the woman to whom man represents the fatherhood of God. Blessed are the children who look upon their parents as Divinity manifested on earth. The only way to rise is by doing the duty that is in our hands now, and making ourselves stronger; and thus go on growing higher, and higher, until we reach the highest state. Nor is duty of any kind to be slighted. I say again that a man who does the lower work is not, therefore, a lower man, than he who does the higher work ; a man should not be judged by the nature of his duties, but by the manner in which he does them. His manner of doing them and his power to do them are indeed the test of the man. A shoe-maker, who can turn out a strong, nice pair of shoes in the shortest possible time, is a better man, according to his profession and his work, than a professor, who talks nonsense every day of his life.

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[86] A certain young Sannyasin went to a forest and there meditated and worshipped, and practised Yoga for a long time. After twelve years of hard work and practice, he was one day sitting under a 1. tree, when some dry leaves fell upon his head. He looked up and saw a crow and a crane fighting on the top of the tree, and they made him very angry. He said, "What! Dare you throw those dry leaves upon my head!", and as he looked upon them with anger a flash of fire burst from his head-such was the Yogin's power-and burnt the birds to ashes. He was very glad; he was almost overjoyed at this development of power in himself; he could burn at a glance the crow and the crane. After a time he had to go into the town to beg his bread. He came and stood at a door and said: Mother, give me food." A voice came from inside the house:-"Wait a little, my son." The young man thought:" You wretched woman, how dare you make me wait! You do not know my power yet." While he was thinking thus, the voice from inside came again" Boy, don't be I

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[ 87 ) thinking too much of yourself. Here is neither crow nor crane." He was astonished; still he had to wait. At last a woman came, and he fell at her feet and said :-" Mother, how did you, know that ?" She said :-"My boy, I do not know your Yoga or your practices. I am a common every day woman, but I made you wait because my husband is ill, and I was nursing him; and that was my duty. All my life I have struggled to do my duty. As a daughter, when I was unmarried, I did my duty; and now, when I am married, I still do my duty; that is all the Yoga I practice, and by doing my duty I have become illumined; thus I could read your thoughts and what you had done in the forest. But if you want to know something higher than this, go to such and such a town and to the market, and there you will find a butcher; and he will tell you some thing that you will be very glad to learn.". The Sannyasin thought : "Why should I go to that town and to a butcher!" (Butchers are the lowest class in our country ;- they are called

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[ 88 ] Chandalas; they are not touched because they are butchers; they do in addition to their work as butchers the duty of scavengers and so forth). . But after what he had seen, his mind opened a little, so he went; and when he came near the the city he found the market, and there saw, at a distance, a big, fat butcher slashing away at animals with big knives talking and bargaining with different people. The young man said, "Lord help me! Is this the man from whom I am going to learn wisdom ? He is the incarnation of a demon, if he is anything at all." In the meantime this man looked up and said, "O Swamin, did that lady send you here? Take a seat until I have done my business." The Sannyasin thought, "What is it that comes to me here ?" And he took a seat; but the man went on, and after he had finished all his selling and bargaining, he took his money and said to the Sannyasin, " Come here, sir; come to my home." So they went there, and the butcher gave him a - seat, and said, "Wait there." Then he went into

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the house, and there were his father and mother. He washed them and fed them and did all he could to please them, and then came and took a seat before the Sannyasin and said, "Now, sir, you are come here to see me; what can I do for you?" Then this great Sannyasin asked him a few questions about the soul and about God, and the butcher gave him a lecture which forms even to-day a very celebrated work in India-the "Vyadha-Gita." It contains one of the highest flights in the Vedanta, the highest flight of metaphysics. You have heard of the Bhagavad. Gita, Krishna's sermon. When you have finished reading that, you should read the Vyadha-Gita; it contains the concentrated essence of the Vedanta philosophy. When the butcher finished his teaching, the Sannyasin felt astonished. He said, "Why are you in that body? With such knowledge as yours why are you in a butcher's body, and doing such filthy, ugly. work ?" "My son," : replied the Chandala " no duty is ugly, no * Skuty is impure. My birth, circumstances and

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[ 30 1 environments were there when I was born. In my boyhood I learnt the trade; I am unattached, and I try to do my duty well. I try to do my duty, as a householder, and I try to do all I can to make my father and mother happy.' I neither know your Yoga, npr have I become a Sannyasin, nor ever did I go out of the world into a forest; nevertheless, all this that you have heard and seen has come to me through the unattached doing of the duty which belongs to my position." . There is a sage in India, a great Yogin, one of the most wonderful men I have ever seen in my life. He is a peculiar man; he will not teach any one; if you ask him a question he will not answer. It is too much for himoto take up the position of a teacher; he will not do it. If you ask a question, and ifs.you wait for some days, in the course of conversation he will bring the subject out himself, and wonderful light will he " then throw on it. He told me once the secret of perfect work, and what he said was, "Let the end and the means be joined into one, and that is the

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[ 91 secret of work." When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the time being. This worship of work is for its own sake. Thus, in this story, the butcher and the woman did their duty with cheerfulness and whole-heartedness and willingness; and the result was that they became illuminated. Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God'; it is certainly a source of great help in enlighten. ing and emancipating the deluded and ignoranceencumbered soul of the Baddhas--the bound ones. This story clearly shows us that the right performance of the duties of any station in life, without our being attached to results and consequences, leads us to the highest realisation of the perfection of the soul. . Our duties are largely determined by our environments, and there can be no high and low in regard to them. It is the worker who is attached to results that grumbles about the nature

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[ 92 ] of the duty which has fallen to his lot to do; to the unattached worker all duties are equally good, and from efficient instruments with which selfishness and sensuality may be effectively killed, and the freedom of the soul unfailingly secured. We are all apt to think too highly of ourselves. When I was a boy I used to dream that I was a great emperor and a great this and a great that; so, I suppose, you too have dreamt. But it is all a dream and nature's justice is uniformly stern and unrelenting. Therefore our duties are also determined by our deserts to a much larger extent than we are willing to grant. By doing well the duty which is nearest to us, the duty which is in our hands now, we make ourselves stronger; and improving our strength in this manner step by step, we may even reach a state in which it shall be our privilege to do the most coveted and honored duties in life and in society. Competition rouses envy, and it kills the kindliness of the heart. To the grumbler all duties are distasteful; nothing will ever satisfy him, and his, whole life is

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[93] doomed to prove a failure. Let us work on, doing as we go whatever happens to be our duty, and being ever ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely shall we see the Light!

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CHAPTER V. WE HELP OURSELVES, NOT THE WORLD. Before considering further how devotion to duty helps us in our spiritual progress, let me place before you in as brief a compass as possible another aspect of what we in India mean by Karma. In every religion there are three parts ; first, there is the philosophy; then there is the mythology; and lastly, there is the ritual. The philosophy is, of course, the essence of every one of the religions ; the mythology gives expression to, that philosophy and .explains and illustrates it by means of the more or less legendary lives of great men and stories and fables of wonderful things and so on; ritual gives to that philosophy a still more concrete form so that every one may grasp it--ritual is in fact concretised philosophy. This ritual is Karma; it is necessary in every . religion, because most of us cannot understand abstract spiritual things until we grow.very much

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[ 95 ] spiritually. It is easy for men to think that they can understand anything, but when it comes to practical experience they find that abstract ideas are often very hard to comprehend. Therefore symbols are of great help and we cannot dispense with the symbolical method of putting things before us. From time immemorial symbols have been used by all kinds of religions. In one sense we cannot but think in symbols ; words themselves are symbols of thought. In another sense everything in the universe may be looked upon as a symbol. The whole universe is a symbol and God is the essence behind. This kind of symbol. ogy is not simply the creation of man; it is not that certain people belonging to a religion sit down together and think out certain symbols; hands and feet and so forth and bring them into existence out of their own minds. The symbols of religion have a natural growth. Otherwise, why is it that certain symbols are associated with certain ideas in the mind of almost every one ? Certain symbols are universally prevalent. Many

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[ 6 ] of you think that the cross came first into exis. tence as a symbol.in connection with the Christian religion; but as a matter of fact it existed before Christianity was, before Moses was born, before the Vedas were given out, before there was any human record of human things. The cross may be found to have been in existence among the Aztecs and the Phoeniciens : every one seems ta have had the cross. Again the symbol of the crucified Saviour, of a man crucified upon a cross appears to have been known to almost every nation. The circle has been a great symbol throughout the world. Then there is the most universal of all symbols, the Swastika. At one time it was thought that the Buddhists carried it all over the world with them, but it has been found out that ages before Buddhism it was used among nations. In old Babylon and in Egypt it was to be found. What does this show? All these symbols could not have been purely conventional: There must be some reason for them, some natural association between them and the human

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[ 97 ] . mind. Language is not the result of convention; it is not that people ever agreed to represent certain ideas by certain words; there never was an idea without a corresponding word or a word without a corresponding idea; ideas and words are in their nature inseparable. The symbols to represent ideas may be sound symbols or colour symbols. Deaf and dumb people have to think with other than sound symbols. Every thought in the mind has a form as its counterpart; this is called in Sanskrit philosophy nama-rupa-name" and form. It is as impossible to create by convention a system of symbols as it is to create a language. In the world's ritualistic symbols we have an expression of the religious thought of humanity. It is easy to say that there is no use of rituals and temples and all such paraphernalia; every baby says that in modern times. But it must be easy for all to see that those who worship inside a temple are in many respects different from those who will not worship there. Therefore the association of particular temples, rituals and M

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[ 98 ] other concrete forms with particular religions has a tendency to bring into the mind of the followers of those religions the thoughts for which those concrete things stand as symbols; and it is not safe to ignore rituals and symbology altogether. The study and practice of these things form naturally a part of Karma-Yoga. There are many other aspects of this science of work: One among them is to know the relation between thought and word and what can be achieved by the power of the word. In every religion the power of the word is recognised, so much so that in some of them creation itself is said to have come out of the word. The external aspect of the thought of God is the Word, and, as God thought and willed before He created, creation came out of the Word. In this stress and hurry of our materialistic life our nerves lose thing sensibility and become hardened like an iron rope. The older we grow, the longer we are knocked about in the world, the more hardened do our nerves become; and we are apt to neglect things

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[ 99 ] that are even persistently and prominently happening around us. Human nature, however, asserts itself sometimes and we are led to inquire into and wonder at some of these common occurrences; and wondering thus is the first step in the acquisition of light. Apart from the higher philosophic and religious value of the Word we may see that sound symbols play a prominent part in the drama of human life. I am talking to you, I am not touching you; the pulsations of the air caused by my speaking go into your ear, they touch your nerves and produce effects in your minds. You cannot resist this. What can be more wonderful than this? another a fool, and this other stands up and clenches his fist and lands a blow on his nose: Look at the power of the word! There is a woman weeping and miserable; another woman comes along and speaks to her a few gentle words; the doubled up frame of the weeping woman becomes straightened at once, her sorrow is gone and she already begins to smile. Think One man calls

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[ 100 ] of the power of words! They are a great force in higher philosophy as well as in common life. Day and night we manipulate this force without thought and without enquiry. To know the nature of this force and to use it well is also a part of Karma-Yoga. Our duty to others means helping others; that is, doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world ? Apparently to help the world, but it is really to help ourselves. We should always try to help the world; that should be the highest motive in us; but, when we analyse the thing properly, we find that the world does not require our help at all. This world was not made that..you or I should come and help it. I once read a sermon in which it was said :-"All this beautiful world.is very good, because it gives us time and opportunity to help others." Apparently, this is a very beautiful sentiment; but, in "One sense, it is quite a curse to think so ; - for is it not a blasphemy to say that the 'world needs aur help? We cannot deny that there is much-misery:

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[ 101 ] in the world; to go out and help others is, there. fore, the highest motive we can have, although; in the long run, we shall find that helping others is only helping ourselves. As a boy I had some white mice. They were kept in a little box and had little wheels made for them, and when the mice tried 10 cross the wheels, the wheels turned and turned, and the mice never got anywhere. So it is with the world and our helping it. The only help is that we get moral exercise. This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself. If a blind man begins to think of the world, it is either as soft or hard, or as cold or hot. We are a mass of happiness or misery;: we have seen that it is so with us hundreds of times in our lives. As a rule, the young are optimistic and the old pessimistic. The young have all life before them; the old are complaining i their day is gone ; hundreds of desires, which they cannot - fulfil, are struggling in their hearts. Life is almost at an end for them. Both are foolish : Aevertheless. This life is neither good nor evil. '.

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[ 102 ) It is according to the different states of mind in which we look at it. The most practical man would neither call it good nor evil. Fire, by itself, is neither good nor evil. . When it keeps us warm we say :-"How beautiful is fire!". When it burns our fingers we blame the fire. Still, in itself it is neither good nor bad.' According as we use it," it produces in us the feeling of good or bad; and so also is this world. It is perfect. By perfection is meant that it is perfectly fitted to meet its ends. We may all be perfectly sure that it will go on beautifully well without us, and need not bother our heads wishing to help it. Yet we must do good; the desire to do good is the highest moral motive power we have, if we know all theirtime that it is.a privilege to help others. Do not stand on a high pedestal and take five cents in your hand and say, "Here my poor man," but be grateful that the poor man is there, so that by giving a gift to him. you are able to help yourself. It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver. Be thankful that you are

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[ 103 ] allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and per: fect. All good acts tend to make us pure and perfect. What can we do at best? Build a hospital, make roads, or erect charity asylums ! We may or: ganize a charity and collect two or three millions of dollars, build a hospital with one million, with the second give balls and drink champagne, and of the third let the officers steal half, and leave the rest finally to reach the poor; but what are all these ? One mighty wind, in five minutes can break all your buildings up. Wlat shall we do then? One volcanic eruption may sweep away all our roads and hospitals and cities and buildings. Let us give up all this foolish talk of doing good to the world. It is not waiting for your or' my help; yet we must work and constantly do good, because it is a blessing to ourselves. That is the only way we can become perfect. No beggar whom we have helped has ever owed a single cent to us; We owe everything to him, because he has allowed us to exercise our powers of piety and pity and

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[104 ] charity on him. It is entirely wrong to think that we have done, or can do, good to the world, or to think that we have helped such and such people. It is a foolish thought, and all foolish thoughts bring misery. We think that we have helped some man and expect him to thank us; and, because he does not, unhappiness comes to us. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do? Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow man? If we were really unattached, we should escape all this pain of vain expectation, and could cheer. fully do good work in the world. Never will unhappiness or misery come through work done without attachment. The world will go on with its happiriess and misery through eternity. There was a poor man who wanted some * money; and, somehow, he had heard that, if he could get hold of a ghost or some spirit, he might command him to bring money or anything he liked; so he was very anxious to get hold of a

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[105] "" ghost. He went about searching for a man who would give him a ghost; and at last he found a sage, with great powers, and besought this sage to help him. The sage asked him what he would do with a ghost. "I want a ghost to work for me; teach me how to get hold of one, sir; I desire it very much," replied the man. But the sage said, "Don't disturb yourself, go home." The next day the man went again to the sage and began to weep and pray. "Give me a ghost; I must have a ghost, sir, to help me.' At last the sage was disgusted, and said, "Take this charm, repeat this magic word, and a ghost will come, and whatever you say to this ghost he will do for you. But beware; they are terrible beings, and must be kept continually busy. If you fail to give him work he will take your life." The man replied "That's easy; I can give him work for all his life." Then he went to a forest, and after long repetition of the magic word, a huge ghost appeared before him, with big teeth, and said :"I am a ghost. I have been conquered by your N

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[ 106 ] magic. But you must keep me constantly employed. The moment you fail to give me work, I will kill you." The man said :-"Build me a palace," and the ghost said, "It is done; the palace is built." "Bring me money," said the man. "Here is your money," said the ghost. "Cut 'this forest down, and build a city in its place." "That is done," said the ghost ; "anything more?" Now the man began to be frightened and said :--"I can give him nothing more to do; he does everything in a trice." The ghost said :-"Give me something to do or I will eat you up."'. 'The poor man could find no further occupation for him, and was frightened. So he ran and ran and at last reached the sage, and said, "Oh, sir, protect my life!" The sage asked him what the matter was, and the man replied :"I have nothing to give the ghost to do. Everything I tell him to do he does in a moment, and he threatens to eat me up if I do not give him work." Just then the ghost arrived, saying, "I'll eat you up," and he would have swallowed the

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107 ] man. The man began to shake, and begged the sage to save his life. The sage said :--"I will find you a way out. Look at that dog with a curly tail. Draw your sword quickly and cut the tail off and give it to the ghost to straighten out." The man cut off the dog's tail and gave it to the ghost, saying, "Straighten that out for me." The ghost took it and slowly and carefully straightened it out, but as soon as he let it go, it instantly curled up againe Once more he laboriously straightened it out, only to find it again curled up as soon as he attempted to let go of it. Again he patiently straightened it out, but as soon as he let it go, it curled up again. So, he went on for days and days, until he was exhausted, and said, "I was never in such trouble before in my life. I am an old veteran ghost, but never before was I in such trouble. I will make a compromise with you," he said to the man. "You let me off and I will let you keep all I have given you and will promise not to harm you." The man was much pleased, and accepted the offer gladly.

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[108] This world is that dog's curly tail, and people have been striving to straighten it out, each in, his own way, for hundreds of years; but when they let it go, it has curled up again. How can it be otherwise? One must first know how to work without attachment, then he will not be a fanatic. When we know that this world is like a dog's curly tail and will never get straightened in the way we want, we shall not become fanatics. There are fanatics of various kinds, wine fanatics, cigar fanatics and so on. There was a young lady once in this class. She is one of a number of ladies in Chicago who have built a house into which they take the working people and give them some music and gymnastics. One day this young lady was talking to me about the evils of drinking and sinoking and so on, and told me that she knew the remedy for it all. I asked her what it was, and she said, "Don't you know the Hall House?" Evidently in her opinion this Hall House is a great panacea, 'for all the evils that human flesh is heir to. There are some fanatics in India who think that, if a

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[ 109 ] woman is allowed to have two or three husbands, it will cure all evil. All this is fanaticism and wise men will never be fanatics. They can never do real work. If there were no fanaticism in the world, it would make much more progress than it does now. It is all silly nonsense to think that fanaticism makes for the progress of mankind. It is, instead, a retarding block, because it rouses hatred and anger, and causes people to fight against each other, and makes them unsympathetic. We think that whatever we do or possess is the best thing in the world, and that those things which we do not do or possess are of no value. So, always remember this curly tail of the dog whenever you have a tendency to become a fanatic. You need not worry yourself or make yourself sleepless about the world; it will go on in spite of you. The Lord God is its Governor and Maintainer, and in spite of wine fanatics and cigar fanatics and all sorts of marriage fanatics, the world will go on under His care. When you have avoided fanaticism, then alone will you

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[ 10 ] work well. It is the level-headed man, the calm man, of good judgment and cool nerves, of great sympathy and love, who does good work and so does good to himself. The fanatic is foolish and has no sympathy; he can never straighten the world, nor himself become pure and perfect. Do you not remember the "Mayflower" people in your own history, and how they came to this land as Puritans? In the beginning they were very pure and good, but very soon they too began to persecute other people. It is the same everywhere in the history of humanity; even those that run away from persecution indulge in persecuting others as soon as a favourable opportunity to do so turns up. I have read of two wonderful ships. The first is Noah's Ark and the second is the "Mayflower." The Jews hold that the whole of creation has come out of Noah's Ark and the Americans say that out of the "Mayflower" nearly half the world has come. I scarcely'meet one in this country who does not say, " My grandfather or great-grand-father came out of the

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[m ] Mayflower." This is fanaticism of another sort. In ninety cases out of a hundred fanatics must have bad livers, or they are dyspeptics, or they are in some way diseased. By and by even physicians will find out that fanaticism is a kind of disease. I have seen plenty of it-Lord save me from it! My experience has become condensed in this form, namely, that we should keep away from all sorts of fanatical reforms. Do you mean to say that the wine fanatics love the poor fellows who become drunkards ? Fanatics are fanatics because they expect to get something for themselves out of the fanaticism. As soon as the battle is over, they go in for the spoil. As soon as you come out of the company of fanatics you learn how to really to love and sympathise. It will become possible for you to sympathise with the drunkard and to know that he also is a man like you. You will then try to understand the many circumstances that are dragging him down, and feel that if you had been in his place you would perhaps have committed suicide. I remember a

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112] woman whose husband is a great drunkard complaining to me of his drunkenness. I am convinced that a large proportion of drunkards are manufactured by their wives. My business is to tell the truth and not to flatter any one. Those unruly women from whose minds the words bear and forbear are gone for ever, and whose false ideas of independence lead them to say that they want men to be down under their feet, and who begin to screatch and howl as soon as men dare to say any thing to them which they do not like such women are becoming the bane of the world, and it is a wonder that they do not drive half the men in it to commit suicide. These women get their half-starved preachers to side with them, and say to them, "Ladies, you are the most 'wonderful beings ever made." Then the women de. clare about every one of such preachers, "This is the preacher for us," and give them money and other things. It is in this way that things are ,,going on. Life is not such a joke as that; it is a little more serious.

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[ 13 ] Let me ask you now to remember the chief points in to-day's lecture. Firstly, we have to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world and that the world does not owe to us, any. thing. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. In helping the world we really help ourselves. The second point to remember is that there is a God in this universe. It is not true that this universe is drifting about standing in need of help from you and from me. God is ever present therein. He is undying and eternally active and infinitely watchful. When the whole universe sleeps, He sleeps not; He is working incessantly; all the changes and manifestations of the world are His. Thirdly, we ought not to hate any one. This world will always continue to be a mixture of good and evil. Our duty is to sympathise with the weak and to love even the wrong-doer. The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise, so as to become stronger -- and stronger spiritually. Fourthly, we ought not mo.

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[114] to be fanatics of any kind, because fanaticism is opposed to love. You hear fanatics glibly saying, "I do not hate the sinner, I hate the sin;" but I am prepared to go any distance to see the face of that man who can really make a distinction between the sin and the sinner. It is easy to say so. If we can distinguish well between quality and substance we may become perfect men. It is not easy to do this. And further, the calmer we are and the less disturbed our nerves, the more shall we love and the better will our work be.

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CHAPTER VI. NON-ATTACHMENT IS COMPLETE SELF-ABNEGATION. Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us in reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs may act on us. Perhaps all of you have observed it as a fact that when persons do evil actions they be. come more and more evil, and when they begin to do good they become stronger and stronger and learn to do good at all times. This intensi. fication of the influence of action cannot .be explained on any other ground, than that we can act and react upon each other. To take an illustration from physical science, when I am doing a certain action, my mind may be said to be in a certain state of vibration; all mind which are in similar circumstances will have the tendency to be affected by my mind. If there are different * musical instruments tuned alike in one room, all

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A [116] of you may have noticed that when one is struck, the others have the tendency to vibrate so as to give the same note. So in this illustration, it may be seen that the instruments had all the same tension and were affected alike by the same impulse. All minds that have the same tension, so to say, will be equally affected by the same thought. Of course, this influence of thought on mind will vary, according to distance and other causes, but the mind is always open to be affected. Suppose I am doing an evil act, my mind is in a certain state of vibration, and all minds in the universe, which are in a similar state, have the possibility of being affected by the vibration of my mind. So, when I am doing a good action, my mind is in another state of vibration; and all minds similarly strung have the possibility of being affected by my mind; and this power of mind upon mind is more or less according as the force of the tension is a greater or less. : Following this simile further, it is quite possible. that, just as light waves may travel for millions of

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[ 117 ] years before they reach any object, so thought waves may also travel hundreds of years before they meet an object which will vibrate in unison with them. It is quite possible, therefore, that this atmosphere of ours is full of such thought pulsations, both of good and evil. Every thought projected from every brain goes on pulsating, as it were, until it meets a fit object that will receive it. Any mind which is open to receive some of these impulses will receive them immediately. So, when a man is doing evil actions, he has brought his mind to a certain state of tension ; and all the waves which correspond to that state of tension, and which may be said to be already in the atmosphere, will struggle to enter into his mind. * That is why an evil-doer generally goes on doing more and more evil. His actions become intensified. Such, also, will be the case with the doer of good; he will open himself to all the good waves that are in the atmosphere, and his good actions also will become intensified. We run, therefore, a twofold danger. in doing evil ; 'first,

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[ 118 ] we open ourselves to all the evil influences surrounding us; secondly, we create evil which will affect others. It may be possible that our evil actions will affect others hundreds of years hence. In doing evil we injure ourselves and others also. In doing good we do good to ourselves and to others as well; and, like all other forces in man, these forces of good and evil also gather strength from outside. U According to Karma-Yoga, the action any man has done cannot be destroyed, until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results. If I do an evil action, I'must suffer for it; there is no power in this universe to stop or stay it. Similarly if I do a good action, there is no power in the universe which can stop its bearing good results. The cause must have its effect; nothing can prevent or restrain this. Now comes a very fine and serious matter for consideration about Karma-' Yoga-namely, that these actions of ours, both good and evil, are all intimately connected with

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[ 119 ] each other. We cannot put a line of demarcation and say, this action is entirely good and this entirely evil. There is no action which does not bear good and evil fruits at the same time. To take the nearest example: I am talking to you, and some of you, perhaps, think I am doing good; and at the same time I am, perhaps, killing thousands of microbes in the atmosphere; I am thus doing evil to something else. There cannot be any action of man's which is either entirely good or entirely evil. When the action is very near to us and affects those we know, we say that it is very good action, provided it affects them in a good manner. For instance, you may call my speaking to you very good, but the microbes will not; the microbes you do not see, but yourselves you do see. The way in which my talk affects you is obvious to you, but how it affects the microbes is not so obvious. And so, if we analyse our" evil actions also we may find that some good possibly results from them somewhere. "He who in good action sees that there is something evit

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[120] in it, and in the midst of evil sees' that there is something good in it somewhere-he has known the secret of work." But what is it that follows from this ? It is this conclusion--that, howsoever we may try, there cannot be any action which is perfectly pure, * or any which is perfectly impure, taking purity and impurity in the sense of injury and non-injury. We cannot breathe or live without injuring others, and every bit of the food we eat is taken away from another's mouth : our very lives are crowding out other lives. So says the Bhagvad-Gita. It may be men, or animals, or small microbes, but some one or other of these we have to crowd out. That being the case, it naturally follows that a thoroughly harmless perfection can never be attained in relation to any work. We may work through all eternity, but there will be no way out of this intricate maze; you may work on, and on, and on; there will be no end to this inevitable association of good and evil in the results of work.

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[121] : The second point to consider is, what is the end of work? We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, or death, or unhappiness, or wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant; but if we think for a moment we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and bad are the obverse and reverse of the same coin ? How can you have good without evil at the same time ? What is meant by perfection ? A perfect life is almost a contradiction in terms. Life itself is a state of continous struggle between ourselves and everything outside. Every moment we are fighting actually with external nature, and if we are defeated our life has to go. It is, for instance, a continuous struggle for food and air. If food or air fails we die. Life is not a simple and smoothly flowing thing, but it is a compound effect. This complex struggle between something inside and

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( 122 ) the external world is what we call life. So, it is clear on the very face of it that, when this struggle ceases, there will be an end of life. .. What is meant by ideal happiness is that, when it is attained, this struggle will cease altogether. But then life will cease, and the struggle can only cease when life itself has ceased. Then again, before we attain even one-thousandth part of this ideal happiness this earth will have greatly cooled down, and we shall not be. So this millennium cannot be in this world, although it may be anywhere else. We have seen already that in helping the world we help ourselves. The main effect of work done for others is to purify ourselves. By means of the constant effort to do good to others we are trying to forget ourselves ; this forgetfulness of self is the one great lesson we have to learn in life. Man thinks foolishly that he can make himself happy, and after years of struggle finds out at last that true happiness consists in killing selfishness and that no one can make him happy except himself. Every act of charity, every

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[123] thought of sympathy, every action of help, every good deed, is taking so much of self-importance away from our little selves and making us think of ourselves as the lowest and the least; and, therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Fnana, Bhakti and Karma, all come to one point. The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation, where there is no "I," but all is "thou"; and whether he is conscious, or unconscious of it Karma-Yoga leads man to that end. A religious preacher may become horrified at the idea of an impersonal God; he may insist on a personal God and wish to keep up his own identity and individuality whatever he may mean by that. But his ideas of ethics, if they are really good, cannot but be based on the highest self-abnegation. It is the basis of all morality; you may extend it to men, or animals, or angels, it is the one basic idea, the one fundamental principle running through all ethical systems. You will find various classes of men in this world. First, there are the God-men, whose self

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[124] abnegation is complete, and who do only good to others even at the sacrifice of their own lives. These are the highest of men. If there are a hundred of such in any country, that country need never despair. But they are unfortunately too few. Then there are the good men who do good to others so long as it does not injure themselves; and there is a third class, the diabolical people, who, to do good to themselves, injure others. It is said by a Sanskrit poet that there is a fourth unnameable class of people who injure others merely for injury's sake. Just as there are at one pole of existence the highest good men, who do good for the sake of doing good, so, at the other pole, there are others who will injure others just for the sake of the injury. They do not gain anything thereby, but it is their nature to do evil. We thus see that, according to our poet, the man who sacrifices himself to do good to others, the man with the highest self-abnegation, is really the greatest man. Here are two Sanskrit words. One is Pravritti," which means' revolving towards, and the

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[125] other is "Nivritti," which means revolving away! The "revolving towards" is what we call the world, the "I and mine"; it includes all those things which are always enriching that "me" by wealth and money and power, and name, and fame, and which are of a grasping nature, always tending to accumulate everything in one centre, that centre being "myself." That is the "pravritti," the natural tendency of every human being; taking everything from every where and heaping it around one centre, that centre being man's own sweet self. When this tendency begins to break, when it is "nivritti" or "going away from," then begin morality and religion. Both "pravritti," and "nivritti" are of the nature of work, the former is evil work, and the latter is good work. This "nivritti" is the fundamental basis of all morality and all religion, and the very perfection, of it is entire self-abnegation, readiness to sacrifice mind and body and everything for another being.. When a man has reached that state he has attained to the perfection of Karma-Yoga. This is the.

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[ 126 ] highest result of good works. Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready' to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, and the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation. However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ all mankind stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. Here, it is not at all any question of creed, or doctrinem-even men who are very much opposed to all religious ideas, when they see one of these acts of complete self-sacrifice, feel that they must revere it. Have you not seen even a most, bigoted Christian, when he reads Edwin

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[ 127 ] Arnold's" Light of Asia," stand in reverence of Buddha, who preached no God, preached nothing but self-sacrifice? The only thing is that the bigot does not know that his own end and aim in life is exactly the same as that of those from whom he differs. The worshipper, by keeping constantly before him the idea of God and a surrounding of good, comes to the same point at last and says, "Thy will be done," and keeps nothing to himself. That is self-abnegation. The philosopher, with his knowledge, sees that the seeming self is a delusion and at once easily gives it up; it is self-abnegation. So Karma, Bhakti and Jnana al* meet here ; and this is what was meant by all the great preachers of ancient times, .when they taught that God is not the world. There is one thing which is the world and another which is God; and this distinction is very true; what they mean by world is selfishness. Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish ; and then he is in God. "Another may live in a hut and

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[ 128 ] wear rags, and have nothing in the world ; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world. To come back to one of our main points, we say that we cannot do good without at the same time doing some evil, or do evil without doing some good. Knowing this, how can we work ? There have therefore been sects in this world who have in an astoundingly preposterous way preached slow 'suicide as the only means to get out of the world; because, if a man lives he has to kill poor little animals and plants or do injury to something or some one. So, according to them the only way out of the world is to die; the Jainas have preached this doctrine as their highest ideal. This teaching seems to be very logical. But the true solution is found in the Gita. It is the theory of non-attachment, to be attached to nothing while doing our work of life. Know that you are separated entirely from the world ; that you are in the world, and that whatever you may be doing in it; "you are not doing that for your own sake: Any action that you do for yourself will bririg its effect

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[ 129 ] to bear upon you. If it is a good action you will have to take the good effect, and, if it is a bad action, you will have to take the bad effect; but any action that is not done for your own sake, whatever it be, will have no effect on you. There is to be found a very expressive sentence in our scriptures embodying this idea :--Even if he kill the whole universe (or be himself killed) he is neither the killed nor the killing, when he knows. that he is not acting for himself at all." Therefore Karma-Yoga teaches, "Do not give up the world; live in the world, imbibe its influences as much as you can; but if it be for your own enjoyment's sake-work not at all. Enjoyment should not be the goal. First kill yourself and then take the whole world as yourself; as the old "Christians used to say " the old man must die." This old man is the selfish idea that the whole world is made for our enjoyment. Foolish parents teach their children to pray, "O Lord, thou hast created this sun for me and this moon for me," as if the Lord has had nothing else to do than to create

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[ 130 ) everything for, these babies. Do not teach you children such nonsense. Then again, there are people who are foolish in another way; they teach us that all these animals were created for us to kill and eat, and that this universe is for the enjoy. ment of men. That is all foolishness. A tiger may say, "Man was created for me," and pray "O Lord, how wicked are these men, who do no come and place themselves before me to be eaten; they are breaking your law." If the worlo is created for us, we are also created for the world. That this world is created for our enjoy. rent is the most wicked idea that holds us down This world is not for our sake ; millions pass out of it every year; the world does not feel it millions of others are supplied in their place Just as much the world is for us, we are also foi the world. : .. ; To work properly, therefore, you have first to give up the idea of attachment. Secondly, d not mix iti the fray, hold yourself as a witness and go on working. My old master used to say

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[ 131 ] " Look upon your children as a nurse does." The nurse will take your baby and fondle it and play with it and behave towards it as gently as if it were her own child; but as soon as you give her notice to quit, she is ready to start off with bag and baggage from the house. Everything in the shape of attachment is forgotten; it will not give the ordinary nurse the least pang to leave your children and take up other children. Even so are you to be with all that you consider your own. You are the nurse, and, if you believe in God, believe that all these things which you consider yours are really His, The greatest weakness often insinuates itself as the greatest good and strength. It is a weakness to think that any, one is dependent on me, and that I can do good to another. This pride is the mother of all our attachment; and through this attachment comes all our pain. We must inform our minds that no one in this universe depends upon us; not one beggar depends on our charity; not one soul on our kindness; not one living thing on our

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[132] help. All are helped on by nature, and will be so helped even though millions of us were not here. The course of nature will not stop for such as you and me; it is, as already pointed out, only a blessed privilege to you and to me that we are allowed, in the way of helping others, to educate ourselves. This is a great lesson to learn in life, and when we have learned it fully we shall never be unhappy; we can go and mix without harm in society anywhere and everywhere. You may have wives and husbands, and regiments of servants, and kingdoms to govern; if only you act on the principle that the world is not for you and does not inevitably need you, they can do you no harm. This very year some of your friends may have died. Is the world waiting without going on, for them to come again? Is its current stopped? No, it goes on. So drive and thrash out of your mind the idea that you have to do something for the world; the world does not require any help, from you. It is sheer nonsense on the part of any man to think that he is born to help the

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[ 133.) world; it is simply pride, it is selfishness insinuating itself in the form of virtue. When you have trained your mind and your muscles to realise this idea of the world's non-dependence on you or on anybody, there will then be no reaction in the form of pain resulting from work. When you give something to a man and expect nothing-do not even expect the man to be grateful--his ingratitude will not tell upon you, because you never expected anything, never thought you had any right to anything in the way of a return; you gave him what he deserved ; his own Karma got it for him ; your Karma made you the carrier thereof. Why should you be proud of having given away something? You are the porter that carried the money or other kind of gift, and the world deserved it by its own Karma. Where is then the reason for pride in you? There is nothing very great in what you give to the world. When you have acquired the feeling of nonattachment, there will then be neither good nor evil for you. . It is only selfishness that causes the

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[134] difference between good and evil. It is a very hard thing to understand, but you will come to learn in time that nothing in the universe has power over you until you allow it to exercise such a power. Nothing has power over the Self of man, until that Self becomes a fool and loses independence. So, by non-attachment, you overcome and deny the power of anything to act upon you. It is very easy to say that nothing has the right to act upon you until you allow it to do so; but what is the true sign of the man who really does not allow anything to work upon him, who is neither happy nor unhappy when acted upon by the external world? The sign is that it causes on change in his mind whether a mountain tumbles on him and crushes him to pieces, or the "most blessed scenes come before him and the' most blessed things happen to him; he is the same in good fortune or in bad fortune; in all conditions he continues to remain the same: There was a great sage in India called Vyasa. This Vyasa is known as the author of the Vedanta

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[ 135 ] aphorisms, and was a holy man. His father had tried to become a very perfect man and had failed: His grandfather had also tried and failed. His great-grandfather had similarly tried and fail. ed. He himself did not succeed perfectly, but his son, Suka, was born perfect. Vyasa taught his son wisdom, and, after teaching him the knowledge of truth himself, he sent him to the court of King Janaka. He was a great king and was called Janaka Videha. Videha means "outside the body." Although a king, he had entirely forgotten that he was a body; he felt that he was a spirit all the time. This boy Suka was sent to be taught by him. The king knew that Vyasa's son was coming to him to learn wisdom; so he made certain arrangements beforehand; and when the boy presented himself at the gates of the palace, the guards took no notice of him whatsoever., They only gave him a seat, and he sat there for three days and nights, no. body speaking to him, nobody asking him who he was for whence he was. He was the son of

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[ 136 ] d very great sage; his father was honored by the whole country, and he himself was a most respectable person; yet the low, vulgar guards of the palace would take no notice of him. After that, suddenly, the ministers of the king and all the big officials came there and received him with the greatest honors. They conducted him in and showed him into splendid rooms, gave him the most fragrant baths and wonderful dresses, and for eight days they kept him there in all kinds of luxury. That solemnly serene face of Suka did not change even to the smallest extent by the change in the treatment accorded to him; he was the same in the midst of this luxury as when waiting at the door. Then he was brought before the king. The king was on his thlone, music was playing, and dancing and other amuse. ments were going on. The king then gave him a cup of milk, full to the brim, and asked him to go seven times round the hall without spilling even a drop of the milk: The boy took the cup and went on in the midst of the music and the

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[ 137 ] attraction of the beautiful faces << desired by the king, seven times did ne go round, and not a drop of the milk was spilt. The boy's mind could not be attracted by anything in the world, unless he allowed it to affect him. * And when he brought the cup to the king, the king said to him, "What your father has taught you, and what you have learned yourself, I can only, repeat; you have known the truth; go home." . Thus the man that has practised control over himself cannot be acted upon by anything that is. outside; there is no more slavery for him. His mind has become free ; such a man alone is fit to live well in the world. We generally find men, holding two opinions regarding the world. Some are pessimists and say "How horrible this world is, how wicked !" Some others are optimists and they say "How beautiful this: world is, how wonderful !'". To those who have not controlled their: Own: minds, the world is either full of evil or at best a imixture of good and evil. This very world will become to us an optimistic world when

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[ 38 ] we become masters of our own minds. Nothing will then work upon us as good or evil; we shall find everything to be in its proper place, to be harmonious. Some men, who begin by saying that tKe world is a hell, often end by saying that it is a heaven when they succeed in the practice of self-control. If we are genuine Karma-Yogins and wish to train ourselves to the attainment of this state, wherever we may begin we are sure to end in perfect self-abnegation; and as soon as this seeming self has gone, the whole world, which at first appears to us to be filled with evil, will appear to be heaven itself and full of blessedness, Its very atmosphere will be blessed; every human face there will be good. Such is the end and aim of Karma-Yoga, and such is its perfection of practical life. Our various Yogas do not conflict with each other; each of them * leads us to the same goal and makes us perfect; only each has to be strenuously practised. The whole secret is in practising. First you have to hear, then think, and then practise. This is true of every. Yoga.

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[ 139 ] 1 You have first to hear about it and understand what it is; and many things which you do not understand will be made clear to you by constant hearing and thinking. It is hard to understand every thing at once. The explanation of every thing is after all in yourself. No one was ever really taught by another; each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion which rouses the internal teacher to work to understand things. Then things will be made clear to us by our own power of perception and thought, and we shall realise them in our own souls; and that realisation will grow into the intense power of will. First it is feeling, then it becomes willing, and out of that willing comes the tremendous force for work that will go through every vein and nerve and muscle, until the whole mass of your body is changed into an instrument of the unselfish Yoga of work, and the desired result of perfect self-abnegation and utter unselfishness is duly attained. This attainment does not depend on any dogma, or doctrine, or belief "

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. . . { 140 ) Whether orie is Christian, or Jew, or Gentile, it does not matter. Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book; without going into a 'single church or temple. Each one of our Yogas is fitted to make man perfect even without the help of the others, because they have all the same goal in view. The Yogas of*work, of wisdom, and of devotion are all capable of serving as direct and independent means for the attainment of Moksha. "Fools alone say that work and philosophy are different, not the learned." The learned know that, though apparently different from each other, they at last lead to the same goal of human perfection.

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CHAPTER VII. FREEDOM. In addition to meaning work, we have stated that psychologically the word Karma also implies causation. Any work, any action, any thought that produces an effect is called a Karma. Thus the law of Karma means the law of causation, of inevitable cause and sequence. Wheresoever there is a cause, there an effect must be produced; this necessity cannot be resisted, and this law of Karma, according to our philosophy, is true throughout the whole universe. Whatever we see, or feel, or do; whatever action there is anywhere in the universe; while being the effect of past work on the one hand, it becomes, on the other hand, a cause in its turn, and produces its own effect. It is necessary, together with this, to consider what is meant by the word law. We may see psychologically that by law is meant the tendency of a series to repeat itself. When

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( 142 ) We see one event followed by another, or some. times happening simultaneously with another, we expect this sequence or co-existence to recur. Our old logicians and philosophers of the Nyaya school call this law by the name of Vyapti. According to them all our ideas of law are due to association. A series of phenomena becomes associated with things in our mind in a sort of invariable order, so that whatever we perceive at any time is immediately referred to other facts in the mind. Any one idea or, according to our psychology, any one wave that is produced in the unind-stuff, chitta, must always give rise to many other waves. This is the psychological idea of association, and causation is only an aspect of this grand and pervasive principle of association. This pervasiveness of association is what is, in Sanskrit, called Vyapti. In the external world the idea of kaw is the same as in the internal world--the expectation that a particular phenomenon will be followed by another, and that the series will repeat itself so far as we can see: ": Really speaking,

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[ 143 ] therefore, law does not exist in nature. Practically it is an error to say that gravitation exists in the earth, or that there is any law existing objectively anywhere in nature. Law is the method, the manner in which our mind grasps a series of phenomena ; it is all in the mind. Certain phenomena happening one after another of together, and followed by the conviction of the regularity of their recurrence, thus' enabling our minds to grasp the method of the whole series, constitute what we call law. The next question for consideration is what we mean by law being universal. Our universe is that portion of existence which is characterised by what the Sanskrit psychologists call desa-kala, nimika, or what is known to European psychology as space; time, and causation. This universe is only one part of infinite existence; one part which is thrown into a peculiar mould, or is composed of space, time, and, causation. That part of the sum-total of existence which fills this mould is what forms.our universe. It necessarily. follows

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[ 144 ] that law is possible only within this conditioned * universe; 'beyond that there cannot be any law. When we speak of this universe; we only mean that portion of existence which is limited by our mind; the universe of the senses, that which we can see, feel, touch, hear, think of, imagine ; that universe alone is under law; but, beyond that, existence cannot be subject to law, because causation does not extend beyond the world of our minds. * Anything beyond the range of our mind and our senses is not bound by the law of causation, as there is no mental association of things in the region beyond the senses, and no causation without association of ideas. It is only when " being" or existence gets moulded into name and form that it obeys the law of causation, and is said to be under law; because all law has its 'essence in causation. Therefore, we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free * will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is" what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within

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( 145 ) our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation. Everything that we know, or can possibly know, must be subject to causation, and that which obeys the law of causation cannot be free. It is acted upon by other agents, and becomes a cause in its turn. But that which has become converted into the will, which was not the will before, but which, when it fell into this mould of space, time and causation became converted into the human will, is free; and when this will gets out of this mould of space, time and causation, it will be free again. From freedom it comes, and becomes moulded into this bondage, and it gets out and goes back to freedom again.. The question has been raised as to from whom this universe comes, in whom it rests, and to whom it goes; and the answer has been given that from freedom it comes, and rests in bondage and goes back into that freedom again. So, when we speak of man as no other than that infinite being who is manifesting himself, we mean that only one very small part thereof is-man; this S:

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: [ 146 ] body and this mind which we see are only one part of the whole, only one spot of the infinite being. This whole universe is only one speck of the infinite being, and all our laws, and our bondages, our joys and our sorrows, our happinesses, and our expectations, are only within this small universe, all our progression and digression are within its small compass. So you see how childish it is to expect a continuation of this universe, the creation of our minds, and to expect and hope to go to heaven, which after all must mean only a repetition of this world that we know. You see at once that it is an impossible and childish desire to make the whole of infinite existence conform to the limited and conditioned existence which we know. So, when a man says that he will have again and again this same thing which he is having now, or, as I sometimes put it, when he asks for a comfortable religion, you may know that he has become so degenerate that he cannot think of anything higher than what he is now;' he is just his little present surro undings and

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147 nothing more. He has forgotten his infinite nature, and his whole idea is confined to these little joys and sorrows, and heart-jealousies of the moment. He thinks that this finite thing is the infinite; and not only so, he will not let this foolishness go. He clings on desperately unto Thrishna, the thirst after life, what the Buddhists call Tanha and Trissa. There may be millions of kinds of happiness, and beings, and laws, and progress, and causation, all acting outside the little universe that we know, and after all the whole of . this comprises but one section of our nature. To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be * found here. Perfect equilibrium or what the Christians call the peace that passeth all understanding cannot be had in this universe, nor in heaven, nor in any place where our mind and thoughts can go, where the senses can feel, or which the imagination can conceive. No such place can give us that freedom, because all such places would be within our universe, and it is

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[ 148 ] limited by space, time and causation. There may be places that are more etherial than this earth of ours, where enjoyments may be keener, , but even those places must be in the universe, and therefore in bondage to law; so we have to go beyond, and real religion begins there where this little universe ends. These little joys, and sorrows, and knowledge of things end there, and the reality begins. Until we give up the thirst after life, the strong attachment to this our transient conditioned existence, we have no hope of catching even a glimpse of that infinite freedom beyond. It stands to reason then that there is * only one way to attain to that freedom which is the goal of all the noblest aspirations of mankind, and that one way is by giving up this little life, giving up this little universe, giving up this earth, giving up heaven, giving up the body, giving up the mind, giving up everything that is limited and conditioned. If we give up our attachments to this little universe of the senses, or of the mind, immediately we shall be free. The only

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[ 149 ] way to come out of bondage is to go beyond the limitations of law, to go beyond where causation prevails. But it is a most difficult thing to give up the clinging to this universe; few ever attain to that. There are two ways to do that, mentioned in our books. One is called the "neti neti", (not this, not this,) the other is called the "iti iti"; the former is the negative and the latter the positive. The negative way is the most difficult. It is only possible to the men of the very highest exceptional minds and gigantic wills who simply stand up and say, "No, I will not have this," and the mind and body obey their will, and they come out successful. But such people are very rare, the vast majority of mankind choose the positive way, the way through the world, making use of all the bondages themselves to break those very bon dages. This is also a kind of giving up; only it .. is done slowly and gradually, by knowing things, enjoying things, and thus obtaining experience, ... and knowing the nature of things, until the mind

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[150] lets them all go at last and becomes unattached. The former way of obtaining non-attachment is by reasoning, and the latter way is through work and experience. The first is the path of Jnana-Yoga, and is characterised by the refusal to do any building work; the second is that of Karma-Yoga, in which there is no cessation from doing work. Every one must work in the universe. Only those who are perfectly satisfied with the Self, whose desires do not go beyond the Self, whose mind never strays out of the Self, to whom the Self is all in all, only those do not work. The rest must all work. A current rushing down freely in accordance with its own nature falls into a hollow and makes a whirlpool, and, after running round and round a little in that whirlpool, it emerges again in the form of the free current to go on unchecked. Each human life is like that current. It gets into the whirl, gets involved in this world * of space, time, and causation, there whirls round a little, crying out my father, my brother, my name, my fame, and so on, and at last emerges.

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[ 151 ] out of it and regains its original freedom. The whole universe is doing that. Whether we know it or not, whether we are conscious or unconscious of it, we are all working to get out of the dream of the world. Man's experience in the world is to enable him to get out of its whirlpool. But what is Karma-Yoga? It is the knowledge of the secret of work. We see that the whole universe is working. For what does it do so? For salvation, for liberty; consciously or unconsciously every thing from the smallest atom to the highest being is working for that; working with the one aim of obtaining liberty for the mind, for the body, for the spirit, and for everything; all things are always trying to get freedom, they are flying away from bondage. The sun, the moon, the earth, the planets, all are trying to fly away from bondage. The centrifugal and the centripetal forces of nature are indeed typical of our universe. Karma-Yoga tells us the secret and the "" method of work. Instead of our being, knocked about in this universe, and after long

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[152] delay and thrashing, getting to know things as they are, Karma-Yoga teaches us the secret of work, the method of work, the organizing power of work. A vast mass of energy may be spent in vain, if we do not know how to use and utilise it. Karma-Yoga makes a science of work, you learn by it how best to utilise all the workings of this world. Work is inevitable, it must be so; but we have work to the highest purpose. KarmaYoga makes us admit that this world is a world of merely five minutes; that it is a something we have inevitably to pass through; and that freedom is not here, but is only to be found beyond. To find the way out of the bondages of the world we have to go through it slowly and surely. There may be those exceptional persons about whom I just spoke, those who can stand aside and give up the world, as a snake casts off its skin and stands aside and looks at it; there are no doubt, some of these exceptional beings; but the rest of mankind have to go slowly through the world of work and Karma-Yoga shows us the

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[ .153 ] process, the secret and the method of doing so to the best advantage of all concerned. What does it say? "Work incessantly, but give up all attachment to work." Do not identify yourself with anything. Hold your mind free. All this that you see, the pains and the miseries, are but the necessary conditions of this world; poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary; they do not belong to our real nature at all. Our nature is far beyond misery or happiness, beyond every object of the senses, beyond the imagination; and yet we must go on working all the time. "Misery comes through attachment; not through work." As soon as we identify our selves with the work we do, we feel miserable; but if we do not identify ourselves with it we do not feel that misery. If a beautiful picture belonging to another is burnt, a man does not generally become very miserable; but when his own picture is burnt, how miserable he feels! Why? Both were beautiful pictures, perhaps copies of the same original; but in one case very much more misery T

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[ 154 ] is felt than in the other. It is because in one case he identifies himself with the picture, and not in the other. This "I and mine" causes the whole misery. With the sense of possession came selfishness, and selfishness brought on misery. Every act of selfishness or thought of selfishness makes us attached to something, and immediately we are made slaves. Each wave in the "chitta" that says "I and mine," immediately puts a chain round us and makes us slaves ; and the more we say, "I and mine" the more slavery grows, the more misery increases. Therefore, Karma-Yoga tells us to enjoy the beauty of all the pictures in the world, but not to identify ourselves with any or all of them. Never say "mine." Whenever we say a thing is mine, misery will immediately come. Do not even say "my child" in your mind. Possess the child, but do not say "mine." If you do, then will come the misery. Do not say "my house," do not say "my body." The Whole difficulty is there. The body is neither yours nor mine nor anybody's. These bodies are

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[ 155 ] coming and going by the laws of nature, but we are free, standing as witness., This body is no more free than a picture, or a wall. Why should we be attached so much to a body? If somebody paints a picture, he does it and afterwards passes away. Why should he be attached to it? Let it pass. Do not project that tentacle of selfishness, "I must possess it." As soon as that is projected, misery will begin. So Karma-Yoga says, first destroy the tendency to project this tentacle of selfishness, and, when you have the power of checking that, hold it in and do not allow the mind to get into that sort of the wave of selfishness. Then you may go out into the world and work as much as you can. Mix everywhere; go where you please ; you will never be polluted or contaminated with evil. There is the lotus leaf in the water; the water cannot touch and adhere to it; so will you be in the world. This is called "vairagya," dispassion or the non-attachment of Karma-Yoga. I believe I'' have told you that without non-attachment i

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[ 156 ] there 'cannot be any kind of Yoga. Nonattachment is the basis of all the Yogas. The man who gives up living in houses, and wearing fine clothes, and eating good food, and goes into the desert, may be a most attached person. His only possession, his own body, may become everything to him; and as he lives he will be simply struggling for the sake of his body. Non-attachment does not mean any thing that we may do in relation to our external body, but it is all in the mind. The binding link of "'I and mine" is in the body. If we have not this link with the body and with the things of the senses, we are Non-attached, wherever and whatever we may be. A man be on a throne and perfectly non. attached; another man may be in rags(r) and still very much attached. First, we have to attain this state of non-attachiment, and then to work incessantly. Karma-Yoga gives us the methods that will help us in giving up all attachment. It is indeed a hard thing to give up attachment.

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[ 157 ] Here are the two ways of giving up all attachment in Karma-Yoga. One way is for those who do not believe in God, or in any outside help. They are left to their own devices; they have simply to work with their own will, with the power of their mind, saying "I must be nonattached," and work too with their own power of Viveka or discrimination. For those who believe in God there is the other way, which is much less difficult to go through. They give up the fruits of work unto the Lord, they work and are never attached to the results. Whatever they see, feel, hear, or do, for Him. Whatever good work we may do, let us not claim any praise to ourselves The work is the Lord's; we have to give up the fruits unto Him. The grandest work that we may do in our lives never let us think that we are to receive the benefits thereof, or that we have done any good work at all. All work is His. Let us stand aside and think that we are only servants obeying the Lord, our master, and that every im. pulse for action comes from him every moment,

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[. 158 ] Whatever thou worshippest, whatever thou perceivest, whatever doest, give up all unto Him and be at rest. Let us be at peace, perfect peace, with ourselves, and give up our whole body and mind and everything as an eternal sacrifice unto the Lord. Instead of the old sacrifice of pouring oblations into the fire, performs this one great sacrifice day and night--the sacrifice of your little self. "In search of wealth in this world, thou art the only wealth I have found; I sacrifice myself unto Thee. In search of some one to be loved, Thou art the only one beloved I have found ; I sacrifice myself unto Thee." Let us repeat this day and night and say, "Nothing for me; no matter whether the thing is good, bad, or indifferent; I do not care for it; I sacrifice ak unto Thee."' Day and night let us renounce our seem. ing self until it becomes a habit with us to do so, until it gets into the blood, the nerves and the brain, and the whole body is every moment obedient to this idea of self-renunciation. Go then into the midst of the battle field, with the roaring

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. [ 159 1. cannon and the din of war, and you will find yourself to be free and at peace. ! Karma-Yoga teaches us that the ordinary idea of duty is on the lower plane; nevertheless, all of us have to do our duty. Yet we may see that this peculiar sense of duty is very often a great cause of misery. Duty becomes a disease with us; drags us ever forward. It catches hold of us and makes our whole life miserable. It is the bane of human life. "This duty, this idea of duty is the mid-day summer sun which scorches the innermost soul of mankind." Look at those poor slaves to duty. Duty leaves them no time to say prayers, no time to bathe. Duty is ever on them. They go out and work, Duty is on them * They come home and think of the work for the next day. Duty is on them! It is living a slave's life, at last dropping down in the street and dying in harness, like a horse. This is duty as it is understood. The only true duty is to be unattached and to work as free beings, to give up all work unto God. All our duties are His.

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[ 160 ] Blessed are we that we are ordered out here. We serve our time; whether we do it. ill or well, who knows? If we do it well, we do not get the fruits. If we do it ill, neither do we get the care. Be at rest, be free, and work. This kind of freedom is a very hard thing to attain. How easy it is to interpret slavery as duty-the morbid attachment of flesh as duty! Men go out into the world and struggle and fight for money or for any other thing to which they feel an attachment. Ask them why they do it. They say :-"It is a duty." It is the absurd greed for gold and gain, and they try to cover it with a few flowers. . What is duty after all? It is really the impulsation of the flesh, of our attachment; and when an attachment has become established, we call it duty. . For instance, in countries where there is no marriage, there is no duty between husband and wife ; when marriage comes, husband and wife live together on account of attachment; and that kind of living together becomes settled after generations ;. and when it becomes

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( 161 ) . so settled, it becomes a duty. It is, so to say, a sort of chronic disease. When it is acute we call it disease, when it is chtonic we call it' natute: It is a disease. So when attachment becomes chronic, we Baptize it with the high-sounding name of duty: We strew howers upon it; trumpets sound for it, sacred texts are said over it, and then the whole world fights, and men earnestly rob each other for this duty's sake. Duty is good to the extent that it checks brutality. To the lowest kinds of men, who cannot have any other ideal, it is- of some good; but those who want to be Karmid-Yogins must throw even this idea of duty overboard. There is no duty for you and me Whatever you have to give to the world, do give by alb.means, but not as a duty. Do not take amy thought of that. Be not compelled. Why should you be compelled ? Every thing that you da:under compulsion goes to build up attachment. Why should you have any duty ? " Resign every thing into God." " In this tremendous fiery furnace where the fire of duty scorches everybody,

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[ 162 ] drink this cup of nectar and be happy." We are all simply working out His will, and have nothing to do with rewards and punishments. If you want the reward, you must also have the punishment; the only way to get out of the punishment is to give up the reward. The only way of getting out of misery is by giving up the idea of happiness, because these two are inseparably linked to each other. On one side there is happiness, on the other there is misery. On one side there is life, on the other there is death. The only way to get beyond death is to give up the love of life. Life and death are the same thing, looked at from different points. So the idea of happiness without misery, or of life without death, is very good for school boys and children; but the thinker sees that it is all a contradiction in terms and gives up these oppositely related things. Seek no praise, no reward, for anything you do. No sooner do we perform a good action than we begin to desire credit for it. No sooner do we give money to some charity than we want to see our names

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[ 163 ) blazoned in "the papers. Misery must come as the result of such desires. The greatest men in the world have passed away unknown. The Buddhas and the Christs that we know are but second rate heroes in comparison with the greatest men of whom the world knows nothing. Hundreds of these unknown heroes have lived in every country working silently. Silently they live and silently they pass away; and in time their thoughts find expression in Buddhas or Christs, and it is these latter that become known to us. The highest men do not seek to get any name or fame from their knowledge. They leave their ideas to the world; they put forth no claims for themselves and establish no schools or systems in their name. Their whole nature shrinks from such a thing. They are the pure Sattvikas, who can never make any stir, but only.melt down in love. I have seen one such Yogin who lives in a cave in India. He is one of the most wonderful men l' have ever seen. He has so altogether lost the sense of his own individuality that we may say

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| 104 ) that the man in him is completely gone, leaving behind only the all comprehending sense of the divine. ' If an animal bites one of his arms, he is 'ready to give it his other arm also, and say that it is the Lord's will. Everything that comes to him is from the Lord. He does not shew himself to men, and yet he is a magazine of love and of true and sweet ideas. . '. 'Next in order come the men with more Rajas, or activity, combative natures, who take up the ideas of the perfect ones and preach them to the world. The highest kind of men silently collect true and noble ideas, and others--the Buddhas and Christs go from place to place preaching them and working for them. In the life of * Gautama Buddha we notice him constantly saying "that he is the twenty-fifth Buddha. The twenty"four before him are unknowh to history, although the Buddha krown to History must have built upon " foundations laid by them. The highest men are calm, silent and unknown. They are the men who really kniow the power of thought;

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[165] 1. they are sure that, even if they go into a cave and close the door and simply think five true: thoughts and then pass away, these five thoughts of theirs will live through eternity. Indeed such thoughts will penetrate through the mountains and cross the oceans, and travel through the world, and will enter, deep into human hearts and brains and raise up men and women who will give them practical expression in the workings of human life. These Sattvika men are too near the Lord to be active and to fight, to be working, struggl, ing, preaching, and doing good, as they say, here on earth to humanity. The active workers, however good, have still a little remnant of ignorance left in them. When our nature has yet some impurities left in it, then alone can we " i go work. It is in the nature of work to be impelled ordinarily by motive and by attachment. In the presence of an ever-active providence and before God who notes even the sparrows fall, how can man attach any importance to his own work? Will it not be a blasphemy to do, so when we L

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[ 166 ] know that he is taking care of the minutest things in the world. We have only to stand in awe and reverence before him saying "Thy will be done." The highest men can not work, for to them there is attachment. "Those whose whole soul is gone into the Self, those whose desires are confined in the Self, who have become ever associated with Self, for them there is no work." Such are indeed the highest of mankind; but apart from them every one else has to work. In so working we should never think that we can help on even the least thing in this universe. We can not. We only help ourselves in this gymnasium of the world. This is the proper attitude of work. If we work in this way, if we always remember that our present opportunity to work thus is a privilege which has been given to us, we shall never be attached to anything. Millions like you and me think that they are great people in the world; but we all die, and in five minutes the world will have forgotten us. But the life of God is infinite. "Who can live

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| 167 ] a moment, breathe a moment, if this all powerful One does not will it?" He is the ever active Providence. All: power is His and within His command. Through His command the winds blow, the sun shines, the earth lives, and death stalks upon the earth. He is the all in all; He is all and in all. We can only worship Him. Give up all fruits of work; do good for its own sake; then alone will come perfect non-attach, ment. The bonds of the heart will thus break; and we shall reap perfect freedom. This freedom is indeed the goal of Karma-Yoga.

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CHAPTER VIII. THE IDEAL OF KARMA-YOGA. 4 The grandest idea in the religion of the Vedanta is that we may reach the same goal by different paths and these paths I have general, ized into four-viz, those of work, love, psychology, 1 and knowledge. But you must, at the same time, remember that these divisions are not very marked and quite exclusive of each other. Each blends into the other. But according to the type which prevails we name the divisions. It is not that you cannot find a man who has no " other faculty than that of work, nor that you cannot find men who are more than devoted Dian worshippers only, nor that there are not men who have more than mere knowledge. These divisions are made in accordance with the type or the tendency that may be seen to prevail in a man. We have found that, in the end, all these four paths converge and become one. All religions

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[ 169 ) and all methods of work and worship lead us to one and only one goal: I have already tried to point out that goal. It is freedom as I understand it. Everything that we'perceive around us is struggling towards freedom, from the atom to the man, from the insentient, lifeless particle of matter to the highest existence on earth, the human soul. The whole universe is in fact the result of this struggle for freedom. In all combinations every particle is trying to go on its own way, to fly from the other particles; but the others are holding it in check. Our earth is trying to fly away from the sun, and the moon from the earth. Everything has a tendency to 'infinite dispersion. All that we see in the universe has for its basis this one struggle towards freedom ; it is under the impulse of this tendency that 'the saint prays and the robber robs. When the line of action taken is not a proper one we call it evil, and when the manifestation of it is proper and high we call it good. But the impulse is the same, the struggle: towards freedom. : The saint is

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[170] oppressed with the knowledge of his condition of bondage, and he wants to get rid of it; so he worships God. The thief is oppressed with the idea that he does not possess certain things, and he tries to get rid of that want, to obtain freedom from it; so he steals. Freedom is the one goal of all nature, sentient or insentient; and consciously or unconsciously, everything is struggling towards the goal. The freedom which the saint seeks is very different from that which the robber seeks; the freedom loved by the saint leads him to the enjoyment of infinite unspeakable bliss, while that on which the robber has set his heart only forges other bonds for his soul. There is to be found in every religion the manifestation of this struggle towards freedom. It is the groundwork of all morality, of unselfishness, which means getting rid of the idea that men are the same as their little body. When we see a man doing good work, helping others, it means that that man cannot be confined within the limited circle of "me and mine." There is

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[ 171 ] no limit to this getting out of selfishness. All the great systems of ethics preach absolute unselfishness as the goal: Supposing this absolute unselfishness can be reached by a man, what. becomes of that man? He is no more the little Mr. So-and-So; he has acquired infinite expansion: That little personality which he had before is now lost for him for ever ; he has become infinite, and the attainment of this infinite expansion is indeed the goal of all religions and of all moral and philosophical teachings. The personalist, when he hears this idea philosophically put, gets frightened. At the same time, if he preaches morality, he after all teaches the very same idea himself. He puts no limit to the unselfishness of man. Suppose a man becomes perfectly unselfish under the personalistic system, how are we to distinguish him from the perfected ones in other systems? He has become one with the universe, and to become that is the goal of all; only: the poor personalist has not the courage to follow out his own reasoning to its right conclusion.

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[ 172 } Karma-Yoga is the attaining of that freedon which is the goal of all human nature. Every selfish action, therefore, retards our reaching the goal, and every unselfish action takes us towards the goal; that is why the only definition that can be given of morality is this :-That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral. But, if you come to details, the matter will not be seen to be quite so simple. For instance, environment often makes the details different as I have already mentioned. The same action under one set of circumstances may be ynselfish, and under another set quite selfish. So we can give only' a general definition, and leave the details to be worked out by taking into consideration the differences in time, place and circumstance. In one country one kind of conduct'is considered moral, and in another the very same is immoral, because the circumstances differ. The goal of all Whiature is freedom, and freedom is to be attained - only by perfect unselfishness; every detion, "thougfit; word or deed that is unselfish takes' us

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[ 173 ) towards the goal, and, as such, is called moral. That definition, you will find, holds good in every religion and every system of ethics. In some; systems of thought, morality is derived from a Superior Being--God. If you ask why a man ought to do this and not that, their answer is, "Because such is the command of God." But. whatever be the source from which it is derived, their code of ethics also has the same central idea--not to think of self but to give up self. And yet same persons, in spite of this high ethical idea, are frightened at the thought of having to. give up their little personalities. We may ask the man who clings to the idea of little personalities to consider the case of a person who has become perfectly unselfish, who has no thought for himself, who does no deed for himself, who speaks no word: for himself, and then say where his "himself" is. That "himself" is known to him only so long as he thinks, acts or speaks. for himself.... If he is only conscious of others, .ol the universe, and of the all, where is his." himself"?. It is gone for ever.

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( 174 ) Karma-Yoga, therefore, is a system of ethics and religion intended to attain freedom through unselfishness, and by good works. The KarmaYogin need not believe in any doctrine whatever. He may not believe even in God, may not ask what, his soul is, nor think of any metaphysical speculation. He has got his own special aim of realising selflessness; and he has to work it out himself. Every moment of his life must be realization, because he has to solve by mere work, without the help of doctrine or theory, the very same problem to which the Jnanin applies his reason and inspiration and the Bhakta his love. Now comes the next question. What is this work? What is this doing good to the world ? Can we do good to the world ? In an abselute sense, no; in a relative sense, yes. No permanent of everlasting good can be done to the world; if it could be done, the world would not be this world. We may satisfy the hunger of a man for fiyg, minutes, but he will be hungry, again. Every pleasure with which we 'supply; a man may be seen

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[ 175 ] to be momentary. No one can pemanently cure this ever-recurring fever of pleasure and pain. Can any pemanent happiness be given to the world? In the ocean we cannot raise a wave without causing a hollow somewhere else. The sum total of the good things in the world has been the same throughout in its relation to man's need and greed. It cannot be increased or decreased. Take the history of the human race as we know to-day. Do we not find the same miseries and the same happinesses, the same pleasures and pains, the same differences in position? Are not some rich, some poor, some high, some low, some healthy some unhealthy? All this was just the same with the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans in ancient times as it is with the Americans to-day. So far as history is known, it has always been the same; yet at the same time, we find that, running along with all these incurable differences of pleasure and pain, there has ever been the struggle to alleviate them, Every period of history has given birth to

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[ 176 ] thousands of men and women who have worked hard to smooth the passage of life for others. And how far have they succeeded ? We can only play at driving the ball from one place to another We take away pain from the physical plane, and it goes to the mental one. It is like that picture in Dante's hell where the misers were given a mass of gold to roll it up a hill. Every time they rolled it up a little, it again rolled down. All our talks about the millennium are very nice as schoolboy's stories, but they are no better than that. All nations that dream of the millennium also think that, of all peoples in the world, they will have the best of it then for themselves. This is the wonderfully unselfish idea of the millennium!.. - We cannot add , happiness to this world ; similarly, we cannot. add :pain to it either. The -sum total of the energies of pleasure and pain displayed here on earth will be the same through. out. We just push it from this side to the other side, and from that side to this, bat it will remain the same, because so to remain-is its very nature.

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( 177 ) This ebb and flow, this rising and falling, is in the world's very nature ; it would be as logical to hold otherwise as to say that we may have life without death. This is complete nonsense, because, ther very idea of life implies constant death and the very idea of pleasure implies pain. The lamp is constantly burning out, and that is its life. If you want to have life you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions for the same thing, looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole: One looks at the "fall" side and becomes a pessimist, another looks at the "rise" side and becomes ani optimist. When a boy is going to school and his father and mother are taking care of him, every thing seems blessed to him ; his wants are simple, he is a great optimist. But the old man, with his varied experience, becomes oalmer, and is sure to have his warmth considerably cooled down. Soj old..nations, with signs of decay all around-them,. are tapt to be less hopeful than new nations. w

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[ 178 ) There is a proverb in India, "A thousand years a city, and a thousand years a forest." This change of city into forest and vice versa is going on every. where, and it makes peoples optimists or pessimists according to the side they see of it. The next idea we take up is the idea of equality. These millennium ideas have been great motive powers to work. Many religions preach this as an element in them,--that God is coming to rule the universe, and that then there will be no difference at all in conditions. The people who preach this doctrine are mere fanatics, and fanatics are indeed the sincerest of mankind. Christianity was preached just on the basis of the fascination of this fanaticism, and that is what made it so attractive to the Greek and the Roman slaves. They believed that, under the millennial religion, there would be no more slavery, that there would be plenty to eat and drink; and therefore they Hocked round the Christian standard. Those who preached the idea first were 'of course ignorant fanatics, but very sincere. In modern times this

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[ 179 ] millennial aspiration takes the form of equality-- of liberty, equality and fraternity. This is also fanaticism. True equality has never been and never can be on earth. How can we all be equal here? That impossible kind of equality implies total death. What makes this world what it is? Lost balance. In the primal state, which is called chaos, there is perfect balance. How do all the formative forces of the universe come then? By struggling, competition, conflict. Suppose that all the particles of matter were held in equilibrium, would there be then any process of creation? We know from science that it is impossible. Disturb r a sheet of water, and there you find every particle of the water trying to become calm again, one rushing against the other; and in this same way all the phenomena which we call the universeall things therein-are struggling to get back to the state of perfect balance. Again a disturbance comes, and again we have combination and creation. Inequality is the very basis of creation. At the same time the forces struggling 'to obtain

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[ 180 ) equality are as much a necessity of creation as those which destroy it. . Absolute equality, that which means a perfect balance of all the struggling forces in all the planes, can never be in this world. Before you attain that state, the world will have become quite unfit for any kind of life, and no one will be there. We find, therefore, that all these ideas of the millennium and of absolute equality are not only impossible, but also that, if we try to carry them out, they will lead us surely enough to the day of destruction. What makes the difference between man and man? It is largely the difference in the brain. Now-a-days no one but a lunatic will say that we are all born with the same brain power. We come into the world' with unequal endowments; we come as greater men or as lesser men, and there is no getting away from that "pre-natally determined condition. The American Indians were in this country for thous. ands of years, and a few handfuls of your ancestors came to their land. What difference have they

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. [181] caused in the appearance of the country? Why did not the Indians make improvements and build cities, if all are equal? With your ancestors a different sort of brain power came into the land, different bundles of past impressions came, and they worked out and manifested themselves. Absolute non-differentiation is death. So long as this world lasts, differentiation there will and must be, and the millennium of perfect equality will come only when a cycle of creation comes to its end. Before that equality cannot be. Yet this idea of realising the millennium is a great motive power. Just as inequality is necessary for creation itself, so the struggle to limit it is also necessary. If there were no struggle to become free and get back to God, there would be no creation either. It is the difference between these two forces that determines the nature of the motives of men. There will always be these motives to work, some tending towards bondage and others towards freedom. This world's wheel within wheel is terrible mechanism; if we put our hands in it, as soon as *

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[ 182 ) we are caught we are gone. We all think that when we, have.done a certain duty, we shall be at rest; but before we have done a part of that duty, another is already, in waiting. We are all being dragged along by this mighty, complex, worldmachine. There are only two ways out of it; one is to give up all concern with the machine, to let it go and stand aside ; to give up our desires. That is very easy to say, but is almost impossible to do. I do not know whether in twenty millions of men one can do that. The other way is to plunge into the world and learn the secret of work, and that is the way of Karma-Yoga. Do hot fly away from the wheels of the world-machine, but stand inside it and learn the secret of work. Through proper work done inside, it is also possible to come out. Through this machinery itself is the way out. ... We have now seen what work is. It is a part of nature's foundation, and goes on always. Those that believe in God understand this better, because they know that God is not such an incapable

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[ 183) being as will need our help. Although this universe will go on always, our goal is freedom ; our goal is unselfishness; and according to KarmaYoga that goal is to be reached through work. All ideas of making the world perfectly happy may be good as motive powers for fanatics; but we must know that fanaticism brings forth as much evil as good. The Karma-Yogin asks why you require any motive to work other than the inborn love of freedom. Be beyond the common wordly motives. "To work you have the right, but not to the fruits thereof." Man can train himself to know and to practice that, says the Karma-Yogin. When the idea of doing good becomes a part of his very being, then he will not seek for any motive outside. Let us do good, because it is good to do good ;' he who does good work even in order to get to heaven binds himself down, says the Karma-Yogin. Any work that is done, with any' the least selfish motive, instead of making us, free, forges one more chain for our feet.

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[ 184 ) So the only way is to give up all the fruits of work, to be unattached to them. Know that this world is not we, nor are we this world ; that we are really not the body; that we really do not work. We are the Self, eternally at rest and at peace. Why should we be bound by anything? We must not weep; there is no weeping for the Soul. We must not even weep for sympathy. Only we like that sort of thing, and, in our imagination, think that God is weeping in that way on His throne. Such a God would not be worth attaining. Why should God weep at all ? To weep is a sign of weakness, of bondage! It is very good to say that we should be perfectly nonattached, but what is the way to do it? Every good work we do without any ulterior motive, instead of forging a new chain, will break one of the links in the existing chains. Every 'good thought that we send to the world without thinking of any return, will be stored up there and break one link in a chain, and make us purer and purer, until we become the purest of mortals.

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[ 185 ] Yet all this may seen to be rather quixotic and too philosophical, more theoretical than practical; I have read many arguments against the Bhagavad. Gita, and many have said that without motives you cannot work. They have never seen unselfish work except under the influence of fanaticism, and therefore, they speak in that way. . Let me tell you in conclusion' a few words about one man who actually carried this teaching of Karma-Yoga into practice. That man is Buddha. He is the one man who ever carried this into perfect practice. All the prophets of the world, except Buddha, had external motives to move them to unselfish action. The prophets of the world, with this single exception, may be divided into two sets, one set holding that they are incarnations of God come down on earth, and the other holding that they are only messengers from God; and both draw their impetus for work from outside, expect reward from outside, however highly spiritual may be the language they use. But Buddha is the only prophet who has said, "I

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( 186 ) do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul ? Do good and be good. And this will take you to freedom and to whatever truth there is." He was, in the conduct of his life, absolutely without personal motives; and what man worked more than he ? Show me in history one character who has soared so high above all. The whole human race has produced but one such character; such high philosophy; such wide sympathy; this great philosopher, preaching the highest philosophy, yet had the deepest sympathy for the lowest of animals, and never put forth any claims for himself. He is the ideal Karma-Yogin, acting entirely without motive, and the history of humanity shows him to have been the greatest man ever born; beyond compare the greatest combination of heart and brain that ever existed, the greatest soul-power that has ever been manifested. He is the first great reformer the world has seen. He was the first who dared to say, "Believe not because some old manuscripts

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[187] are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, because you have been made to believe it from your childhood; but reason it all out, and after you have analysed it, then, if you find that it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it, and help others to live up to it." He works best who works without any motive, neither for money, nor for fame, nor for anything else; and when a man can do that, he will be a Buddha, and out of him will come the power to work in such a manner as will transform the world. This man represents the very highest ideal of Karma-Yoga.

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BHAKTI-YOGA. Definition of Bhakti. 8 H-AKTI-YOGA is a genuine, real search after the Lord a search beginning, continuing and ending in Love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. "Bhakti", says Narada in his explanation of the Bhakti-Aphorisms, "is intense love to God." "When a man gets it he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied for ever." - This love cannot be reduced to any earthly benefit," because as long as 'worldly desires last that kind of love does not come. "Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater thart cauM mA barSa prmmaapaa| (artea ) . MISSION INSTITUTE JUTE OF 18HNA MIS LIBRARY LIBRARY )

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BHAKTI-YOGA. Yoga, because these are intended for an object in view, while Bhakti is its own fruition, its own means and its own end."* Bhakti has been the one constant theme of our sages. Apart from the special writers on Bhakti, such as Sandilya or Narada, the great commentators on the Vyasa-Sutras, evidently advocates of Knowledge (Jnana), have also something very suggestive to say about Love. Even when the commentator is anxious to explain many, if not all, of the texts so as to make them import a sort of dry knowledge, the Sutras, in the chapter on worship specially, do not lend themselves to be easily manipulated in that fashion. cau sA na kAmayamAnA nirodhakapAt / (arceva II--7) jo sAtu krmcaanyogbhyo'pydhiktraa| (orega IV-25) pI vayaM khakhApatevi namakamArAH / ( a a IV-30 )

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DEFINITION OF BHAKTI. There is not really so much difference between Knowledge (Inana) and Love (Bhakti) as people sometimes imagine. We shall see as we go on that in the end they converge and meet at the same point. So also with Raja-Yoga, which, when pursued as a means to attain liberation, and not (as unfortunately it frequently becomes in the hands of charlatans and mystery-mongers) as an instrument to hoodwink the unwary, leads us also to the same goal. The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest, and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view ; its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it often times degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism, or Mahomedanism, or Christianity, have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers on the lower planes of Bhakti. That singleness of attachment (Nishtha) to a loved object, without which

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BHAKTI-YOGA. no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in any religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i. e., by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howl. ing fanatic as soon as he sees or hears any thing of any other ideal. This kind of love is somewhat like the canine instinct of guarding the master's property from intrusion ; only even the dog's instinct is better than the reason of man, for the dog never mistakes its master for an enemy in whatever dress he may come before it. Again the fanatic loses all power of judgment. Personal cohsiderations are in his case of such absorbing interest that to him it is no question at all What a man says-whether it is right or wrong ; but the one thing he is always

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DEFINITION OF BHAKTI. particularly careful to know is, who says it. The same man who is kind, good, honest, and loving, to people of his own opinion will not hesitate to do the vilest deeds, when they are directed against persons beyond the pale of his own religious brotherhood. But this danger exists only in that stage of Bhakti which is called the preparatory (irit). When Bhakti has become ripe and has passed into that form which is called the supreme (TTT), no more is there any fear of these hideous manifestations of fanaticism ; that soul which is overpowered by this higher form of Bhakti is too near the God of Love to become an instrument for the diffusion of hatred. It is not given to all of us to be harmonious in the building up of our characters in this life : yet we know that that character is of the noblest type in which all these. three-Knowledge and Love and Yogamare harmoniously fused. Three things are

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BHAKTI-YOGA. necessary for a bird to fly--the two wings and the tail as a rudder for steering. Jnana (Knowledge) is the one wing, Bhakti (Love) is the other, and Yoga is the tail that keeps up the balance. For those who cannot pursue all these three forms of worship together in harmony, and take up, therefore, Bhakti alone as their way, it is necessary always to remember that forms and ceremonials, though absolutely necessary for the progressive soul, have no other value than taking us on to that state in which we feel the most intense love to God. There is a little difference in opinion between the teachers of Knowledge and those of Love, though both admit the power of Bhakti. The nanins hold Bhakti to be an instrument of liberation, the Bhaktas look upon it both as the instrument and the thing .to be attained. To my mind this is a distinction without much difference. In fact, Bhakti, when used to signify an instrument

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DEFINITION OF BHAKTI. only, really means a lower form of worship, but this appears to be inseparable from and in continuity to higher expressions of Bhakti after realisation. Each seems therefore to lay a great stress upon his own peculiar method of worship, forgetting that with perfect love, true knowledge is bound to come even when it is unsought, and that from perfect knowledge, true love is inseparable. Bearing this in mind let us try to understand what the great Vedantic commentators have to say on the subject. In .explaining the Sutra Ch. IV.-I-1 Bhagavan Sankara says "Thus people say, 'He is devoted to the Guru'; they say this of him who follows his Guru, and does so, having that following as the one end in view. Similarly they say 'The loving wife meditates on her absent husband'; here also a kind of cAGatira sanadupadezAt / (Vedanta Sutras Ch. IV-I-I) >

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10 BHAKTI-YOGA. eager and continuous remembrance is meant."* This is devotion according to Sankara. Bhagavan Ramanuja in his commentary thus says about Bhakti : "Meditation again is a constant remembrance (of the thing meditated upon) flowing like an unbroken stream of oil poured out from one vessel to another. When this kind of remembering has been attained in relation to God) all bondages break. Thus it is spoken of in the scriptures regarding constant remembering as a means to liberation. This remembering again is of the same form as seeing, because it is of the same meaning, as in the passage, 'When He Who is far and near is seen, the bonds of the * tathA hi khoke gurumupAste rAjAnasapAsa iti ca yatAtparyeca gurbAdInanuvati sa evmucyte| tathA dhyAyati prISitanAthA patimiti yA nirantarasarakA pati prati sItakalA saivmbhidhiiyte| (Vedanta Sutra-Sankara Bhasya-Ch. IV-I-1) + Vedanta Sutra l--1-2, Commentary by Ramanuja.

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DEFINITION OF BHAKTI. II heart are broken, all doubts vanish, and all effects of work disappear'. (He, Who is near can be seen, but He Who is far can only be remembered. Nevertheless the scripture says that we have to see Him who is near as well as Him who is far, thereby indicating to us that the above kind of remembering is as good as seeing:) This remembrance when exalted assumes the same form as seeing. .... Worship is constant remembering as may be seen from the essential texts of scriptures. Knowing, which is the same as repeated worship, has been described as constant remembering. ...... Thus the memory, which has attained to the height of what is as good as direct perception, is spoken of in the Sruti as a means of liberation. This Atman is not to be reached through various sciences, nor by intellect, noroby much study of the Vedas. Whomsoever this Atman desires, by him is the Atman attained, unto him this Atman dis

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12 BHAKTI-YOGA. covers himself.' Here after saying that mere hearing, thinking, and meditating are not the means of attaining this Atman, it is said, 'Whom this Atman desires, by him the Atman is attained.' The extremely beloved alone is desired; by whomsoever this Atman is extremely loved, he alone becomes the most beloved of the Atman. That this beloved may attain the Atman, the Lord himself helps. For it has been said by the Lord: 'Those who are constantly attached to me and worship me with loveI give that direction to their will by which they come to me.' Therefore it is said that, to whomsoever this remembering, which is of the same form as direct perception, becomes of itself very dear, for the reason that it is dear to the Object of such memory-perception, he alone is desired by the Supreme Atman, i. e., by him alone the Supreme Atman is attained. This constant remembrance is denoted by the word Bhakti."

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DEFINITION OF BHAKTI. 13 In commenting on the Sutra of Patanjali Ch. 1-23* i. e., 'By the worship of the Supreme Lord,'-Bhoja says, "Pranidhana is that sort of Bhakti in which, without seeking results, such as sense-enjoyments, etc., all works are dedicated to that Teacher of teachers."+ Bhagavan Vyasa also, when commenting on the same, defines Pranidhana as "the form of Bhakti by which the mercy of the Supreme Lord comes to the yogin and blesses him by granting him his desires."1 According to Sandilya, "Bhakti is intense Love to God." The best defi. . fruferit (Or by devotion to Iswara) (Patanjal Sutra Ch. I-23) + pravidhAnaM tapa bhaktivizeSIviziSTamupAsana sarva kriyAnAmapi tacApa viSayasukhAdivam phalamanicchan sarvAH kriyAsamin paramagurAvapayati / (Patanjal Sutras-Commentary by Bhoja-Ch. 1--23) I formfmfadarerafaia fragtextafon Thia_&c. (Patanjal Sutras-Commentary by Vyasa-Ch. l~23) SS 8 yaratii (Sandilya Sutras--Ch. 1-2)

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BHAKTI-YOGA. nition is, however, that given by the king of Bhaktas Prahlada : "That deathless love which the ignorant have for the fleeting objects of the senses-as I keep meditating on Thee -may not that (sort of intense) love (for Thee) ever slip away from my heart.". Love ! For whom? For the Supreme Lord Isvara. Love for any other being, however great, cannot be Bhakti ; for, as Ramanuja says in his Sri Bhashya quoting an ancient Acharya, (a great teacher): "From Brahma to a 'clump of grass all things that live in the world are slaves of birth and death caused by Karma ; therefore they cannot be helpful as objects of meditation, because they are all yA proviravivekAnAM vissyessnpaayinii| enlagukat: a teurantaeng i (Vishnu Puran, ImmCh. 20--19)

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DEFINITION OF BHAKTI. in ignorance and subject to change."* In commenting on the word wecha, used by Sandilya, the commentator Svapnesvara says that it means wa, after, and tra, attachment ; 2. e., "the attachment which comes after the knowledge of the nature and glory of God";t else a blind attachment to any one, e.g., to wife or children would be Bhakti. We plainly see, therefore, that Bhakti is a series or succession of mental efforts at religious realisation beginning with ordinary worship and ending in supremely intense love for the Isvara. pAnamasambaparyantA agadantAvasthitAH / prANinaH karmanitasaMsAravazavartinaH / yatasatI na te dhyAne dhyaaninaamupkaarkaaH| aframmam: a fe tarcie: 1 + Horeca framky Tropfehlutaneyefufcit (Sandilya Satras, 1-2 Commentary by Swapnesvara)

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The Philosophy of Isvara. Who is Isvara ? "From whom is the birth, continuation and dissolution of the universe, "*_He is Isvara--"the Eternal, the Pure, the Ever Free, the Almighty, the AllKnowing, the All-Merciful, the Teacher of all teachers"; and above all "He the Lord is, of His own nature, inexpressible Love." + These certainly are the definitions of a personal God. Are there then two Gods ? The "not this, not this," the Sat-chit-ananda, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss, of the philosopher, and this God of Love of the bhakta ? No, it is the same "Sat-chit-ananda" who is also the God of Love, the impersonal and personal in one. It has always to be * UTC 27: (Vedanta Sutan Ch. 1-1-2) savara nirmacanIyamApaH

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA. understood that the personal God worshipped by the bhakta is not separate or different from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a second : only the Brahman as unity or absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped ; so the bhakta chooses the relative aspect of Brahman, that is, Isvara, the Supreme Ruler. To use a simile : Brahman is as the clay or substance out of which an infinite variety of articles are fashioned. As clay, they are all one ; but form or manifestation differentiates them. Before ever one of them was made, they all existed potentially in the clay ; and, of course, they are identical substantially ; but when formed, and so long as the form remains, they are separate and different ; the clay-mouse can never become a clayelephant, because, as manifestations, form alone makes them what they are, though as unformed clay they are all one. Isvara is the highest manifestation of the absolute

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18 BHAKTI-YOGA. reality, or, in other words, the highest possible reading of the absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Isvara. In the fourth pada of the fourth chapter of his sutras, after stating that almost infinite power and knowledge will come to the liberated soul after the attainment of moksha, Vyasa makes the remark, in an aphorism, that none, however, will get the power of creating, ruling, and dissolving the universe, because that belongs to God alone. * In explaining this sutra it is easy for the dualistic commentators to shew how it is ever impossible for a subordinate soul, jiva, ever to have the infinite power and total independence of God. The thorough dualistic commentator Madhvacharya deals with nagadyApAravana prakaraNAdasabihivasvAca / (Vedanta Sustras Ch. IV-4 17)

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA. 19 this passage in his usual summary method by quoting a verse from the Varaha-Purana. The commentator, Ramanuja, in explaining this aphorism says :- This is the doubt here--whether among the powers of the liberated souls is included that unique power of the Supreme One, of creation, etc., of the universe and also Rulership over all, or wanting that, the glory of the liberated consists only in the direct perception of the Supreme One. Let us assume as reasonable that the liberated get the rulership of the universe also. Why? Because, the scriptures say, the liberated soul attains to extreme sameness with the Supreme One in the passages--"the free from all stain attains to extreme sameness" ( Mundaka III--3) and "all his desires are realized." Now extreme sameness and realisation of all desires cannot be attained without the unique power of the Supreme Lord, namely that of governing the universe. Therefore, by virtue of these

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20 BHAKTI-YOGA. assertions about the realization of all desires and the attainment of extreme sameness we get that the liberated gain the power of ruling the whole universe also. To this we reply that the liberated get all the powers except that of ruling the universe. Ruling the universe is directing the various manifestations of form, life and desire of all the sentient and the non-sentient beings, of which it is comprised and this does not belong to the liberated ones from whom all veils have been removed, and who enjoy the glory of the unobstructed perception of the Brahman. This is proved from the very text of the book which has declared the control of the universe to be the nature of the Supreme Brahman alone: 'From whom all these beings are born, by whom all that are born, live, and unto whom they departing, return; ask about ItThat is Brahman.' Had this quality of ruling the universe been common to the liberated also, then this text would not

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA. 21 be applicable, for it defines Brahman, through this very quality of rulership of the universe. The uncommon qualities alone are stated in a definition as in the following texts of the Vedas : "My beloved boy! alone, in the beginning, there existed the One without a second. That saw and felt I will give birth to the many. That projected heat.'-Brakman, indeed, alone existed in the beginning. That One evolved. That projected a blessed form, the Kshatra. All these gods are Kshatras : Varuna, Soma, Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu, Isana.'--'Atman, indeed, existed alone in the beginning ; nothing else vibrated ; He, saw and felt like projecting the worlds. He projected the worlds afterwards'--'Alone Narayana existed ; neither Brahma nor Isana, nor the Dyava-Prithvi, nor the stars, nor water, nor fire, nor Soma nor the Sun. He did not take pleasure in being alone. He after His meditation had one daughter, the ten organs.'--'Who living

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BHAKTI-YOGA. in the earth is separate from the earth, who living in the Atman,' etc. *_In texts like the above the Srutis speak of the Supreme One as the subject of the work of ruling the universe. Nor in the above descriptions of the ruling of the universe is there any position ascribed to the liberated soul in the texts quoted-for the quality of ruling the universe is far away from such a soul province. In explaining the next sutra, Ramanuja says, "If you say it is not so, because there are direct texts in the Vedas in evidence to the contrary, these texts refer to the glory of the liberated in the spheres of the subordinate deities."+ This also is an easy solution of the difficulty. Although the system of Ramanuja admits the unity of the total, within that totality of existence there are, according to him, eternal differences. Therefore, for all practical purposes, this *Vedanta Sutras IV.-4-17, Commentary by Ramanuja + Vedanta Sutras IV. 4-18, Commentary by R amanuja.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA. 23 system also being dualistic, it was easy for Ramanuja to keep up the distinction between the personal soul and the personal God clearly distinct. We will now try to understand what the great representative of the Advaita school has got to say on the point. We shall see how the Advaita system maintains all the hopes and aspirations of the dualist intact and at the same time propounds its own solution of the problem, in consonance with the high destiny of divine humanity. Those, who aspire to retain their individual mind even after liberation, and remain distinct, from the absolute reality will have ample opportunity of realising their aspiration and enjoy the blessing of the qualified Brahman. These are they who have been spoken of in the Bhagavata Purana thus :-"O king, such are the glorious qualities of the Lord that the sages whose only pleasure is in the Self, and from whom all bondages have fallen

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BHAKTI-YOGA, oft, even they love the All-Powerful with the love that is for love's sake."* These are they who are spoken of by the Sankhyas as "getting merged in nature"t in this cycle so that, after attaining perfection, they may come out in the next as lords of world-systems. But none of these ever becomes equal to God (Isvara). Those who attain to that state where there is neither creation, nor created, nor creator, where there is neither knower, nor knowable, nor knowledge, where there is neither 1, nor thou, nor he, where there is neither subject, nor object, nor relation, "there, who is seen by whom ?"ISuch persons have gone beyond everything, beyond "where words cannot go nor mind," Witary Art fordiansgt # kurvantya hetukoM bhakti ityambhUtaguNaNe hariH / (Bhagabat, 1-Ch. VII-10) + "qaforetari" * I "TE *: # cererit area foramina A TOT AR I"

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA. 25 gone to that blessed condition which the Srutis declare as "not this, not this." But for those who cannot, or will not reach this state, there will inevitably remain the tri-une vision of the one undifferentiated Brahman as nature, soul, and the interpenetrating sustainer of both--Isvara. So, when Prahlada forgot himself, by rising to a higher plane of conciousness through excess of devotion, he perceived neither the universe nor its cause. All was to him as one Infinite Being, undifferentiated by name and form. But as soon as he on coming down the ordinary mental plane remembered that he was Prahlada, again appeared the universe before him and with it the Lord of the universe--"the repository of an infinite number of blessed qualities." So it was with the blessed Gopis. So long as they had lost sense of their own personal identity and individuality by their intense love and yearning for Sree Krishna, they all felt them

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26 BHAKTI-YOGA. selves to be Krishnas, and when they had begun again to think of Him as the one to be worshipped, then they were Gopis again, and immediately. "unto them appeared Krishna with smile on his lotus face, clad in yellow robes and having garlands on, the embodied conqueror (in beauty) of the god of love."* Now to go back to our Acharya Sankara : "Those," he says, "who by worshipping the qualified Brahman attain conjunction with the Supreme Ruler preserving their individual mind is their glory limited or unlimited ? This doubt arising, we get as an argument : -Their glory should be unlimited, because of the scriptural texts They attain their own kingdom-To him all the gods offer worship'--Their desires are fulfilled in all the worlds.' As an answer to this, Vyasa uses the expression 'without the power of * tAsAmAvirabhUchauriH ayamAnamukhAmbunaH / * Matarcrc: erant UNITATE: -( Bhagabat, X. Ch. 31-2).

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27 ruling the universe.' Barring the power of creation, continuation and dissolution of the universe, the other powers such as anima, etc., are acquired by the liberated. As to ruling the universe, that belongs to the eternally perfect Isvara. Why? Because He is the subject of all the scriptural texts which speak of creation, and the liberated souls are not mentioned therein in any connection whatever. The Supreme Lord, indeed, is alone engaged in ruling the universe. The texts as to creation, all point to Him, and there has been used the adjective "ever perfect in relation to Him." Also, as the scriptures say that the powers anima, etc., of others come from the search after, and the worship of, God, therefore their powers have a beginning and are limited; hence they have no place in the ruling of the universe. Again on account of their possessing their individual minds it is possible that their wills may differ, so that, while one desires creation, another may desire THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA.

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28 BHAKTI-YOGA. destruction. The only way of avoiding this conflict is to make all wills subordinate to some one will. Therefore the conclusion is that the wills of the liberated are dependent on the will of the Supreme Ruler."* Bhakti, then, can be directed towards only the personal aspect of Brahman. "The way is more difficult for those, whose mind is attached to the Absolute."+ The Bhakta sails smoothly along with the current of human nature. True it is that we cannot have any idea of the Brahman which is not anthropomorphic, but is it not equally true of everything we know? The greatest psychologist the world has ever known, Bhagavan Kapila, demonstrated ages ago that human consciousness furnishes only one of the elements in the make-up of all the objects of our perception and conception, * Vedanta Sutras, IV, 4-17, Commentary by Sankara. t menstruachana Mene14 (Bhagabat Gita, Ch. XII-5.)

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISVARA. 29 internal as well as external. Beginning with our own bodies and going up to Isvara, every object of our perception is thus made up of this consciousness plus a something else, which is beyond and distinct from it and the unavoidable mixture of both these is what we see everywhere and think of as reality. Indeed it is, and ever will be, all the reality that is possible for the human mind to know. Therefore to say that I svara is unreal, because He is anthropomorphic, is sheer nonsense. It sounds very much like the squabble on idealism and realism in occidental philosophy, which has for its foundation the mere play on the word real. The idea of Isvara covers all the ground ever denoted and connoted by the word real. Isvara is as much real as anything else in the universe ; and the word real means nothing more to us than what has now been pointed out. Such is the conception of Isvara, in Hindu philosophy.

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Spiritual Realisation, the Aim of Bhakti-Yoga. To the bhakta these dry details are necessary to strengthen his will only. Beyond that they are of no use to him, for, he is treading along a path which will soon lead him beyond the hazy and turbulent regions of reason, to the realm of realisation. Soon, through the mercy of the Lord, he reaches a plane where pedantic and powerless reason is left far behind, and the mere intellectual groping through the dark gives place to the daylight of direct perception. No more does he reason and believe, he perceives. No more does he argue, he senses. And is not this seeing and feeling and enjoying God, higher than reasoning and arguing about Him? Nay, bhaktas have not been wanting who have maintained that it is higher than Moksha-liberation even. And is it not

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THE AIM OF BHAKTI-YOGA. 31 in itself the highest utility also ? There are people in this world, and a good many of them too, who are covinced that that alone is of use and utility which brings creature-comforts to man. Religion, God, Eternity, Soul, none of these is of any use to them, for these do not bring them money or physical comfort ! To such, things, which do not gratify the senses or appease the appetites, are of any utility. In every mind, utility, however, is conditioned by its own peculiar wants. To men, therefore, who never rise higher than eating, drinking, begetting progeny, and dying, the gain lies in sense-enjoyments only; and they must wait and go through many more re-incarnations to learn to feel even the faintest necessity for anything higher. But those to whom the eternal interests of the soul are of much higher value than the fleeting interests of this mundane life, to whom the gratification of the senses is but like the thoughtless play of the baby, to them God

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32 BHAKTI-YOGA. and the love of God form the highest and the only utility of human existence. Thank God there are some such still living in this world of too much worldliness. Bhakti-Yoga, as we have said, is divided into the strat) gauni or the preparatory, and the (act) para or the supreme forms. We shall find as we go on how, in the preparatory stage, we unavoidably stand in need of many concrete helps to enable us to get on ; and indeed the mythological and symbological parts of all religions are natural growths which early environ the aspiring soul and help it Godward. It is also a significant fact that spiritual giants have only been produced in those systems of religion, where there is an exuberant growth of rich mythology and ritualism. The dry fanatical forms of religion which attempt to eradicate all that is poetical, all that is beautiful and sublime, all that gives a firm grasp to the infant mind tottering in its Godward way-the forms which

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33 attempt to break down the very ridge poles of the spiritual roof, and in their ignorant and superstitious conceptions of truth try to drive away all that is life-giving, all that furnishes the formative material to the spiritual plant growing in the human soul-such forms of religion find too soon that all of what is left to them is but an empty shell, a contentless frame of words or perhaps sophistry, with a little flavour of social scavengering, the so-called spirit of reform. The vast mass of those whose religion is like this are conscious or unconscious materialists-the end and aim of their lives here and hereafter being enjoyment. That is why yo or works like street-cleaning and scavengering intended to increase the material comfort of man are to them the alpha and the omega, the "be-all" and the "end-all" of human existence! The sooner the followers of this curious mixture of ignorance and fanaticism come out in their true colours, and join, as 3 THE AIM OF BHAKTI-YOGA.

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34 BHAKTI-YOGA. they well deserve to do, the ranks of atheists and materialists, the better will it be for the world. One ounce of practice of righteousness for spiritual self-realisation outweighs tons and tons of such frothy talk and nonsensical sentiments. Show us one, but one, gigantic spiritual genius growing out of all this dry dust of ignorance and fanaticism, or if you cannot, close your mouths, open the windows of your hearts to the clear light of truth, and sit like children at the feet of those who know what they are talking aboutthe sages of India ! Let us then listen attentively to what they say.

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The Need of a Guru. Every soul is destined to be perfect, and every being, in the end, will attain the state of perfection. Whatever we are now, is the result of our acts and thoughts in the past ; and whatever we shall be in the future, will be the result of what we think and do now. But this, our shaping of our own destinies, does not preclude our receiving help from outside, nay, in the vast majority of cases, such help is absolutely necessary. When it comes, the higher powers and possibilities of the soul are quickened, spiritual life is awakened, growth is animated, and man becomes holy and perfect in the end. 'This quickening impulse cannot be derived from books. The soul can only receive impulses from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end .we find, that we have not developed sipritu

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BHAKTI-YOGA. ally at all. It is not true that a high order of intellectual development always goes hand in hand with a proportionate development of the spiritual side in man. In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually helped ; but if we analyse the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the utmost, it is only our intellect that derived profit from such studies and not our inner spirit. This insufficiency of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and the living of a truly spiritual life, we find ourselves so awfully deficient. To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another soul. The person, from whose soul such impulse comes, is called the gurun-the teacher, and the person to whose soul the impulse is conveyed is called the sishyam-the student. To

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THE NEED OF A GURU. 37 convey such an impulse to any soul, in the first place, the soul from which it proceeds must possess the power of transmitting it, and in the second place, the soul to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it. The seed must be a living seed, and the field must be ready ploughed ; and when both these conditions are fulfilled, a wonderful growth of genuine religion takes place. "The true preacher of religion has to be of wonderful capabilities, and clever must his hearer be ;"* and when both of these are really wonderful and extraordinary, then will a splendid spiritual awakening result and not otherwise. Such alone are the real teachers, and such alone are also the real students or aspirants to spirituality. All others are only playing with spirituality. They have just a little curiosity awakened, just a little intellectua aspiration kindled in them, but are merely * pAcau~ vaktA kubhalI'sya baccA ( Katha, 11-7)

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standing on the outward fringe of the horizon of religion. There is, no doubt, some value even in that, as it may, in course of time, result in the awakening of a real thirst for religion. It is a mysterious law of nature that, as soon as the field is ready, the seed must and does come, as soon as the soul earnestly desires to have religion, the transmitter of the religious force must and does appear to help that soul. When the power that attracts the light of religion in the receiving soul is full and strong, the power, which answers to that attraction and sends in light, does come as a matter of course. There are, however, certain great dangers in the way. There is, for instance, the danger to the receiving soul of its mistaking momentary emotions for real religious yearning. We may study that in ourselves. Many a time in our lives, when somebody dies whom we loved, we receive a blow-we'feel that the world is slipping away between our

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THE NEED OF A GURU. 39 fingers, that we want something surer and higher and that we must become religious. In a few days that wave of feeling passes away and we are left stranded just where we were before! We are all of us often mistaking such impulses for real thirst after religion ; but as long as these momentary emotions are thus mistaken, that continuous, real, craving of the soul for religion will not come, and we cannot find the true transmitter of spirituality. So, whenever we are tempted to complain of our search after the Truth proving vain, instead of so complaining, our first duty ought to be to look into our own souls and find whether the craving in the heart is real. Then in the vast majority of cases, it would be discovered that we were not fit for receiving the Truth, that there was no real thirst for spirituality. There are still greater dangers in regard to the transmitter, the guru. There are many, who, though immersed in ignorance,

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40 BHAKTI-YOGA. yet in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything, and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders ; and thus the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch. "Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind." * The world is full of such. Everyone wants to be a teacher, every beggar wants to make a gift of a million dollars ! Just as these beggars are ridiculous, so are these teachers. wfaquiam TANT: 4 ct: aferuatura: 6 mAnyamAnAH pariyanti mUr3hA pandhenaiva nIyamAnA yathAndhA: / (Mundaka, 1-2-8)

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Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher. How are we to know a teacher then ? The sun requires no torch to make him visible--we need not light a candle in order to see him. When the sun rises, we instinctively become aware of the fact, so when a teacher of men comes to help us, the soul will instinctively find that truth has already begun to shine upon it. Truth stands on its own evidence-it does not require any other testimony to prove it to be true--it is selfeffulgent. It penetrates into the innermost corners of our nature, and in its presence the whole universe stands up and says, "This is truth." The teachers whose wisdom and truth shine like the light of the sun, the very best that the world has known, are worshipped as gods by the major portion of man

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42 BHAKTI-YOGA kind. But we may get help from a comparatively inferior class also and as we ourselves do not possess intuition enough to judge the merits of the man from whom we are going to receive teaching and guidance ; so there ought to be certain tests, certain conditions, for the teacher to satisfy, as there are for the taught. The conditions necessary for the taught are purity, a real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance. No impure soul can be really religious. Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for any one to be religious. As to thirst after knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want. None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon. To pant for religion truly is a very difficult thing, not at all so easy as we generally imagine. Hearing religious talks, reading religious books, is no proof yet of a real want felt in the heart ; there must be a continuous strug

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THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER. 43 gle, a constant fight, an unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt and the victory is achieved. It is not a question of one or two days or years, or of one or two lives-the struggle may have to go on for hundreds of life-times. The success sometimes may come immediately, but we must be ready to wait patiently for what may look like an infinite length of time, even. The student who sets out with such a spirit of perseverance will surely find success and realisation at last. In regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures. The whole world reads Bibles, Vedas, and Qurans ; but it reads only the words, syntax, etymology and philology of these--the dry bones of religion. The teacher who deals too much in words, and allows the mind to be carried away by the force of words, loses the spirit. It is the knowledge of the spirit

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 44 of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true religious teacher. The network of the words of the scriptures is like a huge forest in which the human mind often loses itself and finds no way out. "The network of words is a big forest; it is the cause of curious wanderings of the mind."* "The various methods of joining words, the various methods of speaking in beautiful language, the various methods of explaining the diction of the scriptures, as well as the disputations of the learned, are good intellectual enjoyments, but do not conduce to the development of spiritual perfection." + Those who employ such methods to impart religion to others are only desirous to show off their learning, so that the world may praise them as great * zabdajAlaM mahArasyaM cittabhramaNakAraNaM / (Vivekachud'amani, 62 sloka) + vAgvaikharI zabdabharI zAstravyAkhyAnakauzalaM / duSyaM viduSAM tataye na tu muktaye // (Vivekachud'amani, 60 sloka )

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THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER. 45 scholars. You will find that no one of the great treachers of the world ever went into these various explanations of the texts ; there is with them no attempt at "'text-torturing," no eternal playing upon the meaning of words and their roots. They simply taught, while others who have nothing to teach, have taken up a word sometimes, and written a three volume book on its origin, on the man who used it first, and on what that man was accustomed to eat, and how long he slept and so on ! Bhagavan Ramakrishna used to tell a story of some men who went into a mangoorchard and busied themselves in counting the leaves, twigs, and branches of the trees, examining their colour, comparing their size, and noting down everything most carefully, and then getting up a learned discussion on each of these topics, which were undoubtedly highly interesting to them. But one of them, more sensible than the others, did not care for all these things, and

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46 BHAKTI-YOGA. instead thereof, began to eat the mangofruit ! And was he not wiser ? So leave this counting of leaves and twigs and this notetaking to others. This kind of work has its proper place, but not here in the spiritual domain. You can never see a strong spiritual man among these "leaf-counters." Religion, the highest aim, the highest glory of man, does not require so much labour as leaf-counting. If you want to be a bhakta, it is not at all necessary for you to know whether Krishna was born in Mathura or in Vraja or what he was doing all through his life-time or just the exact date on which he pronounced the teachings of the Gita. You only require to feel the craving for the beautiful lessons of duty and love in the Gida. All the other particulars about it and its author are for the enjoyment of the learned. Let them have what they desire. Say "Shantih, Shantih" to their learned controversies, and let us eat the mangoes.

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THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER. 47 The second condition necessary in the teacher is--sinlessness. The question is often asked: "Why should we look into the character and personality of a teacher ? We have only to judge of what he says, and take that up." This is not right. If a man wants to teach me something of dynamics or chemistry, or any other physical science, he may be anything he likes, because what the physical sciences require, is merely an intellectual equipment ; but as regards the spiritual sciences, it is impossible from first to last, that there can be any spiritual light in the soul that is impure. What religion can an impure man teach ? The sine qua non of acquiring spiritual truth for one's self or for imparting it to others, is the purity of heart and soul. A vision of God or a glimpse of the beyond, never comes until the soul is pure. Hence with the teacher of religion we must see first what he is, and then what he says. He must be perfectly pure, and then

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BHAKTI-YOGA. alone comes the value of his words, because he is only then the true "transmitter." What can he transmit, if he has not spiritual power in himself ? There must be an intense spiritual vibration in the mind of the teacher, so that it may be sympathetically conveyed to the mind of the taught. The function of the teacher is indeed an affair of real transference of something, and not one of a mere stimulation of the existing intellectual or other faculties in the taught. Something real and appreciable as an influence, comes from the teacher and goes to the taught. Therefore the teacher must be pure. The third condition is in regard to the motive. The teacher must not teach with any ulterior selfish motive, for money, name, or fame ; his work must be simply out of love, out of pure love for mankind at large. The only medium through which spiritual force can be transmitted is love. Any selfish motive, such as the desire for gain or for

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THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER. 49 name, will immediately destroy this convey. ing medium. God is love, and only he who has known God as love can be a teacher of godliness and of God to man. When you see, that in your teacher these conditions are all fulfilled, you are safe ; if they are not, it is unsafe to allow yourself to be taught by him, for there is the great danger that, if he cannot convey goodness into your heart, he may convey wickedness. This danger must by all means be guarded against. "He who is learned, sinless and unpolluted by lust, he is the greatest knower of the Brahman."* From what has been said, it naturally follows that we cannot be taught to love, appreciate, and assimilate religion everywhere and by everybody. The "sermon in stones, books in running brooks, and good in . fastsaforisanament faufama: 1 (Vivekachud'amani, 34 sloka ) 24

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50 BHAKTI-YOGA. everything"* is all very true as a poetical figure-but no man can impart to another a single grain of truth, unless he has the undeveloped germs of it in himself. To whom do the stones and brooks preach sermons ? - to the human soul, the lotus of whose inner holy shrine is already quick with life. And the light which causes the beautiful opening out of this lotus comes always from the good and wise teacher. When the heart has thus been opened, it becomes fit to receive teaching from the stones and the brooks, or the stars, the sun and the moon, or from anything which has its existence in this divine universe; but the unopened heart will see in them nothing but mere stones and mere brooks. A blind man may go to a museum, but he will not profit by it in any way; his eyes *And this our life exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermon in stones and good in every thing. -Shakespeare's As you like it, Act II, Scene I.

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THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER. 51 must be opened first, and then alone he will be able to learn what the things in the museum can teach. This eye-opener of the aspirant after religion is the teacher. With the teacher, therefore, our relationship is the same as that between an ancestor and his descendants. Without faith, humility, submission and veneration in our hearts to our religious teacher, there cannot be any growth of religion in us ; and it is a significant fact, that where this kind of relation between the teacher and the taught prevails, there alone gigantic spiritual men are growing, while in those countries which have neglected to keep up this kind of relation, the religious teacher has become a mere lecturer,-the teacher expecting his five dollars, the person taught expecting his brain to be filled with the teacher's words and each going his own way after this much is done ! Under such circumstances spirituality becomes almost an un

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52 BHAKTI-YOGA. known quantity. There is none to transmit it and none to have it transmitted to. Religion with such people becomes businessthey think they can obtain it with their dollars. Would to God that religion could be obtained so easily ! But unfortunately it cannot. Religion, which is the very height of knowledge and wisdom, cannot be bought nor can it be acquired from books. You may thrust your head into all the corners of the world, you may explore the Himalayas, the Alps and the Caucasus, you may sound the bottom of the sea and pry into every nook of Thibet and the desert of Gobi, you will not find it any where, until your heart is ready for receiving it and your teacher has come. And when that divinely appointed teacher comes, serve him with childlike confidence and simplicity, freely open your heart to his influence and see in him God, incarnated! Those who come to seek truth with such a spirit of love and veneration, to

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THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER. 53 them the Lord of Truth reveals the most wonderful things regarding truth, goodness, and beauty. MISSIO AISHNA LIBRARY

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Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation "Wherever the name of the Lord is spoken, that very place is holy,"_how much more so is the man who speaks His name and with what veneration ought we to approach him, out of whom is transmitted spiritual light to us ! Such teachers of spiritual truth are indeed very few in number in this world, but the world is never altogether without them. The moment it will be absolutely bereft of them, it will become a hideous hell and hasten on to its destruction. They are always the fairest flowers of human life, "the ocean of mercy without any motive !" * "Know Me to be the Guru of all,"t says Sri * *gacuifera (Vivekachud'amani, 35 sloka ) t were at faratara (Bhagavat, Ch I, 17--26 )

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INCARNATE TEACHERS AND INCARNATION. 55 Krishna in the Bhagavat,--and higher and nobler than all ordinary ones is another set of teachers in the world, the Avataras of Isvara. They can transmit spirituality with a touch, even with a mere wish! The lowest and the most degraded characters become in one second saints at their command ! They are the Teachers of all teachers, the highest manifestations of God through man. We cannot see God except through them. We cannot help worshipping them and indeed, they are the only ones whom we are bound to worship. No man can really see God except through these human manifestations. If we try to see God otherwise, we make for ourselves a hideous caricature of Him, and believe the caricature to be no worse than the original. There is a story of an ignorant man who was asked to make an image of the God Siva, and who, after days of hard struggle, manufactured only the image of a

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56 BHAKTI-YOGA. monkey. So whenever we try to think of God as He is in His absolute perfection, we invariably meet with the most miserable failure ; because as long as we are men, we cannot conceive Him as anything higher than man. The time will come when we shall transcend our human nature, and know Him as He is; but as long as we are men we must worship Him in man and as man. Talk as you may, try as you may, you cannot think of God except as a man. You may deliver great intellectual discourses on God, you may become very great rationalists and prove to your satisfaction that all these accounts of the Avataras or incarnations of God as man are nonsense-but let us come for a moment to practical common sense and examine them. What is there behind these rational discourses-how much real substance ? Zero, nothing-simply so much froth! Hence next time when you hear a man delivering a great intellectual lecture

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INCARNATE TEACHERS AND INCARNATION. 57 against this worship of the Avataras of God, get hold of him and ask him what his idea of God is, what he knows by "omnipotence," "omnipresence," and all similar terms, beyond the spelling of the words. He really means nothing by them; he cannot formulate as their meaning any idea unaffected by his own human nature; he is no better off in this matter than the man in the street who has not read a single book. That man in the street, however, is quiet and does not disturb the peace of the world -while this big talker creates disturbance and misery among mankind. Religion is after all realisation, and we must make the sharpest distinction between talk and intuitive experience. What we experience in the depths of our souls is realisation. Nothing indeed is so uncommon as common sense in regard to this matter! By our present constitution, we are limited and bound to see God as man. If, for

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58 BHAKTI-YOGA. instance, the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keeping with their own nature, see Him as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an idea of Him as a big fish; and man has to think of Him as man. And these various conceptions are not due to morbidly active imagination. Man, the buffalo and the fish, all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels so to say, with different shape and capacities. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water. In the man the water takes the shape of man, in the buffalo the shape of a buffalo, and in the fish the shape of a fish. Now, as each of these vessels, though containing the same water of the same sea of God, has to appear according to its own shape and capacity, so when men see God, they see Him as man, and the animals, if they have any conception of God at all, must see Him as animal, each according to its own mental

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INCARNATE TEACHERS AND INCARNATION. 59 constitution and capacity. Therefore we cannot help seeing God as man and are bound to worship Him as man. There is no other way. Two kinds of men do not worship God as man--the human brute who has no religion, and the liberated soul, the Paramahamsa, who has risen beyond all the weaknesses of humanity and has transcended the limits of his own human nature. To him all nature has become his own Self. He alone can worship God as He is. Here too, as in all other cases, the two extremes meet. The extreme of ignorance and the other extreme of knowledge-neither of these go through acts of worship. The human brute does not worship because of his ignorance, and the free souls (Jivanmuktas) do not worship, because they have realised God in themselves. Being between these two poles of existence, if any one tells you that he is not going to worship God as man, take kind

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60 care of that man; he is, not to use any harsher term, an irresponsible talker; his religion is for unsound and empty brains. God understands human failings and becomes man to do good to humanity. "Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails, I manifest myself. To establish virtue, to destroy evil, to save the good I come in every age." "*"Fools deride Me, Who have assumed the human form, without knowing My real nature as the Lord of the universe." + Such is Sri Krishna's declaration in the Gita on incarnation. "When a huge BHAKTI-VOGA. * " yadA yadA hi dharmasya glAnirbhavati bhArata / abhyutthAnamadharmasya tadAtmAnaM sRjAmyaham // parivANAya sAdhUnAM vinAzAya ca duSkRtAm / dharmasaMsthApanArthAya sambhavAmi yuge yuge // " (Gita, Ch. IV. 7-8) + Geonafa ai zei zigai agenfaci i param bhAvamajAnantI mama bhUtamahezvaram // (Gita, Ch. IX-II)

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INCARNATE TEACHERS AND INCARNATION 61 tidal wave comes," says Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna, "all the little brooks and ditches become full to the brim without any effort or consciousness or their own part--so when an incarnation comes, a tidal wave of spirituality breaks upon the world and people feel spirituality in the very atmosphere."

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The Mantra : Om : Word and Wisdom. We are now considering not the Mahapurushas, or the great incarnations of God, but only the siddha-gurus, the teachers who have attained the goal. They as a rule, have to convey the germs of spiritual wisdom to the disciple by means of words (mantra) to be meditated upon. What are these mantras ? The whole of this universe has, according to Indian philosophy, both name and form (TTTH ) as its conditions of manifestation. In the human microcosm, there cannot be a single wave in the mindstuff (fr) unconditioned by name and form. If it be true that nature is built throughout on the same plan, this kind of conditioning by name and form must also be the plan of the building of the whole of the cosmos. "As one lump of clay being known, all clay

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THE MANTRA : OM : WORD AND WISDOM. 63 is known," so the knowledge of the microcosm must lead to the knowledge of the macrocosm. Now, form is the outer crust, of which name or idea is the inner essence or kernel. In the microcosm, the body is the form, and the mind or the antahkarana is the name, and sound-symbols are universally associated with this name, in all beings having the power of speech. In other words, in the individual man the thought-waves arising in the limited mahat (79-mind-stuff) must manifest themselves, first as words or ideas, and then as the more concrete forms of speech and action. In the universe also, Brahma or Hiranyagarbha (the cosmic mahat or the universal mind) first manifested Itself as name, and then as form or the outer universe. All this expressed sensible universe is the form, behind which stands the eternal inexpress* yathA saumya kana mapilena sarva masAyaM vijJAta sthAda / (Chhandogya, VI-1).

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64 BHAKTI-YOGA. ible sphota (mitz) or manifester, as Logos or Word. This eternal sphota, the essential eternal material of all ideas or names, is the power through which the Lord creates the universe-nay, the Lord first becomes conditioned as the sphota, and then evolves himself out as the yet more concrete sensible universe. This sphota has one word as its only possible symbol, and this is the Om (MISH). And as by no possible means of analysis we can separate a sound-symbol from the idea, connoted by it, this Om and the eternal sphota are inseparable. And therefore it is out of this holiest of all holy words, the mother of all names and forms, the eternal Om, that the whole universe may be supposed to have been created. But it may be said that, although ideas and soundsymbols are inseparable, yet as there may be various sound-symbols for the same idea, it is not necessary that this particular word Om should be the sound-representative of

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THE MANTRA OM WORD AND WISDOM. 65 the thought, out of which the universe has become manifested. To this objection we reply that this Om is the only possible symbol which covers the whole ground of all possible ideas and there is none other like it. The sphota is the material of all ideas, and not any definite idea in its fully formed state. That is to say, if all the peculiarities which distinguish one idea from another be removed, then what remains will be the sphota. Now, as every sound-symbol, intended to express this inexpressible sphota will so particularize it that it will no longer be the sphota, that sound-symbol which particularizes it the least and at the same time most approximately expresses its nature, will be the truest symbol for it and this is the Om, and the Om only. The three letters A, U, M, (++) pronounced in combination as Om, may well be the generalised symbol of all possible sounds. Let us see how it can be so. The letter A is the 5

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BHAKTI-YOGA. least differentiated of all sounds, therefore Krishna says in the Gita"I am A among the letters." * Again, all articulate sounds are produced in the space within the mouth beginning with the root of the tongue and ending in the lips. The throat-sound is A, and M is the last lip-sound and the effort made to produce the sound U exactly represents the rolling forward of the impulse which begins at the root of the tongue till it ends in the lips. Thus properly pronounced, this Om will represent the whole phenomenon of sound-production, and no other word can do this. This, therefore, is the fittest symbol to represent the sphota, and the idea connoted by the word sphota is the real meaning of the word Om. And as the symbol can never be separated from the thing signified, the Om and the sphota are one. # @hardisfari ( Gita, Ch. X-33 )

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THE MANTRA : OM : WORD AND WISDOM. 67 Therefore the sphota is called the NadaBrahma ( FICAH ) or the Sound-Brahman. And as the sphota, being the finer side of the manifested universe, is nearer to God, and is indeed the first manifestation of Divine Wisdom, this Om is truly symbolic of God. Again, just as the "one only" Brahman, the Akhanda-Sachchidananda, the Undivided Existence-Knowledge-Bliss, can be conceived by imperfect human souls from particular and limited standpoints of view only and will always be associated with particular qualities, so the universe in its entirety, the body of the Lord will also be thought of in the same manner by them. Now the particular view of God and universe of a particular worshipper's mind, will always be determined by its prevailing elements or tattvas. And thus the result is that the same God will be seen by various worshippers as the possessor of different and not unoften contradictory qualities, in His various manifestations ; and the

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68 same universe will also appear as full of manifold unconnected forms. In the same way again as in the case of the least differentiated and the most universal symbol Om, idea and sound-symbol have been seen to be inseparably associated with each other-the law of the inseparable association of ideas and soundsymbols will apply to the many differentiated views of God and universe and each of them will and must have a particular word-symbol to express it. These word-symbols, evolved out of the deepest spiritual perceptions of sages, symbolize and express as nearly as possible the particular view of God and universe they stand for. And as the Om represents the Akhanda or the undifferentiated Brahman, the other sound-symbols represent the khanda or the differentiated views of the same Being; and they will all be found helpful to divine meditation and the acquisition of true knowledge, by worshippers having respective different views of the Lord and the universe. BHAKTI-YOGA.

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Worship of Substitutes and Images. The next points to be considered are the worship of Pratikas or of things more or less satisfactory as substitutes for God, and the worship of Pratimas or images. What is the worship of God through a Pratika ? It is "joining the mind with devotion to that which is not Brahman, taking it to be Brahman." * Says Bhagavan Ramanuja :"Worship the mind as Brahman', this is internal; and 'the Akasa is Brahman', this is external". The mind is an internal Pratika, the Akasa is an external one ; yet both can be worshipped as substitutes of God. Similarly Sankara says--"'The Sun is Brahman, this is the command,'... 'He who worships Name as Brahman,' and in all such passages the doubt arises as to the worship of Pratikas." The word Pratika means going towards, ___* bramaNi brahatyA'nusandhAnam /

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70 BHAKTI-YOGA. and worshipping a Pratika is worshipping some thing which, as a substitute, is in some one or more respects, like the Brahman, but is not the Brahman. Along with the Pratikas mentioned in the Srutis there are various others to be found in the Puranas and the Tantras. In this "Pratika-worship" may be included all the various forms of ancestor-(Pitri) worship and the worship of angels and higher beings (Deva lit. a shining or radiant being). Now worshipping Isvara and Him alone is bhakti ; the worship of anything else, such as Deva or Pitri, or any other being cannot be called bhakti. The various kinds of worship of the various Devas, are all to be included in ritualistic Karma, which gives to the worshipper a particular result only, in the form of some celestial enjoyment, but can neither give rise to bhakti or intense devotion to God nor lead to mukti or freedom from all bondages. One thing, therefore, will have to be carefully borne in mind.

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WORSHIP OF SUBSTITUTES AND IMAGES. 71 If, as it may happen in some cases, the highly philosophic ideal of the supreme Brahman is dragged down by pratika-worship to the level of the pratika or the substitute and the pratika itself is taken by the worshipper, as his innermost Self and the inner controler of everything (Antarayamin), the worshipper gets entirely misled, as no pratika can really be the Atman of the worshipper. But where Brahman Himself is the object of worship, and the pratika stands only as a substitute or a suggestion thereof--that is to say, where through the pratika the omnipresent Brahman is worshipped and the pratika is being idealized into the cause of the universe, as a means to the attainment to the Brahman--the worship is positively beneficial ; nay, it is absolutely necessary for all mankind, until they have all got beyond the primary or preparatory state of the mind in regard to worship. When, therefore, any gods or other beings MISSION INSTIT 111UNE OF RISHNA RAMA LIBRARY www un

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72 are worshipped in and for themselves, such worship is only a ritualistic karma; and as a vidya (science) it gives us only the fruit belonging to that particular vidya; but when the devas or any other beings are looked upon as Brahman and worshipped, the result obtained is the same as by the worshipping of Isvara, the Supreme Ruler. This explains how, in many cases, both in the Srutis and the Smritis, a god or a sage or some other extraordinary being was taken up and lifted gradually out of its own personal nature and after being idealized into Brahman, had been worshipped as such. In explanation the Advaitin says, 'Is not everything Brahman when the name and the form have been removed from it ?'--'Is not He, the Lord, the innermost self of every one?'-says the Visishtadvaitin. "The fruition of even the worship of the Adityas etc. Brahman Himself bestows, because he is the Ruler of all. Here, in this way does Brahman become the BHAKTI-YOGA.

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WORSHIP OF SUBSTITUTES AND IMAGES. 73 object of worship, because He, as Brahman, is superposed on the pratikas just as Vishnu, and other Gods are superposed upon images" *-says Sankara. The same ideas apply to the worship of the pratimas or images as do to that of the pratikas--that is to say, if the image stands for a god or a saint only, the worship is not the result of bhakti and does not lead to liberation ; but if it stands for the one God, the worship thereof will bring both bhakti and mukti. Of the principal religions of the world we see Vedantism, Buddhism, and certain forms of Christianity freely using images to help the worshipper-and only two religions, Mahomedanism and Protestantism, refuse such help. Yet the Maho'medans use the graves of their saints and martyrs, almost in place of images. The * phalamAdityAdhupAsaneSu brajhaiva dAsyati saadhyksstvaat| IdRzaM cAca akha: upAsyatvaM yataH pratIkeSu tathyAdhyArIpaNaM pratimAdiSu va vinnaadiinaa| (Vedanta Sutras-Bhasya by Sankara ).

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74 BHAKTI-YOGA. Protestants alone, in rejecting all concrete helps to religion, drifted away every year farther and farther from spirituality, till at present there is scarcely any difference between the advanced Protestants and the followers of Auguste Comte or the Agnostics, who preach ethics only! Again, in Christianity and Mahomedanism whatever exists of image-worship is to be counted under that category, in which the pratika or the pratima is worshipped in itself but not as a "help to the vision" of God ( Efenten ). Therefore it is at best only of the nature of ritualistic karmas and cannot produce either bhakti or mukti. In this form of image-worship the allegiance of the soul is given to other things than Isvara, and therefore, such use of images or graves, of temples or tombs is real(r) idolatry. Yet it is in itself neither sinful nor wicked--it is a rite, a karma, and woro shippers must and will get the fruit thereof.

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The Chosen Ideal. The next thing to be considered is what we know as Ishta Nishtha or devotion to the chosen ideal. One who aspires to be a bhakta or devotee must know that in the matter of worshipping God "so many opinions are so many ways."* He must know that all the various sects of the various religions are the various manifestations of the glory of the same Lord. "They call Thee by so many names--they divide Thee, as it were, by them-yet in each one of these, Thy names, is to be found Thy omnipotence and Thou reachest the worshipper through any one of them! Neither is there any special time mentioned to take Thy name so long as the soul has intense love for Thee. Thou art so easy of approach! It is my misfortune that I cannot love Thee, oh! * Sayings of Sree Ramakrishna.

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76 BHAKTI-YOGA. Lord". Not only this, the bhakta must take care not to hate nor even to criticize, those radiant sons of light who are the founders of various sects. He is not even to hear them spoken ill of. Very few indeed are those, who are at once the possessors of an extensive sympathy and power of appreciation, as well as an intensity of love. We find as a rule that liberal and sympathetic sects lose the intensity of religious feeling, and in their hands religion is apt to degenerate into a kind of politico-social club life. On the other hand intensely narrow sectaries, whilst displaying a very commendable love of their own ideals, are seen to have acquired every particle of that love by hating every one who is not exactly of the same opinion as mAmAmakAri bahudhA nijasarvazaktisavArpitA niyamita: araNe na kAla: / etAdRzau tava kRpA bhagavan mamApi zamihAni naanuraagH| (Sree Krishna Chaitanya )

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77 they are. Would to God that this world was full of men, who were as intense in their love and as world-wide in their sympathies! But such are only few and far between. Yet we know that it is practicable to educate large numbers of human beings, into the ideal of a wonderful blending of both the width and the intensity of love; and the way to do that is by this path of the Ishta Nishtha or by devotion to a "chosen ideal." Every sect of every religion presents only one ideal of its own to mankind, but the eternal Vedantic religion opens an infinite number of doors for ingress into the inner shrine of Divinity, and places before humanity an almost inexhaustible array of ideals, there being in each of them a manifestation of the Eternal One. With the kindest solicitude the Vedanta points out to aspiring men and women, the numerous roads hewn out of the solid rock of the realities of human life, by the glorious sons THE CHOSEN IDEAL.

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BHAKTI-YOGA. or human manifestations of God, in the past and in the present, and stands with outstretched arms to welcome all--to welcome even those that are yet to be to that Home of Truth and that Ocean of Bliss wherein the human soul, liberated out of the net of Maya, may transport itself with perfect freedom and with eternal joy! Bhakti-Yoga, therefore, lays on us the imperative command not to hate or deny any one of the various paths that lead to salvation. Yet the growing plant must be hedged around for protection, until it has grown into a tree. The tender plant of spirituality will die, if exposed too early to the action of a constant change of ideas and ideals. Many people, in the name of what may be called religious liberalism, may be seen to be feeding their idle curiosity with a continuous succession of different ideals. With them hearing new things grows into a sort of disease, a sort of religious drink

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79 THE CHOSEN JDEAL. mania. They want to hear new things just to get a sort of temporary nervous excitement, and when one such exciting influence has had its effect on them, they are ready for another. Religion is with these people a sort of intellectual opium-eating, and there it ends. "There is another sort of men," says Bhagavan Ramakrishna, "who are like the pearl oyster of the story. The pearl oyster leaves its bed at the bottom of the sea, and comes up to the surface, to catch the rain water when the star Svati is in the ascendant. It floats about on the surface of the sea with its shell wide open until it has succeeded in catching a drop of the rain water, and then it dives deep down to its sea-bed and there rests until it has succeeded in fashioning a beautiful pearl out of that rain drop." This is indeed the most poetical and forcible way in which the theory of Ishta Nishtha has ever been put. This Eka

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80 BHAKTI-YOGA. Nishtha, or devotion to one ideal is absolutely necessary for the beginner in the practice of religious devotion. He must say with Hanuman in the Ramayana--"Though I know that the Lord of Sri and the Lord of Janaki are both manifestations of the same Supreme Being and therefore One and the same, yet my all in all is the lotus-eyed Rama."*mor, as was said by the sage Tulasidas, he must say--"Take the sweetness of all, sit with all, take the name of all, and say yea, yea to every one but hold your own position firmly."+ Then, if the devotional aspirant is sincere, out of this little seed will come out a gigantic tree like the Indian banyan sending branch after branch and root after root to all sides, till it covers the entire some patarie wat: qCfo tathApi mama sarvasvI rAmaH kamalakhIcanaH / + sabase vasiye sabase rasiye sabakA lijiye nAma / hAjI hAMjI karate rahiye vaiThiye pApanA ThAma / -Tulasidas.

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THE CHOSEN IDEAL. 81 field of religion. Thus will the true devotee realize that He, Who was his own ideal in life is worshipped in all ideals by all sects, under all names, and through all forms.

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The Method and the Means. In regard to the method and the means of Bhakti-Yoga we read in the commentary of Bhagavan Ramanuja on the Vedanta Sutras :--"The attainment of That (Brahman) comes through discrimination, controlling the passions, practice, sacrificial work, purity, strength, and suppression of excessive joy." Viveka or discrimination is, according to Ramanuja, discriminating, among other things, the pure food from the impure. According to him, food becomes impure from three causes : namely, (1) from the nature of the food itself, as in the case of garlic, etc. ; (2) owing to its coming from wicked and accursed persons ; and (3) from physical impurities, such as dirt, or hair, etc. The Srutis say, "by pure food, the Sattva element gets purified and by that the

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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS. 83 memory becomes unfailing, *" and Ramanuja quotes this from the Chhandogya Upanishad. The question of food has always been one of the most vital with the bhaktas or devotees. Apart from the extravagance into which some of the bhakti sects have run, there is a great truth underlying this question of food. We must remember that, according to the Sankhya philsophy the sattva, rajas, and tamas, which in the state of homogeneous equilibrium form the prakriti and in the heterogeneous, disturbed condition form the universe, are both the substance and the quality of prakriti or the creative principle. As such they are the materials out of which every human form has been manufactured, and the predominance of the sattva material is what is absolutely necessary for spiritual development. The materials which we receive through our food into our bodies go a ITV Tayfa: Javni ya fa: 1 (Chhandogya Upanishad, VII-31).

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BHAKTI-YOGA. great way to determine our mental constitution ; therefore the food we eat has to be particularly taken care of. However, in this matter as in others, the fanaticism into which the disciples invariably fell is not to be laid at the door of the masters. And this discrimination of food is after all of secondary importance. The very same passage quoted above is explained by Sankara in his bhashya on the Upanishads in a different way, by giving an entirely different meaning to the word a hara,-translated generally as food. According to him"That which is gathered in is dhara. The knowledge coming through the different sensations such as sound, etc.,-is gathered in the mind for the enjoyment of the enjoyer (self); the purification of the knowledge which thus gathered through perception of the senses, is the purifying of the food (@hara). Purification-of-food means therefore the acquiring of knowledge of all

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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS. 85 the things of the world, untouched by the defects of attachment, aversion, and delusion. Hence, knowledge or ahara being purified, the sattva material of the mind or antahkarana, the internal organ, in which is stored all such knowledge, will become purified, and the sattva being purified, an unbroken memory of the knowledge of the real nature of the infinite One, that has been attained through the scriptures, will result." The explanations by Sankara and Ramanuja of the word a hara are apparently conflicting, yet both are true and necessary. The manipulating and controlling of what is called the finer body, + are no doubt higher functions than the controlling of the grosser body of flesh. But the control of the grosser is ab * ( Vide Bhashya by Sankara of the Chhandogya Upanishad, vil-26). + The finer body or Sukshma Sarira in man, is made up of the five sense-organs plus the five organs of action plus the Manas and Buddhi. It is not destroyed by death but re-incarnates with all past experiences until the soul reaches perfection or mukti.

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86 BHAKTI-YOGA. solutely necessary to enable one to arrive at the control of the finer. The beginner, therefore, must pay particular attention to all such dietetic rules as have come down from the line of accredited teachers of bhakti. But the extravagant, meaningless fanaticism, which has driven religion entirely to the kitchen, as may be noticed in the case of many of our sects, without any hope of the noble truth of that religion over coming out to the sunlight of spirituality--is a peculiar sort of pure and simple materialism. It is neither jnana, nor bhakti nor karma. It is a special kind of lunacy, and those who pin their souls to it, are more likely to go to lunatic asylums than to Brahma-loka or the highest sphere. So it stands to reason that discrimination in the choice of food, is necessary for the attainment of this higher state of mental composition which can not be easily obtained otherwise. Controlling the passions is the next thing

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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS. 87 to be attended to. To restrain the Indriyas (organs from going towards the objects of the senses, to control them and bring them under the guidance of the will, is the very central virtue in religious culture. Then comes the practice of self-restraint and self-denial. All the immense possibilities of divine realisation in the soul, cannot get actualised without struggle and without practice of these qualities, on the part of the aspiring devotee. The mind must always think of the Lord. It is very hard at first to compel the mind to think of the Lord always, but with every new effort the power to do so grows stronger in us. "By practice, Oh son of Kunti, and by non-attachment is the control of mind attained," * says Sri Krishna in the Gita. The devotee therefore shall cultivate all these qualities which are essential to attain * abhyAsena tu kaunteya vairAgyena ca gRhyate / ( Gita, Ch. VI--35).

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BHAKTI-YOGA. supreme devotion and must not observe the ritualistic sacrifices, enjoined in some of the scriptures, the sole object of which is the attainment of sense-enjoyments, either in this world or the next, thus leading one to greater and greater bondage and farther and farther away from the Lord. Hence as to sacrificial works it is to be understood that he will have to perform the five great sacrifices ( AER ) only and nothing more. Purity therefore is the basement, the one bed-rock upon which the whole bhakti-building rests. Cleansing the external body and discriminating the food are both easy, but without internal cleanliness and without purity, these external observances are of no value whatsoever. In the list of the qualities conductive to purity, as given by Ramanuja, there have been enumerated--Satya, truthfulness, Arjava, sincerity, Daya, doing good to others without expectation of any gain to one's self; Ahimsa, not injuring others by thought,

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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS. 89 word or deed and Abhidhya, not coveting other's goods, not thinking vain thoughts, and not brooding over injuries received from another. The one idea that deserves special notice in this list is Ahimsa, non-injury to others. This duty of non-injury is obligatory on the devotee in relation to all beings. As with some of us, it does not mean simply the not-injuring of human beings and mercilessness towards the lower animals-nor as with some others, does it mean, the protecting of cats and dogs and the feeding of ants with sugar, with liberty to injure brotherman in every horrible way. It is remarkable that almost every good idea in this world can be carried to a disgusting extreme. A good practice carried to an extreme and worked in accordance with the letter of the law, becomes a positive evil and it is a matter of no less regret that the practice of noninjury too, has not been an exception to this. The stinking monks of certain religious

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90 BHAKTI-YOGA. sects, who do not bathe lest the vermin on their bodies should be killed, never think of the discomfort and disease they bring to their fellow human beings ! It is a comfort to think, however, that they do not belong to the religion of the Vedas. The test of Ahimsa is absence of jealousy. Any man may do a good deed or make a generous gift on the spur of the moment, or under pressure of some superstition or priestcraft ; but the real lover of mankind is he who is jealous of none. The so-called great men of the world may all be seen to become jealous of each other for name, fame, and a few bits of gold. So long as this jealousy exists in the heart, no matter even if one is a vegetarian, one is far away from the perfection of Ahimsa. The cow does not eat meat, nor does the sheep. Are they great Yogins, great non-injurers for that? Any fool may abstain from eating meat ; surely that alone gives him no more distinction than to herbi

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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS. 91 vorous animals. The man who will mercilessly cheat widows and orphans, and do the vilest deeds for money, is worse than any brute, even if he lives entirely on grass alone. The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to any one, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy, that man is a Bhakta, that man is a Yogin. He is the Guru of all, even though he lives every day of his life on the flesh of swine. Therefore we must always remember that external practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity. It is better to attempt for internal purity alone when minute attention to external observances is not practicable. But woe unto the man and woe unto the nation, that forgets the real, the internal, the spiritual essentials of religion, and mechanically clutches with death-like grasp all the external forms of it and never lets them go. The forms have value only so far as they are the expressions of the life

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 92 within. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy. The next means to the attainment of bhakti-yoga is strength (). "This Atman is not to be attained by the weak," * says the Sruti. Both physical weakness and mental weakness are meant here. "The strong, the hardy," are the only fit students. What can puny, little, decrepit things do? They will break to pieces, whenever the mysterious forces of the body and mind are even slightly awakened by the practice of any of the Yogas. It is "the young, the healthy, the strong" that can score success. Physical strength, therefore, is absolutely necessary. It is the strong body alone that can bear the shock of re-action resulting from the attempt to control the organs. He who wants to become a bhakta must be strong-must be healthy. When the miset * nAyamAtmA valahonena labhAH / (Mundaka III-2-4).

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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS. 93 ably weak attempt any of the Yogas, they are likely to get some incurable malady; and get their minds weakened by it; and to weaken the body voluntarily is really no prescription for spiritual enlightenment. The mentally weak also cannot succeed in attaining the Atman. The person who aspires to be a bhakta must be cheerful. With many, the ideal of a religious man isthat he never smiles, that a dark cloud must always hang over his face, which, again, must be long-drawn with the jaws almost collapsed. In my opinion such people with emaciated bodies and long faces are fit subjects for the physician. They can never be Yogins. It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties. And this, the hardest task of all, the cutting of our way out of the net of Maya, is the work reserved only for giant wills. > Yet at the same time excessive mirth

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94 BHAKTI-YOGA. should be avoided (anuddharsha). Excessive mirth makes us unfit for serious thought. It also fritters away the energies of the mind. The stronger the will, the less the yielding to the sway of the emotions. Excessive hilarity is quite as objectionable as too much of sad seriousness, and all religious realisation is possible only where the mind is in a steady, peaceful condition of harmonious equilibrium. It is thus that one may begin to learn to love the Lord, and this is what is known as the preparatory bhakti ( itu-ufa).

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Para-Bhakti or Supreme Devotion.

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The Preparatory Renunciation. We have finished the consideration of what may be called the preparatory bhakti, and are almost ready to enter into the study of the Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. We have to speak now of the final preparation necessary to the practice of this ParaBhakti. All such preparations are intended only for the purification of the soul. The repetition of names, the rituals, the forms, the symbols, all are for the purification of the soul. The greatest purifier among all such things, a purifier without which no one can enter the regions of this higher devotion (Para-Bhakti), is renunciation. It is a frightening thing to many; yet, without it, there cannot be any spiritual growth. In all the Yogas this renunciation is necessary. It is the stepping stone, the centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture. In short, religion is renunciation. When the human soul draws

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08 BHAKTI-YOGA. back from the things of the world and tries to go deeper into the heart of things; when man, the spirit--which is here below, after getting concretised and materialised somehow -understands, that he is thereby going to be destroyed and reduced almost into mere matter, and turns his face away from matter -then begins renunciation, then begins his real spiritual growth. The karma-yogin's renunciation is in the shape of giving up all the fruits of his actions ; he must not be attached to the results of his labours ; he must not care for any reward here or hereafter. The raja-yogin knows that the whole of nature is intended for the soul to acquire experience, and that the result of all the experiences of the soul, is for it to become aware of its eternal separateness from nature. The human soul has to understand and realize that it has been spirit, and not matter, through eternity and that this conjunction of it with matter is and can be only for a time.

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THE PREPARATORY RENUNCIATION. 99 The raja-yogin learns the lesson of renunciation through his own experience of nature. The jnana-yogin has the harshest of renunciations to go through, as he has to realise from the very first that the whole of this solid-looking nature is all an illusion. He has to understand that all the manifestations of power in nature belongs to the soul, and 'not to nature. He has to know, from the very start, that all knowledge and all experiences are within the soul, and not within nature. So he has at once and by the sheer force of rational conviction, to tear himself off from all bondage to nature. He lets nature and all her things go-he lets them vanish and tries to stand alone! Of all renunciations, the most natural is that of the bhakti-yogin. Here-there is no violence, nothing to give up, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from which we have violently to separate ourselves. The bhakta's renunciation is easy,

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100 BHAKTI-YOGA. smooth, flowing, and as natural as the things around us. We see the manifestation of this sort of renunciation, although more or less in the cause of caricatures, every day around us. A man begins to love a woman; after a while he loves another, and the first woman, he lets go. She drops out of his mind smoothly, gently without his feeling the want of her at all. A woman loves a man ; she then begins to love another man, and the first one drops off from her mind quite naturally. A man loves his own city, then he begins to love his country, and the intense love for his little city drops off smoothly, naturally. Again, a man learns to love the whole world; his love for his country, his intense, fanatical patriotism drops off, without hurting him, without any manifestation of violence. An uncultured man loves the pleasures of the senses intensely; as he becomes cultured he begins to love intellectual, pleasures, and sense-enjoyments become less and

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THE PREPARATORY RENUNCIATION. TOI less to him. No man can enjoy a meal with the same gusto of pleasure as a dog or a wolf, but the pleasures, which a man gets from intellectual experiences and achievements, the dog can never enjoy. Pleasure at first is in association with the lower senses ; but as soon as an animal reaches a higher plane of existence, the lower kind of pleasures becomes less intense to it. In human society, the nearer the man is to the animal, the stronger is his pleasure in the senses ; and the higher and the more cultured the man is, the greater is his pleasure in intellectual and such other finer pursuits. So, when a man gets even higher than the plane of the intellect, higher than that of mere thought, when he gets to the plane of spirituality and of divine inspiration, he finds therein a state of bliss, compared to which all the pleasures of the senses, or even of the intellect, become as nothing. When the moon shines brightly all the stars become dim, and when the sun

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102 BHAKTI-YOGA. shines, the moon herself becomes dim. The renunciation necessary for the attainment of bhakti, is not obtained by killing anything, but just comes in as naturally as, in the presence of an increasingly stronger light, the less intense ones become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish away completely. So this love of the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim, and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God. That love of God grows and assumes a form which is called Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, and images, temples, churches, religions, sects, countries and nationalities, all these little limitations, and bondages fall off of themselves from him, who knows this love of God! Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A ship, all of a sudden, comes 'near a magnetic rock and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks

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THE PREPARATORY RENUNCIATION. 103 get loosened and freely float on the water. Divine grace thus loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free. So, in this renunciation auxiliary to devotion, there is no harshness, no dryness, no struggle, no repression or suppression. The bhakta has not to suppress any single one of his emotions, he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.

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The Bhakta's Renunciation Results from Love. We see love everywhere in nature. Whatever in society is good and great and sublime, is the working out of love ; whatever in society is very bad, nay diabolical, is also the ill-directed working out of the same emotion of love. It is this same emotion that gives us the pure and holy conjugal love between husband and wife, as well as the sort of love which goes to satisfy the lowest forms of animal passion. The emotion is the same, but its manifestation is different in the different cases. It is the same feeling of love, well or ill directed, that impels one man to do good and to give all he has to the poor, while it makes another man cut the throats of his brethren and take away all their possessions. The former loves others as much as the latter loves himself. The direction of the love is bad in the case of this latter, and it is right

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RENUNCIATION FROM LOVE. 105 and proper in the former case. The same fire that cooks a meal for us may burn a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it did so ; the difference lies in the way in which it is used. Therefore, love, the intense longing for association, the strong desire on the part of two to become one, and it may be after all, of all to become merged in one, is being manifested everywhere in higher or lower forms as the case may be. Bhakti-Yoga is the science of higher love--it shows us how to direct it. It shows us how to control it, how to manage it, how to use it, how to give it a new aim, as it were, and from it obtain the highest and most glorious results, that is, how to make it lead us to spiritual blessedness! Bhakti-Yoga does not say--give up ; it only says--love, love the Highest ; and everything low naturally falls off from him the object of whose love is this Highest. * "I cannot tell anything about Thee, except that Thou art my love. Thou art

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106 BHAKTI-YOGA. beautiful, Oh Thou art beautiful! Thou art beauty itself." What is after all really required of us in this Yoga is that our thirst after the beautiful should be directed to God. What is the beauty in the human face, in the sky, in the stars, and in the moon ? It is only the partial apprehension of the real, all-embracing Divine Beauty. "He shining, everything shines. It is through His light that all things shine."* Take this high position of bhakti which makes you forget at once all your little personalities. Take yourself away from all the world's little selfish clingings. Do not look upon humanity as the centre of all your human and higher interests. Stand as a witness, as a student, and observe the phenomena of nature. Have the feeling of personal nonattachment with regard to man, and see how + CH4 HTTHHIf = 1 tasya bhAsA sarvamidaM vibhAti // (Katha Upanishada, II. 5-15)

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RENUNCIATION FROM LOVE. 107 this mighty feeling of love is working itself out in the world. Sometimes a little friction is produced, but that is only in the course of the struggle to attain the higher and real love. Sometimes there is a little fight, or a little fall ; but it is all along the way only. Stand aside, and freely let these frictions come. You feel the frictions, only when you are in the current of the world. But when you are outside of it, simply as a witness or as a student, you will be able to see that there are millions and millions of channels in which God is manifesting Himself as Love. "Wherever there is any bliss, even though in the most sensual of things, there is a spark of that Eternal Bliss which is the Lord Himself."* Even in the lowest kinds of attraction there is the germ of Divine love. One of the names of the Lord in Sanskrit is Hari, and this means that He attracts all etasyaivAnandasya gAgi sarve mAvAmupajIvanti /

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108 BHAKTI-YOGA. things to Himself. His is in fact the only attraction worthy of human hearts. Who can attract a soul really ? Only He! Do you think dead matter can trully attract the soul ? It never did, and never will. When you see a man going after a beautiful face, do you think that it is the handful of arranged material molecules which really attracts the man? Not at all. Behind those material particles there must be and is the play of divine influence and divine love. The ignorant man does not know it ; but yet, consciously or unconciously, he is attracted by it and it alone. So even the lowest forms of attraction derive their power from God Himself. "None, o beloved, ever loved the husband for the husband's sake ; it is the Atman, the Lord, Who is inside, and for His sake the husband is loved."* Loving wives may know this or qarqi qay: Aare afa: fazit waaraan w#10 ofa: priyI bhvti| (Brihadaranyaka, II-4)

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RENUNCIATION FROM LOVE. 109 they may not-it is true all the same. "None, O beloved, ever loved the wife for the wife's sake, but it is the Self within the wife that is loved."* Similarly no one loves a child or anything else in the world except on account of Him, Who is within. The Lord is the great magnet, and we are all like iron filings. All of us are being constantly attracted by Him and all of us are struggling to reach Him. All this struggling of ours in this world is surely not intended for selfish ends. Fools do not know what they are doing, but all the work of their lives, is to approach that great Magnet. Yea--all the tremendous struggling and fighting in life is intended to make us go to Him ultimately and be one with Him. The bhakti-yogin however knows the meaning of life's struggles--he understands * kvA parajAyAya kAmAya mAyA priyA bhavatyAtmanastu kAmAya mAyA priyA bhvti| (Brihadaranyaka, 11-4)

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IIO BHAKTI-YOGA. its purpose. He has passed through a long series of such struggles, and knows what they mean, and earnestly desires to be free from the friction thereof. He wants to avoid the clash and go direct to the centre of all attraction, the great Hari. This mighty attraction, in the direction of God makes all other attractions vanish for him ; this mighty infinite love of God which enters his heart leaves no place for any other love to live there. How can it be otherwise ? Bhakti fills his heart with the divine waters of the ocean of love, which is God Himself--thus there remains no place there for little loves. This is the renunciation of the bhakta. That is to say, the bhakta's renunciation is that vairagya, or non-attachment for all things that are not God, which results from anuraga, or great attachment to God. This is the ideal preparation for the attainment of the supreme bhakti. When this renunciation comes, the gate opens for

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RENUNCIATION FROM LOVE. III the soul to pass through and reach the lofty regions of Supreme Devotion or ParaBhakti. Then it is that we begin to understand what Para-Bhakti is--and the man who has entered into the inner shrine of the Para-Bhakti, has alone the right to say, that all forms and symbols are useless to him as aids to religious realisation. He alone has attained that supreme state of love which is commonly called, the brotherhood of man -the rest only talk of it. He alone sees no distinctions! The mighty ocean of love has entered into him, and he sees not men, animals and plants or the sun, moon and the stars, but beholds his Beloved everywhere and in everything. Through every face shines to him his Hari. The light in the sun or the moon is all His manifestation. Wherever there is beauty or sublimity, to him it is all His. Such bhaktars are still living--the world is never without them. Such, even while bitten by a serpent, only say that a messenger came for

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112 BHAKTI-YOGA. them from their Beloved. Such men alone have the right to talk of universal brotherhood. They feel no resentment ; their minds never re-act in the form of hatred, or of jealousy. The external, the sensuous, has vanished from them for ever. How can they be angry, when, through their love, they are always able to see the Reality behind the scenes ?

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The Naturalness of Bhakti-Yoga and Its Central Secret. "Those who with constant attention always worship You, and those who worship the Undifferentiated, the Absolute, - of these who are the greater Yogins ?" Arjuna asked of Sri Krishna. The answer was--"Those who concentrating their minds on Me, worship Me with eternal constancy, and are endowed with the highest faiththey are My best worshippers, they are the greatest Yogins. Those that worship the Absolute, the Indescribable, the undifferentiated, the Omnipresent, the Unthinkable, the All-comprehending, the Immovable, and the Eternal, by controlling the play of their organs and having the conviction of sameness in regard to all things, they also, being engaged in doing good to all beings, come to 'Me alone. But to those whose minds Bhagavat Gita, Chapter XII, 1-7 Slokas.

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114 BHAKTI-YOGA. have been devoted to the unmanifested Absolute, the difficulty of the struggle along the way is much greater, for it is indeed with great difficulty that the path of the unmanifested Absolute is trodden by any embodied being. Those who, having offered up all their work unto Me, with entire reliance meditate on Me and worship Me and is without any attachment to anything else-them, will I soon lift up from the ocean of ever-recurring births and deaths for their minds are wholly attached to Me." Jnana-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga are both referred to here. Both may be said to have been defined in the above passage. JnanaYoga is grand--it is high philosophy. And almost every human being thinks, curiously enough, that he can surely do every thing required of him by philosophy ? But it is really very difficult to live truly the life of philosophy. We are often apt to run into great dangers in trying to guide our life by

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ITS CENTRAL SECRET. 115 philosophy. This world may be said to be divided between persons of demoniacal nature, who think the taking care of the body to be the be-all and the end-all of existence, and persons of godly nature, who realise that the body is simply a means to an end-an instrument intended for the culture of the soul. The devil can and indeed does quote the scriptures for its own purposes ; and thus the way of knowledge appears to offer justification to what the bad man does, as much as it offers inducements to what the good man does. This is the great danger in JnanaYoga. But Bhakti-Yoga is natural, sweet, and gentle. The bhakta does not take such high flights as the jnana-yogin, and therefore he is not apt to have such big falls. Yetuntil the bondages of the soul pass away, it cannot of course be free, whatever may be, the path that the religious man takes. Here is a passage showing how, in the case of one of the blessed Gopis, the

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116 BHAKTI-YOGA. soul-binding chains of both merit and demerit were broken. "The intense pleasure in meditating on God took away the binding effects of her good deeds. Then again her intense misery of soul in not attaining unto Him, washed off all her sinful propensities ; and thus becoming devoid of all bondages she became free." In Bhakti-Yoga the central secret is, therefore, to know that the various passions and feelings and emotions in the human heart are not wrong in themselves. They have to be carefully controlled only and given a higher and higher direction, until they attain the very highest condition of excellence. The highest direction is that which takes us to God; every aferanfageartegna er TEHAHreiaforetaaa97a1817 U featurant once fet cawanfaat nirucAsatayA muktiM gatAnyA gopakampakA / (Vishnupurana, V, 13--21, 22)

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ITS CENTRAL SECRET. 117 other direction is lower. We find that pleasure and pain are very common and oft-recurring feelings in our lives. When a man feels pain, because he has not got wealth or some such worldly thing, he is giving a wrong direction to the feeling. Still pain has its uses. Let a man feel pain that he has not reached the Highest, that he has not reached God, and that pain will be to his salvation. When you become glad that you have got a handful of coins, it is a wrong direction given to the faculty of joy. It should be given a higher direction--it must be made to serve the Highest Ideal. Pleasure in that kind of ideal ought surely be our highest joy. This same thing is true of all our other feelings. The Bhakta says that not one of them is wrong. He gets - hold of them all and points them unfailingly towards God.

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The Forms of Love-Manifestation. Here are some of the forms in which love manifests itself. First there is reverence. Why do people show reverence to temples and holy places ? Because the Lord is worshipped there, and His presence is associated with all such places. Why do people in every country pay reverence to teachers of religion ? It is natural for the human heart to do so, because all such teachers preach the Lord. At bottom, reverence is a growth out of love ; we can none of us revere him whom we do not love. Then comes priti-pleasure in God. What an immense pleasure men take in the objects of the senses ! They go anywhere, run through any danger, to get the thing which they love, the thing which their senses like. What is wanted of the bhakta is this very kind of intense love which has, however, to

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LOVE-MANIFESTATION. 119 be directed to God. Then there is the sweetest of pains, viraha, the intense misery due to the absence of the beloved. When a man feels intense misery-because he has not attained to god, has not known that which is the only thing worthy to be known--and becomes in consequence very dissatisfied and almost mad, then he is said to have viraha ; and this state of the mind makes him feel disturbed in the presence of anything other than the beloved ( Vancfafafo faict). In earthly love we see how often this viraha comes. Again, when men are really and intensely in love with women, or women with men, they feel a kind of natural annoyance in the presence of all those whom they do not love. Exactly the same state of impatience, in regard to things that are not loved, comes to the mind, when Para-Bhakti holds sway oyer it-even to talk about things other than God becomes distasteful then. "Think of Him, think of Him alone, and give up all

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120 BHAKTI-YOGA. other vain words." Those who talk of Him alone, the bhakta finds to be friendly to him ; while those who talk of anything else appear to him to be unfriendly. A still higher stage of love is reached when life itself is maintained for the sake of the Ideal of Love, when life itself is considered beautiful and worth living only on account of that Love (featTie ). Without it, such a life would not remain even for a moment. Life is sweet because it thinks of the Beloved. Tadiyata (actuat = Hisness) comes when a man becomes perfect according to bhakti-when he has become blessed, when he has attained to God, when he has touched the feet of his Lord and then his whole nature is purified and completely changed. All his purposes in life become fulfilled then. Yet, many such bhaktas live on # THE 194 am vAcI vimuJcathAmatapeSa setuH| (Mundaka, II. 2--5)

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LOVE-MANIFESTATION. 121 after that state is reached, just to worship Him. That is their bliss, their only pleasure in life, which they will not give up. "Oh king, such is the blessed quality of Hari that even those, who have become satisfied with everything, and all the knots of whose hearts have been cut asunder, even they love the Lord for love's sake"#_the Lord "whom all the gods worship, all the lovers of liberation, and all the knowers of the Brahman."+ Such is the power of love. When a man has forgotten himself altogether, and feels that nothing belongs to him, then alone he acquires the state of tadiyata. Everything becomes sacred to him, because it belongs to the Beloved-even as in regard to earthly STANCIATA teil faut atsgrana 1 kurvantya hetu kI bhakti' ityambhUtaguNIhariH / Bhagabat, 1---10). ye savrSe devA namasyanti mumucavI bramavAdinati / (Nrishinhatapani, V--2-16).

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I 22 BHAKTI-YOGA. love, the lover thinks that everything belonging to his beloved is so sacred and so dear to him. As the human lover loves even a bit of the cloth belonging to the darling of his heart--in the same way, when a person loves the Lord, everything in the universe becomes dear to him, because it is all His.

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Universal Love and How It Leads to Self-surrender. How can we love the vyashti, the particular, without first loving the samashti, the universal ? God is the samashti, the general. ised and the abstract universal whole ; and the universe that we see is the vyashti, the particularised thing. To love the whole universe is possible only by way of loving the samashti, the universal - which is the one Unity in which are to be found millions and millions of smaller unities. The philosophers of India do not stop at the particulars. They cast a hurried glance at the particulars, and immediately start to find the generalised form which will include all the particulars. *The search after the universal is thus the one search of Indian philosophy and religion. The jnanin aims at the wholeness of things, at that one absolute and generalised Being, knowing which, he knows every thing. The

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124 BHAKTI-YOGA. bhakta wishes to realise that one generalised abstract Person, in loving Whom, he loves the whole universe. The yogin wishes to find and have possession of that one generalised form of power, by controlling which he controls his whole universe. Thus the Indian mind, throughout his history, has been directed to this kind of singular Search after the universal in everything-in science, in psychology, in love, and in philosophy. The search of the bhakta leads him to the conclusion that, if one goes on merely loving one person after another, one may go on loving them so for an infinite length of time, without being in the least able to love the world as a whole. One, therefore, should strive to arrive at the central idea, that the sum-total of all love is God, that the sumtotal of the aspirations of all the souls in the universe, whether they be free or bound or struggling towards liberation, is God--then alone it will become possible for one to put

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UNIVERSAL LOVE. I 25 forth universal love. The bhakta says therefore that, God is the samashti, and this visible universe is God, differentiated and made manifest. If we love this sum-total, we love everything. Loving the world and doing it good will all come easily then-but we shall have to obtain this power, only by loving God, first-otherwise it is no joke to do good to the world. "Everything is His and He is my Lover ; I Love Him," says the bhakta. In this way everything becomes sacred to him, because all things are His--all are His children, His body, His manifestation. How then may we hurt any one? How then may we not love any one ? With the love of God will come, as a sure effect, the love of every one in the universe. The nearer we approach to God, the more do we begin to see that all things are in Him. When the soul succeeds in appropriating the bliss of this supreme love, it also begins to see Him in everything. Our

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126 BHAKTI-YOGA. heart will thus become an eternal fountain of love. And when we reach a higher state even through this love, all the little differences between the things of the world will be entirely lost-man will be seen no more as man, but only as God; the animal will be seen no more as an animal, but as God; even the tiger will no more be seen a tiger, but as a manifestation of God. Thus, in this intense state of bhakti, worship is offered to every life, and to every being. "Knowing that Hari, the Lord, is in every thing, the wise have thas to manifest unswerving love towards all beings."* As a result of this kind of intense allabsorbing love, comes the feeling of perfect self-surrender and the conviction, that nothing that happens is against us (papAtikUlya). Then the loving soul is able to say, if pain por yang may alam confirmafesti arjont of data general and

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UNIVERSAL LOVE. 127 comes, "welcome pain"-or if misery comes, "welcome misery, you are also from the Beloved." If a serpent comes, it will say "welcome serpent." And even if death comes, such a bhakta will welcome it with a smile. He will say "blessed am I that they all come to me; they are all welcome." The bhakta in this state of perfect resignation, arising out of intense love to God and to all that are His, ceases to distinguish between pleasure and pain, in so far as they affect him. He does not know now what it is to complain of pain or misery--and this kind of uncomplaining resignation to the will of God, who is all love, is indeed a worthier acquisition than all the glory of grand and heroic performances. * To the vast majority of mankind, the body is 'everything. The body is all the universe to them and bodily enjoyment, their all in all. This demon of the worship of the body and of the things of the body has

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128 BHAKTI-YOGA. entered into us all. We may indulge in tall talk, and take very high flights in the reign of reason, but we are like vultures all the same-our mind is directed to the piece of carrion down below. Why should our body be saved, say, from the tiger? Why may we not give it over to the tiger? The tiger will thereby be pleased, and that is not altogether so very far from self-sacrifice and worship. Can you reach to the realisation of the idea where all sense of self is completely lost? It is a very dizzy height on the pinnacle of the religion of love, and few in this world, have ever climbed up to it; but until a man reaches that highest point of ever-ready and ever-willing self-sacrifice, he cannot become a perfect bhakta. We may all manage maintain our bodies more or less satisfactorily, for longer or shorter intervals of timenevertheless, our bodies will have to go; there is no permanence about them. And blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed to

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UNIVERSAL LOVE. 129 in the service of others. "Wealth, and even life itself, the sage always holds ready for the service of others. In this world, there being one thing certain, namely, death, it is far better that this body dies in a good cause than in a bad one." We may drag our life on for fifty years or a hundred-but after that, what is it that happens? Everything that is the result of combination must get dissolved and die and there must and will come a time for the body to be decomposed. Jesus and Buddha and Mahammad are all dead-all the great prophets and teachers of the world are dead. "In this evanescent world where everything is falling to pieces, we have to make the highest use of what time we have," says the bhakta, "and really the highest use of life is to hold it at the service of all beings." It is the horrible body-idea, just this one delusion, that we are wholly the body we own, and that we must by all possible means try our very best 9

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130 to preserve and to please it, that breeds all the selfishness in the world. If you know positively that you are other than your body, you have then none to fight with or struggle against; you are dead to all ideas of selfishness. So the bhakta declares that we shall have to hold ourselves as if we are altogether dead to all the things of the world -and that is indeed self-surrender. Let things come as they may-this is the meaning of "Thy will be done," and not going about fighting and struggling, and thinking all the while that God wills all our own weaknesses and worldly ambitions. It may be that good comes even out of our selfish struggles; that is, however through God's look out and no merit of ours. The perfected bhakta's idea must be never to will and work for himself. "Lord, they build high temples in Thy name, they make large gifts! I am poor-I am nothing, so I take this body of mine and place it at Thy feet. Do not give BHAKTI-YOGA.

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UNIVERSAL LOVE. 131 me up, O Lord !"-such is the prayer that proceeds out of the depths of the bhakta's heart. To him who has experienced it, this eternal sacrifice of the self unto the Beloved Lord, is higher by far than all wealth and power, than even all soaring thoughts of renown and enjoyment. The peace of the bhakta's calm resignation is a "peace that passeth all understanding," and is of incomparable value. His apratikulya is that state of the mind, in which the mind has no interests in anything whatever in this world and naturally it knows nothing that is opposed to those interests. In this state of sublime resignation, everything in the shape of attachment goes away completely, except that one all-absorbing love to Him "in Whom all things live and move and have their being." This attachment through love to God is, indeed, one that does not bind the soul, but effectively breaks all its bondages.

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The Higher Knowledge and the Higher Love are one to the True Lover. The Upanishads distinguish between a higher knowledge and a lower knowledge. There is really no difference between this higher knowledge of the Upanishads and the bhakta's higher love (Para-Bhakti). The Mundaka Upanishad says :--' -"The knowers of the Brahman declare that.there are two kinds of knowledge worthy to be known, namely, the higher (para) and the lower (apara), Of these the lower knowledge consists of the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, the Atharvaveda, the siksha or the science dealing with pronunciation and accent, the kalpa or the sacrificial liturgy, grammar, the nirukta ar the science dealing with etymology "and the meaning of words, prosody, and astronomy. The higher knowledge is that by which that Unchangeable is known."* The higher know

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THE TRUE LOVER. 133 ledge is thus clearly shown to be the knowledge of the Brahman. The Devi-Bhagavata gives us the following definition of higher love (Para-Bhakti) :-"As oil poured from one vessel to another falls in an unbroken line, so, when the mind in an unbroken stream of thought, thinks of the Lord, we have what is called Para-Bhakti or supreme love." This kind of undisturbed and ever steady direction of the mind and the heart to the Lord, with an inseparable attachment is indeed the highest manifestation of man's love to God. All other forms of bhakti are only preparatory to the attainment of this highest form of it, namely, the Para-Bhakti, which is also known as the love that comes after attachment (raganuga). When this supreme,love once comes into the heart of .* he vidye veditavye prati ha ma yadmavidI vadanti / parA caivAparA ca // taaAparA Rgvedo yajurvedaH sAmavedo'tharvavedaH zivA kalpo vyAkaraNaM niru chando nyotiSamiti / atha parA yayA tadacaramadhigamyate // (Munduka. I. 4, 5.)

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134 BHAKTI-YOGA. man, his mind will continuously think of God and remember nothing else. He will give no room in himself to thoughts other than those of God, and his soul by being unconquerably pure, will break all the bonds of mind and matter and become serenely free. He alone can worship the Lord in his own heart and to him forms, symbols, books and doctrines become all unnecessary and incapable of proving serviceable in any way. It is not easy to love the Lord thus. Ordinarily human love is seen to flourish only in places where it is returned and where love is not returned for love, cold indifference is the natural result. There are, however, rare instances of human love where we may notice love exhibiting itself, even though there is no return for love. We may.compare this kind of love, for purposes of illustration, to the love of the moth for the fire. The insect loves the fire, falls into it and dies--for it is indeed in the nature of this insect to love

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THE TRUE LOVER. 135 so. To love, because it is in the very nature of love to love, is undeniably the highest and the most unselfish manifestation of love that may be seen in the world. Such love working itself out on the plane of spirituality necessarily leads to the attainment of ParaBhakti.

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The Triangle of Love. We may represent love as a triangle, each of the angles of which, corresponds to one of its inseparable characteristics. There can be no triangle without all its three angles, and there can be no true love without its three following characteristics. The first angle of our triangle of love is that love knows no bargaining. Wherever there is any seeking for something in return, there can be no real love. It becomes a mere matter of shop-keeping. As long as there is in us, any idea of deriving this or that favour from God in return for our respect and allegiance to Him, so long there can be no true love growing in our hearts. Those who worship God because they wish Him to bestow favours on them are sure not to worship Him, if those favours are not forthcorting. The bhakta loves the Lord because He is loveable. There is no other motive

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THE TRIANGLE OF LOVE. 137 originating or directing this divine emotion of the true devotee. We have heard it said that a great king once went into a forest and there met a sage. He talked with the sage a little and was very much pleased with his purity and wisdom. The king then wanted the sage to oblige him by receiving a present from him. The sage refused to do so, saying, "the fruits of the forest are food enough for me ; the pure streams of water flowing down from the mountains, give enough of drink to me; the barks of the trees supply me with enough of covering ; and the caves of the mountains form my home. Why should I take any present from you or from any body ?" The king said, "Just to benefit me, sir, please come with me to the city to my palace and take something from my hands." After much persuasion, the sage at last consented to do as the king desired, and went with him to his palace. Before offering the gift to the sage

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138 BHAKTI-YOGA. the king repeated his prayers, saying, "Lord, give me more children ; Lord, give me more wealth ; Lord, give me more territory; Lord, keep my body in better health ;" and so on. Before the king had finished saying his prayer the sage got up and walked away from the room quietly. At seeing this, the king became perplexed and began to follow him, crying aloud, "Sir, you are going away, you have not taken my presents." The sage turned round and said, "Beggar, I do not beg of beggars. You are a beggar yourself, and how can you give me anything? I am no fool to think of taking anything from a beggar like you. Go away, do not follow me." The above story brings out clearly the distinction between mere beggars in the province of Religion and the real lovers of God. To worship God for any other reward or even for the sake of salvation is degenerating the high ideal of love. Love knows no reward. Love is always for love's sake:

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THE TRIANGLE OF LOVE. 139 The bhakta loves because he cannot help loving-just as when you see a beautiful scenery and fall in love with it. You do not demand anything in the way of favour from the scenery, nor does the scenery demand anything from you. Yet the vision thereof brings you to a blissful state of the mind by toning down all the friction in your soul. It makes you calm, and almost raises you, for the time being, beyond your mortal nature, by placing you in a condition of tranquil divine ecstasy. So is the nature of real love and this is the first angle of our triangle. Therefore ask not anything in return for your love. Let your position be always that of the giver. Give your love unto God, but do not ask anything in return even from Him.. The second angle of the triangle of love is that love knows no fear. Those that love God through fear are the lowest of human beings-quite undeveloped as men. They

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 140 worship God from fear of punishment. He is a great Being to them, with a whip in one hand and the sceptre in the other and if they do not obey Him they are afraid they will be whipped. It is a degradation to worship God through fear of punishment. Such worship is, if worship at all, the crudest form of the worship of the God of love. So long as there is any fear in the heart, how can there be love also ? Love conquers naturally all fear. Think of a young mother in the street. If a dog barks at her she is frightened ; she Alies into the nearest house. Now suppose the same mother is in the street with her child and a lion springs upon the child. Where then will the mother be ? Of course at the mouth of the lion--to save the child, Love does conquer all fear. Fear comes from the selfish idea of cutting one's self off from the universe. The smaller and the more selfish I make myself, the more is my fear. If a man thinks he is little or nothing,

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THE TRIANGLE OF LOVE. 141 fear will surely come upon him. And the less you think of yourself as an insignificant person, the less fear will there be for you. So long as there is the least spark of fear in you there can be no love there. Love and fear are incompatible. So God is never to be feared by those who love Him. The commandment, "Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' the true lover of God laughs at. How can there be any blasphemy in the religion of love? The more you take the name of the Lord, the better for you, in whatever way you may do it. You are only repeating His name because you love Him. The third angle of the love-triangle is that love knows no rival, for in it is always ambodied the lover's highest ideal. True love never comes until the object of our love becomes to us our highest ideal. It may be that in many cases human love is misdirected and misplaced-but to the person who loves,

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 142 the thing he loves is always his own highest ideal. One may see his ideal in the vilest of beings and another in the highest of beingsnevertheless, in every case it is the ideal alone that can be truly and intensely loved. The highest ideal of every man is his God Ignorant or wise, saint or sinner, man or woman, educated or uneducated, cultivated or uncultivated-to every human being, his highest ideal is his God. And indeed the synthesis of all the highest ideals of beauty, of sublimity, and of power gives us the completest conception of the loving and lovable God. These ideals exist in some shape or other, in every mind naturally and form a part and parcel of all our minds. All the active manifestations of human nature are but struggles of those ideals within it, to become realised in practical life. All the various movements that we see around us in society are caused by the various ideals in various souls, trying to come out

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THE TRIANGLE OF LOVE. 143 and become concretised-for what is in the inside presses on to come to the outside. This perennially dominant influence of the ideal is the one force, the one motive power, that may be seen to be constantly working in the midst of mankind. It may be after hundreds of births, after struggling through thousands of years, that man finds out that it is in vain to try to make the inner ideal mould completely the external conditions and square well with them--and after realising this he no more tries to project his own ideal on the outside world, but worships the ideal itself as ideal, from the highest standpoint of love. This ideally perfect ideal embraces all lower ideals. Every one admits the truth of the saying that a lover sees Helen's beauty on an Ethiop's brow. The man who is standing aside is a looker-on, sees that love is here misplaced. But the lover sees his Helen all the same, and does not see the

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 144 Ethiop at all! For-Helen or Ethiop, the objects of our love are really the centres round which our ideals get crystallised. Now what is it that the world commonly worships? Not certainly this all-embracing, ideally perfect ideal of the supreme devotee and lover. The ideal which men and women commonly worship, is what is in themselves and every person projects his or her own ideal on the outside world and kneels before it. This is why we find that men who are cruel and bloodthirsty conceive of a bloodthirsty God-because they can only love their own highest ideal. That is why good men have a very high ideal of God and their ideal is indeed so very different from that of others.

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The God of Love is His own Proof. Now what is the ideal of the lover who has passed quite beyond the idea of selfishness, of bartering and bargaining, and who knows no fear ? Even to the great God such a man will say--"I have given you my all, and I do not want anything from you ; indeed there is nothing that I can call my own." When a man has acquired this stage his ideal becomes one of perfect love-one of perfect fearlessness of love. The highest ideal of such a person has no narrowness or particularity about it. It is love universal, love without limits and bounds, love itself, perfect and absolute. This grand ideal of the religion of love is worshipped and loved absolutely as such, without the aid of any symbols or suggestions. The highest form of bhakti is the worship of this all-comprehend

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146 BHAKTI-YOGA. ing ideal as one's chosen ideal. All the other forms of Bhakti are only stages on the way to reach it. All our failures and all our successes in following the religion of love, are on the road to the realisation of this one ideal. Object after object is taken up, and his inner ideal is successively projected on them all, by the bhakta, to find that all such external objects are always inadequate as exponents of his ever-expanding inner ideal-and are naturally rejected by him one after another. At last the aspirant begins to think that it is vain to try to realise the ideal in external objects--that all external objects are as nothing, compared to the ideal itself. And in course of time, he acquires the power of realising the highest and the most generalised abstract ideal, entirely as an abstraction-and that, to him 'becomes quite alive and real. When the devotee has reached this point, he is no more impelled to ask-whether God can be demonstrated or

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THE GOD OF LOVE. 147 not, whether he is omnipotent and omniscient, or not. To him, He is only the God of Love! He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes ! He, as love, is self-evident to him--for it requires no proofs to demonstrate the existence of the beloved, to the lover! The magistrate-gods of other forms of religion, may require a good deal of proof to prove them, but the Bhakta does not and cannot think of such gods at all. To him God exists entirely as Love, and finding Him as the innermost soul in all, he proclaims in ecstasy--"None, o beloved, loves the husband for the husband's sake, but it is for the sake of the Self, the Lord, who is in the husband, that the husband is loved-none, O beloved, loves the wife for the wife's sake, but it is for the sake of the Self, the Lord, who is in the wife, that the wife is loved." It is said by some that selfishness is the only motive power, in regard to all human

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148 BHAKTI-YOGA. activities. In my opinion that also is love lowered, by being particularised. When I think of myself as a part of the universal Whole and love It-my love becomes universal also, and there can surely remain then no selfishness in me. But when I, by mistake, think that I am a little something disconnected from the Whole--my love becomes particularised and narrowed. It is a great mistake therefore thus to make the sphere of love narrow and contracted--for all things in the universe are of divine origin and deserve to be loved. It has, however, to be borne in mind that the love of the whole includes the love of the parts. This universal whole is the God of the bhaktas, and all the other Gods, or Fathers in Heaven, or Rulers, or Creators, and all theories and doctrines and books, have no purpose and no meaning for themfor they have through their supreme love and devotion, risen above those things altogether. When the heart is purified and

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149 cleansed and filled to the brim with the divine nectar of love, all other ideas of God except that He is all Love, become simply puerile, and are rejected as being inadequate or unworthy. Such is indeed the power of Para-Bhakti or supreme love and the perfected bhakta no more goes to see God in temples and churches-he knows nowhere to go where he will not find Him. He finds Him in the temple as well as out of the temple; he finds Him in the saint's saintliness as well as in the wicked man's wickedness, because he has Him already seated in glory in his own heart, as the one almighty, inextinguishable Light of Love which is ever shining and eternally present. THE GOD OF LOVE.

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Human Representations of the Divine Ideal of Love. It is impossible to express the nature of this supreme and absolute ideal of love in human language. Even the highest flight of human imagination is incapable of comprehending it, in all its infinite perfection and beauty. Nevertheless, the followers of the religion of love, in its higher as well as lower forms, have all along and in all countries, had to use the inadequate human language to comprehend and to define their own ideal of love. Nay more-human love itself, in all its varied forms, has been made to typify this inexpressible divine love. Man can think of divine things only in his own human way. To us the Absolute can be expressed only in our relative language. The whole universe is to us a writing of the infinite, in the language of the finite.

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 151 Therefore bhaktas make use of all the common terms associated with the common love of humanity, in relation to God and his worship through love. Some of the great writers on Para-Bhakti have tried to understand and experience this divine love in the following different ways. The lowest form in which this love is apprehended, is what they call the peaceful--the shanta (ATH). When a man worships God without the fire of love in him, without its madness in his brain--when his love is just the calm commonplace love, a little higher than mere forms, ceremonies and symbols, but not at all characterised by the madness of intensely active love--it is said to be shanta. We see some people in the world who like to move on slowly, and others who come and go like the whirlwind. The shanta-bhakta is like the former-calm, peaceful, and gentle. The next higher type is that of dasya (ere), or servantship. It comes when a man thinks he is the servant

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 152 of the Lord-when the attachment of the faithful servant to the master is his ideal. The next type of love is sakhya (), or friendship. "Thou art our beloved friend"* -exclaims one, who takes up this ideal. Just as a man opens his heart to his friend, and knows that the friend will never chide him for his faults, but will always try to help him just as there exists in his mind, the idea of equality between him and his friend, so the same kind of love flows out from the heart of the worshipper towards his Godwhen this type of love is his ideal. Thus God becomes our friend-the friend who is near, the friend to whom we may freely tell all the tales of our lives-and the innermost secrets of our hearts we place before Him with the greatest assurance of safety and. support. He is thus the friend Whom we here accept as our equal-as our play-mate. tvameva vandhuca sakhA tvameva / (Pandava Gita).

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 153 Indeed we may well say that the Lord is playing in this universe. Just as children play their games, so is the Beloved Lord Himself in sport, creating this universe! He is perfect-He does not want anything. Then why should he create ? Activity is always with us for the fulfilment of a certain want, and want always presupposes imperfection. God is perfect. He has no wants. Then why should He be ever active and go on with this work of creation? What purpose has He in view ? The stories about God creating this world, for some end or other that we imagine, are good as stories, but not otherwise. Therefore it cannot be otherwise but really in sport and the universe is His play going on! The whole universe must after all be a piece of pleasing fun to, Him! So the bhakta says-love the Lord, the Playmate and enjoy the play. If you are poor, enjoy that as a fun. If you are rich, enjoy the fun of being rich. If dangers

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154 BHAKTI-YOGA. come, it is good fun. If happiness comes, there is more good fun. The world is just a playground, and we are here having a gamehaving God with us playing all the while ! Eternal playmate--how beautifully He is playing! The play is finished when the cycle comes to an end and there is rest for a shorter or longer time. Then again begins the play-again the universe and everything come out and play with Him--and so on it goes! It is only when you forget that it is all play and that you are also helping in this play, that misery and sorrows come, the heart becomes heavy and the world weighs upon you with tremendous power. But as soon as you give up the idea of serious reality, characteristic to us all, in the changing incidents of this life of three minutes, ando know it to be but a stage on which you are playing and helping God to play-at once misery ceases for you. So see Him playing in every atom--playing when He is

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 155 building up earths, suns, and moons--playing with the human hearts, and animals, and plants! See that we are but His chessmen. He arranges us first in one way and then in another, and we are consciously or unconsciously helping in His play. And Oh bliss! we are His playmates! The next type is what is known as batsalya (), or loving God not as our Father but as our Child. This may look peculiar, but it is a discipline to enable us to detach all ideas of from the power of concept God. The idea of power brings with it awe. There should be no awe in love. The ideas of reverence and obedience are necessary for the formation of character. But when the character is formed, when the lover has tasted the calm peaceful love and also a little of its intense madness, then he need talk no more of ethics and obedience to the scriptural forms. To conceive God as mighty, majestic and glorious Lord of the Universe,

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156 BHAKTI-YOGA. or as the God of Gods--the lover says, he does not care. It is to avoid this association with God, of the fear-creating sense of power that he worships God as his own child! The mother and the father are not moved by awe in relation to the child ; they cannot be said to have any reverence for their child. They cannot think of asking any favour from the child. The child's position in regard to his parents, is always that of the receiver, and out of love for the child, the parents will give up their bodies a hundred times over. A thousand lives they will sacrifice for that one child of theirs, and therefore God is loved as a child. Thus the idea of loving God as a child, comes into existence and grows naturally, among those religious sects which believe in the incarnation of God.. To the Mahomedans it is impossible to have this idea of God as a child-they will shrink from it with a kind of horror. But the Christian and the Hindu can realise it easily,

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 157 because they have the baby Jesus and the baby Krishna. The women in India often look upon themselves as Krishna's mothers. Christian mothers also may take up the idea that they are all Christ's mothers, and it will bring to the West the knowledge of God's Divine Motherhood, which they so much need. Thus the superstitions of awe and reverence in relation to God, deeply rooted in the heart of our hearts, fades away through the power of love and sometimes it takes long years entirely to sink in love, the ideas of reverence and veneration, of awe, majesty and glory with regard to God. There is one more human representation of the divine ideal of love. It is known 'as the madhura (AYT), or sweet, and is the highest of all such representations. It is rindeed based on the highest manifestation of love in this world, and the strongest, known to man. What love shakes the whole.

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BHAKTI-YOGA. 158 nature of man and running through every atom of his being, makes him mad, makes him forget his own nature, transforms him, makes him either a God or a demon--as the love between man and woman? In this sweet representation of divine love, God is looked upon and worshipped as the husband. The bhakta says-indeed we are all like women dependent on the Lord and there are no men in this world but that One Man. and that is He, the Beloved. Therefore all that love which man gives to woman, or woman to man, has here to be given up to the Lord--and all the different kinds of love which we see in the world, and with which we are more or less playing merely, have God as the one goal. Unfortunately, man does not know the infinite ocean into which this mighty river of love is constantly flowing, and so, foolishly tries to direct it often to little dolls of human beings. The tremendous love for the child that is in

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 159 human nature is not for the little doll of a child. If you bestow it blindly and exclusively on the child, you will suffer in consequencebut through such suffering will come the awakening, by which you are sure to find out, that the love which is in you, if given to any human being, will sooner or later bring pain and sorrow as the result. Our love must therefore be given to the Highest One -Who never dies and never changes--to Him, in the ocean of Whose love there is neither ebb nor flow. Love must be directed to its right destination--it must go unto Him, Who is really the infinite ocean of love! Even as drops of water coming down from the mountain-side cannot stop their course after being formed into a brook or a river, however big they may be--but at last find their way somehow to the ocean--so God is the one goal wherein all our passions and emotions will and must go in the end. Therefore if you want to be angry, be angry with

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160 BHAKTI-YOGA. Him-chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide ?-For mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger-sooner or later there will come a re-action from him. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. So say unto the Beloved, "Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone ?" And where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? It is the crystallised essence of infinite enjoyment that we are seeking and that is only to be found in God. Therefore let all our passions and emotions go up unto Him. They are meant for Him alone--for if they miss their mark and go lower, they become vile. And when they go straight to the mark, the Lord, even the lowest of them becomes transfigured! Thus all the energies of the human body and mind, howsoever they may express themselves,

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 161 have the Lord as their one goal, as their ekayana and hence all loves and all passions of the human heart must be directed to God, the Beloved! Whom else can this heart love except Him, Who is beauty itself-sublimity itself? Who in this universe is more beautiful than He? Who in this universe is more fit to become the husband than He? Who in this universe is fitter to be loved than He? So let him be the husband, let Him be the Beloved. And often it so happens, that divine lovers who sing of this divine love, accept the language of human love in all its aspects, as adequate to describe it. Fools do not understand this and they never will. They look at it only with the physical eye. They do not understand the 'mad throes of this spiritual love. How can they ? * "One kiss of Thy lips, O Beloved ! He that has been kissed by Thee, his thirst for Thee goes on increasing for ever, all his sorrows vanish, and he forgets all things U

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162 BHAKTI-YOGA. except Thee"#-aspire after that kiss of the Beloved, that touch of His lips which makes the bhakta mad, which makes of man a god! To him, who has been blessed with such a kiss, the whole of nature changes -- worlds vanish, suns and moons die out and the universe itself melts away into that one infinite ocean of Love! That is the perfection of the madness of love. Aye, the true spiritual lover does not rest even there. Even the love of husband and wife is not mad enough for him. The bhaktas take up also the idea of illegitimate love, because it is so strong. The impropriety of it is not at all the thing they have in view but its power and intensity. The nature of this love is such that the more obstructions there are for its free play, the more powerful it becomes. The love between husband and wife is smooth-there otato di attaa ya ug gladi itararAgavimAraNaM nRNAm vitara vIra naste'dharAmRtam / (Bhagavat, Gopi Gita, Canto X.)

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IDEAL OF LOVE. 163 are no obstructions there. So the bhaktas take up the idea of a girl who is in love with her own beloved man, and her mother or father or husband, objecting and obstructing the course of her love, the more is her love tending to grow in strength. The author of the Sreemad-Bhagavat has dealt with this sort of love-representation, in trying to relate the love of the Gopis towards Krishna, whom by divine illumination, they knew to be the incarnated Lord of the universe. Human language cannot describe how Krishna was, in the groves of Brinda, intensely, madly loved-how at the sound of His voice all the ever-blessed Gopis rushed out to meet Him, forgetting this world and its ties, its duties, its joys and its sorrows ! Man, oh man, you speak of divine love and as the same time are able to attend to all the vanities of this world are you sincere ? Where Rama is, there is no room for any desire and where there is any desire, there is

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164 BHAKTI-YOGA. no room for Rama--these never co-exist, -- like light and darkness they are never together!" UTET TA NIFT 4TH WfFI GIFT FTA at af tra , etc. (Tulsidas.)

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Conclusion. When this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown away-for who will then care for it ? Freedom, salvation, nirvana-all are thrown away--for who cares to become free while in the enjoyment of this divine love? "Lord, I do not want wealth, nor friends, nor beauty, nor learning, nor even freedom ; let me be born again and again, and be Thou ever my Love."* Aye, be Thou ever and ever my Love-and what more can I want ! "Who cares to become sugar," says the bhakta, "I want to taste sugar."+ Who will then desire to become free and be one with God?"I may know that I am He, yet will I take myself away from Him and become different, so that I * na dhanaM na nanaM na sundarauM kavitAm vA jagadIza kAmaye / HH 37 ani vaata watejat afaru (Sree Krishna Chaitanya.) + Ramaprasada.

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166 BHAKTI-YOGA. may enjoy the Beloved !"--This is what the Bhakta says. Love for love's sake is his highest enjoyment. Who will not be bound hand and foot a thousand times over to enjoy the Beloved ? No bhakta cares for anything except love,-except to love and be loved. His unworldly love is like the tide rushing up the river-going madly up against the usual current. The world calls him mad! Aye-I knew one whom the world used to call mad, and this was his answer--"My friends! the whole world is a lunatic asylum ; some are mad after worldly love, some after name, some after fame, some after money, and some after salvation or going to heaven. In this big lunatic asylum I am also mad- I am mad after God. If you are mad after money, I am mad after God. You are mad; so am I. I think my madness is after all the best." The true bhakta's love is this burning madness, before which everything else vanishes for him!

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CONCLUSION. 167 The whole universe is to him full of love and love alone--that is how it seems to the true lover. So when a man has this love in him, he becomes eternally blessed, eternally happy and this blessed madness of divine love alone, can cure for ever the disease of the world that is in us. We all have to begin as dualists in the religion of love. God is to us a separate being, and we feel ourselves to be separate beings also. Love then comes in the middle and man begins to approach God--and God also comes nearer and nearer to man. Man takes up all the various relationships of life-as father, as mother, as son, as friend, as master, as lover-and projects them on his ideal of love, on his God. To him God really becomes all these, and the last point of his progress is reached when he feels that he has become absolutely merged, in the object of his worship. We all begin with love for ourselves, and the unfair claims of

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168 the little self make even love, selfish. At last, however, comes the full blaze of light in which this little self is seen to have become one with the One, Infinite! Man himself becomes transfigured in the presence of this Light of Love! And thus his heart being cleansed of all impurities and vain desires of which it was more or less full before, he realises at last the beautiful and inspiring truth that-Love, Lover and the Beloved are one! BHAKTI-YOGA. 30.8.87 ... Recd. on.. R. R. o...163.5 G. R. No... 400.66 KRISHNA MISSION INSTE LIBRARY Wry zn ALBUTTA OF CULTURE \

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UDVODHAN SERIES. SWAMI VIVEKANANDA'S WORKS. ... O 10 O Books. PRICE. Rs. A. P. Raja Yoga ... too Jnana Yoga ... ... ... In the Press. Karma Yoga... ... 0 12 0 Bhakti Yoga ... The Science and Philosophy Religion ... ... ... .... A Study of Religion ... ... Realisation and its Methods .. 0 12 Thoughts on Vedanta ... O 100 Religion of Love ... 0 100 Addresses at the Chicago Parliament of Religions ... . ... 0 5 0 My Master (with Paramhansa Ramakrishna by P. C. Mojumdar) 0 8 0 Life of Pavhari Baba' ... ... 0 3 0 Valuable Conversations with Swami' Vivekananda ... ... In the Press.

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B All the above-mentioned books are to be had at reduced rates for the subscribers of Udvodhan, a Bengali Monthly Organ of the Ramakrishna Mission. (Annual Subscription Rs. 2). Besides the above, all the original Bengali Works of the Swami and the Bengali translations of his English works are always available. Photos and Half-tone Pictures of Sri Ramakrishna and of Swami Vivekananda are also to be had at THE UDVODHAN OFFICE, 12, 13, GOPAL CHANDRA NEOGI'S LANE, Baghbazar P. O., Calcutta,

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