"But he, the Highest Person, who wakes in us while we are asleep, shaping one lovely sight after another, he indeed is called the Light, he is called Brahman, he alone is called the Immortal. All worlds are founded on it, and no one goes beyond. This is that.
"As the one fire, after it has entered the world, though one, becomes different according to what it burns, thus the One Self within all things, becomes different, according to whatever it enters, but it exists also apart.
"As the sun, the eye of the world, is not contaminated by the external impurities seen by the eye, thus the One Self within all things is never contaminated by the sufferings of the world, being himself apart.
"There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal thoughts; he, though one, fulfils the desires of many. The wise who perceive Him within their Self, to them belongs eternal life, eternal peace.[341]
"Whatever there is, the whole world, when gone forth (from Brahman), trembles in his breath. That Brahman is a great terror, like a drawn sword. Those who know it, become immortal.
"He (Brahman) cannot be reached by speech, by mind, or by the eye. He cannot be apprehended, except by him who says, He is.
"When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.
"When all the fetters of the heart here on earth are broken, when all that binds us to this life is undone, then the mortal becomes immortal—here my teaching ends."
This is what is called Vedânta, the Veda-end, the end of the Veda, and this is the religion or the philosophy, whichever you like to call it, that has lived on from about 500 b.c. to the present day. If the people of India can be said to have now any system of religion at all—apart from their ancestral sacrifices and their Srâddhas, and apart from mere caste-observances—it is to be found in the Vedânta philosophy, the leading tenets of which are known, to some extent in every village.[342] That great revival of religion, which was inaugurated some fifty years ago by Ram-Mohun Roy, and is now known as the Brahma-Samâg, under the leadership of my noble friend Keshub Chunder Sen, was chiefly founded on the Upanishads, and was Vedântic in spirit. There is, in fact, an unbroken continuity between the most modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu thought, extending over more than three thousand years.
To the present day India acknowledges no higher authority in matters of religion, ceremonial, customs, and law than the Veda, and so long as India is India, nothing will extinguish that ancient spirit of Vedântism which is breathed by every Hindu from his earliest youth, and pervades in various forms the prayers even of the idolater, the speculations of the philosopher, and the proverbs of the beggar.