The fox is considered very unholy by the Mohammedans, also by the Hindus. Also, if a dog touches any bit of food it has to be thrown out, it cannot be eaten by any man. In a certain Mohammedan house a fox entered and took a little bit of food from the table, ate it up and fled. The man was a poor man, and had prepared a very nice feast for himself, and that feast was made unholy, and he could not eat it. So he went to a Mulla, a priest, and said: “This has happened to me; a fox came and took a mouthful out of my meal; what can be done? I had prepared a feast and wanted so much to eat it, and now comes this fox and destroys the whole affair.” The Mulla thought for a minute, and then found only one solution and said: “The only way is for you to get a dog, and make him eat a bit out of the same plate, because dog and fox are eternally quarrelling. The food that was left by the fox will go into your stomach, and that not eaten by the dog will go there, and both will be purified.” We are very much in the same Predicament. This is an hallucination that we are imperfect, and we take up another, that we have to practice to become perfect. Then one will chase the other, as we can use one thorn to extract another and then throw both away. There are people for whom it is sufficient knowledge to hear, “Thou art That.” With a flash this universe goes away and the real nature shines, but others have to struggle hard to get rid of this idea of bondage.
The first question is, who are fit to become Jnâna Yogis? Those who are equipped with these requisites. First, renunciation of all fruits of work and of all enjoyments in this life or another life. If you are the creator of this universe whatever you desire you will have, because you will create it for yourself. It is only a question of time. Some get it immediately; with others the past samskâras (impressions) stand in the way of getting their desires. We give the first place to desires for enjoyment, either in this or another life. Deny there is any life at all, because life is only another name for death. Deny that you are a living being. Who cares for life? Life is one of these hallucinations and death is its counterpart. Joy is one part of these hallucinations, and misery the other part, and so on. What have you to do with life or death? These are all creations of the mind. This is called giving up desires of enjoyment either in this life or another.
Then comes controlling the mind, calming it so that it will not break into waves and have all sorts of desires; holding the mind steady, not allowing it to get into waves from external or internal causes, controlling the mind perfectly just by the power of will. The Jnâna Yogi does not take any one of these physical helps, or mental helps, simply philosophic reasoning, knowledge and his own will, these are the instrumentality he believes in. Next comes Titikshâ, forbearance, bearing all miseries without murmuring, without complaining. When an injury comes, do not mind it. If a tiger comes, stand there. Who flies? There are men who practice titikshâ, and succeed in it. There are men who sleep on the banks of the Ganges in the mid-summer sun of India, and in winter float in the waters of the Ganges for a whole day; they do not care. Men sit in the snow of the Himâlayas, and do not care to wear any garment. What is heat? What is cold? Let things come and go, what is that to me, I am not the body. It is hard to believe this in these Western countries, but it is better to know that it is done. Just as your people are brave to jump at the mouth of a cannon, or into the midst of the battle-field, so our people are brave to think and act out their philosophy. They give up their lives for it. “I am Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute; I am He; I am He.” Just as the Western ideal is to keep up luxury in practical life, so ours is to keep up the highest form of spirituality, to demonstrate that religion is not merely frothy words, but can be carried out, every bit of it, in this life. This is titikshâ, to bear everything, not to complain of anything. I myself have seen men who say “I am the soul; what is the universe to me? Neither pleasure, nor pain, nor virtue, nor vice, nor heat, nor cold are anything to me.” That is titikshâ; not running after the enjoyments of the body. What is religion? To pray: “give me this and that”? Foolish ideas of religion! Those who believe them have no true idea of God and soul. My Master used to say the vulture rises high and high until he becomes a speck, but his eye is always in the piece of rotten carrion on the earth. After all, what is the result of your ideas of religion? To cleanse the streets, and have more bread and clothes. Who cares for bread and clothes? Millions come and go every minute. Who cares? Why care for the joys and vicissitudes of this little world? Go beyond that if you dare; go beyond law, let the whole universe vanish, and stand alone. “I am Existence-Absolute, Knowledge-Absolute, Bliss-Absolute; I am He; I am He.”
V
ONE EXISTENCE APPEARING AS MANY
We have seen how Vairâgyam, or renunciation, is the turning point in all these various Yogas. The Karmi (worker) renounces the fruits of his work. The Bhakta (devotee) renounces all little loves for the almighty and omnipresent love. The Yogi renounces his experiences, because his philosophy is that the whole Nature, although it is for the experience of the soul, at last brings him to know that he is not in Nature, but eternally separate from Nature. The Jnâni (philosopher) renounces everything, because his philosophy is that Nature never existed, neither in the past, present nor future. We have also seen how the question of utility cannot be asked in these higher themes; it is very absurd to ask utility, and even if it be asked, after a proper analysis what do we find in this question of utility? The ideal of happiness, that which brings man greater happiness is of greater utility to him than those things which do not improve his material conditions or bring him such great happiness. All the sciences are for this one end, to bring happiness to humanity and that which brings the larger amount of happiness, mankind takes and gives up that which brings a lesser amount of happiness. We have seen how happiness is either in the body, or in the mind, or in the Âtman. With animals, and in the lowest of human beings, who are very much like animals, happiness is all in the body. No man can eat with the same pleasure as a famished dog, or a wolf; so, in the dog and the wolf the happiness is gone entirely into the body. In men we find a higher plane of happiness, that of thought, and in the Jnâni there is the highest plane of happiness in the Self, the Âtman. So to the philosopher this knowledge of the Self is of the highest utility, because it gives him the highest happiness possible. Sense gratifications or physical things cannot be of the highest utility to him because he does not find in them the same pleasure that he finds in knowledge itself; and after that, knowledge is the one goal, and is really the highest happiness that we know. All who work in ignorance are, as it were, the draught animals of the devas. The word deva is here used in the sense of a wise man. All the people that work, and toil, and labor like machines do not really enjoy life, but it is the wise man who enjoys. A rich man buys a picture at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars perhaps, but it is the man who understands art that enjoys it; and if a man is without knowledge of art it is useless to him, he is only the owner. All over the world, it is the wise man who enjoys the happiness of the world. The ignorant man never enjoys; he has to work for others unconsciously.
Thus far we have seen the theories of these Advaitist philosophers, how there is but one Âtman; there cannot be two. We have seen how in the whole of this universe there is but One Existence, and that One Existence when seen through the senses is called the world, the world of matter. When It is seen through the mind It is called the world of thoughts and ideas, and when It is seen as it is, then It is the One Infinite Being. You must bear this in mind; it is not that there is a soul in man, although I had to take that for granted in order to explain it at first, but that there is only One Existence, and that one the Âtman, the Self, and when this is perceived through the senses, through sense imageries, It is called the body. When It is perceived through thought, It is called the mind. When It is perceived in Its own nature, It is the Âtman, the One Only Existence. So, it is not that there are three things in one, the body and the mind and the Self, although that was a convenient way of putting it in the course of explanation; but all is that Âtman, and that one Being is sometimes called the body, sometimes the mind, and sometimes the Self, according to different vision. There is but one Being which the ignorant call the world. When a man goes higher in knowledge he calls the very same Being the world of thought. Again when knowledge itself comes, all illusions vanish, and man finds it is all nothing but Âtman. I am that One Existence. This is the last conclusion. There are neither three nor two in the universe; it is all One. That One, under the illusion of Mâyâ is seen as many, just as a rope is seen as a snake. It is the very rope that is seen as a snake. There are not two things there, a rope separate and a snake separate. No man sees two things there. Dualism and non-dualism are very good philosophic terms, but in perfect perception we never perceive the real and the false at the same time. We are all born monists, we cannot help it. We always perceive the one. When we perceive the rope, we do not perceive the snake at all, and when we see the snake, we do not see the rope at all; it has vanished. When you see illusion, you do not see real men. Suppose one of your friends is coming from a distance in the street; you know him very well, but through the haze and mist that is before you, you think it is another man. When you see your friend as another man, you do not see your friend at all, he has vanished. You are perceiving only one. Suppose your friend is Mr. A., but when you perceive Mr. A. as Mr. B. you do not see Mr. A. at all. In each case you perceive only one. When you see yourself as a body, you are body and nothing else, and that is the perception of the vast majority of mankind. They may talk of soul and mind, and all these things, but what they perceive is the physical form, the touch, taste, vision, and so on. Again, with certain men, in certain states of consciousness, they perceive themselves as thought. You know, of course, the story told of Sir Humphrey Davy, who was making experiments before his class with laughing-gas, and suddenly one of the tubes broke, and the gas escaping, he breathed it in. For some moments he remained like a statue. Afterwards he told his class that when he was in that state, he actually perceived that the whole world is made up of ideas. The gas, for a time, made him forget the consciousness of the body, and that very thing which he was seeing as the body, he began to perceive as ideas. When the consciousness rises still higher, when this little puny consciousness is gone forever, that which is the Reality behind shines, and we see it as the One Existence-Knowledge-Bliss, the one Âtman, the Universal. “One that is only knowledge itself, One that is bliss itself, beyond all compare, beyond all limit, ever free, never bound, infinite as the sky, unchangeable as the sky. Such an One will manifest Himself in your heart in meditation.”
How does the Advaitist theory explain all these various phases of heavens and hells and all these various ideas we find in all religions? When a man dies it is said that he goes to heaven or hell, goes here or there, or that when a man dies he is born again in another body, either in heaven or in another world, or somewhere. These are all hallucinations. Nobody is ever born or dies, really speaking. There is neither heaven nor hell, nor this world; all three never really existed. Tell a child a lot of ghost stories, and let him go out into the street in the evening. There is a little stump of a tree. What does the child see? A ghost, with hands stretched out, ready to grab him. Suppose a man comes from the corner of the street, wanting to meet his sweetheart; he sees that stump of the tree as the girl. A police-man coming from the street corner sees the stump as a thief. The thief sees it as a police-man. It is the same stump of a tree that was seen in various ways. The stump is the reality, and the visions of the stump are the projections of the various minds. There is one Being, this Self; It neither comes nor goes. When a man is ignorant, he wants to go to heaven or some place, and all his life he has been thinking and thinking of this, and when this earth dream vanishes he sees this world as a heaven, with devas and angels flying about, and all such things. If a man all his life desires to meet his forefathers he gets them all, from Adam downwards, because he creates them. If a man is still more ignorant and has always been frightened by fanatics with ideas of hell, when he dies he will see this very world as hell, with all sorts of punishments. All that is meant by dying or being born is simply changes in the plane of vision. Neither do you move, nor does that move upon which you project your vision. You are the permanent, the unchangeable. How can you go and come? It is impossible; you are omnipresent. The sky never moves, but the clouds move over the surface of the sky, and we may think that the sky itself moves. Just as you go into a railway train, and you think the land is moving. It is not so, but it is the train which is moving. You are where you are; this dream, these various clouds move. One dream follows another without connection. There is no such thing as law or connection in this world, but we are thinking that there is a great deal of connection. All of you have probably read “Alice in Wonderland.” It is the most wonderful book for children written in this century. When I read it I was delighted, it was always in my head to write that sort of a book for children. What pleased me most in it was what you think most incongruous, that there is no connection there. One idea comes and jumps into another, without any connection. When you were children you thought that the most wonderful connection. So this man brought back his thoughts of childhood, perfectly connected to him as a child, and composed this book for children. And all these books which men write, trying to make children swallow their own ideas as men are nonsense. We too are grown up children, that is all. The world is the same unconnected thing,—“Alice in Wonderland,”—with no connection whatever. When we see things happen a number of times in a certain sequence, we call it cause and effect, and say that the thing will happen again. When this dream changes another dream will seem quite as connected as this. When we dream, the things we see all seem to be connected; during the dream we never think they are incongruous; it is only when we wake that we see the want of connection. When we wake from this dream of the world and compare it with the Reality, it will be found all incongruous nonsense, a mass of incongruity passing before us, we do not know whence or whither, but we know it will end; and this is called Mâyâ, and is like masses of fleeting, fleecy clouds. They represent all this changing existence, and the sun itself, the unchanging, is you. When you look at that unchanging Existence from the outside, you call it God, and when you look at it from the inside you call it yourself. It is but one. There is no God separate from you, no God higher than you, the real “you.” All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your reflection. God Himself is your image. “God created man after His own image.” That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god, and fall down at his feet and worship; and when this dream comes, we love it!
This is a good point to understand,—that the sum and substance of this morning’s lecture is that there is but One Existence, and that One Existence seen through different constitutions appears either as the earth, or heaven, or hell, or God, or ghosts, or men or demons, or world, or all these things. But among these many “He who sees that One in this ocean of death, he who sees that One Life in this floating universe, who realizes that One who never changes, unto him belongs eternal peace; unto none else, unto none else.” This One Existence has to be realized. How, is the next question. How is it to be realized? How is this dream to be broken, how shall we wake up from this dream that we are little men and women, and all such things? We are the Infinite Being of the universe, and have become materialized into these little beings, men and women, depending upon the sweet word of one man, or the angry word of another man and so forth. What a terrible dependence, what a terrible slavery! I who am beyond all pleasure and pain, whose reflection is the whole universe, little bits of whose life are the suns and moons and stars,—I am held down as a terrible slave. If you pinch my body I feel pain. If one says a kind word I begin to rejoice. See my condition,—slave of the body, slave of the mind, slave of the world, slave of a good word, slave of a bad word, slave of passion, slave of happiness, slave of life, slave of death, slave of everything. This slavery has to be broken. How? “This Âtman has first to be heard, then reasoned upon and then meditated upon.” This is the method of the Advaita Jnâni. The truth has to be heard, then reflected upon and then to be constantly asserted. Think always—“I am Brahman”; every other thought must be cast aside as weakening. Cast aside every thought that says that you are men or women. Let body go, and mind go, and gods go, and ghosts go. Let everything go but that One Existence. “Where one hears another, where one sees another, that is but small; where one does not hear another, where one does not see another, that is infinite.” That is the highest, when the subject and the object become one. When I am the listener and I am the speaker, when I am the teacher and I am the taught, when I am the creator and I am the created,—then alone fear ceases; there is not another to make us afraid. There is nothing but myself, what can frighten me? This is to be heard day after day. Get rid of all other thoughts. Everything else must be thrown aside, and this is to be repeated continually, poured through the ears until it reaches the heart, until every nerve and muscle, every drop of blood tingles with the idea that I am He, I am He. Even at the gate of death say “I am He.” There was a man in India, a Sannyâsin, who used to repeat “Shivoham” (“I am Bliss Eternal”), and a tiger jumped on him one day and dragged him away and killed him, and as long as he was living the sound came “Shivoham, Shivoham.” Even at the gate of death, in the greatest danger, in the thick of the battle-field, at the bottom of the ocean, on the tops of the highest mountains, in the thickest of the forest, tell yourself “I am He, I am He.” Day and night say “I am He.” It is the greatest strength; it is religion. “The weak will never reach the Âtman.” Never say: “O Lord, I am a miserable sinner.” Who shall help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? Where is the man, or the god, or the demon to help you? What can prevail over you? You are the god of the universe; where can you seek for help? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself. In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself, unknowingly. The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that some one was sending help to you. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself. Who will save you? Cut your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. Ever tell yourself “I am He.” These are words that will burn up the dross that is in the mind, words that will bring out the tremendous energy which is within you already, the infinite power which is sleeping in your heart. This is to be brought out by constantly hearing the truth and nothing else. Wherever there is thought of weakness, approach not the place. Avoid all weakness if you want to be Jnâni.
Before you begin to practise, clear your mind of all doubts. Fight and reason and argue, and when you have established it in your mind that this and this alone can be the truth and nothing else, do not argue any more; close your mouth. Hear not argumentation, neither argue yourself. What is the use of any more arguments? You have satisfied yourself, you have decided the question. What remains? The truth has now to be realized, therefore why waste valuable time in vain arguments? The truth has now to be meditated upon and every idea that strengthens you must be taken up and every thought that weakens you must be rejected. The Bhakta meditates upon forms and images and all such things and upon God. This is the natural process, but a slower one. The Yogi meditates upon various centres in his body and manipulates powers in his mind. The Jnâni says the mind does not exist, neither the body. This idea of the body and of the mind must go, must be driven off; therefore it is foolish to think of them. It would be like trying to cure one ailment by bringing in another. His meditation therefore is the most difficult one, the negative; he denies everything, and what is left is the Self. This is the most analytical way. The Jnâni wants to tear away the universe from the Self by the sheer force of analysis. It is very easy to say, “I am a Jnâni,” but very hard to really be one. “The way is long; it is, as it were, walking on the sharp edge of a razor, yet despair not. Awake, arise, and stop not until the goal is reached,” say the Vedas.