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Excerpts from The Complete
Works of Swami Vivekananda (Vol. 1 - 8), published by
Advaita Ashrama, 5, Dehi Entally Road, Calcutta 14,
India.
THE WAY TO BLESSEDNESS
What is this Self? We have seen that It is even beyond
the intellect. We learn from the same Upanishad that
this Self is eternal and omnipresent, that you and I and
all of us are omnipresent beings, and that the Self is
changeless. Now this omnipresent Being can be only one.
There cannot be two beings who are equally omnipresent —
how could that be? There cannot be two beings who are
infinite, and the result is, there is really only one
Self, and you, I, and the whole universe are but one,
appearing as many. "As the one fire entering into the
world manifests itself in various ways, even so that one
Self, the Self of all, manifests Itself in every form."
But the question is: If this Self is perfect and pure,
and the One Being of the universe, what becomes of It
when It goes into the impure body, the wicked body, the
good body, and so on? How can It remain perfect? "The
one sun is the cause of vision in every eye, yet it is
not touched by the defects in the eyes of any." If a man
has jaundice he sees everything as yellow; the cause of
his vision is the sun, but his seeing everything as
yellow does not touch the sun. Even so this One Being,
though the Self of every one, is not touched by the
purities or impurities outside. "In this world where
everything is evanescent, he who knows Him who never
changes, in this world of insentience, he who knows the
one sentient Being, in this world of many, he who knows
this One and sees Him in his own soul, unto him belongs
eternal bliss, to none else, to none else. There the sun
shines not, nor the stars, nor the lightning flashes,
what to speak of fire? He shining, everything shines;
through His light everything becomes effulgent. When all
the desires that trouble the heart cease, then the
mortal becomes immortal, and here one attains Brahman.
When all the crookedness of the heart disappears, when
all its knots are cut asunder, then alone the mortal
becomes immortal. This is the way. May this study bless
us; may it maintain us; may it give us strength, may it
become energy in us; may we not hate each other; peace
unto all!"
This is the line of thought that you will find in the
Vedanta philosophy. We see first that here is a thought
entirely different from what you see anywhere else in
the world. In the oldest parts of the Vedas the search
was the same as in other books, the search was outside.
In some of the old, old books, the question was raised,
"What was in the beginning? When there was neither aught
nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, who
created all this?" So the search began. And they began
to talk about the angels, the Devas, and all sorts of
things, and later on we find that they gave it up as
hopeless. In their day the search was outside and they
could find nothing; but in later days, as we read in the
Vedas, they had to look inside for the self-existent
One. This Is the one fundamental idea in the Vedas, that
our search in the stars, the nebulae, the Milky Way, in
the whole of this external universe leads to nothing,
never solves the problem of life and death. The
wonderful mechanism inside had to be analysed, and it
revealed to them the secret of the universe; nor star or
sun could do it. Man had to be anatomised; not the body,
but the soul of man. In that soul they found the answer.
What was the answer they found? That behind the body,
behind even the mind, there is the self-existent One. He
dies not, nor is He born. The self-existent One it
omnipresent, because He has no form. That which has no
form or shape, that which is not limited by space or
time, cannot live in a certain place. How can it? It is
everywhere, omnipresent, equally present through all of
us. |
