More than a hundred years ago Swami Vivekananda
(1863–1902) gave a talk entitled The Mission of the Vedanta, proclaiming
the Vedantic essence of life that should become universal, not in the sense of
dogmatic religious imposition but in the discovery of the first principles on
which is founded the harmony of existence. His work in
It is worthy of our traditions as Hindus, it is worthy
of our race, whose vitality, whose life-principle, whose very soul, as it were,
is in religion. I have seen a little of the world, travelling among the races
of the East and the West; and everywhere I find among nations one great ideal
which forms the backbone, so to speak, of that race. With some it is politics,
with others it is social culture; others again may have intellectual culture
and so on for their national background. But this, our motherland, has religion
and religion alone for its basis, for its backbone, for the bedrock upon which
the whole building of its life has been based.
In other countries religion is only one of the many necessities in life. Their
God is, so to speak, the Being who helps to cleanse and to furnish this world
for them; that is apparently all the value of God for them. Do you not know how
for the last hundred or two hundred years you have been hearing again and again
out of the lips of men who ought to have known better, from the mouths of those
who pretend at least to know better, that all the arguments they produce
against the Indian religion is this—that our religion does not conduce to
well-being in this world, that it does not bring gold to us, that it does not
make us robbers of nations, that it does not make the strong stand upon the
bodies of the weak and feed themselves with the life-blood of the weak.
Certainly our religion does not do that. It cannot send cohorts, under whose
feet the earth trembles, for the purpose of destruction and pillage and the
ruination of races. Therefore they say—what is there in this religion? It does not
bring any grist to the grinding mill, any strength to the muscles; what is
there in such a religion?
Ours is away beyond, and still beyond; beyond the senses, beyond space, and
beyond time, away, away beyond, till nothing of this world is left and the
universe itself becomes like a drop in the transcendent ocean of the glory of
the soul. Ours is the true religion because it teaches that God alone is true,
that this world is false and fleeting, that all your gold is but as dust, that
all your power is finite, and that life itself is oftentimes an evil; therefore
ours is the true religion. Ours is the true religion because, above all, it
teaches renunciation.
It is a curious fact that while nations after nations have come upon the stage
of the world, played their parts vigorously for a few moments, and died almost
without leaving a mark or a ripple on the ocean of time, here we are living, as
it were, an eternal life. They talk a great deal of the new theories about the
survival of the fittest, and they think that it is the strength of the muscles
which is the fittest to survive. If that were true, any one of the aggressively
known old world nations would have lived in glory today, and we, the weak
Hindus, who never conquered even one other race or nation, ought to have died
out; yet we live here!
We have, as it were, thrown a challenge to the whole world from the most
ancient times. In the West, they are trying to solve the problem how much a man
can possess, and we are trying here to solve the problem on how little a man
can live. There are times in the history of a man's life, nay, in the history
of the lives of nations, when a sort of world-weariness becomes painfully
predominant. It seems that such a tide of world-weariness has come upon the
Western world. There is a class which still clings on to political and social
changes as the only panacea for the evils in
Every one of the great religions in the world excepting our own, is built upon
historical characters; but ours rests upon principles. There is no man or woman
who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiment of eternal
principles; sages discovered them; and now and then the names of these sages
are mentioned. They were the preachers of principles, and they themselves, so
far as they went, tried to become illustrations of the principles they
preached. At the same time, just as our God is an Impersonal yet Personal, so
is our religion a most intensely impersonal one—a religion based upon
principles—and yet with an infinite scope for the play of persons; for what
religion gives you more Incarnations, more prophets and seers, and still waits
for infinitely more? The Bhāgavata says that Incarnations are infinite. Yet our
religion is based upon principles, and not upon persons.
Two such scientific conclusions drawn from comparative religion, I would
specially like to draw your attention to: the one bears upon the idea of the
universality of religions, and the other on the idea of the oneness of things.
We observe in the histories of
One of the greatest sages that was ever born found out here in India even at
that distant time, which history cannot reach, and into whose gloom even
tradition itself dares not peep—in that distant time the sage arose and
declared,—"He who exists is one; the sages call Him variously." This
is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the
grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been
the very backbone of our national existence. For throughout the vistas of the
centuries of our national life, this one idea—comes down, gaining in volume and
in fullness till it has permeated the whole of our national existence, till it
has mingled in our blood, and has become one with us. We live that grand truth
in every vein, and our country has become the glorious land of religious
toleration. It is here and here alone that they build temples and churches for
the religions which have come with the object of condemning our own religion.
This is one very great principle that the world is waiting to learn from us.
The other great idea that the world wants from us today is that eternal grand
idea of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. There is but one Soul
throughout the universe, all is but One Existence This great idea of the real
and basic solidarity of the whole universe has frightened many, I tell you,
nevertheless, that it is the one great life-giving idea which the world wants
from us today.
The rational West is earnestly bent upon seeking out the rationality, the raison d'être of all its philosophy and
its ethics; and you all know well that ethics cannot be derived from the mere
sanction of any personage, however great and divine he may have been. Such an
explanation of the authority of ethics appeals no more to the highest of the
world's thinkers; they want something more than human sanction for ethical and
moral codes to be binding, they want some eternal principle of truth as the
sanction of ethics. And where is that eternal sanction to be found except in
the only Infinite Reality that exists in you and in me and in all, in the Self,
in the Soul? The infinite oneness of the Soul is the eternal sanction of all
morality, that you and I are really one. This is the dictate of Indian
philosophy. This oneness is the rationale of all ethics and all spirituality.
Every one of our Vedantic systems admits that all purity and perfection and
strength are in the soul already. According to the Advaita, it neither
contracts nor expands, but becomes hidden and uncovered now and again. This is
the one central idea which the world stands in need of, and nowhere is the want
more felt than in our motherland.
But I must tell you a few harsh truths. Our aristocratic ancestors went on
treading the common masses of our country underfoot, till they became helpless,
till under this torment the poor people nearly forgot that they were human
beings. They have been compelled to be merely hewers of wood and drawers of
water for centuries, so much so, that they are made to believe that they are
born as slaves, born as hewers of wood and drawers of water. I also find that
all sorts of most demoniacal and brutal arguments are brought forward in order
to brutalise and tyrannise the poor.
If the Brahmin has more aptitude for learning on the ground of heredity than
the Pariah, spend no more money on the Brahmin's education, but spend all on
the Pariah. Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed. If the Brahmin
is born clever, he can educate himself without help. If the others are not born
clever, let them have all the teaching and the teachers they want. This is justice
and reason as I understand it. Our poor people, these downtrodden masses of
If there is anything in the Gita that I like, it is
these two verses, coming out strong as the very gist, the very essence, of
Krishna's teaching—"He who sees the Supreme Lord dwelling alike in all
beings, the Imperishable in things that perish, he sees indeed. For seeing the
Lord as the same, everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by the Self,
and thus he goes to the highest goal."
Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I
have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say,
relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in
the underlying sameness and oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic
ideal. To have the ideal is one thing, and to apply it practically to the
details of daily life is quite another thing.
Here comes the difficult and the vexed question of caste and of social
reformation, which has been uppermost for centuries in the minds of our people.
I must frankly tell you that I am neither a caste-breaker nor a mere social
reformer. I have nothing to do directly with your castes or with your social
reformation. Live in any caste you like, but that is no reason why you should
hate another man or another caste. It is love and love alone that I preach, and
I base my teaching on the great Vedantic truth of the sameness and omnipresence
of the Soul of the Universe.
That there are evils in our society even a child can see; and in what society
are there no evils? My ideal is growth, expansion, development on national
lines. As I look back upon the history of my country, I do not find in the
whole world another country which has done quite so much for the improvement of
the human mind. Therefore I have no words of condemnation for my nation.
Our ideal of high birth is different from, that of others. Our ideal is the
Brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation. I mean the ideal Brahmin-ness in
which worldliness is altogether absent and true wisdom is abundantly present.
That is the ideal of the Hindu race. If the Brahmin is he who has killed all
selfishness and who lives and works to acquire and propagate wisdom and the
power of love—if a country is altogether inhabited by such Brahmins, by men and
women who are spiritual and moral and good, is it strange to think of that
country as being above and beyond all law? They are good and noble, and they
are the men of God; these are our ideal Brahmins, and we read that in the Satya
Yuga there was only one caste, and that was the Brahmin. We read in the Mahābhārata
that the whole world was in the beginning peopled with Brahmins, and that as
they began to degenerate, they became divided into different castes, and that
when the cycle turns round, they will all go back to that Brahminical origin.
This cycle is turning round now. Therefore our solution of the caste question
is not degrading those who are already high up, is not running amuck through
food and drink, is not jumping out of our own limits in order to have more
enjoyment, but it comes by every one of us, fulfilling the dictates of our
Vedantic religion, by our attaining spirituality, and by our becoming the ideal
Brahmin. There is a law laid on each one of you in this land by your ancestors,
whether you are Aryans or non-Aryans, Rishis or Brahmins, or the very lowest
outcasts. The command is the same to you all, that you must make progress
without stopping, and that from the highest man to the lowest Pariah, every one
in this country has to try and become the ideal Brahmin. This Vedantic idea is
applicable not only here but over the whole world. Such is our ideal of caste
as meant for raising all humanity slowly and gently towards the realisation of
that great ideal of the spiritual man who is non-resisting, calm, steady,
worshipful, pure, and meditative. In that ideal there is God.