Jnana Yoga

My notes from ‘Vedanta: Voice of Freedom” – a selected compilation from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

“Jnana Yoga” – Chapter Highlights reproduced below:

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What is the force that manifests itself through the body? It is obvious to all of us, whatever that force be, that it is taking particles up, as it were, and manipulating forms out of them— human bodies.

So that something was called the soul— the Atman, in Sanskrit. It was the Atman which through the bright body, as it were, worked on the gross body outside. The bright body is considered as the receptacle of the mind, and the Atman is beyond that. It is not the mind even. It works the mind, and through the mind, the body. You have an Atman. I have another. Each one of us has a separate Atman and a separate fine body, and through that we work on the gross external body.

Religion begins with a tremendous dissatisfaction with the present state of things, with our lives, and a hatred— an intense hatred— for this patching up of life, an unbounded disgust for fraud and lies.

A man may say very harsh things to me, and I may not outwardly hate him for it, may not answer him back, and may restrain myself from apparently getting angry, but anger and hatred may be in my mind, and I may feel very badly toward that man. That is not nonresistance. I should be without any feeling of hatred or anger, without any thought of resistance. My mind must then be as calm as if nothing had happened. And only when I have got to that state have I attained nonresistance, and not before. Forbearance of all misery, without even a thought of resisting or driving it out, without even any painful feeling in the mind or any remorse— this is titiksha.

Where is God? Where is the field of religion? It is beyond the senses, beyond consciousness. Consciousness is only one of the many planes in which we work. You will have to transcend the field of consciousness, go beyond the senses, approach nearer and nearer to your own center, and as you do that, you will approach nearer and nearer to God.

If one proposes to teach any science to increase the power of sense enjoyment, one finds multitudes ready for it. If one undertakes to show the supreme goal, one finds few to listen to him. Very few have the power to grasp the higher— fewer still, the patience to attain it.

Upon the same tree there are two birds, one on the top, the other below. The one on the top is calm, silent, and majestic, immersed in his own glory. The one on the lower branches, eating sweet and bitter fruits by turns, hopping from branch to branch, becomes happy and miserable by turns.

The upper bird is God, the Lord of this universe, and the lower bird is the human soul, eating the sweet and bitter fruits of this world. Now and then comes a heavy blow to the soul. For a time he stops the eating and goes toward the unknown God, and a flood of light comes. He thinks that this world is a vain show. Yet again the senses drag him down, and he begins as before to eat the sweet and bitter fruits of the world.

Again an exceptionally hard blow comes. His heart becomes open again to divine light. Thus gradually he approaches God, and as he gets nearer and nearer, he finds his old self melting away. When he has come near enough, he sees that he is no other than God, and he exclaims: “He whom I have described to you as the Life of this universe, as present in the atom and in suns and moons— He is the basis of our own life, the Soul of our soul. Nay, thou art That.”

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