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My notes from ‘Vedanta: Voice of Freedom” – a selected compilation from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.
“The Religion of Vedanta” – Chapter Highlights reproduced below:
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Even if a book were given by God that contained all the truth about religion, it would not serve the purpose, because nobody could understand the book. Take the Bible, for instance, and all the sects that exist among the Christians. Each one puts its own interpretation upon the same text, and each says that it alone understands that text and all the rest are wrong. So with every religion. There are many sects among the Mohammedans and among the Buddhists, and hundreds among the Hindus.
Now, I bring these facts before you in order to show you that any attempt to bring all humanity to one method of thinking in spiritual things has been a failure and always will be a failure. You cannot make all conform to the same ideas. That is a fact, and I thank God that it is so.
Religion is a question of fact, not of talk. We have to analyze our own souls and find what is there. We have to understand it and realize what is understood. That is religion.
This turmoil and fight and difference in religions will cease only when we understand that religion is not in books and temples. It is in actual perception.
We often consider a man religious who can talk well. But this is not religion. “Wonderful methods of joining words, rhetorical powers, and explaining the texts of the books in various ways— these are only for the enjoyment of the learned, and are not religion.” Religion comes when that actual realization in our own souls begins.
We find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God: forms or symbols, names, and God— men. All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other. One says: “My name is the only name, my form is the only form, and my God— men are the only God— men in the world. Yours are simply myths.” These are the external forms of devotion through which man has to pass.
Religion is not in doctrines, in dogmas, nor in intellectual argumentation. It is being and becoming. It is realization.
Sense happiness is not the goal of humanity. Wisdom (jnana) is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses. And we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than his rational nature. So the highest wisdom must be this spiritual knowledge. With this knowledge will come bliss. All the things of this world are but shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree, of the real Knowledge and Bliss.
If you want to be religious, enter not the gate of any organized religions. They do a hundred times more evil than good, because they stop the growth of each one’s individual development. Study everything, but keep your own seat firm. If you take my advice, do not put your neck into the trap. The moment they try to put their noose on you, get your neck out and go somewhere else. [As] the bee culling honey from many flowers remains free, not bound by any flower, be not bound…. Enter not the door of any organized religion. [Religion] is only between you and your God, and no third person must come between you.
If you and I organize, we begin to hate every person. It is better not to love, if loving only means hating others. That is not love.
Let us be no more the worshippers of creeds or sects with small, limited notions of God, but see Him in everything in the universe.
If you are knowers of God, you will everywhere find the same worship as in your own heart.
Get rid, in the first place, of all these limited ideas and see God in every person— working through all hands, walking through all feet, and eating through every mouth.
In every being He lives, through all minds He thinks. He is self— evident, nearer unto us than ourselves. To know this is religion, is faith, and may it please the Lord to give us this faith!
Brahman, the God of Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself— nothing at all. All this indeed is He. He is in the universe; He Himself is the universe.
You and I are both outlets of the same channel, and that is God; as such, your nature is God, and so is mine. You are of the nature of God by your birthright; so am I.
The sum total of this whole universe is God Himself. Is God then matter? No, certainly not, for matter is that God perceived by the five senses. That God, as perceived through the intellect, is mind; and when the Spirit sees, He is seen as Spirit. He is not matter, but whatever is real in matter is He.
So the Hindus say that this Atman is absolute and all— pervading, and therefore infinite. There cannot be two infinites, for they would limit each other and would become finite. Also, each individual soul is a part and parcel of that universal Soul, which is infinite. Therefore in injuring his neighbor, the individual actually injures himself. This is the basic metaphysical truth underlying all ethical codes.
“He who looks upon the learned brahmin, upon the cow, the elephant, the dog, or the outcast with the same eye, he indeed is the sage and the wise man. Even in this life he has conquered relative existence whose mind is firmly fixed on this sameness; for the Lord is one and the same to all, and the Lord is pure. Therefore, those who have this sameness for all and are pure are said to be living in God.” 2 This is the gist of Vedantic morality— this sameness for all.
The sign of approaching that freedom is more and more of this sameness and equality. In misery and happiness the same, in success and defeat the same— such a mind is nearing that state of freedom.
What is your life? The same struggle for freedom. Nature is trying all around to suppress us, and the soul wants to express itself. The struggle with nature is going on. Nature says, “I will conquer.” The soul says, “I must be the conqueror.” Nature says, “Wait! I will give you a little enjoyment to keep you quiet.” The soul enjoys a little, becomes deluded a moment, but the next moment it [cries for freedom again].
What is practical religion, then? To get to that state— freedom— the attainment of freedom. And this world, if it helps us on to that goal, [is] all right. If not— if it begins to bind one more layer on the thousands already there— it becomes an evil. Possessions, learning, beauty, everything else— as long as they help us to that goal, they are of practical value. When they have ceased helping us on to that goal of freedom, they are a positive danger. What is practical religion, then? Utilize the things of this world and the next just for one goal— the attainment of freedom.
You may talk, you may struggle, you may try to do many things, but renunciation comes by itself when you have got the higher. Then the lesser falls away by itself.
I am the Spirit— the soul no instrument can pierce, no sword can cut asunder, no fire can burn, no air can dry. Unborn and uncreated, without beginning and without end, deathless, birthless, and omnipresent— that is what I am. And all misery comes just because I think this little lump of clay is myself. I am identifying myself with matter and taking all the consequences.
Practical religion is identifying myself with my Self. Stop this wrong identification!
The kingdom of heaven is within us. He is there. He is the Soul of all souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom. Let us ask each other how much we are advanced in that— how much we are worshippers of the body, or real believers in God, the Spirit; how much we believe ourselves to be Spirit. That is selflessness. That is freedom. That is real worship. Realize yourself. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are— infinite Spirit. That is practical religion.
My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you that it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent.
“External worship, material worship,” say the Hindu scriptures, “is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer, is the next stage; but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized.”
If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Or, even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error? To the Hindu, man is not traveling from error to truth, but from truth to truth— from lower to higher truth.
The Hindus have discovered that the Absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated, through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols— so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those who do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.
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