"First steps towards knowledge" :- Vintage Vivekananda!

Hello folks. If you either follow Impulsum blogs with full commitment or know me intimately, you very well know my love for a book series called Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. This book series expands into 9 big voulmes and currently I am in mid 9th and the last volume. For the unmindful ones, this book series for me is simply the essence of all the Vedantic philosophy, the Upanishads, and even the other religions. Not only this, as it is a compiled literature of Swami Vivekananda, the reformer monk, the patriotic saint, you'll undoubtedly find greatest of insights on nation building, youth awakening, social and political upliftment of India and many other things.

Not going too deep into this book and Vivekananda's greatness, today we are going to talk about one of the lectures of Swamiji that is recorded in this book. Well see, I try my best to avoid going into philosophy and metaphysics as mere discussions on it are endless. But today, what I find in this short lecture of Vivekananda hits me differently everytime. Not building up too much, let's just go through it.

(A Jnana-Yoga class delievered in New York, Wednesday, December 11,1895, and recorded by Swami Kripananda)

"The word Jnana means knowledge. It is derived from the root Jna - to know - the same word from which your English word to know is derived. Jnana-Yoga is Yoga by means of knowledge.

What is the object of the Jnana-Yoga? Freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from our imperfections, freedom from the misery of life. Why are we miserable? We are miserable because we are bound. What is the bondage? The bondage is of nature. Who is it that binds us? We, ourselves."

My Commentory - When I had myself read this paragraph for the first time, I was downright stunned. He just asked five questions, the biggest ones, and replied them as pointedly and boldly. This shows how deeply yet at a Thunder's speed Swamiji could think. 

"The whole universe is bound by the law of causation. There cannot be anything, any fact-either in the internal or in the external world-that is uncaused; and every cause must produce an effect.

Now this bondage in which we are is a fact. It need not be proved that we are in bondage. For instance: I would be very glad to get out of this room through this wall, but I cannot; I would be very glad if I never became sick, but I cannot prevent it; I would be very glad not to die, but I have to; I would be very glad to do millions of things that I cannot do.

 The will is there, but we do not succeed in accomplishing the desire. When we have any desire and not the means of fulfilling it, we get that peculiar reaction called misery. Who is the cause of desire? I, myself. Therefore, I myself am the cause of all the miseries I am in."

My Commentory - This last paragraph explains us the psychology of misery. It also proves that it is we ourselves that cause our miseries. What is to come next will completely blow your mind. Let me not commentate more not to ruin the flow. 

"Misery begins with the birth of the child. Weak and helpless, he enters the world. The first sign of life is weeping. A caterpillar spins a little cocoon around itself out of the substance of its own body and at last finds itself imprisoned. It may cry and weep and howl there; nobody will come to its rescue until it becomes wise and then comes out, a beautiful butterfly. So with these our bondages. We are going around and around ourselves through countless ages. And now we feel miserable and cry and lament over our bondage. But crying and weeping will be of no avail. We must set ourselves to cutting these bondages.

The main cause of all bondage is ignorance. Man is not wicked by his own nature - not at all. His nature is pure, perfectly holy. Each man is divine. Each man that you see is a God by his very nature. This nature is covered by ignorance, and it is ignorance that binds us down. Ignorance is the cause of all misery. Ignorance is the cause of all wickedness; and knowledge will make the world good. 

Knowledge will remove all misery. Knowledge will make us free. This is the idea of Jnana-Yoga: knowledge will make us free! What knowledge? Chemistry? Physics? Astronomy? Geology? They help us a little, just a little. But the chief knowledge is that of your own nature. "Know thyself." You must know what you are, what your real nature is. You must become conscious of that infinite nature within. Then your bondages will burst.

Studying the external alone, man begins to feel himself to be nothing. These vast powers of nature, these tremendous changes occurring-whole communities wiped off the face of the earth in a twinkling of time, one volcanic eruption shattering to pieces whole continents perceiving and studying these things, man begins to feel himself weak. Therefore, it is not the study of external nature that makes [one] strong. But there is the internal nature of man-a million times more powerful than any volcanic eruption or any law of nature-which conquers nature, triumphs over all its laws. And that alone teaches man what he is.

"Knowledge is power", says the proverb, does it not? It is through knowledge that power comes. Man has got to know. Here is a man of infinite power and strength. He himself is by his own nature potent and omniscient. And this he must know. And the more he becomes conscious of his own Self, the more he manifests this power, and his bonds break and at last he becomes free.

How to know ourselves? the question remains now. There are various ways to know this Self, but in Jnana Yoga it takes the help of nothing but sheer intellectual reasoning. Reason alone, intellect alone, rising to spiritual perception, shows what we are.

Talk of reason! Very few people reason, indeed. You hear a man say. "Oh I don't like to believe in anything: I don't like to grope through darkness. I must reason". And so he reasons. But when reason smashes to pieces things that he hugs unto his breast, he says. "No more! This reasoning is all right until it breaks my ideals. Stop there!" That man would never be a Jnani. That man will carry his bondage all his life and his lives to come. Again and again he will come under the power of death. Such men are not made for Jnana. There are other methods for them-such as Bhakti-Yoga, Karma-Yoga, or Raja-Yoga but not Jnana-Yoga.

It is very hard to believe in reason and follow truth. This whole world is full either of the superstitious or of half-hearted hypocrites. I would rather side with superstition and ignorance than stand with these half hearted hypocrites. They are no good. They stand on both sides of the river.

Take anything up, fix your ideal and follow it out boldly unto death. That is the way to salvation. Half heartedness never led to anything. Be superstitious, be a fanatic if you please, but be something. Be something, show that you have something; but be not like these shilly shallyers with truth-these jacks-of-all-trades who just want to get a sort of nervous titillation, a dose of opium, until this desire after the sensational becomes a habit.

I do not understand what they mean by this "comfortable religion". I was never taught any comfortable religion in my life. I want truth for my religion. Whether it be comfortable or not, I do not care. Why should truth be comfortable always? Truth many times hits hard-as we all know by our experience. Gradually, after a long intercourse with such persons, I came to find out what they meant by their stereotypical phrase. These people got into a rut, and they do not dare to get out of it. Truth must apologize to them.

We are slaves in the hands of nature-slaves to a bit of bread, slaves to praise, slaves to blame, slaves to wife, to husband, to child, slaves to everything. Why, I go about all over the world-beg, steal, rob, do anything-to make happy a boy who is, perhaps, hump-backed or ugly looking. I will do every wicked thing to make him happy. Why? Because I am his father. And, at the same time, there are millions and millions of boys in this world dying of starvation-boys beautiful in body and in mind. But they are nothing to me. Let them all die. I am apt to kill them all to save this one rascal to whom I have given birth. This is what you call love. Not I. Not I. This is brutality.

There are millions of women — beautiful in body and mind, good, gentle, virtuous — dying of starvation this minute. I do not care for them at all. But that Jennie who is mine — who beats me three times a day, and scolds me the whole day — for that Jennie I am going to beg, borrow, cheat and steal so that she will have a nice gown.

Do you call that love? Not I. This is mere desire, animal desire — nothing more. Turn away from these things. Is there no end to these hideous dreams? Put a stop to them.

When the mind comes to that state of disgust with all the vanities of life, it is called turning away from nature. This is the first step.

Think of the slavery in which we are [bound]. Every beautiful form I see, every sound of praise I hear, immediately attracts me; every word of blame I hear immediately repels me. Every fool has an influence over my mind. Every little movement in the world makes an impression upon me. Is this a life worth living?

So when you have realized the misery of this physical existence — when you have become convinced that such a life is not worth living — you have made the first step towards Jnana."

Can you just comprehend how things got quickly elevated? Vivekananda's lectures are bombshells of strentgh. This is the one thing we take away from this blog. Another thing, how he gradually cut through everything in this lecture. He started from misery, stated it as bondage, explained ignorance as its root cause, gave us the tonic of knowledge, showed us the vanities of life and how we all should try to rise beyond our animal nature to be free.

I forever love to read such excerpts, for these make my day whenever I open the Complete Works.

This particular one was something different, so thought to share with you all too :)

Thanks,

Daksh Parekh.