THE REAL NATURE OF MAN 1

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Om Namah Sivaya

Discourse by Sri Swami Vivekananda

Great is the tenacity with which man clings to the senses. Yet, however

substantial he may think the external world in which he lives and moves, there

comes a time in the lives of individuals and of races when, involuntarily, they

ask, "Is this real?" To the person who never finds a moment to question the

credentials of his senses, whose every moment is occupied with some sort of

sense-enjoyment — even to him death comes, and he also is compelled to ask,

"Is this real?" Religion begins with this question and ends with its answer.

Even in the remote past, where recorded history cannot help us, in the

mysterious light of mythology, back in the dim twilight of civilisation, we find

the same question was asked, "What becomes of this? What is real?"

One of the most poetical of the Upanishads, the Katha Upanishad, begins with

the inquiry: "When a man dies, there is a dispute. One party declares that he

has gone for ever, the other insists that he is still living. Which is true?"

Various answers have been given. The whole sphere of metaphysics,

philosophy, and religion is really filled with various answers to this question.

At the same time, attempts have been made to suppress it, to put a stop to the

unrest of mind which asks, "What is beyond? What is real?" But so long as

death remains, all these attempts at suppression will always prove to be

unsuccessful. We may talk about seeing nothing beyond and keeping all our

hopes and aspirations confined to the present moment, and struggle hard not to

think of anything beyond the world of senses; and, perhaps, everything outside

helps to keep us limited within its narrow bounds. The whole world may

combine to prevent us from broadening out beyond the present. Yet, so long as

there is death, the question must come again and again, "Is death the end of all

these things to which we are clinging, as if they were the most real of all

realities, the most substantial of all substances?" The world vanishes in a

moment and is gone. Standing on the brink of a precipice beyond which is the

infinite yawning chasm, every mind, however hardened, is bound to recoil and

ask, "Is this real?" The hopes of a lifetime, built up little by little with all the

energies of a great mind, vanish in a second. Are they real? This question must

be answered. Time never lessens its power; on the other hand, it adds strength

to it.

Then there is the desire to be happy. We run after everything to make ourselves

happy; we pursue our mad career in the external world of senses. If you ask the young man with whom life is successful, he will declare that it is real; and he

really thinks so. Perhaps, when the same man grows old and finds fortune ever

eluding him, he will then declare that it is fate. He finds at last that his desires

cannot be fulfilled. Wherever he goes, there is an adamantine wall beyond

which he cannot pass. Every sense-activity results in a reaction. Everything is

evanescent. Enjoyment, misery, luxury, wealth, power, and poverty, even life

itself, are all evanescent.

Two positions remain to mankind. One is to believe with the nihilists that all is

nothing, that we know nothing, that we can never know anything either about

the future, the past, or even the present. For we must remember that he who

denies the past and the future and wants to stick to the present is simply a

madman. One may as well deny the father and mother and assert the child. It

would be equally logical. To deny the past and future, the present must

inevitably be denied also. This is one position, that of the nihilists. I have never

seen a man who could really become a nihilist for one minute. It is very easy to

talk.

Then there is the other position — to seek for an explanation, to seek for the

real, to discover in the midst of this eternally changing and evanescent world

whatever is real. In this body which is an aggregate of molecules of matter, is

there anything which is real? This has been the search throughout the history of

the, human mind. In the very oldest times, we often find glimpses of light

coming into men's minds. We find man, even then, going a step beyond this

body, finding something which is not this external body, although very much

like it, much more complete, much more perfect, and which remains even when this body is dissolved. We read in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, addressed to the God of Fire who is burning a dead body, "Carry him, O Fire, in your arms

gently, give him a perfect body, a bright body, carry him where the fathers live,

where there is no more sorrow, where there is no more death." The same idea

you will find present in every religion. And we get another idea with it. It is a

significant fact that all religions, without one exception, hold that man is a

degeneration of what he was, whether they clothe this in mythological words,

or in the clear language of philosophy, or in the beautiful expressions of poetry.

This is the one fact that comes out of every scripture and of every mythology

that the man that is, is a degeneration of what he was. This is the kernel of truth

within the story of Adam's fall in the Jewish scripture. This is again and again

repeated in the scriptures of the Hindus; the dream of a period which they call

the Age of Truth, when no man died unless he wished to die, when he could

keep his body as long as he liked, and his mind was pure and strong. There was

no evil and no misery; and the present age is a corruption of that state of

perfection. Side by side with this, we find the story of the deluge everywhere.

That story itself is a proof that this present age is held to be a corruption of a

former age by every religion. It went on becoming more and more corrupt until

the deluge swept away a large portion of mankind, and again the ascending

series began. It is going up slowly again to reach once more that early state of

purity. You are all aware of the story of the deluge in the Old Testament. The

same story was current among the ancient Babylonians, the Egyptians, the

Chinese, and the Hindus. Manu, a great ancient sage, was praying on the bank

of the Gangâ, when a little minnow came to him for protection, and he put it

into a pot of water he had before him. "What do you want?" asked Manu. The

little minnow declared he was pursued by a bigger fish and wanted protection.

Manu carried the little fish to his home, and in the morning he had become as

big as the pot and said, "I cannot live in this pot any longer". Manu put him in a

tank, and the next day he was as big as the tank and declared he could not live

there any more. So Manu had to take him to a river, and in the morning the fish

filled the river. Then Manu put him in the ocean, and he declared, "Manu, I am

the Creator of the universe. I have taken this form to come and warn you that I

will deluge the world. You build an ark and in it put a pair of every kind of

animal, and let your family enter the ark, and there will project out of the water

my horn. Fasten the ark to it; and when the deluge subsides, come out and

people the earth." So the world was deluged, and Manu saved his own family

and two of every kind of animal and seeds of every plant. When the deluge

subsided, he came and peopled the world; and we are all called "man", because

we are the progeny of Manu.

Now, human language is the attempt to express the truth that is within. I am

fully persuaded that a baby whose language consists of unintelligible sounds is

attempting to express the highest philosophy, only the baby has not the organs

to express it nor the means. The difference between the language of the highest

philosophers and the utterances of babies is one of degree and not of kind.

What you call the most correct, systematic, mathematical language of the

present time, and the hazy, mystical, mythological languages of the ancients,

differ only in degree. All of them have a grand idea behind, which is, as it

were, struggling to express itself; and often behind these ancient mythologies

are nuggets of truth; and often, I am sorry to say, behind the fine, polished

phrases of the moderns is arrant trash. So, we need not throw a thing overboard

because it is clothed in mythology, because it does not fit in with the notions of

Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so of modern times. If people should laugh at

religion because most religions declare that men must believe in mythologies

taught by such and such a prophet, they ought to laugh more at these moderns.

In modern times, if a man quotes a Moses or a Buddha or a Christ, he is

laughed at; but let him give the name of a Huxley, a Tyndall, or a Darwin, and

it is swallowed without salt. "Huxley has said it", that is enough for many. We

are free from superstitions indeed! That was a religious superstition, and this a

scientific superstition; only, in and through that superstition came life-giving

ideas of spirituality; in and through this modern superstition come lust and

greed. That superstition was worship of God, and this superstition is worship of filthy lucre, of fame or power. That is the difference.

 

Sivaya Namah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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