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Swami Vivekananda - Jayanthi - 12Jan - Karma. Is there no way out?

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Being Swami's Jayanthi today, i am posting what he said about our

Upanishad & Karma - is there a way out?

 

Let us celebrate his birth aniversary today 12-jan.

 

The following is a CUT and PASTE, but i read it and thought of

posting it today on his birth aniversay so that, who have not read

this can benefit.

 

 

Man is a slave of nature, and slave eternally he has got to remain.

We call it Karma. Karma means law, and it applies everywhere.

Everything is bound by Karma. " Is there no way out? " " No! Remain

slaves all through the years — fine slaves. We will manipulate the

words so that you will only have the good and not the bad side of

all — if you will pay [us] enough. " That was the ideal of [the

Mimamsakas]. These are the ideals which are popular throughout the

ages. The vast mass of mankind are never thinkers. Even if they try

to think, the [effect of the] vast mass of superstitions on them is

terrible. The moment they weaken, one blow comes, and the backbone

breaks into twenty pieces. They can only be moved by lures and

threats. They can never move of their own accord. They must be

frightened, horrified, or terrorised, and they are your slaves for

ever. They have nothing else to do but to pay and obey. Everything

else is done by the priest. ... How much easier religion becomes! You

see, you have nothing to do. Go home and sit quietly. Somebody is

doing the whole thing for you. Poor, poor animals!

 

Side by side, there was the other system. The Upanishads are

diametrically opposite in all their conclusions. First of all, the

Upanishads believe in God, the creator of the universe, its ruler.

You find later on [the idea of a benign Providence]. It is an

entirely opposite [conception]. Now, although we hear the priest, the

ideal is much more subtle. Instead of many gods they made one God.

 

The second idea, that you are all bound by the law of Karma, the

Upanishads admit, but they declare the way out. The goal of man is to

go beyond law. And enjoyment can never be the goal, because enjoyment

can only be in nature.

 

In the third place, the Upanishads condemn all the sacrifices and say

that is mummery. That may give you all you want, but it is not

desirable, for the more you get, the more you [want], and you run

round and round in a circle eternally, never getting to the end —

enjoying and weeping. Such a thing as eternal happiness is impossible

anywhere. It is only a child's dream. The same energy becomes joy and

sorrow.

 

I have changed my psychology a bit today. I have found the most

curious fact. You have a certain idea and you do not want to have it,

and you think of something else, and the idea you want to suppress is

entirely suppressed. What is that idea? I saw it come out in fifteen

minutes. It came out and staggered me. It was strong, and it came in

such a violent and terrible fashion [that] I thought here was a

madman. And when it was over, all that had happened [was a

suppression of the previous emotion]. What came out? It was my own

bad impression which had to be worked out. " Nature will have her way.

What can suppression do? " (Gita, III. 33.) That is a terrible

[statement] in the Gita. It seems it may be a vain struggle after

all. You may have a hundred thousand [urges competing] at the same

time. You may repress [them], but the moment the spring rebounds, the

whole thing is there again.

 

[but there is hope]. If you are powerful enough, you can divide your

consciousness into twenty parts all at the same time. I am changing

my psychology. Mind grows. That is what the Yogis say. There is one

passion and it rouses another, and the first one dies. If you are

angry, and then happy, the next moment the anger passes away. Out of

that anger you manufactured the next state. These states are always

interchangeable. Eternal happiness and misery are a child's dream.

The Upanishads point out that the goal of man is neither misery nor

happiness, but we have to be master of that out of which these are

manufactured. We must be masters of the situation at its very root,

as it were.

 

The other point of divergence is: the Upanishads condemn all rituals,

especially those that involve the killing of animals. They declare

those all nonsense. One school of old philosophers says that you must

kill such an animal at a certain time if the effect is to be

produced. [You may reply], " But [there is] also the sin of taking the

life of the animal; you will have to suffer for that. " They say that

is all nonsense. How do you know what is right and what is wrong?

Your mind says so? Who cares what your mind says? What nonsense are

you talking? You are setting your mind against the scriptures. If

your mind says something and the Vedas say something else, stop your

mind and believe in the Vedas. If they say, killing a man is right,

that is right. If you say, " No, my conscience says [otherwise, " it

won't do]. The moment you believe in any book as the eternal word, as

sacred, no more can you question. I do not see how you people here

believe in the Bible whenever you say about [it], " How wonderful

those words are, how right and how good! " Because, if you believe in

the Bible as the word of God, you have no right to judge at all. The

moment you judge, you think you are higher than the Bible. [Then]

what is the use of the Bible to you? The priests say, " We refuse to

make the comparison with your Bible or anybody's. It is no use

comparing, because — what is the authority? There it ends. If you

think something is not right, go and get it right according to the

Vedas. "

 

The Upanishads believe in that, [but they have a higher standard

too]. On the one hand, they do not want to overthrow the Vedas, and

on the other they see these animal sacrifices and the priests

stealing everybody's money. But in the psychology they are all alike.

All the differences have been in the philosophy, [regarding] the

nature of the soul. Has it a body and a mind? And is the mind only a

bundle of nerves, the motor nerves and the sensory nerves?

Psychology, they all take for granted, is a perfect science. There

cannot be any difference there. All the fight has been regarding

philosophy — the nature of the soul, and God, and all that.

 

Then another great difference between the priests and the Upanishads.

The Upanishads say, renounce. That is the test of everything.

Renounce everything. It is the creative faculty that brings us into

all this entanglement. The mind is in its own nature when it is calm.

The moment you can calm it, that [very] moment you will know the

truth. What is it that is whirling the mind? Imagination, creative

activity. Stop creation and you know the truth. All power of creation

must stop, and then you know the truth at once.

 

On the other hand, the priests are all for [creation]. Imagine a

species of life [in which there is no creative activity. It is

unthinkable]. The people had to have a plan [of evolving a stable

society. A system of rigid selection was adopted. For instance,] no

people who are blind and halt can be married. [As a result] you will

find so much less deformity [in India] than in any other country in

the world. Epileptics and insane [people] are very rare [there]. That

is owing to direct selection. The priests say, " Let them become

Sannyâsins. " On the other hand, the Upanishads say, " Oh no, [the]

earth's best and finest [and] freshest flowers should be laid upon

the altar. The strong, the young, with sound intellect and sound

body — they must struggle for the truth. "

 

So with all these divergences of opinion, I have told you that the

priests already differentiated themselves into a separate caste. The

second is the caste of the kings. ... All the Upanishadic philosophy

is from the brains of kings, not priests. There [runs] an economic

struggle through every religious struggle. This animal called man has

some religious influence, but he is guided by economy. Individuals

are guided by something else, but the mass of mankind never made a

move unless economy was [involved]. You may [preach a religion that

may not be perfect in every detail], but if there is an economic

background [to it], and you have the most [ardent champions] to

preach it, you can convince a whole country. ...

 

Whenever any religion succeeds, it must have economic value.

Thousands of similar sects will be struggling for power, but only

those who meet the real economic problem will have it. Man is guided

by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head

afterwards. Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to

go first. By the time a man is sixty years of age, he is called out

of [the world]. The whole of life is one delusion, and just when you

begin to see things the way they are, you are snatched off. So long

as the stomach went first you were all right. When children's dreams

begin to vanish and you begin to look at things the way they are, the

head goes. Just when the head goes first, [you go out].

 

[For] the religion of the Upanishads to be popularised was a hard

task. Very little economy is there, but tremendous altruism. ...

 

The Upanishads had very little kingdom, although they were discovered

by kings that held all the royal power in their hands. So the

struggle ... began to be fiercer. Its culminating point came two

thousand years after, in Buddhism. The seed of Buddhism is here, [in]

the ordinary struggle between the king and the priest; and [in the

struggle] all religion declined. One wanted to sacrifice religion,

the other wanted to cling to the sacrifices, to Vedic gods, etc.

Buddhism ... broke the chains of the masses. All castes and creeds

alike became equal in a minute. So the great religious ideas in India

exist, but have yet to be preached: otherwise they do no good. ...

 

In every country it is the priest who is conservative, for two

reasons — because it is his bread and because he can only move with

the people. All priests are not strong. If the people say, " Preach

two thousand gods, " the priests will do it. They are the servants of

the congregation who pay them. God does not pay them. So blame

yourselves before blaming the priests. You can only get the

government and the religion and the priesthood you deserve, and no

better.

 

So the great struggle began in India and it comes to one of its

culminating points in the Gita. When it was causing fear that all

India was going to be broken up between [the] two ... [groups], there

rose this man Krishna, and in the Gita he tries to reconcile the

ceremony and the philosophy of the priests and the people. Krishna is

loved and worshipped in the same way as you do Christ. The difference

is only in the age. The Hindus keep the birthday of Krishna as you do

Christ's. Krishna lived five thousand years ago and his life is full

of miracles, some of them very similar to those in the life of

Christ. The child was born in prison. The father took him away and

put him with the shepherds. All children born in that year were

ordered to be killed. ... He was killed; that was his fate.

 

Krishna was a married man. There are thousands of books about him.

They do not interest me much. The Hindus are great in telling

stories, you see. [if] the Christian missionaries tell one story from

their Bible, the Hindus will produce twenty stories. You say the

whale swallowed Jonah; the Hindus say someone swallowed an

elephant. ... Since I was a child I have heard about Krishna's life.

I take it for granted there must have been a man called Krishna, and

his Gita shows he has

a wonderful book. I told you, you can

understand the character of a man by analysing the fables about him.

The fables have the nature [of decorations]. You must find they are

all polished and manipulated to fit into the character. For instance,

take Buddha. The central idea [is] sacrifice. There are thousands of

folklore, but in every case the sacrifice must have been kept up.

There are thousands of stories about Lincoln, about some

characteristic of that great man. You take all the fables and find

the general idea and [know] that that was the central character of

the man. You find in Krishna that non-attachment is the central idea.

He does not need anything. He does not want anything. He works for

work's sake. " Work for work's sake. Worship for worship's sake. Do

good because it is good to do good. Ask no more. " That must have been

the character of the man. Otherwise these fables could not be brought

down to the one idea of non-attachment. The Gita is not his only

sermon. ...

 

He is the most rounded man I know of, wonderfully developed equally

in brain and heart and hand. Every moment [of his] is alive with

activity, either as a gentleman, warrior, minister, or something

else. Great as a gentleman, as a scholar, as a poet. This all-rounded

and wonderful activity and combination of brain and heart you see in

the Gita and other books. Most wonderful heart, exquisite language,

and nothing can approach it anywhere. This tremendous activity of the

man — the impression is still there. Five thousand years have passed

and he has influenced millions and millions. Just think what an

influence this man has over the whole world, whether you know it or

not. My regard for him is for his perfect sanity. No cobwebs in that

brain, no superstition. He knows the use of everything, and when it

is necessary to [assign a place to each], he is there. Those that

talk, go everywhere, question about the mystery of the Vedas, etc.,

they do not know the truth. They are no better than frauds. There is

a place in the Vedas [even] for superstition, for ignorance. The

whole secret is to find out the proper place for everything.

 

Then that heart! He is the first man, way before Buddha, to open the

door of religion to every caste. That wonderful mind! That

tremendously active life! Buddha's activity was on one plane, the

plane of teaching. He could not keep his wife and child and become a

teacher at the same time. Krishna preached in the midst of the

battlefield. " He who in the midst of intense activity finds himself

in the greatest calmness, and in the greatest peace finds intense

activity, that is the greatest [Yogi as well as the wisest man]. "

(Ibid. IV. 18.) It means nothing to this man — the flying of missiles

about him. Calm and sedate he goes on discussing the problems of life

and death. Each one of the prophets is the best commentary on his own

teaching. If you want to know what is meant by the doctrine of the

New Testament, you go to Mr. So-and-so. [but] read again and again

[the four Gospels and try to understand their import in the light of

the wonderful life of the Master as depicted there]. The great men

think, and you and I [also] think. But there is a difference. We

think and our bodies do not follow. Our actions do not harmonise with

our thoughts. Our words have not the power of the words that become

Vedas. ... Whatever they think must be accomplished. If they say, " I

do this, " the body does it. Perfect obedience. This is the end. You

can think yourself God in one minute, but you cannot be [God]. That

is the difficulty. They become what they think. We will become [only]

by [degrees].

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, " Senthil " <senthil_sym wrote:

>

> Being Swami's Jayanthi today, i am posting what he said about our

> Upanishad & Karma - is there a way out?

 

 

Thanks Senthil... for reminding that great soul's birthday and for

posting this wonderful msgs

 

aum

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