posted on May, 27 2004 @ 12:18 PM
There is not one system of philosophy in India which teaches you that you can get power or purity or perfection from outside; but they all tell you
that these are your birthright, your nature. Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is
already perfect, already strong. You do not require any assistance to govern yourself; you are already self-restrained. The only difference is in
knowing it or not knowing it. Therefore the one difficulty has been summed up in the word, Avidy�. What makes the difference between God and man,
between the saint and the sinner? Only ignorance. What is the difference between the highest man and the lowest worm that crawls under your feet?
Ignorance. That makes all the difference. For inside that little crawling worm is lodged infinite power, and knowledge, and purity � the infinite
divinity of God Himself. It is unmanifested; it will have to be manifested.
This is the one great truth India has to teach to the world, because it is nowhere else. This is spirituality, the science of the soul. What makes a
man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin. If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads,
bursting like a bomb-shell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word fearlessness. And the only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of
fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings
misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature. Each of us is heir-apparent to the Emperor
of emperors; are of the substance of God Himself. Nay, according to the Advaita, we are God Himself though we have forgotten our own nature in
thinking of ourselves as little men. We have fallen from that nature and thus made differences � I am a little better than you, or you than I, and so
on. This idea of oneness is the great lesson India has to give, and mark you, when this is understood, it changes the whole aspect of things, because
you look at the world through other eyes than you have been doing before. And this world is no more a battlefield where each soul is born to struggle
with every other soul and the strongest gets the victory and the weakest goes to death. It becomes a playground where the Lord is playing like a
child, and we are His playmates, His fellow-workers. This is only a play, however terrible, hideous, and dangerous it may appear. We have mistaken its
aspect. When we have known the nature of the soul, hope comes to the weakest, to the most degraded, to the most miserable sinner. Only, declares your
Sh�stra, despair not. For you are the same whatever you do, and you cannot change your nature. Nature itself cannot destroy nature. Your nature is
pure. It may be hidden for millions of aeons, but at last it will conquer and come out. Therefore the Advaita brings hope to every one and not
despair. Its teaching is not through fear; it teaches, not of devils who are always on the watch to snatch you if you miss your footing � it has
nothing to do with devils � but says that you have taken your fate in your own hands. Your own Karma has manufactured for you this body, and nobody
did it for you. The Omnipresent Lord has been hidden through ignorance, and the responsibility is on yourself. You have not to think that you were
brought into the world without your choice and left in this most horrible place, but to know that you have yourself manufactured your body bit by bit
just as you are doing it this very moment. You yourself eat; nobody eats for you. You assimilate what you eat; no one does it for you. You make blood,
and muscles, and body out of the food; nobody does it for you. So you have done all the time. One link in a chain explains the infinite chain. If it
is true for one moment that you manufacture your body, it is true for every moment that has been or will come. And all the responsibility of good and
evil is on you. This is the great hope. What I have done, that I can undo. And at the same time our religion does not take away from mankind the mercy
of the Lord. That is always there. On the other hand, He stands beside this tremendous current of good and evil. He the bondless, the ever-merciful,
is always ready to help us to the other shore, for His mercy is great, and it always comes to the pure in heart.
Your spirituality, in a certain sense, will have to form the basis of the new order of society. If I had more time, I could show you how the West has
yet more to learn from some of the conclusions of the Advaita, for in these days of materialistic science the ideal of the Personal God does not count
for much. But yet, even if a man has a very crude form of religion and wants temples and forms, he can have as many as he likes; if he wants a
Personal God to love, he can find here the noblest ideas of a Personal God such as were never attained anywhere else in the world. If a man wants to
be a rationalist and satisfy his reason, it is also here that he can find the most rational ideas of the Impersonal.
[Edited on 5/27/2004 by DivineSoma]
[Edited on 5/27/2004 by DivineSoma]