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Let Us Be God
Let Us Be God
Let Us Be God
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Let Us Be God

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The author, Swami Ashokananda, a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, is renowned for his thought-provoking lectures and articles on Vedanta philosophy and its practical application in daily life as taught by his master. The Swami’s tenure as the Editor of the Prabuddha Bharata, an English monthly of the Ramakrishna Order, from 1927-1930 was a memorable one. Later on as the Minister-in-charge of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, San Francisco from 1932 until his passing away in 1969, the Swami was one of the guiding forces for the Vedanta Movement in the West.


This book published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, borrows its title from an inspired utterance of Swami Vivekananda which forms the subject of the Swami’s deliberations presented herein as the first lecture. By his forceful lectures based on deep reasoning, the Swami turns our attention to the Divine within.


The lectures and articles included here were earlier published in the Prabuddha Bharata and the Vedanta Kesari, another English monthly of the Ramakrishna Order. They are intended for all sincere spiritual aspirants, irrespective of caste, creed, or gender, who strive to transform their daily lives through the invigorating tonic of Advaita Vedanta.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 26, 2019
ISBN9788175059221
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    Book preview

    Let Us Be God - Swami Ashokananda

    LET US BE GOD

    by

    SWAMI ASHOKANANDA

    (PUBLICATION HOUSE OF RAMAKRISHNA MATH)

    5 DEHI ENTALLY ROAD • KOLKATA 700 014

    Published by

    The Adhyaksha

    Advaita Ashrama

    P.O. Mayavati, Dt. Champawat

    Uttarakhand - 262524, India

    from its Publication Department, Kolkata

    Email: mail@advaitaashrama.org

    Website: www.advaitaashrama.org

    © All Rights Reserved

    First Print Edition, December 2018

    First Ebook Edition, February 2019

    ISBN 978-81-7505-478-3 (Paperback)

    ISBN 978-81-7505-922-1 (epub)

    PUBLISHER'S NOTE

    Swami Ashokananda is renowned for his thought-provoking lectures and articles on Vedanta philosophy and its practical application in life as taught by Swami Vivekananda. The Swami’s tenure as the Editor of the Prabuddha Bharata, an English monthly organ of the Ramakrishna Order published from Advaita Ashrama, was a memorable one. Later on as the Minister-in-charge of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, San Francisco, the Swami was one of the guiding force for the Vedanta Movement in the West.

    The lectures and articles included here were earlier published in the Prabuddha Bharata and the Vedanta Kesari. We are grateful to Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, for granting us the permission to include the articles from the Vedanta Kesari.

    We have already published eight books by the Swami including Meditation, Ecstasy and Illumination, The Soul’s Journey to its Destiny, Ascent to Spiritual Illumination, Spiritual Practice, When the Many Become One, Spiritualising Everyday Life, A Call to the Eternal, and The Influence of Indian Thought on the Thought of the West. The present book is yet another luminous gem added to the above collection, and is sure to benefit both the spiritual aspirants and the students of Vedanta philosophy.

    Publisher

    December 2018

    CONTENTS

    Publisher's Note

    1. Let Us Be God

    2. God and the Other God

    3. Free Will or Predestination?

    4. Thinking versus Meditation

    5. The Quest for Power

    6. Reality as the Supreme Person

    7. The Great Lie

    8. The Religion of the Future and the Future of Religion

    9. Sri Sankaracharya : A Study

    10. Swami Vivekananda, the Ideal for the Modern age

    LET US BE GOD

    My subject this morning is ‘Let Us Be God’—with a capital G. Of course, you are not surprised at the title of my lecture, because most of you know that one of the fundamental teachings of our philosophy, Vedanta, in its monistic interpretation, is that the individual soul is the same as God himself. In one of the Upanishads it is said, Yo ha vai tat paramam brahma veda brahmaiva bhavati [Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.9] — ‘He who knows Brahman, God, becomes God.’ Now, this sentence ‘Let us be God,’ is found in the book ‘Inspired Talks’ by Swami Vivekananda. And I would like to read you the passage in which it occurs:

    ‘The world for me, not I for the world. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is, not to progress. It is the nature of man to seek good and avoid evil. It is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be God! Make the heart like an ocean. Go beyond all the trifles of the world. Be mad with joy, even at evil. See the world as a picture, and then enjoy its beauty, knowing that nothing affects you. Children finding glass beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with calm complacency. See good and evil as the same, both are merely God’s play. Enjoy all.’ (1)

    I have no doubt many of you have read this book and some of you, no doubt, have studied it. These ‘Inspired Talks’ were given in June, July and August of 1895, and were taken down by one of Swami Vivekananda’s American disciples, Miss Waldo. She was a distant relative of Emerson, and was, herself, a very scholarly person, and very earnest. The Swami had started his work in New York in the beginning of 1895, and had lectured and held classes there almost daily. When summer came, he felt exceedingly tired, and one of the New York students offered him the use of her cottage in Thousand Island Park, which is one of the islands in the St. Lawrence River. The Swami accepted this invitation very gladly. A few students who wanted to continue their study were also invited to come and live there. Altogether there were twelve students, not all of them were present at the same time, but the largest number was twelve. Swami Vivekananda came to Thousand Island Park about the middle of June, and he at once started his classes. It was a most wonderful time for the Swami, and, it goes without saying, for those who lived with him. It was a wonderful time because he had been tired, and having come to that place, he, as it were, received a new life.

    His mind had been very highly lifted even before he came to Thousand Island Park. He had been the guest of one of his disciples, Mr. Leggett, in his country place in New Hampshire, a place called Camp Percy. Meditating on the bank of a small lake there, the Swami had entered into nirvikalpa samadhi. A gardener found him seated, deadlike, and had run to the house to tell them that Swami had passed away. They all ran to where he was seated, and they called him, they shook him, but they could not bring life back to him. They thought he had actually died. And then they saw the sign of life coming back to his body, and afterwards the Swami told them that he had been in nirvikalpa samadhi. So you can see he was in a very high state even before he reached Thousand Island Park.

    For those who do not know anything about samadhi, it is a state in which one is able to completely withdraw the whole mind and consciousness from everything else, what to speak of the outside world, even from the body—so much so that breathing stops, the heartbeat stops, the pulse stops, because none of those things would go on in the body unless there was a little part of the mind behind it. When the mind completely relinquishes the body, the body cannot function in the least.

    So that is one sign. Of course, from the outside, it would appear as if the person was dead. But it is different from death as in that a person can come back, and again life will begin to function in the body. In samadhi, then, no activity takes place in the body. You would not breathe, your heart would not beat, there would be no pulse, unless you have given a part of your consciousness and mind to these functions. Of course, if you have done that, it means that you have not given your whole mind and consciousness to God. And if you do not give your whole mind and consciousness to God, how can you expect to have the full vision of God? You can’t. It is said that the mind is finite. But when the mind becomes absolutely and totally concentrated on God, then the mind becomes infinite. And it is only then that the vision of God becomes reflected in the mind, and being so reflected it destroys the mind because the mind is no longer necessary.

    So the spirit of man, which is different from the mind, becomes one with the other spirit, which is called God. Other spirit? Because it appears so to us in ignorance. In truth, the spirit of man is God. So, that is how full and complete knowledge of God is attained, and that state has been called, technically in our books, nirvikalpa samadhi. Samadhi means complete contemplation and meditation, and nirvikalpa means that in which there is no other thought. When there is no other thought, when there is no perception of any other thing, but only of God and God alone, then it is considered that the mind has reached that desired condition.

    The Swami had attained to that state even while his master, Sri Ramakrishna, was living. That was in 1886. And of course, as our books say and our tradition maintains, one has to practice again and again; one has to attain to that state again and again, until it becomes natural. If you ask, ‘If we realize God once, why should it not become natural? Why should we lose it again?’ The answer is that if you come back to this body, it means you have some prarabdha karmas left, that is to say, some of your worldly tendencies are left. It is like a man who has left home and joined the monastery. Of course, he had a desire to join, otherwise he would not have gone there, but afterwards he finds that he wants to go back home. It means that some desire for home life is still left in his mind, and then it pulls him back. Similarly, even when one has the vision of God some little things might remain, and so you have to realize God in samadhi again and again until that state becomes natural with you and you will never come down to a lower plane. The Swami had realized that state in India, as I told you, and then he had a second realization.

    Swami Vivekananda’s work of aggressive lecturing, fighting with opponents, and so on, had mostly come to a close by 1895, and his mind, released from the responsibility of this work, had at once risen to a high state. You may ask, ‘Why did the Swami have to fight?’ If you know anything about that period, you know there had been tremendous missionary activities against India—in India and outside India. Most awful, most abominable things were written and spoken about India, and the Swami found that if India was to have some peace and be saved from great misunderstanding, then he had to controvert all these slanders and unfounded falsehoods. So whenever he came across this kind of thing, he opposed it. Now, I must tell you this, he never made it a point of directly bringing propaganda against these missionary activities. What he did directly was to teach the principles of Hinduism and Vedanta. Knowers of God do not like to indulge in any kind of fight if they can avoid it. But then, wherever he went, these ministers and missionaries would all rise up and begin to howl against him, and so he had to speak. However, that period had practically ended by the end of 1894. And he settled down in New York to teach these great doctrines of Vedanta and train people practically in the teachings of this great philosophy and religion.

    So, when he arrived at Thousand Island Park within a week or ten days of having attained to nirvikalpa samadhi at his disciple’s place in New Hampshire, his mind was high. We have a letter he wrote to some friends in Chicago in which he said:

    ‘This is a wonderful place. Here I am feeling the state of mind I used to have in India.’

    And then he quotes from a famous poem describing a person who has risen above all relativities and dwells in the transcendental state. (2) In that state there is no sense of good and evil, or sin and virtue, there is only infinite peace. All sense of difference and non-difference has gone away. This is a most wonderful state, according to Hindu understanding. It is the description of the divine status, the status of God, and also the status of a person who has become one with God. So, in that most beautiful place, peaceful and quiet place, and in the company of those who were earnestly devoted to the teachings of Vedanta, he began discoursing to them.

    There used to be two classes every day, one in the morning, another in the evening. After breakfast he used to conduct the morning class on the basis of a scriptural text. The first class that he held was on the Gospel of St. John. That is how the book, Inspired Talks, begins. Afterwards he took up many other books—Vedanta Sutras, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and so on — one after another. He would explain a little of the text, but the most interesting part was not the explanation of the texts, but his comments. He would go from one idea to another, and speak so inspiringly, that the book itself was afterwards called Inspired Talks. As I told you, Miss Waldo took down notes of these talks. Swami Vivekananda, once hearing her read those notes to a visitor, was astonished that she had taken them so faithfully, and he told her: ‘Why, you have not only taken notes, I hear myself speaking, they are so faithful.’ So we need not have any doubt about the authenticity of this sentence, ‘Let us be God!’ He really meant that.

    You have to get hold of the idea that you are divine, however strange it might seem to you. And you need not in your cowardice say it is blasphemy. Why do I call you a coward if you consider it as a blasphemy? Because you want to hang on to your little weak self, and you call it humility. You give it all kinds of fantastic names. But oftentimes when we do not want to face these ideas it is because we want to continue in our enfeebled state, in our state of ignorance. You see, you must take the total man. Didn’t the Bible say that man was made after the image of God? I should say man was made in the image of God. Man, the true man, is a reflection of God, the same as God Himself. There is no difference. But we do not want to face this; we want to remain the sinful man. In that there is a comfort. We don’t have to struggle. Don’t you see where the trap is? You don’t want to become any better than what you presently are. Of course you want to kneel down before the altar of the Lord. You want to shed lots of tears, you want to read holy books, and you do all kinds of things. And, of course, you are better than the average man and the wicked man. But if it comes to the question of whether you have realized the truth—the truth about which the Christ said: ‘Thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’—if it comes to the question of whether you have realized the truth, you are a million miles away from that. Rest assured that that’s not the way to find the eternal truth.

    You see, we sometimes feel horrified at this idea. Yet how do you think you will know God if you do not become Godlike? How? Would a brute beast understand a man? Only an intelligent man would be able to understand another man. Isn’t it true? You have to be a man to understand a man. You have to be God to understand God. And that is going to the very heart of truth. The truth about man is that he is God.

    But if you don’t want to acknowledge this truth, my understanding is, it is because you want to live like something other than what you really are, what you truly are. You want to eat; you want to drink; you want to sleep; you want to be merry; you want to earn money; you want to be egotistical; you want to have the joys of the flesh. That is what you want. You would deny it, but there you are. If you are honest you will find that is what you want. But if you begin to think that you are divine spirit, you can no longer say: ‘I am this body.’ You cannot contain these two ideas in your mind simultaneously. You cannot. And if you hold them successively, then one will kill the other. The idea that we are this body, we are finite living things, that we should eat, sleep, and so on, is so strong within us, that even if for a moment this other idea—that we are divine—arises in our mind, that consciousness is at once destroyed. You cannot entertain both these ideas in your mind. You have to learn to think in the other way.

    If you ask me, ‘Is it possible to learn that idea?’ Yes, it is possible. If it is the truth of your own Self, then, not only is it possible, I say that it is now haunting you. You cannot get rid of that idea.

    If you ask me, ‘How do you know it? We don’t feel that we are God.’ Well, let me ask you this: do you ever admit that you are lesser than someone else? If I say, ‘You are good-for-nothing,’ you will flare up. That so-called egotism, which is in everyone, is an obscure sign of the fact that we are unconquerable and incomparable. Why do you think there is so much ambition in a man’s heart? Why is it that he never comes to the end of his own desiring? You will find that he continually wants one tiling after another, one thing after another. That endlessness in him is a sign of his own endless nature.

    Man has never found a limit to himself. To the last he holds hope for himself. He cannot think himself capable of dying. Even in thinking that, he transcends death. Swami Vivekananda used to say:

    ‘One proof that man is by nature immortal is that he cannot think of himself as a dead person. If he does so, he finds he is watching himself as a dead man. That’s all he can do. He can never consider the extinction of his own being. In considering that, he transcends that extinction, he lives beyond it.’ (3)

    There is something in man that refuses to be considered a mortal being, or a limited being. Endless, endless desires are the proof that his being is endless. Only he manifests it in a wrong way and an obscure way. That is what I would say. No, you cannot give up the idea that you are that eternal and infinite being. You cannot. It is haunting you. Only you are trying to realize it in a wrong way, and therefore you come to misery. You have taken a wrong path, and that path is full of difficulties and dangers. If you have taken the right path, you will at once realize that your true nature is divine. You will at once realize it. This is the idea.

    Swami Vivekananda used to emphasize these things. He himself was a great Advaitin. Advaitin means non-dualist. He believed that everything was divine. He said, ‘The suffering of man comes because he is conscious of jati.’ Jati means difference, difference between one and another. And unless a person has given up the idea of jati, or sense of difference and separateness, he can never have salvation. Never can he attain to that highest state in which he will realize his fulfillment, and in which he will be beyond all kinds of difficulties and unhappiness and sufferings. You understand this only when you realize there is only one thing, one reality, one being. If we see there are different things, that is our wrong perception. And no wonder we perceive things wrongly, because, we are, after all, in a state of ignorance. If you ask: ‘How do you know that we are in a state of ignorance?’ We have only to ask ourselves how much we know, and we shall be astonished to find how fully we are lacking in knowledge about everything. We do not even know ourselves. So if ignorance is so strong in us and so abundant, what is the wonder that our thought and our experiences should be wrong? And that is exactly what has happened to us. Therefore, if you start with the idea that what you now think and perceive is right, and that the only thing wanted is a little polishing here, a little correction there, you are entirely mistaken.

    You are so full of ignorance in your present state that everything you think, everything you perceive, is wrong. I am of course speaking from the standpoint of highest knowledge; spiritual knowledge is the highest knowledge. That is the knowledge that brings you eternal satisfaction. It is not a knowledge that is good only for certain circumstances, and not good beyond those circumstances, or for a time, and not beyond that time. No—that kind of knowledge we have when we study in schools and colleges, for example, when we study science and philosophy and literature and art and all these things. These are true for a time under certain conditions. These are not true eternally, and these are not true under all conditions. Spiritual knowledge alone is so true, and so I am speaking from that point of view. And I say, in our present state, we do not try to know everything, or even try to take into consideration everything that is given to us every moment. I may repeat here, as I have done on other occasions, that even in our ignorance, and in and through our ignorance and wrong thinking and wrong experiencing, we are still perceiving the divine reality. But we do not pay attention to this divine reality. So what we have is ignorance, wrong perception, wrong thoughts and so on. And because of that, we are not able to perceive the truth.

    You will

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