SELECTIONS FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS OF

SWAMI VIVEKANADA

Publisher: Advaita Ashrama

Summary: Satyendra N. Dwivedi

“Each soul is potentially divine.

The Goal is to manifest this divinity, by controlling nature, external and
internal.
Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy – by
one, or more, or all of these – and be free.

This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or

temples, or forms, are but secondary details.”
- Swami Vivekananda

PART I

THE SECRET OF WORK

Spiritual knowledge is the only thing that can destroy our miseries for ever; any
other knowledge satisfies wants only for a time. It is only with the knowledge of
the spirit that the faculty of want is annihilated for ever; so helping man spiritually
is the highest help that can be given to him.

‘Sankhya’ says: “The whole of nature is for the soul, not the soul for the nature.”
The very reason of nature’s existence is for the education of the soul; it has no
other meaning; it is there because the soul must have knowledge, and through
knowledge free itself.

Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring
peace and blessedness as its reaction. Real existence, real knowledge, and real
love are eternally connected with one another, the three-in-one; where one of
them is, the others must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a
second – the Existence-Knowledge- Bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda).

With love there is no painful reaction: love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does
not, it is not love; it is mistaking something else for love.

If you can invariably take the position of a giver in which everything given by you
is a free offering to the world, without any thought of return, then will your work
bring you no attachment. Attachment comes only where we expect a return.

‘Karma-Yoga’ means; even at the point of death to help any one, without asking
questions. Be cheated a million of times and never ask a question, and never

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think of what you are doing. Never vaunt of your gifts to the poor or expect their
gratitude, but rather be grateful to them for giving you the occasion of practicing
charity to them.

THE IDEAL OF KARMA-YOGA

All religions and all methods of work and worship lead us to one and the same
goal.

Freedom is the one goal of all nature, sentient or insentient; and consciously or
unconsciously, everything is struggling towards that goal. The attainment of
infinite expansion is indeed the goal of all religions and of all moral and
philosophical teachings. ‘Karma-Yoga’ is attaining through unselfish work of that
freedom which is the goal of all human beings.

The only way is to give up all the fruits of the work, to be unattached to them.
Know that this world is not we, nor we are this world; that we are really not the
body; that we really do not work. We are the Self, eternally at rest and at peace.

Buddha was the man who actually carried out this teaching of ‘Karma-Yoga’ into
practice. This great philosopher, preaching the highest philosophy, yet had the
deepest sympathy for the lowest animals, and never put forth any claims for
himself. He is the ideal ‘Karma-Yogi’, acting entirely without motive, and the
history of humanity shows him to have been the greatest man ever born; beyond
compare the greatest combination of heart and brain that ever existed, the
greatest soul-power that has ever been manifested. He is the first great reformer
the world has seen. He was the first who dared to say, “Believe not because
some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national
belief, because you have been made to believe it from your childhood; but
reason it all out, and after you have analyzed it, then, if you find that it will do
good to one and all, believe it, live up to it, and help others to live up to it.”

He works best who works without any motive, neither for money, nor for fame,
nor for anything else; and when a man can do that, he will be a Buddha, and out
of him will come the power to work in such a manner as will transform this world.
This man represents the very highest ideal of ‘Karma-Yoga’.

THE FIRST STEPS TO BHAKTI

The philosophers who wrote on Bhakti defined it as extreme love for God.

The Indian idea is that God is the goal of life; there is nothing beyond God, and
the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now
in the hope of getting better things. In our everyday life we find that the less the
sense-enjoyments, the higher the life of the man.

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God himself is the highest goal of man; see Him, enjoy Him. We can never
conceive anything higher, because God is perfection. But the path to God is long
and difficult, and very few people attain Him. Who knows but you or I may be the
next to attain. Let us struggle therefore.

Do you think that man, the Infinite Spirit, was born to be a slave to his eyes, his
nose and his ears? There is an Infinite, Omniscient Spirit behind that can do
everything, break every bond; and the spirit we are, and we get that power
through love.

He who desires God will get love, unto him God gives Himself. So if you want to
love, love God.

This world is utterly false; all the great teachers of the world found that out; there
is no way out of it but through God. He is the goal of our life; all ideas that the
world is the goal of our life are pernicious.

THE TEACHER OF SPIRITUALITY

Every soul is destined to be perfect, and every being, in the end, will attain to that
state. Whatever we are now, is the result of whatever we have been, or thought,
in the past, and whatever we shall be in future will be the result of what we do or
think now.

When a teacher of man comes to help us, the soul will instinctively know that it
has found the truth. Truth stands on its own evidence; it does not require any
other testimony to attest it; it is self-effulgent. It penetrates into innermost races
of our nature, and the whole universe stands up and says, “This is Truth”.

There are certain conditions necessary in the taught. These conditions necessary
in the taught are purity, a real thirst for knowledge, and perseverance.

In the teacher we must first see that he knows the secret of the scriptures. Those
who deal too much in words, and let the mind run always in the force of words,
lose the spirit. So the teacher must be able to know the spirit of the scriptures.

The second condition necessary in the teacher is that he must be sinless.

Spiritual truth is purity. A vision of God, glimpse of the beyond, never comes until
the soul is pure. Therefore in the teacher of spirituality, purity is the one thing
indispensable.

When spiritual forces are transmitted from the teacher to the taught, they can
only be conveyed through the medium of love; there is no other medium that can
convey them.

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The teacher is the spiritual ancestor, and the disciple is the spiritual descendant.
Find the teacher, serve him as a child, open your heart to his influence, see in
him God manifested. Our attention should be fixed on the teacher as the highest
manifestation of God, and as the power of attention concentrates there, the
picture of the teacher as man will melt away, the frame will vanish, and the real
God will be left there.

The extremely ignorant do not worship God, not being developed enough to feel
the need for so doing. Those that have attained the highest knowledge also do
not worship God – having realized and become one with God.

THE NEED FOR SYMBOL

The word ‘Bhakti’ covers all ground between the lowest form of worship and the
highest form of life.

Religion is realizing, and I will call you a worshipper of God, when you have
become able to realize the idea.

The first task in becoming a Bhakta is to give up all desires of heaven and other
things.

THE AIM OF RAJA-YOGA

The teachers of the science of Yoga declare that religion is not only based upon
the experience of ancient times, but that no man can be religious until he has the
same perception himself. Yoga is the science which teaches us how to get these
perceptions.

Man wants truth, wants to experience truth for himself; when he has grasped it,
realized it, felt it within his heart of hearts, then alone, declare the Vedas, would
all doubts vanish, all darkness be scattered, and all crookedness be made
straight.

“Ye children of immortality, even those who live in the higher spheres, the way is
found; there is a way out of all darkness, and that is by perceiving Him who is
beyond all darkness; there is no other way.”

The knowledge of the mind, of the internal nature of man, of thought, can never
be had until we have first the power of observing the facts that are going on
within.

The science of Raja-Yoga proposes to give us such a means of observing the

internal states. The instrument is the mind itself. The power of attention, when
properly guided, and directed towards the internal world, will analyze the mind
and illuminate facts for us.

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That is what Raja-Yoga proposes to teach. The goal of all its teachings is how to
concentrate the mind, then, how to discover the innermost recesses of our
minds, then, how to generalize their contents and form our own conscious from
them.

This study of Raja-Yoga takes a long time and constant practice. A part of this
practice is physical, but in the main it is mental.

According to Raja-Yoga, the external world is but the gross form of the internal,
or subtle. The finer is always the cause, the grosser the effect. So the external
world is the effect, the internal the cause.

The end and aim of all science is to find the unity, the One out of which the
manifold is being manufactured, the One existing as many. Raja-Yoga proposes
to start from the internal world, to study internal nature, and thought that, control
the whole – both internal and external.

The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters discard
everything that weakens you; have nothing to do with it. Mystery-mongering
weakens the human brain. It has been well-nigh destroyed Yoga – one of
grandest sciences.

HINTS ON PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY

We are always making this mistake in judging others; we are always inclined to
think that our little mental universe is all that is; our ethics, our morality, our
sense of duty, our sense of utility, are only things that are worth having.

About fourteen hundred years before Christ, there flourished in India a great
philosopher, Patanjali by name. He collected all the facts, evidences and
researches in psychology and took advantage of all the experience accumulated
in the past.

According to the Yogis, there are three principal nerve currents: one they call
‘Ida’, the other the ‘Pingala’, and the middle one the ‘Sushumna’, and all these
are inside the spinal column. The Ida and the Pingala, the left and the right are
clusters of nerves, while the middle one, the Sushumna, is hollow and not a
cluster of nerves. This Sushumna is closed, and for the ordinary man is of no
use, for he works through Ida and Pingala only. Currents are continuously going
down and coming up through these nerves, carrying orders all over the body
through other nerves running to the different organs of the body.

It is the regulation and the bringing into rhythm of the Ida and Pingala that is the
great object of breathing. Everywhere, all movements are the various
manifestations of the ‘Prana’. Whatever is in this universe has been projected by

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the vibration of the Prana. The highest result of vibration is thought. The nerves,
Ida and Pingala, work through the Prana.
The breathing exercises, called ‘Pranayama’, bring about regulation of the
breathing, rhythmic action of the Prana. When the Prana is working rhythmically,
everything works properly. When the Yogis get control over their bodies, if there
is any disease in any part, they know the Prana is not rhythmic there and they
direct the Prana to the affected part until the rhythm is re-established.

Just as you control the Prana in your own body, so, if you are powerful enough,
you can control, even from here, another man’s Prana in India.

Birth, life and death are but old superstitions. None was ever born, none will ever
die; one changes one’s position – that is all.

All the automatic movements and all the conscious movements are the working
of Prana through the nerves.

The great error in all ethical systems, without exception, has been the failure of
teaching the means by which man could refrain from doing evil.

The great task is to revive the whole man, as it were, in order to make him the
complete master of himself.

The books say that he alone is the Yogi who, after long practice in self-
concentration, has attained to this truth. The Sushumna now opens and a current
that never before entered this new passage will find its way into it, and gradually
ascend to (what we call in figurative language) the different lotus centers, till it
reaches the brain. Then the Yogi becomes conscious of what he really is,
God himself.

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation (Dhyana). In meditation we divert

ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend
upon any external help in meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the highest
color even in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing; it
can make the wicked divine – and all enmity, all selfishness is effaced. The less
the thought of the body, the better. For it is the body that drags us down. It is
attachment, identification, which makes us miserable. That is the secret: to think
that I am the Spirit and not the body, and that whole universe, with all its good
and all its evil, is but a series of paintings, scenes on a canvas, of which I am the
witness.
[To be continued]

Summary: Satyendra N. Dwivedi