Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 97)

April 12, 2002

Parts 1 to 96 were posted earlier. This is part 97. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 97

3. Beyond All Other Methods, the Vedas Teach That We Are Free Already

Soul has no caste, and to think that it has is a delusion; so are life and death, and any motion or quality. The Atman never changes, never goes nor comes. It is the witness of all its own manifestations, but we take It for the manifestation, an eternal illusion, without beginning or end, ever going on. The Vedas, however, have to come down to our level, for if they told us the highest truth in the highest way, we could not understand it. (17)

Although all the religious systems agree... that we had a [spiritual] empire and that we have lost it, they give us varied advice as to how to regain it. One says that you must perform certain ceremonies, pay certain sums of money to certain idols, eat certain sorts of food, live a peculiar fashion to regain that empire. Another says that, if you weep and prostrate yourselves and ask pardon of some Being beyond nature, you will regain that empire. Again, another says that if you love such a Being with all your heart, you will regain that empire. All this varied advice is in the Upanishads. As I go on, you will find it so. But the last and greatest is that you need not weep at all. You need not go through all these ceremonies and need not take any notice of how to regain your empire, because you never lost it. Why should you go to seek for what you never lost? You are pure already and you are free already. If you think you are free, free you are this moment; and if you think that you are bound, bound you will be. This is a very bold statement... and I shall have to speak to you very boldly. It may frighten you now, but when you think it over and realize it in your own life, then you will come to know that what I say is true. For, supposing that freedom is not your nature, by no manner of means can you become free. Supposing you were free and in some way you lost that freedom; that shows that you were not free to begin with. Had you been free, what could have made you lose it? The independent can never be made dependent; if it is really dependent, its independence was a hallucination.

Of the two sides, then, which will you take? If you say that the soul was by its own nature pure and free, it naturally follows that there was nothing in this universe which could make it bound or limited. But if there was anything in nature which could bind the soul, it naturally follows that it was not free, and your statement that it was free is a delusion. So, if it is possible for us to attain to freedom, the conclusion is inevitable that the soul is by its nature free. It cannot be otherwise. Freedom means independence of anything outside, and that means that nothing outside of itself could work upon it as a cause. The soul is causeless; and from this follow all the great ideas that we have. You cannot establish the immortality of the soul unless you grant that it is by nature free; or, in other words, that it cannot be acted upon by anything outside. For death is an effect produced by some outside cause. I drink poison and I die, thus showing that my body can be acted upon by something outside that is called poison. But if it be true that the soul is free, it naturally follows that nothing can affect it, and it can never die. (18)

The Upanishads are the one scripture in the world, of all others, that does not talk of salvation, but of freedom. Be free from the bonds of nature, be free from weakness! And it shows to you that you have this freedom already in you. That is another peculiarity of their teachings. (19)

Cross reference to:

Mund. Up., 2.2.8