Excellent.... Swami Vivekananda says we should conquer the world through our spirituality

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THE WORK BEFORE US (Delivered at the Triplicane Literary Society, Madras)

Volume 3, Lectures from Colombo to Almora

 

The Mohammedan conquest gave us many good things, no doubt; even the lowest

man in the world can teach something to the highest; at the same time it

could not bring vigour into the race. Then for good or evil, the English

conquest of India took place. Of course every conquest is bad, for conquest

is an evil, foreign government is an evil, no doubt; but even through evil

comes good sometimes, and the great good of the English conquest is this:

England, nay the whole of Europe, has to thank Greece for its civilization.

 

We cannot do without the world outside India; it was our foolishness that we

thought we could, and we have paid the penalty by about a thousand years of

slavery. That we did not go out to compare things with other nations, did

not mark the workings that have been all around us, has been the one great

cause of this degradation of the Indian mind. We have paid the penalty; let

us do it no more. All such foolish ideas that Indians must not go out of

India are childish. They must be knocked on the head; the more you go out

and travel among the nations of the world, the better for you and for your

country. If you had done that for hundreds of years past, you would not be

here today at the feet of every nation that wants to rule India. The first

manifest effect of life is expansion. You must expand if you want to live.

 

But the gift of India is the gift of religion and philosophy, and wisdom and

spirituality.

 

 

Before Buddhism, Vedanta had penetrated into China, into Persia, and the

Islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Again when the mighty mind of the Greek

had linked the different parts of the Eastern world together there came

Indian thought; and Christianity with all its boasted civilisation is but a

collection of little bits of Indian thought. Ours is the religion of which

Buddhism with all its greatness is a rebel child, and of which Christianity

is a very patchy imitation. One of these cycles has again arrived. There is

the tremendous power of England which has linked the different parts of the

world together.

 

The world wants it; without it the world will be destroyed. The whole of the

Western world is on a volcano which may burst tomorrow, go to pieces

tomorrow. They have searched every corner of the world and have found no

respite. They have drunk deep of the cup of pleasure and found it vanity.

Now is the time to work so that India's spiritual ideas may penetrate deep

into the West. Therefore young men of Madras, I specially ask you to

remember this. We must go out, we must conquer the world through our

spirituality and philosophy. There is no other alternative, we must do it or

die. The only condition of national life, of awakened and vigorous national

life, is the conquest of the world by Indian thought.

 

If the principles are there, the persons will come by the thousands and

millions. If the principle is safe, persons like Buddha will be born by the

hundreds and thousands. But if the principle is lost and forgotten and the

whole of national life tries to cling round a so-called historical person,

woe unto that religion, danger unto that religion! Ours is the only religion

that does not depend on a person or persons; it is based upon principles. At

the same time there is room for millions of persons. There is ample ground

for introducing persons, but each one of them must be an illustration of the

principles. We must not forget that.

 

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Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prashant Jalasutram