At the present state of moral, ethical, and cultural degradation in our country, to totally dispose of religion would be making our dash to ruin the quicker. However decadent our religion may be, it is far better than having none at all. My proposal is that the wise thing would be for us to try and bring about a renaissance of Hinduism so that under its greatness-proved through many centuries-we may come to grow in to the very heights of culture and civilization that was our in the historical past.

No doubt, in India Hinduism has come to mean nothing more than bundle of sacred superstitions, or a certain way of dressing, cooking, eating, talking and so on. Our gods have fallen to the mortal level of administration officers at whose alters the faithful Hindu might pray and get special permits of the things he desires; that is, if he pays the required fee to the priest!

This degradation is not the product of any accidental and sudden historical upheaval. For two hundred years Hinduism has remained an encouragement of the rich. Once upon a time, the learned philosophers were rightly the advisers of the state. But then the quality of the adviser-class [Brahmana] and the ruler-class [Kshatriya] deteriorated. By slowly putrefying themselves in the leprous warmth of luxury and power, they have taken us to the regrettable stage in which we find ourselves now. The general cry of the educated class is really against this un-religion. However, it is only the thoughtless, uninformed leaders who call this Hinduism.

Certainly, is Hinduism can breed for us only heartless lalas [shopkeepers], corrupt babus [clerks], cowardly men, loveless masters, faithless servants; if Hinduism can give us only a state of social living in which each man is put against his brother; if Hinduism can give us only starvation, nakedness, and destitution; if Hinduism can encourage us only to plunder, to loot, and to steal; if Hinduism can preach to us only intolerance, fanaticism, hardheartedness, and cruelty; then I too cry, "Down, Down"; with that Hinduism.

And yet the above is a realistic picture of the sad condition and plight into which the Hindu people as a nation have allowed themselves to fall. This is the tragic picture of the great Hindu disaster in present-day India.

But Hinduism is not this external show that we have learned to parade about in our daily life. Hinduism is a science of perfection. There is in it an answer to every individual, social, national, or international problem. But unfortunately the religion, which we have come to follow blindly, is not the grand true Hinduism. It is only the treacherous scheme thrust upon us sometime in the past by the selfish, arrogant; power mad priest caste whose intention was to make us slaves of their plans and our own passions. The present day Hindu ignoramuses prove the tragic success of these religious saboteurs. With their guidance we overlook the fundamental tenets in sacred scriptures that are the very backbone of Hinduism. True Hinduism is the Sanatana Dharma [Eternal Truth] of the Upanishads.

The Upanishads declare in unmistakable terms that in reality, man-at the peak of his achievement- is God himself. He is advised to live his day to day experiences in life in such a systematic and scientific way that, hour by hour, consciously cleansing himself of all the encrustation of imperfections that have gathered to conceal the beauty and divinity of the true eternal personality in him. The methods by which an individual can consciously purify and evolve by his self-effort to regain the status of his True Nature are the content of Hinduism. Hinduism in its vast amphitheater has preserved and worshiped, under the camouflage of the heavy descriptions contained in the Puranas, shastras [scriptures], and their commentaries of thousand different interpretations. This overgrowth has so effectively come to conceal that real beauty and grandeur of the tiny Temple of Truth that today the college-educated illiterates, in their ignorance of the language and style of the ancient Sanskrit writers, miss the Temple amidst its own festoons!

To inquire into the very textbooks of our religion with a view to knowing what Hinduism has to teach and how its message can be used to serve us as we face the problems of our daily life is the aim of the One Hundred Day's Upanishad Jnana Yagna, which is now proposed to commence on December 31, 1951, here in Poona.

Religion becomes dead and ineffectual if the seekers are not ready to live its ideals. For that matter is there any philosophy-political, social, or cultural-which can take us to its promised land of success, without our following its principles in our day-to-day living?

However great our culture might have been in the past, that dead glory, reported in the pages of history books, is not going to help us in our present trails. If the barbarous cavemen of the unexplored jungles want to become as civilized as the men of modern nations, they cannot achieve this total revolution through mere discourses, or even through an exhaustive study of the literature describing the ways of modern civilized nations. They will have to know and then live the civilized values of life. A mere knowledge of it will not help them. They can claim the blessing of their knowledge only if they are ready to live what they know. In order to live as civilized men, they will have to renounce completely their ways of uncivilized thinking and acting.

In fact without renunciation no progress is ever possible. We must renounce the thrills of our childhood games in order to grow to be young men of noble actions. Again, unless we renounce our youthful spirit, we cannot come to the reverence of old age.

Unless we are ready to renounce the low animal values of material life and replace them with the noble values of the truly religious life, we cannot hope to gain the blessings of religion. A study of a cookbook, however thorough it might be will not satisfy our hunger. No matter how long we may meditate upon and repeat the name of a medicine, we cannot get the cure we need until we actually take the medicine. Similarly, the blessings of religion can be ours only when we are ready to live the recommended values. To condemn unpracticed religion is as meaningless as those cavemen sitting around their open fire and querulously decrying advanced civilization.

During these one hundred days of the Upanishad Jnana Yagna, we shall be trying to discover the eternal happiness and bliss that is the succulent essence of all true religions. In the light of the principle of Truth declared in the Upanishads, we shall be trying to get at the scientific significance of the various practices that are considered part of our religion. In a spirit of communal living for these one hundred days we shall come to discover the Science of Perfection, the true essence of Hinduism.

Let us know what Hinduism is! Let us take an honest oath for ourselves, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of the entire world: That we shall, when once we are convinced of the validity of the Eternal Truth, try honestly to live as consistently as possible the values advocated by this ancient and sacred religion.

Let us be Hindus, and thus build up a true Hindustan [home of the Hindu] people with thousands of Shankara, hundreds of Buddhas, and dozens of Vivekanandas!

OM OM OM

The Twenty Questions

The following are the twenty items that constitute your diary. The list is compiled to suit all temperaments. Select fifteen items out of the twenty and pursue them diligently. Enter the items as heads for fifteen columns, and indicate each day your report on yourself under each category. At the end of the month, study the chart you have made to determine the schedule of your progress or decline for that month.

1. How many hours did I sleep? Normally six hours of sleep are sufficient for a quiet-living spiritual seeker.
2. When did I get up from bed? You should be out of bed between 4:30 and 6:00 a.m. The early morning’s quiet will assist you in your spiritual evolution. The great masters have found, from their own personal experience, that this part of the day is most beneficial for spiritual practice. In the early stages, you may need an alarm clock to awaken you. If you find yourself being too sleepy after getting up, let a brisk shower freshen you up.
3. How long did I practice concentration? Begin with small doses, and increase the period of concentration slowly and steadily.
4. What religious books am I now reading? Reading the lives of the great masters and their declarations of Truth in a spirit of inquiry will greatly help you in thinking intelligently. In reading such books, do not be content with their story content alone. All such stories have deep symbolic and philosophic significance, and your aim should be to unravel the deeper meanings.
5. For how long was I in companionship with the good (satsanga)? Satsanga here does not mean merely attending prayer meetings and religious discourses. Once you have developed the spirit of inquiry, you will automatically seek out friends interested in discussing religious topics with you. Where such friends are not available, good books will serve as good company; discover companionship with them.
6. For how long did I engage myself in selfless service (karma yoga)? Any act of service, performed in a spirit of detachment, will further the growth of the noble qualities of love, tolerance, mercy, and so on. Learn to serve Him through the people you are helping.
7. How many mala (rosaries) of japa did I perform? One mala consists of 108 beads, with a mantra chanted at the turning of each bead. In order to do japa effectively, you must strive as far as possible to exclude all extraneous thoughts from the mind during the period of japa practice.
8. How many Upanishad mantras did I read? Read only a little each day, but digest what you have read and allow your mind to reflect over the great truths behind the words of the mantras.
9. How many mantras did I write? Mantra writing is the easiest way of fixing your concentration. Keep a separate notebook for this purpose, and regularly write about a page of your chosen mantra. While writing the mantra, do not speak or look around, nor move away from the work until the allotted amount is finished. This exercise will aid your concentration immensely, since you soak your mind with the ideal suggested by the mantra as you whisper and write: the hand is writing the mantra, the eyes are seeing the mantra, the mouth is softly chanting the mantra, and the ears are listening to the mantra. The mind thus becomes easily single-pointed.
10. How many hours did I observe silence? Keeping silence does not mean expressing all your thoughts in relation to the outside world by making signs. If you do so, your mind will be entertaining thoughts that relate to the objective world. The aim is to withdraw one’s attention to the inner world of the spirit.
11. How many days did I fast? Fasting here does not mean abstaining from food continuously for long periods of time, such as 21 or 41 days. Fast regularly—once a month, once a week, or once a fortnight.
12. What did I give away in charity? Giving here means giving in thought, cash, or kind.
13. How many lies did I tell and with what self-punishment? A lie is something uttered against your conscience with a view of obtaining some advantage for yourself. During the act of lying, you will all the time be conscious of uttering something against your natural inclinations in order to surmount a real or imagined difficulty. Such conflicts will haunt you after the lie has been told and will become a stone wall in your spiritual practice. Do not allow yourself to console yourself by saying that the lie was small and did not affect anyone detrimentally. In all events, lying disturbs your mental poise. If you tell a lie, give yourself severe punishment, such as fasting or increasing the period of daily silence.
14. How many times was I angry, and how long did each attack of anger last? Anger arises out of nonfulfillment of your desires. Array the forces of tolerance, mercy, sympathy, and understanding of the weakness in yourself and in others in order to win a victory over anger.
15. How many hours did I spend in useless company? In all spiritual practices you should attempt to see yourself as a child who desires to come home after having stayed away for a time, charmed by some pleasant attraction elsewhere. In spiritual practice, this coming home is possible only if you scrupulously avoid useless company, thus creating a proper atmosphere for your inner work.
16. How many times did I fail in brahmacarya? Remember brahmacarya means self-control in all areas—eating, talking, sex, and any other indulgences. Self-control within bounds is the safest rule.
17. What virtues am I developing consciously? For a month at a time, take to the cultivation of a single noble quality, such as love, tolerance, or kindness.
18. What evil quality am I trying to eradicate? Become conscious of thoughts that hold you down and slow your spiritual progress. Negative qualities are like a millstone tied around your neck while you are trying to swim. You have to snap the cord, let the weight sink, rise to the surface of the water, and swim to the shore. You must diagnose your own malady and find its proper cure.
19. How many times did I fail in controlling an evil habit, and with what punishment? Punishment here may be dealt out similarly as in paragraph 13, above.
20. When did I go to bed? Simply enter the time of retiring.

SRI KRISHNA JANMASHTHAMI

Sri Krishna is not a historical person; Bhagavad Geeta is not written by a historian. The birth of Krishna is a fact repeated every moment in everybody's life.

In and through the clamour of the lower beastly gruntings in our bosom we surely hear very often the enchanting notes of a warbling music of Truth and peace.

The divine flute player is never far away from our bosom. To be alert to catch His melody, in and through the boisterous wooing of the baser in us, is to live the life of devotion and spiritual seeking.

To all those who sit thus in vigil, Krishna is born again and again.

Krishna is not a historical figure; He is the perpetual Truth. He does not belong to the past. He is of the ever present immediate moment.

On this Krishnashtami day, I expect everyone of you to sit in vigil waiting for His birth within the iron doors of your self-made penetentiary.

WHEN YOU MEET HIM THERE, I SHALL NOT BE FAR AWAY FROM HIM.

With Prem and Om,
Thy Own Self,
Swami Chinmayananda

GURU POORNIMA

To students of Vedanta, the Guru is the embodiment of their goal. The Guru is nothing but pure Consciousness, absolute Bliss, and eternal Wisdom. Anyone who can elicit a continual feeling of faith and devotion in us is our Guru. If we expect a Guru to transform us to Godhood by a touch, we shall wait in vain.

Self redemption must come ultimately from ourselves. The external props, such as temples, idols and gurus, are all encouragements and aids. They must be intelligently used to help build up inner perfection.

With inner purity, the student comes to be guided more and more by the intellect. In fact, the real guru is the pure intellect within; the purified, deeply aspiring mind is the disciple.

When we come to deserve a master, he shall reach us. Stick to spiritual practices. Be good, be kind, be sincere. Refine the motives by building life upon the enduring values of love, mercy, charity and purity. Through constant remembrance of the Lord rise in spirituality.

Gurus shall from time to time reach such determined and sincere seekers. This is the eternal law."

IMMORTAL VALUES

Civilization flourishes with the promotion of culture, but when the cultural values deteriorate, the civilization of a society breaks down, as we have known from the fall of the Egyptian, the Greek and the Roman civilizations. The great religious masters of India, using their own ingenious efforts, have time and again revived the philosophical and religious values for which India stood and thereby arrested the deterioration of the culture. When culture deteriorates there is an increase in barbarity and immorality in the country and its philosophy is misinterpreted, leading to confusion and chaos among its people. This, in short, is more or less the sad condition of the present world. The need of the hour is to arrest forthwith the deterioration by reviving the great philosophical and religious values of life. In no other literature in the world have these values been so beautifully and exhaustively dealt with as in the sacred books of India.

In this context we may note the following advice given to the students by the Rishi of the Taittiriya Upanishad : The practice of what is right and proper is fixed by the scriptural texts; is to be followed along with reading the texts oneself and propagating the truths of the same. ("Truths": this means that practising in life what is understood to be right and proper is to be pursued along with regular studies and preaching.)

This Upanishadic passage closely parallels the corresponding function that we have in our colleges today, which goes by the term, "Convocation Address". The students of the Gurukula are given some key ideas on how they should live lives dedicated to their culture, consistent with what has been taught to them as the goal and way of life.

More than Just Facts

It must be the duty of the educationists to see that they impart to the growing generation not merely some factual knowledge or some wondrous theories but also ideals of pure living, and training in how to live those ideals in practical life. In short, the secret of a sound culture is crystallized in this convocation address; this portion is more exhaustively amplified in the section that follows the address.

In this section the teacher presents twelve immortal ideas of living and rules of conduct. An equal number of times he has insisted that the student continue his study of the scriptures and propagate the immortal ideas of his culture all through his life. In these passages, we find that the brilliant students are repeatedly commissioned to continue their study and be preachers throughout their lifetime. The Upanishadic style lies in its brevity. Use of even a syllable more than the minimum required is considered as a great sin; yet, here we find in a small section twelve repetitions of the same idea; study (swadhyaya) and discoursing upon the Veda with a view to making others understand (pravachana).

For this missionary work the Rishis never saw any necessity in organizing a special class of teachers. The preaching activity was built into the duty of every householder. In the pursuit of his vocation, the householder was not asked to spare any special time or to sacrifice his duties either towards himself or towards his own children, the society, the nation or the world. But while emphasizing the need to pursuing his duties at all these levels, the Rishis asked him to keep continuously in touch with the scriptures and to preach the same truth to others.

The great qualities that the teacher has insisted upon are:

(a)The practice of what is right and proper as indicated in the scriptures (ritam);

(b) Living up to the ideals that have been intellectually comprehended during the studies (satyam);

(c) Aspirit of self - sacrifice and self - denial (tapas);

(d) Control of the senses (dama);

(e) Tranquillity of the mind (sama);

(f) Maintenance of a charitable and ready kitchen at home in the service of all deserving hungry fellow beings (agni);

(g) Practice of concentration and ritualism through fire worship as was in vogue in the society of those days; and

(h) Doing one's duty towards humanity, towards one's children and grandchildren and towards the society.

Continuing the "Convocation Address", the teacher says: Having taught the Vedas, the preceptor enjoins the pupil: "Speak the truth, do your duty, never swerve from the study of the Vedas; do not cut off the line of descendants in your family, after giving the preceptor the guru dakshina. Never deviate from the truth, never fail in your duty, never overlook your own welfare, never neglect your prosperity, never neglect the study and the propagation of the Vedas."

After the studies, before the students are let out to meet their destinies in their independent individual life as social beings, the teacher gives his exhortation, which comprises, we might say, "Vedanta in practice".

Relationship to Society

Satyam vada, "Speak the truth": Truthfulness consists mainly in uttering a thought as it is actually perceived, without hypocrisy or any vulgar motive to do injury to others. Truthfulness in its essential meaning is the atunement of one's thoughts with one's own intellectual convictions.

Having developed this quality of truthfulness, where should one apply it? As if anticipating such a doubt in the student, the teacher says, dharmam chara. Dharma is a Sanskrit word that has no corresponding word in English. We may, for our convenience, but not to our full satisfaction, translate dharma as "duty".

Hinduism is built upon duties and responsibilities, not on rights. A culture built upon duties recognizes the right to do one's duty as the fundamental privilege in life. A generation that understands such a culture gets trained to demand of life ample chances to fulfil its duties. Duty, therefore, develops the spirit of giving, not the lust to hoard or the anxiety to keep.

The sequence of thoughts -- "After giving the preceptor his fees, do not cut off the thread of progeny" -- implies a healthy suggestion as how best to plan one's life. After finishing your education, first of all become economically independent; learn a trade, create a market, assure a comfortable income. Then, as the next duty in life, marry and maintain the line of descendents in the family. This is followed by a series of warnings not to swerve from truthfulness, duty, personal welfare and prosperity. The Rishi advised the students to be prosperous so that they would be able to serve others in selfless charity. It is reasserted that we must pursue the study of the scriptures and make it a life's mission to spread those truths among ourselves with a burning, irresistible missionary zeal.

Continuing the advice, the teacher says: Never swerve from your duties towards gods and towards the departed "souls" (manes). May the mother, father, preceptor and the guest be to thee a god.

Relationship to the Teacher

Philosophy is a subjective science, and its blessing can be gained only by actually living it. Apart from its logic and reason, the theory must have the dynamism of the teacher behind it to inspire the students at all times. If this reverence and respect for the teacher are not there, the moment suspicion and doubt creep into our minds regarding the purity and sincerity of the teacher, the philosophy that is declared becomes immediately impotent in our hearts. Therefore, the teacher says, "Follow only the irreproachable qualities in us." Wearing the look of the ordinary and behaving as any ordinary mortal, these men of perfection faced their students. This, in fact, was the secret of their success in spreading the transcendental wisdom among people living amid life's conditions in their day - to - day existence. The idea of the advice to students was that you must be all ears and eyes when the wise talk, and not be full of noise and tongue. When such teachers discuss, there are plenty of ideas that one must try to absorb, discuss later on and assimilate properly.

Practising Charity

Continuing the address to the students, the Rishi adds: Gifts should be given with faith: they should never be given without faith; they should be given in plenty, with modesty and with sympathy.

Hinduism recognizes the householder's existence only as a necessary training in curbing his animalism and purifying him for the greater heights of spirituality. Cultural perfection is the goal. Ultimately the individual was valued upon the spirit of sacrifice he could show toward the finite, when the call of the Infinite reached him. Naturally, therefore, the teacher has to give some instruction as to how charity can best be practised. Therefore, charity is acceptable only when it toes the line with our own independent intellectual beliefs and convictions.

Indiscriminate charity is not acceptable to the science of Vedanta, which is not trying to cultivate fruit trees. Its aim is to cultivate the thinking animal called "man". Therefore, the Rishi pointedly condemns the opposite idea by the positive declaration. "Gifts should not be given without faith." Every benefactor has the right, even the duty, to inquire into the righteousness of the cause he is trying to patronize. It is said that having come to judge a cause to be deserving, give it your entire patronage: "Give in plenty; with both hands, give." However, charity can bring to us the feeling of egoism and vanity. These are avoided by instructions to give with modesty. Charity constricts the heart and obstructs human growth if it is not honeyed with the spirit of love and the joy of identification.

Proper Conduct

Coming to the end of the "Convocation Address" given to the students, the Rishi says: Now if there should arise any doubt regarding your acts or any uncertainty in respect of your conduct in life and with regard to those who are falsely accused of some crime, you should conduct yourselves exactly in the same manner as do the brahmanas there, who are thoughtful, religious, not set on by others, not cruel, and are devoted to dharma.

An ideal Brahmin should be one who is not set on by others. He must not be cruel. He must be a self - dedicated champion of the greater values of life as explained in the immortal scriptures. Such men of dedicated life, firmly established in their ideas and stoutly independent, are the true sons of the Hindu culture, and the student is asked to follow them whenever there is a doubt regarding either action or conduct.

The above passages, starting with satyam vada, consisting of twenty - five items and divisible into six waves of thought, constitute the sacred commandments of Hinduism. The waves of thought as indicated in this section are advice regarding (1) the individual himself, (2) his relationship with others, (3) his right action in the world, (4) his attitude toward the eminent men of culture, (5) the laws of charity, and (6) his duty to follow the eminent living men of his own times.

In the seventh wave of thought, the teacher concludes by saying that these commandments are to be followed diligently by every intelligent seeker who lives a life for a higher cultural purpose -- more than mere worldly ambitions and secular activities.

In short, over the shoulders of the students, as it were, the Rishi is addressing the entire community to follow these commandments and bring about the perfect cultural and spiritual unfoldment in themselves and in the society.

KILL THE EGO

All the Shastras and scriptures unanimously declare that our enemy is the ego. The sorrows and sighs belong to the ego - phantom. Sublimate the ego in constant vichar. In your discrimination of the real and the unreal, the false ego dream ends. End the ego and end the woes. If the ego in you is the samsarin, if the ego in you is the tormentor, if the ego in you is the enemy, spy on him more closely and come to know who he is. Find out your enemy and drive him away.

This ego, in fact, is a myth, a non - entity, a dream, a phantom, a mere false shadow. All the sorrows belong to this shadow of your own reality, and in your own thoughtlessness you have surrendered yourselves to the endless tyranny of this shadow. End the shadow for ever.

Fall flat at the feet of the Lord in love and surrender. When the ego sense is offered at His lotus feet, the mortal limitations end and the bhakta who has done a full and complete atma - samarpan becomes God himself. Turn your gaze towards the light within. If you cannot all of a sudden do so, then do the easier act of self - surrender. Detach the mind from memories and hopes. Egolessness is the state of Godhood. Attain that supreme goal of life through knowledge and right living. Kill the tyrant within you and bring out the real Rama.

NEW YEAR PRAYER

Beloved Lord ! You had, with infinite patience,
in your endless mercy, led us through a busy year,
giving certainly more than what we asked for,
and often even more than what we, perhaps, deserved.
We prostrate to you in humble reverence,
really aghast at your endless grace,
under which alone we could live all through the last year,
a fairly noble and moral life of service and satisfaction.

Lord ! with your help, may we live a nobler life of
greater undertakings in your seva, all through the coming year.

Let duty become touched with beauty,
all our obligations may, in your blessing, be turned
magically into opportunities. Teach us to fulfill our
duties with joy, nay, with pleasure.

May we bow down to others’ needs.
Let our ears be tuned to hear with love and concern the
silent cry of the needy.

Let us learn to accept kindness with humble joy.
Let us, during this year, learn to heal ourselves
of all our bleeding ulcers of misunderstanding,
jealousy and regrets that erupt from time to time in
our own hearts.

As this year ends, and the fresh year is being
welcomed, let peace and goodwill burst in our heart.

We shall sincerely strive, all through the year,
to serve your creatures,
but it is only in your grace shall they feel blessed,
by your splendour divine.

THE GEETA - HER SPECIAL CHARM

The culture of a people must continuously serve them, nourishing their inspirations, guiding their actions and providing consolation and comfort, balance and equanimity in both their joys and sorrows. A culture when sustained through its religious practices, if it has no elasticity, will come to choke the growth of the community and the people will then outgrow that culture. If an unyielding iron ring is put around a growing tree, in time, as the tree grows, the ring will be swallowed up into the very dimension and growth of the vigorous tree.

Our Bharatiya culture, as expressed through Hinduism, never died through all these millenniums, only because our culture had the required elasticity to embrace all the new dimensions into which our society grew during the march of time. The ideas enshrined in the Upanishads, couched as discussions held by the Rishis and their disciples in the forest vastnesses along the Ganges banks, the way of life and the eternal values that were preached therein, gathered in the minds of the people an association with the mountains, the trees, the silence, and the spirit of retirement of the jungles. In short, the Upanishadic philosophy came to carry about itself, for no fault of its own, the fragrance of the forests, the hum of the Ganges and the hymn of the eternal snow peaks. In the history of our cultural growth, thus, a time came when people felt that to live Hinduism was to live in retreat away from the rush of the people, the noise of the market-place, the struggles of the rustic fields and moving into the silence and quietude of the Himalayas.

Such a dangerous concept was prevalent not only among the unintelligent and the uninitiated, but even the educated, and the well informed men of action themselves shared in this national misconception of their own life giving culture. Arjuna himself felt the need for renouncing the world and refusing to fulfil his duties towards the community in order to retire into the silent arbours of contemplation and meditation. This is against the very dynamic spirit of the Hindu culture, against the very national security of the country, against all the material welfare of our people. It is at such a time of a crucial cultural crisis in our country, the genius of Shri Veda Vyasa produced the Bhagawad Geeta all through keeping his pen faithful to the fundamental thoughts of the Upanishads, their sane conclusions, their demonstrated theories and their spectacular achievements.

Here in the Bhagawad Geeta, we find a practical hand - book of instruction on how best we can reorganise our ways of thinking, feeling and acting in our everyday life and draw from ourselves a larger gush of productivity to enrich the life outside and around us, and to emblazon the subjective life within us. As we proceed on into our serious study of the Geeta, chapter by chapter, we shall find how she unfolds a way of life by living which we can grow to be socially more productive men and individually more balanced and tranquil, pursuing our life at peace with ourselves.

Without this inward balance and the readiness to act well in the world outside, how can an individual ever successfully face his own problems in life ? And when each individual fails to face the challenges outside him, since the community is made up of individuals, the community will not be able to face its own or the nation’s problems.

Thus ‘life’ is a problem only when we know not how to meet the life’s challenges rising around us. When that ‘knowledge’ is revealed to us, we know the solution, and then the problem is no more to us threatening or despairing. Prince Arjuna of the Bhagawad Geeta represents in himself the confused and the desperate youth the world over. The Pandava Prince is painted in the Geeta as suffering from the universal disease of all young hearts the problem - phobia -- to take things and happenings as problems where there are none and to feel terribly despaired of them.

In the Bhagawad Geeta, the man making science of the Uapnishads is brought out of the forests to serve us where we are suffering -- in the market place, in the slum huts, in the drawing rooms, in the commune, and at the barricades ! The outstretched hands of Mother Geeta, ready and willing always to lift all intelligent young hearts from their dirt and filth, are today often ignored in our utter confusion of mind. We are today totally ignorant of the security which the Geeta’s motherly embrace can provide and the divinity of her reviving touch. These are times when religion must march out of the forests and temples, churches and mosques, Gurudwaras and Vihars into places where man is striving in his despair and turning sour in his incorrigible cynicism and impossible disillusionments.

The Geeta is a readymade textbook which serves us where we are; whoever we may be, whatever may be our problem, irrespective of place and time, caste and creed, the Geeta serves us. This is the special charm of the scriptural textbook-the Bhagawad Geeta.

YOUNG AMBASSADOR

Unless the youth of a country is trained to live vitally the culture of the country, they will never be able to appreciate the cultures of the world. Especially, in these days when almost every educated man has become a world - trotter, it is necessary that everyone 'has a certain amount of his own cultural beauty within himself so that he may absorb the best from around him. A dry syphon cannot draw or convey; a heart that is dry of any of the higher values cannot get itself benefitted in the presence of, or in its contacts with the various civilisations of the world, and the cultural beauties in the different continents.

The grown up and developed nations in the world have all cultivated consciously, and often unconsciously, under the moulding hands of History, a generation that knows and lives its own culture. When such people come in contact with others, they react healthily and absorb into them what is useful in polishing and strengthening their own cultural traits.

In the relatively new nations that have recently come to their political and cultural freedom, they, the children of a slave generation, who in the past had wandered away from their own nation's traits -- in their immaturity -- when they reach the foreign shores, the glamour of light and sounds and the passing fashions in life are cheaply borrowed into their native lands, not as men who have known the world and have polished themselves, but as ugly caricature of foreign types.

The Hindu nation in our country is at this moment suffering from this great malady. They go to the foreign shores not to chasten what they have, but to borrow shamelessly new tonics of thought, and clad in them, when they return back to their native towns, they are neither a foreigner nor a native.

This is making the Indians a laughable crowd in the foreign countries. I have been receiving many letters from my friends enquiring why young boys and girls visiting from India bring with them not the atmosphere of India, but they suddenly get converted into the foreign ideologies. Many a foreigner I had met in the country who had reached often for pleasure, but sometimes for profit, and yet without an exception, their anxiety had always been to understand our culture and to draw from it whatever that is useful for them. They never give up what they have in them as their national traits.

It is only in India we find that our own educated youths have no such firm framework to maintain in their bosom upon which they can work up and beautify their own essential national character. It is high time that we give at least a six months regular training to our young Indians in their national culture before they are allowed to leave the shores of their country. The type of boys and girls businessmen and others who reach the foreign countries have slowly undermined the world’s respect for our nation - which is mainly for the ancient and powerful spiritual culture of the land.

Against the disintegration, only the youth can save the country. If one Gandhi could inspire so many at that time, our CHYK members can inspire the youth. Living a life of self confidence and self respect, proud of their country, and prepared to work to rebuild it with heads held above the clouds and hands and legs ready to sacrifices and work, that is sufficient... Now, the question is who is to bell the cat?

At this moment when I look around, people are fanatical Hindus -- they cannot do anything, or they have one - sided political views -- they cannot save the country. Our simple CHYK members alone have the vision, the understanding and the readiness to make sacrifices if only they take it up. I am not asking you to do it because it is not a thing that I can ask you to do. I need not tell you that you should love your wife -- how can I give you love for your wife? You have to discover love for your wife. It is very intimate; it must spring forth from yourself. Start thinking about it what can I give to my country? Don't expect the leaders to do it. They released us from the shackles of the British and thereafter sat back to share the spoils and spoilt the whole nation.

In this chaotic madness, the saner youth is our CHYK and when you start marching in the right direction with the right inspiration in yourself, you shall find a long crowd behind you.....

Have a vast vision. Just look at what we have done in the last 35 years and where we have landed -- even if you realise that, it is enough.

So, I want you children to rise above these limitations. See in one sweep the past, the present and the possible future. From the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, it is my country. Everyone is my brother, be he a Christian or a Muslim. In India, there are only two societies -- those who were Hindus and those who are Hindus.

The Indian tradition is the Hindu Tradition because 82% of the populace are Hindus. If the Hindus rise, the country rises. The redemption of the Hindus is the redemption of the country; the strength of the Hindus is the strength of the country; the glory of the Hindus is the glory of the country. The politicians are responsible for the present state of drift and slime, but we are not going to spend time regretting it. We want to get out of it. You are responsible for the future of the country. I have said enough. The rest is for you to show in your actions.

Personally, I am no advocate of violence. But violence, too, has its rightful place in life, life does not preclude death. The average Indian has been moulded into a particular national mentality of quixotic tolerance. His attitude is shaped into its distinct pattern by the ideologies and moralities preached in our national literature. And no single work in our classics has gained such a wide influence on our people as the Bhagawad Gita: and in, this century, no other single message had such a universal appeal to our countrymen as the single line, "Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah" -- "Non - Violence is the greatest Dharma."

This line in its over - emphasis, has sapped both initiative and energy in our millions, and, instead of making us all irresistible moral giants, we have been reduced to poltroons and cowards. And banking on this cowardly resignation of the majority, a handful of fanatics have been perpetrating crimes which even the most barbarous cave dwellers would have avenged. To clothe our weaknesses, we attribute to them glorious names and purposefully persuade ourselves to believe that they are brilliant ideologists !

Let us for a moment go to the original sacred verse and investigate the significances of the moral precept: Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah. This is the opening line of a stanza, and the very next line reads: Dharma himsaa tathaiva cha. "So too is all righteous violence." Indeed, non - violence is the supreme policy to be adopted by man to foster enduring peace in the world; but there are certain dire moments in the life of individuals, as of nations, when we will have to meet force with force in order that justice be done.

To every individual his mother, wife and children are the nearest dependents and to guard their honour and life is the unavoidable first moral duty of each head of the family. This is an obligation whether the victim be a member of the majority or of the minority class within a country, province or city.

By the over - emphasis laid on non - violence we have come to witness the pathetic situation of today, when thousands, in cowardly fear take to precipitate flight, leaving their innocent children to be butchered and their unarmed helpless women to be dishonoured or converted or killed. Under the cloak of glorified non - violence, an entire nation of cowards fly from their homes, when a small sect of fanatic barbarians boldly stalk in and out of their open undefended thresholds to kill, to rape, and to loot. When will we learn to fully interpret our Vedas, scriptures and Upanishads. If only we all learn that dharma - himsa is equally noble as ahimsa.

To me it seems that the only solution for the day's internal chaos is to bring home to the people the significance of the much neglected teaching of dharma - himsa. As it is, a misled and over - excited minority in the country has the sole monopoly of violence; and non - violence is a dangerous folly. However ideal a moral precept may be, so long as, in a society, innocent children, helpless women and defenceless old are left to be butchered dishonoured and tortured, while the youth of the land is made to watch impassionately the hellish scene, we are to conclude that either the idea is a dangerous one, or that we have not rightly understood the full meaning of the precept.

Under the present available scheme of chaos in this country, when under the planned instigation of a few power blind, reckless men, a minority community is rendered into a murderous gang of fanatics, it is the duty of the majority to win back the erring thousands. The cure depends upon the disease; the potency of the medicine is decided upon the virulene of the illness. Today when looting, arson and rape are the dharma of a few, it is rank cowardice for the many to suffer the tyranny of the unprovoked violence in meek submission. In the battlefield, when violence is rampant, it is the dharma of everyone to meet that maniacal violence with determined, restrained, violence not only in self - defence but also to convince the aggressive vicious few that 'it rarely pays to be violent.'

Every aspect of Krishna and His deeds is pregnant with deep mystical symbolism, indicating the highest Truth. Consciousness is the pure Self, the sentient Life Principle which enlivens one's material equipment to function in their respective realms. Consciousness is the very Subject of all experiences and therefore cannot be objectively experienced.

In Sanskrit, the word Krishna means "dark", indicating the Supreme Consciousness. Pure Consciousness is said to be "dark", not as opposed to "light" but in the sense that it is unseen by or unknown to one as long as one remains rooted in earthly experiences, limited to the realms of perceptions, emotions, and thoughts gained through the physical body, the mind, and the intellect.

The incarnation of Krishna represents the descent of the infinite Brahman to the material world. The ever smiling Lotus - eyed Krishna, with a garland of flowers around His neck, is described as being blue in colour and wearing yellow clothes. Blue is the colour of the infinite and whatever is immeasurable can appear to the mortal eye only as blue, like the sky and the ocean. Yellow represents the earth. Anything buried in the earth gathers a yellow hue; and fire earth (mud silica) emits a yellow hue. Hence, the finite blue form of Krishna clothed in yellow appropriately suggests the pure infinite Consciousness. The one infinite Reality has become the world of endless forms. Therefore, every form in the universe, in a sense, is but a representation of a primeval Truth.

The infinite, all pervading Truth, donning the finite form of a human being, gives the impression that Truth is fettered and limited. This idea of the limitless Truth seeming to be limited, is well brought out by the fact that Krishna is said to have been born in prison. Kamsa, Krishna's maternal uncle and Chanura his minister, imprisoned his father and usurped the throne of Mathura. Their tyrannical rule caused confusion and chaos everywhere. Krishna destroyed the tyrants and restored peace and order in the land. Similarly, our bosom is usurped by two evil forces, namely, the ego and the egocentric desires, which cause agitations, worries, and anxieties within. When these two forces are conquered by one's higher nature, the original glory and splendour of the Self is restored.

Krishna, the beloved boy of Brindavan, is pictured amid the dancing gopis. Much criticism has been levelled against Krishna's association with milkmaids. Little do the critics realize that the Lord is ever an unconcerned and unaffected witness of the milkmaids' dance, even though He may be in their midst. Krishna is like the Consciousness within, which vitalizes one's thoughts (gopis) but remains unperturbed and unaffected by them. The Self is ever immaculate, uncontaminated by the thoughts in one's bosom. Thus, if the lives of such godmen are read without understanding their mystical symbolism one comes to wrong and, at times, absurd conclusions.

The gopis performed their obligatory duties throughout the day in constant remembrance of Krishna. Their limbs were ceaselessly engaged in activity while their minds were very attuned to the Lord. Thus, in essence, karma yoga is the dedication of one's actions to a higher altar while working without ego and egocentric desires. Such dedicated activities exhaust one's existing vasanas (inherent tendencies) and also prevent the formation of any new vasanas. Hence, Krishna is described as a thief stealing the butter which the gopis had carefully stored in their homes.

The most beautiful and most beloved of all gopis was Radha. The love of Radha and Krishna is symbolic of the eternal love affair between the devoted mortal and the Divine. In relation to God, it is said that we are all women. Radha's yearning for union with her beloved Krishna is the soul's longing for spiritual awakening -- to be united with the one Source of Peace and Bliss from which it has become separated. This long forgotten pain of separation is the root cause of all suffering. To rediscover our Oneness is the source of all happiness and fulfillment. In this sense, Krishna is the fulfillment of all desires.

Every human being is constantly seeking a share of peace and happiness, and since one does not know the real source of these, one seeks them in the midst of sense objects. But when, in devotion, one comes to turn one's entire attention towards the Higher and the Nobler, one experiences the Immortal, the Infinite, as intimately as one experienced the world and its changes earlier. Bhagavan Himself says in the Bhagavatam, "The mind that constantly contemplates upon the sense objects, irresistibly comes to revel in their finite joys, and the mind that learns to constantly remember Me comes to dissolve into Me." Radha represents this state of devotion and the consequent merging with the Lord.

Please understand that even if we happen to be lucky enough to be at the feet of the greatest Master, that Master can do nothing to any one of us unless we are ready to move in His direction and become one with the Divine.

If you want a Guru, what you have to do is to stay right where you are. Each of us is getting the right atmosphere and environment for our evolution. Don’t try to be more intelligent than universal intelligence – stay where you are and start opening up !

“God never helps” – forget all about it. If you accept that there is a God who helps some people and doesn’t help others, He becomes a sultan in the sky. God is not a tyrant ! God is not a petitioner of favours ! To the extent you open up your heart, to that extent He is available. He is like the sun – impartial. The sun is sunlight, God is God’s grace, they are not two. The sunlight is flooding the entire country but in your room there is no light.

Why? Because you choose to keep the curtains closed. If you open the curtains then impartially the sunshine will enter.

Your own intellectual understanding can pull you nearer to the Truth. When the fascinating beauty of the Infinite Beatitude comes, it naturally sucks you unto Itself.

"Some act till they meet obstacles, others act inspite of obstacles, and conquer them; but some act not, fearing the possibility of some obstacles that might arise en route."

The very word OBSTACLE indicates to us the attitude required to overcome obstacles. Invoking these attitudes is to invoke the 'Ganesha' within us -

O - Objective Knowledge - "Knowledge is Power." Gain functional knowledge and skills in your chosen field. Lack of knowhow poses many obstacles.

B - Broadmindedness - "Life, when properly tuned, can round the sharp edges in our character." In a broader vision of Life in its entirety, obstacles are stepping stones to cultivate an inner perfection and an outer excellence.

S - Sensitivity - "Be like a flower. Give happiness and fragrance to all." A flower produces fragrance from mud, dirty water, manure, etc.

T - Toughness - "The Suffering depends not on the factual happening but on the texture of one's mind." Cultivate a 'tough' mind through study of the scriptures, faith in a Higher Reality, value - based life, etc.

A - Alertness - "Alert and vigilant living is a sadhana by itself." Alertness helps one to foresee the 'obstacle' and nip it in the bud.

C - Concentration - "Never complain, about the number of hours you have put in to do a job. How much of you was put into each hour of your daily work ?" The sun's rays (mind) when unified through a convex lens (concentration), burns away a piece of pape r(problems & negativites) below it.

L - Love of God - "Don't tell God how big your problem is. Tell your problem how big God is."

E - Enthusiasm - "Real men of achievement are people who have the heroism to fuel more and more enthusiasm in their work when they face more and more difficulties. Be Agressively good."

Mysticism in Hinduism is so rich, precise and of such depths that the extremely poetic minds of our later Rishis tried to express it all in the form of stories. Such mystical stories have a significance of their own, revealing the final conclusions arrived at in our Upanishads.

Not fully realising these secret suggestions people read, sung, worshipped our deities and thus maintained the dry skeleton without the soft flesh and its pulsating beauty and its bursting mirth.

The Reality is Peace, Good, Beauty (Satyam Shivam Sundaram). But our life in this world of names and forms is experienced as just the opposite. This paradox is explained as caused by a mysterious inherent power in the Supreme called Maya.

It is a natural trick of the human inner equipment of mind and intellect. When the intellect cannot apprehend a thing rightly, at this non - apprehension, the mind starts projecting delusory images and creates a thousand misapprehensions. The dual effect of this non - apprehension and its consequent mis - apprehensions is termed as this mighty Maya Power (Shakti, Divine Mother).

In all religions, in the earlier days God was conceived as an unrelenting father, a severe disciplinarian, ready to punish His children for all their trespasses. It is an evolution in religious thought that brought the idea of an all loving, all forgiving, Mother God. This is Devi: Consort of Shiva, the Supreme.

The Supreme with Maya is Ishwara, the Creator - Sustainer - Destroyer, Lord of the Universe. Shiva minus Devi is Pure Consciousness and Maya merges with the Supreme Self.

Think !!

Respected Swamiji,

I am anxious to learn about you. I have been hunting for some biography (or autobiography) of Swami Chinmayananda. You seem to have written or revealed so far nothing. Your Upanishads and Geeta and other books have been glanced by me; but they are all regarding the great Truth. But who are you? Were you like Buddha - a prince, or like Shankara -- a poor brahmin boy, or like Ramakrishna -- an uneducated simple villager, or like Vivekananda -- an intellectual agnostic seeking Truth, but getting disgusted by the vague explanations of the Pundit class? We have a right to know you....

You must give us a glimpse of your own person. Hence I write this note. I have heard, honestly I confess, so many contradictory versions of you -- that from what I am told you can be anything from an irredeemable rake to the sublime instance of a born divine....

Please console me, comfort me. Am I asking too much? Where can I meet you?

Chandra Bhanu Adiyar
Mangalore
26th April, 1966

SWAMIJI'S REPLY

Blessed Self,

Om Namo Narayanaya ! Salutations !

Only because I have got more interesting and very useful fields of many other works in hand at present, I cannot give you an "Autobiography" But here are some positive points which should satisfy you for the time being. Later, I am sure you will try to shift your attention from me to the Rishis and make your life beautiful and sublime.

I was born in Kerala, raised in the north, hardened in Punjab, softened in Uttarkashi, criticized everywhere, applauded in some places but accepted and worshipped by everyone. I am a riddle to myself.

Prattling was my profession, preaching is my profession now, and I know practice should be my future job. But everywhere I earned a lot so far and squandered it all in the community.

I am by training a Religious man, by experience a Vedantin, by inclination a Bhakta, in temperament a Karma Yogi, in practice an integral Yogi; my faith is in democracy; I am convinced by socialism; I am habituated to communism; and I am committed to the impossible theory of "Love All".

Thick skinned, hard boned, I have a mail - of - laughter to cover and protect both my head and heart, and so stabs do not penetrate me, spears cannot cleave me, whippings do not lash me.

I eat and drink, take regular baths and sleep, wear clothes, have no jata, work for 18 - 19 hours a day and preach the rest of the time. When audiences are not available, of course, I preach to myself.

I have my lovers and many beloveds in this country and abroad. I play the beloved to my lovers, and am an enthusiastic lover to my Beloveds. We, together, thus step ahead and march through love towards the Lord's Palace of Bliss and Wisdom.

Your goodself may meet me easily in my 35 books, or in the pooja room of any healthy young Indian, be a Hindu, Christian or Muslim. The white men adore me, the yellow men recognize me, the brown men worship me, the black ones love me.

My teacher was a divinely sweet, incandescent, noble soul and I must tell you of Him when you grow a bit more.

May I hope to hear from you often, plenty of the similar rubbish, but sprinkled with more and more of the sensible stuff? Try. You can. Don't be shy. This is how everyone grows.

This concept that we have come into this world is against all scientific knowledge : I do not come 'into' the world; we came 'out' of it, as trees from the earth, as the web from a spider, as hair from the body. As waves from the ocean, Universe 'peoples' - if we may use such a term. We are not isolated beings 'residing inside a bag of skin', but each is a unique action of the whole Universe.

'Out' of Living Hell
Swami Chinmayananda

Pujya Gurudev said of his early days before Sannyas:

Menon was supremely confident as he strode out to meet life. He was sure that he could, just for the asking, fix himself up comfortably in one of its 'Luxury flats'. But at the guarded entrance to life, none is admitted who has not a healthy character, a good disposition, a charming friendliness and a bending knee. At the gates of life alone did he realise that he was poor in real wealth.

However, there is a ditch door in the backyard, through which few had crept in to live later on successfully in one of the 'luxury flats.' Slowly Menon bustled his way onto the crowded verandah of life where men and women were busy doing nothing; and from there, without much difficulty pushed himself into the very stinking hall of life. A roaring welter of immaterial values! Impossible behaviours and stupid vanities ! All around him, he saw the sick and suffering life of people with made - to - order laughter concealing their sighs of voiceless regrets, stormy hatreds, grudging sympathies and poisonous rivalries. Each suffered and contributed lavishly to the total suffering. This was sufficient for Menon, as he saw what a godless animal could be at its best. He decided to gatecrash and come out of this living hell, and go out in search of that which is permanently joyful and peace rendering. He decided to seek for himself the meaning of true life; that which would lead him to the brilliant domain of perfection."

Gurudev never tried to give the illusion that just because we had turned to the spiritual life, everything would run smoothly, without obstruction, but warned us instead that on the material plane, change and disturbance and sorrow are part of the mix. He compared life's journey to travel over a long - distance road:

When you are travelling across the country a long distance, some part of the road may be under repair or in bad condition. At such patches of rough road, drive slowly and move carefully, and once the smooth road comes, step on the gas. Patches of the road will always be slightly bad.

Criminal or Dignitary

In a letter, Gurudev told the story of a father who pointed out to his son a man who was being hustled along the road between four soldiers. The father said: "Son, that one who is walking between the soldiers is a great criminal, and he is being taken to prison."

After a few yards, the son and father came to the main road and saw a large crowd waiting on the sidewalk. The road had been cleared of traffic. Soon they saw a procession of soldiers on motorcycles, followed by the President of the country riding inside a luxurious limousine, which was protected on all sides by many soldiers.

The boy cried out ,"Daddy, there goes the biggest criminal!"The father hushed the child as he lovingly explained that they were seeing not a criminal but the President. Gurudev elaborated further:

Both of them, the criminal and the President, have soldiers around them. A man is a prisoner when he is under the command of the soldiers. But when the soldiers are under his command, he is the President or king himself.

Similarly, you may have your own house and child. You will become their prisoner if they come to rule over you. But you shall continue to be the sovereign when you control them, not they you.

No Moulding Required

Radhika Krishnakumar had brought her small infant to Swamiji and asked, "How do I teach him to become a good human being?" "You don't have to mould him or teach him anything ," was Swamiji's reply. "You just keep improving as a person, and he'll be fine."

"He Does It All"

One day in 1992, two people approached Swamiji about doing some healing work on him through a method that analyzes and treats the human system at the energetic level. For the analysis, the practitioner needed a few strands of his hair. His immediate response was, "No! I don't want to keep this body around. I've finished my work here."

However, after some more gentle pressure from the inquiring parties, he tugged vigorously at his beard, but no hairs come loose. "Nothing ! Not one!" he said. Then he gave an offhand hint as to where some loose hair may be lying about. The two devotees took this as a go ahead sign and located a hairbrush with the required strands.

When the practitioner did her analysis, the results were so astounding that she repeated the measurements over and over again to assure that she had done her work correctly. But the unprecedented results remained the same: At the pathological (physical) level, Swamiji body was showing readings so low as to indicate death of the body. However, when the readings were taken at his energetic level, they were so high that they went off the scale. The practitioner's interpretation was: Swamiji's as - though - dead physical body was being kept alive by some immense source of energy.

When a devotee relayed the analysis to him, she asked: "Swamiji, how do you do it?"

His reply was immediate and vigorous, "I do absolutely nothing; He does it all. This one is a totally useless fellow. It is His work alone!"

To many devotees who heard this story, it became a scientific corroboration of what they had heard said for many years: A master is an instrument in the hands of the Lord. His life is sustained not by his own desires, for they no longer exist, but by the aggregate desires of those around him.

A similar theme was repeated on many occasions.

Chief Sevak

During a spiritual picnic back in the early days, Gurudev demonstrated how one should conduct oneself as a worker, a sevak (one who serves others). At the outset of the journey, he declared that he was the "Chief Sevak".

He boarded his bus only after everyone in the entire convoy of buses was in his or her seat.

En route, one of the buses had a breakdown. Gurudev stopped the whole convoy and remained near the bus that was being repaired. Only after the repairs were completed, did he allow the convoy to resume the journey.

Working with Crooks

One man told Swamiji, "I have a problem: The man I work with is a crook. But this work is my livelihood ! What do I do?"

Swamiji's answer was: "Do your work; do your level best. When it gets very difficult, wink at the Lord. When the time is right, the crook won't be there any more."

Viji Sundaram, who served as editor of the Chinmaya Mission Vedanta journal Tapovan Prasad, writes about the lesson she received about journalism from her guru. "In the five years I worked for the Mission as editor of Tapovan Prasad," she said while Gurudev was still alive, "I learned a lot about the profession I had chosen just by watching Swamiji slip into the role of writer. He could, and still can, do it effortlessly. No writer's blocks seem to trouble him.

I once asked him how he did it, and he said, 'I let the thoughts flow through me,' and added, for my benefit, 'When you compromise your values, you block the flow of your natural creative instincts."

No Doors Closed on Love

Whenever Neeru Mehta travelled with Swamiji, she would go into his room before he retired to check on his drinking water, offer her pranams, say "Hari Om !" - and then leave the rrom.

Twice, once in Lucknow and once at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya, when Gurudev stood up to close the door, Neeru bowed and stood facing him. He looked and waited. Then said, "Please turn around. I can't close the door in your face."

"This sentiment is expressed by many persons, "says Neeru, 'but no one I have met in my life, except for Swamiji, puts it into practice: not closing the door in the face of someone you love."

A Transforming Moment

Swami Chidananda, teacher of Vedanta courses both at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya in Mumbai and Sandeepany San Jose in California, experienced a deeply transforming moment with Gurudev during an informal gathering. Swamiji had just come out of his room to give some time to a group of devotees. They were singing kirtan [devotional songs] when Swamji walked very slowly into the room.

"As he came near me,"recalls Swami Chidananda, "he held my folded hands for a while, greeted me, and then proceeded to take his chair. That was it. I do not know what went through me, but I sobbed continuously for perhaps twenty minutes."

Curbside Yagna

One early Saturday morning during a Yagna in Napa, California, Swamiji and his listeners had already gathered by the high school door where his 6 a.m. classes on Vivekachudamani had been held all that week. The caretaker had remembered to open the doors of the building every morning except this, a Saturday. But that didn't stop Gurudev. With a smile on his face, he sat down cross - legged on the cold curb of the sidewalk, motioned the rest of us to sit down in front of him, opened the text, and began to teach. And so he continued for the next one and a half hours as the brisk morning grew gradually warmer around us and traffic noises in the distance slowly beckoned the day awake.

Blank Tape

Gurudev's talks were being planned at Standford University, Palo Alto, California. One devotee asked Gurudev for his permission to record the talks on audio tape, but Gurudev did not grant it. The devotee decided to record the talk anyway. He set up all the equipment, checked it carefully, and proceeded to record the talk. However, when he checked the tape at the end of the lecture, he found that it was still blank.

Shivaratri Miracle

It was Shivaratri at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya in Mumbai. Although Gurudev usually retired to his room in the evening, that night he had said: "I'll come out at midnight and go to the temple. Whoever wants to come with me, come, but just remember one thing: Nobody should touch me!"

Those who were there that night recall that when Gurudev came out of his room, he was "shining," as though light were streaming from him.

The brahmacharis and the devotees who followed in his footsteps in their bare feet to the Jagadeeshwara Temple say that the spots where Gurudev had placed his feet were warm.

Playing with One's Prarabdha

Bharati Sukhatankar was helping Swamiji pack. Giving her his cufflinks, he said," There will be four bags there. Look for one small plastic bag inside a larger plastic bag. Put the cufflinks in the small empty bag."

Bharati remembered some cufflinks that Swamiji had with a beautiful image of orchids pressed into them. She didn't see them in the suitcase.

"Swamiji, whatever happened to the cufflinks with the engraved orchids?"

"Swamiji replied, "My dear, you must learn to play with your prarabdha (that portion of one's past karmas that is being lived out in one's current life). I know the art. You don't."

It was Swamiji's prarabdha to receive things from others: gold cufflinks, silver - knobbed chappals , silver - tipped canes, gold chains - but he just continued to give them away, playing with his praradbha with ease and joy.

Like an Army General

Swami Gangeshwarananda was 108 years old when Gurudev dedicated a yagna in his honour. Swamiji had great respect for this old, blind Swami and visited him whenever he could. One time, Swamiji, with his padukas on, had just walked across some wooden planks over a canal and arrived at the blind Swami's side without informing anyone. "Chinmayananda , so you've come!" said Swami Gangeshwarananda.

Swamiji was curious how the blind Swami had known that it was he who had arrived.

"The way you walk," answered Gangeshwaranandaji. "Only one Swami walks like that , and it is Chinmayananda. You walk like an army general !"

Heaven

At one of the Swamiji's camps, a devotee asked him at Satsang:

"Swamiji what does one need to do to invoke an experience of Brahmaloka - Heaven?"

Swamiji gave no answer. Pindrop silence followed for some fifteen minutes. One could hear the leaves rustling outside.

Finally Swamiji said, looking at the questioner: "Buddhu [you fool], where do you think you've been for the last three weeks?"

Spiritual Prescription

Once an eminent doctor came to meet Gurudev at his ashram with a copy of Gurudev's Holy Gita (Bhagavad Gita) and asked for his autograph. Gurudev wrote the following message in her copy of the book:

Two stanzas, three times a day, for three months. To be repeated if symptoms persist.

Encounter Groups

Referring to the indisciplined use of some encounter group techniques, Gurudev wrote in a letter to a study group leader: The mutual exploration of the mind is a dangerous game. It is scavenging work. It is dangerous. Beware !. The cleaning of your own mind itself is sufficient work. Don't try to clean all "commodes." If you must, then wear a mask and a pair of thick gloves. Teachers do it often. They have the defence equipment plenty.

If you keep on analysing yourself, your despair will increase - and your thoughts will unnerve you. Please stop it. Rise above them. Viveka and Vairagya, right knowledge and dispassion, are the wings for the bird of life in you to reach the roof gardens of liberation.

Recognizing Your Divinity

Swamiji was telling us that when the Guru first tells you that you're Brahman and not the body, you don't quite believe him. He expanded on this idea a with a story from his own experience :

One day, Swamiji was walking down a path near Rishikesh. It was so hot that not even " a decent crow" was not out at that time.

"Hey, Swami !"a female voice called out, but he paid no heed. He had just recently taken sannyasa, and his station was new to him. He didn't realize that he himself was being addressed. When he finally realized it was he the woman was addressing, she invited him to have bhiksha.

"In the same way," said Swamiji, " you need time to get used to the idea that you are in essence the pure Self - Atman, Brahman. It takes practice.

From the stage of disorganised, sporadic activities during 1964, we have decided to enter into the field of organised, wilfull, planned service of the society and the Lord. This is a great step that the Mission has taken and the report reads as a great promise to the community.

This is an age of organization and without it Hinduism has suffered sufficiently long all these recent centuries. All workers in the Mission will tighten up the discipline, and let the Mission Members become conscious of their responsibilities and duties. Let us relentlessly insist upon discipline from each, and spontaneous co - operation with all.

As a community in 1965, we must come out of this self - made tragedy of wasteful disintegration and avoidable wretchedness. Consciously let us live in a spirit of unity and mutual understanding, of respect for one another, and of love to all. The programmes conceived and the work - schedule planned out can all become a spiritual Sadhana if we insist upon the physical discipline of life and the mental spirit of understanding among the Mission Members.

The office - bearers of the Mission will have to bear the greater burden of encouraging discipline among its members, constantly by their own example.

It is so heartening to find that the Central Chinmaya Trust is taking up courageously such noble plans and programmes of intense social activities and service of the Lord. When we are serving the society if we realise that we are serving Him , we need no other Yoga for our inner purification. I have full confidence in everyone of you. Let us strive hard !!

May Parameshwara's Grace be upon you all always.

Let "At it, at once" be the slogan for the Mission workers throughout 1965.

I wish all of you, throughout the country a happy and prosperous New Year of ardent work in love and with dedication.

On 20th May 1965, Swamiji was invited at the Bartholomew Hospital for tea and later to address the students, most of whom were in their final year of medical college. Swamiji spoke to them on the "Art of Meditation".

"Meditation" he said, "is a vocation which only the human intellect is capable of.

It is not possible in the animal, for the human intellect alone has the capacity to stand apart from its own emotions and judge.

In the case of the animal, its actions spring from its instincts and impulses. An individual who is also victimised by instincts and impulses, will not be able to meditate.

Meditation is a method of controlling our thoughts so that we can be better and efficient men in the outside world. It brings out a better cadence of work from an individual. There are thoughts which are prompted by our earlier animal impulses or more dignified human ideals. In all human beings both good and bad thoughts come. The one who refuses to entertain low vulgar thoughts, sensuous or degrading thoughts but only allows noble thoughts and ideas, is the man."

On 21st May at the Indian Institution of World Culture, Swamiji spoke on the Upanishads.

With an uncanny sympathy with the audience, Swamiji started, "This great life we see everywhere in everybody and in us, this life pulsating through the body manifests as the perceiver and life pulsating through the intellect as the thinker. Life is something different from the body, the mind and the intellect. E.g. the bulb, the heater and the fan are the equipments of electricity - the light, the heat and the air, are its manifestations: but electricity is something apart from all these, because of which they function, without which these things are lifeless. So this Life which is the "perceiver" in the body, the " feeler" in the mind, the " thinker" in the intellect is the ultimate essence in the experiencer. This individuality is forever defeated in our everyday life, because the objects around are always changing as they are conditioned by time.

These subjective scientists who had man as the theme of investigation, were called the Rishis and their recordings were called the Upanishads.

The Upanishads were not given out by one man. It was a science like any other sciences, built slowly by generations of thinkers." Swamiji, after his one hour's logical outpouring, concluded. "To rediscover this life in us is the path of Spirituality. To recognise it in us is to recognise it everywhere.

These Upanishads are in the form of conversations between the teacher and the taught. Upa - means near; ni -means below; shad - means sit. So it is that literature, or a knowledge gained through the teacher, in a spirit of humble enquiry. The disciple in his term, teaches his pupils; and so the great knowledge comes down through the centuries by word of mouth."

On 23rd May, 1965, a lecture was arranged by the Hindu centre at St. Michael's Hall. After Mr. L.K. Jeswani, Secretary of the Hindu center had given a welcoming speech, there were bhajans and devotional songs as part of their usual programme.

It was a huge gathering and there was pin drop silence when Swamiji rose to speak on the "Geeta Vision".

"The backbone of a culture" Swamiji said "is its philosophy. A culture dies away when the philosophy is not strong enough to accommodate the new urges of a growing society. Philosophical truths, eternal though they are, should be interpreted to the ordinary man in the context of the changing times. This interpretation of philosophy evolving a new way of life is done by the rare few, great masters.

The Bhagavad Geeta is the conversation between Lord Krishna and Arjuna; though it took place 6000 years before Christ's birth, it is immortal and eternal because it comprehends all situations man faces and all types of men in any situation. It is the bible of the Hindus. The great poet - philosopher, Vyasa has painted in the Mahabharata a cross section of humanity."

Swamiji explained how the Upanishads and the picture of the Geeta are exact opposites, though they give the same truths. The Upanishadic Rishis were those who had retired into the Himalayas, to them the students came in humbleness, with a thirst to know the great reality. Whereas in the Geeta, Krishna is a mere charioteer and the arrogant, royal prince, Arjuna, refused to take Him seriously. This, the background and other details show that Hinduism is not for the retired recluse, but is to be lived every day in the market place, home and office.

The first chapter describes the state of dejection of Arjuna - the victim of a psychological break up in himself and wanting to escape from life's battles.

The following chapters give the way of life, which diligently lived, the shattered person can be rejuvenated and reoriented to face the challenges of life."

Wednesday, the 7th April, started with a very busy schedule. A half an hour at 8.30 a.m. there was a very interesting discussion with Professor Robinson of the University of Wisconsin over the radio.

Q. What is the difference between materialism and spirituality?
A. Materialism is when man turns outward for sense gratification. Spirituality is turning inward, seeking for a sense of satisfaction .

Q. Do you object to sense gratification ?
A. Not at all.
Q . A man looks on to enjoy forever a bird, or a woman. Would you call it as a sensual act ?

A. It is not what you look at that is of significance, but what your vision is at the time of looking at things. To live with the senses is a noble life, to live by the senses is a tragedy. If a noble and inspired ideal is thrilling the heart, it is immaterial what is the object you are gazing upon. The right relationship is ordered by the mental attitude and the intellectual value of the individual.

Q. Is it necessary to give up sex for spiritual attainment?
A. Sex should not be given up, but should be transcended. There is a tremendous power in sex. The sex energy can be sublimated to spiritual vitality. Concentration and contemplation need subtle energy and one will find less of sex in all true artists, scientists, politicians and authors, etc., who are creatively thinking constantly.

Q. American biologists says that sex has nothing to do with intellectual development. What do you say ?
A. A man who is well fed will grow just like an animal, and if a person concentrates on sex and the gratification of physical demands only, he is no more than an animal. Attraction between a girl and a boy is a natural phenomenon, and sex control cannot be accomplished by rules and regulations. Overeating is one of the causes of sexual excitement and, therefore, if a couple wishes to live for noble aspirations, sex may be controlled by dieting and divinising the relationship so that the sexual energy - 0jas - can be converted into the brilliance of spirituality (tejas).

Q. Most intellectual boys will not agree with you; they feel sexual consummation can be there along with spirituality - What is your comment ?
A. All the boys and girls will not be able to live up to the great ideals. In India, it is prescribed in the scriptures that the first 20 years should be that of a Brahmachari, without any sex indulgence, but plenty of reading and discussions on sex. The second 20 years are for a happy married life, entirely faithful to each other, satisfying the mutual sex demands more with the ideal of procreation, learning to live nobly during the time, practising the greater values of life at the same time.

Q. In India, people identify with their own castes and creeds, not feeling strongly for national interests. What do you say?
A. Indians have been striving under the pressure of foreign domination far the past two centuries which has sapped out all philosophy from the majority of the urban population. The only education available was supervised by the missionaries and they did their best in destroying our students' faith in their own religion. After independence we were concerned mainly in removing our national poverty as soon as possible. Therefore, our attention was in rapid industrialization. There is now a growing interest in nationalism and the average student is very much interested in the Hindu philosophy and religion.

The interview was mainly directed to the 12,000 students of the university, and according to information, it was well received.

On the 20th of April, Mrs. Lee Graham interviewed Swamiji for Radio WNYC for 25 minutes for broadcast under the "People and Ideas "program. After introducing him, Mrs. Graham asked Swamiji a number of questions:-

Q. When did your interest in spirituality start ?

A. First, I was almost an atheist or, say, a sceptic. After University education, I studied various scriptures which confirmed there is something higher to seek for. So I went for contemplation and study in the Himalayas under a master in the right atmosphere.

Q. Do you find marked differences between Eastern and Western students ?

A. Western students initially find it difficult to understand Eastern philosophy, but they are more anxious to live it, whereas Eastern students are more curious to know philosophy. In fact, West studies Eastern philosophy more intelligently and pursues its paths more diligenty.

Q. You have been lecturing in various universities. What are your impressions in general ?

A. I don't know how far it will be treading on the toes of your country. But here is my honest impression. Christianity seems to have failed to satisfy the youth here. They feel that there is something lacking in their religion, and they tell you this openly and straight. They naturally are trying to understand the Eastern philosophy if it can fill up the vacuum. They make an honest attempt, and in fact, many American universities have now separate department to deal with Indian and Asian studies and schools of religions.

Q. Do you think that Christianity is not able to give the necessary spirituality ?

A. It is not that the Christian religion has nothing to offer. But it is just that the Church is not able to satisfy the rational demand of the modern youth for explanations. It is not Christ or the Bible that have failed, but the Priests and Sermons have cheated the youth. Even in India the students are not inclined to discuss the Truth of life unless it is interpreted to them in a language that they can understand.

Q. Why did you feel compelled to do this overseas trip?

A. Our younger generation is being Americanized and this, coupled with the industrial revolution in India have resulted in labour troubles and other problems, economic and social. I want to see in America their social and psychological problems born as a result of the material and scientific pursuit without an equally diligent emphasis upon the spiritual values. For example, scattered concepts of morality, the emotional imbalance, the shattering of the personality, harmony, etc. Once I get a clear picture of these, then I can plan up for India some remedy to avoid these catastrophes by warning my people against possible dangers and training some to deal with such calamities should they arise.

Here is the text of Pujya Gurudev's talk that he gave to the Mission members on the eve of his First Global Tour in 1965.

"Now that I am going abroad people there will ask me why are you trying to improve others when you yourselves are so bad at home? At that time I must have an answer to give and that answer of mine is the Chinmaya Mission. I can say, who said we have not started? I am working for the last twelve years, I have started the organisation, and now it is a question of a few years before the results from it can be seen. Just as in a seed there is the possibility of a tree - it has just started; wait for a few years and you will find a huge tree coming out. That tree is the Chinmaya Mission.

On the other hand, if the Mission members themselves say immediately I go, "Now that Swamiji is gone, let us stop the study classes." All work stopped, and fights between the secretaries, group leaders and members also split into rightists and leftists, if that comes that will be a very bad thing indeed. You regularly attend the classes and do your sadhana, and that will be your help to me there. I am going only depending upon and ensuring thus on your strength. When I am gone you continue with your study, meditation, japa and sadhana. You must regularly meet and be in touch with one another and ensure mutual relationships. As a team, work! Thus, you help me. Be regular in your Sadhana.

In every walk of life, wherever you be, 24 hours you are a Mission member, not only on Sunday afternoons. As members, your work is not by mouth but by your every action, 24 hours.

MORALITY is never taught, MORALITY is CAUGHT. Moral instructions you cannot give to anybody. Ears are not as powerful as the eyes. We easily imitate what we see and not what we hear. Exhibit the Geeta in your actions. Membership of the Chinmaya Mission is not available for all. Every member must be an active, dynamic living member. If one Mahatma Gandhi is good, all Congress is good - when he went away all are bad now. Now that I am temporarily going abroad, people will evaluate the Chinmaya Mission by your actions. Beware of your actions ! Actions will be good only when the thoughts are good, so keep the thoughts good. Beware, beware all."

Then looking at the members from other centres, he said: "All those from Ernakulam and Poona also. This is not only to Bombay. Don't say it was said only to Central Chinmaya Mission Trust. It is for everyone."

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY

An orphan - he doesn’t know who his father is, or who his mother is. He has been cared for all these years in an orphanage. He comes out with nobody to support him, to call his own, nobody to love him and none to love. Such a person will try to get money somehow, by fair means or foul, just to feed himself. He will plunder, burn, shoot and kill, if necessary, to achieve this end. Why does he do so? Because he has no self - respect.

On the other hand, an individual who belongs to a family, knows who his father and mother are, and who knows the tradition and the family - even when he is starving, he will not think of stealing, but rather of some constructive way of creating comfort. He may, under the pressure or the urgency of the need, come down a little, but there will always be a limit set by himself, thus far and no further. Why? Because I belong to that family, I respect my father – a kind of restraint comes upon him.

The quality of your behaviour will depend upon the respect that you have got for the association, the institution to which you belong -- may be caste, creed, religion, a nation or community. For this sense of belonging, I must know who my parents are and what they have done. Do they deserve my respect? Have they made any sacrifice for me? I don’t know that, and then I am a bastard - an orphan. I don’t know my father and I have no respect for my mother. Such an individual feels lonely in the world. He has no moral values to compare whether what he is doing is morally right or wrong.

Is it not true that today, when we try to solve our problems, the question of morality never comes up? Certainly, a Punjabi should get Punjab - he has the right to demand it. But look at what he does - putting bombs in ordinary buses, and that too, in Delhi, not bothering as to who dies. Is this the solution that your perverted intellect can find? This is because; our sense of belonging is not there. The Sikhs feel that the Hindus are useless.

Who are the Hindus? Their own fathers and mothers. Sikhs, as a community, never came from the clouds – they are the sons and daughters of Hindu mothers, and a Hindu mother offered her son to protect Hinduism for this great movement. Think…...!

These disintegrating forces are working all over the country. It is not only the Sikhs - it is absurd to say so. Disintegration is the first stage before a nation collapses. Just as the smoke rising from a building is the beginning of the entire building gutting down by fire, this is the beginning. It is not that I am forecasting. History teaches me so. Whether it is the Moghul Empire or any other empire - when they founded it, they were all together, united, integrated. After indulgence for some time, disintegration started, and that is the beginning of the end of that dynasty. That is why generally people take History because it is very easy to pass; the cause for growth and development of an empire is the same, and the cause for decay is also the same. They became more indulgent, more sensuous, more self - centered, more selfish and, therefore, neighbours who were relatively integrated, conquered them. Whether it is Greece or Rome or Egypt -- all over the world, this is the trend.

At the same time, I cannot blame my youngsters for not having this love for the country, or an awareness of what is happening around. They are the products of the education that been given to them even after Independence. Even the attempts at changing the education system were all corrupt. The ministers never thought of our culture and keep them inspired by the very word – “BHARAT”.

After centuries of condemning our country; we have now come to a point where we have no respect for the nation, no sense of belonging to the nation. All that we know is that the population is increasing. That is what the politicians tell us. to control population. Have they ever thought of what would happen if our neighbours, China, decided to attack us? At least we should be able to stand man to man.

I am talking of a political exigency. We can’t afford to reduce our population -- don’t say you can’t feed them. We have got enough land. Even today our villages are lying empty. Only the old villagers are going to the fields, the educated ones don’t want to roll up their sleeves and do manual work. They just want a job, a cushy cushy job in an air - conditioned room. That is why everyone is running madly to get trained in computers – to get an A / C room. If everyone wants to sit in an A / C room, where is the nation? Who is to sweat for it? Without any sacrifice, can we create anything?

Wealth is created by sweat. Dignity of a nation is created by sacrifice – this is true socialism. It is not population increase which is responsible for the state we are in, but production going down is the cause. That is why a westerner comes to India, studies everything and goes back and says there is God, because India is still living ! There is no other reason why we should be an economically viable and politically united nation except for God’s Grace. Think........!

Our education system is so wrong; history has no place in it. Without knowing the glory of the country, how can I love the country? If the younger generation is not prepared to sacrifice in order to build it, who is to do it? Political parties? It is squarely upon your shoulders – the shoulders of the younger generation to build your own future. Don’t wait for your father or mother to do it for you. Leave them alone, we shall look after them and feed them in their old age. It is entirely up to you to bring out the best in you. Study hard and as much as you can; develop your mind and intellect, and pour it out in the rebuilding of the country – not in terms of what I can get out from the society but in terms of what I can give to my younger brothers and sisters. Today’s Chyks can afford to be Brahmacharis – after all, we are Hindus, we believe in rebirth, we shall postpone our marriages for the next life. This life is to reorganize my values, my society, my nation. So, I sacrifice, even die, if necessary in order to build my nation. Without sacrifice, would there be a China today? – A China about which Napoleon had said “Let the sleeping dogs lie. To wake them up is a terrible thing, we will not be able to stand against them.” And here we are sleeping for such a long time !

To awaken you, we are singing the glories of your own country in a language, which you can understand – how the personality can be reconstructed, etc. But that only gives you a capacity to study well and score high in life. That is not sufficient. All the mental and intellectual energy has to be offered now for the rebuilding of the nation. This needs a lot of sacrifice and in spite of the outsiders and others in the country laughing at you and ridiculing your ideas, you must have the courage to stand against them and work. These are the glories of great men.

When Gandhiji said that he was planning to launch a non - violent movement, even Patel and others laughed at the idea. Even on the salt making march, he was all alone when he set out. By the time he crossed a few villages, a big crowd joined him, just out of curiosity. Others, because of the herd instinct. A crowd of newspapermen came to watch him. By the time he reached Bombay, all those who had laughed at him were slaves in adoration at his feet. Somebody has to start and you are being given the chance, which no other generation in recent times has got in our country. You are standing on the threshold – either you collapse or you revive. Let the revival be in your hands. This needs an enormous self - respect, enormous love and reverence for the country. What is the source from which I can gather the necessary energy?

You can’t stand against the vast crowd ridiculing you, unless you are inspired by an ideal. Unless you know the glory of the past, how can you work in the present and make sacrifices for rebuilding a future? Past, present and future are one intrinsic whole and not separate. Drawing inspiration form the past, we meet the challenges in the present. Unfortunately, our history tells us what a westerner thinks of our country until, at last, here we are creating a monster, a total disintegration. The Maharastrian wants Maharshtra, etc. It is not even economically viable for each state to be independent. Instead of that, we should understand that matter is nothing but atoms, and an atom is nothing but energy in motion, telling us that everything is one, while in our behaviour we are trying to disintegrate.

Against this disintegration, only the youth can save the country. If one Gandhi could inspire so many at that time, our Chyk members can inspire the youth. Living a life of Self - confidence and self - respect, proud of their country, and prepared to work to rebuild it with heads held above the clouds and hands and legs ready to make sacrifices and work, that is sufficient. Slowly it will become a fashion among the young, just as the churidar kurta – everyone is wearing it just because Rajiv Gandhi wears it. This is because the majoritiy doesn’t have the originality. They survive only by imitating others in the country. You few must have the heroism to live that life of glory. If anyone asks what you are doing, have the guts to explain to them. Many of them will not understand, doesn’t matter – you start doing it. Now, the question is, who is to bell the cat?

At this moment when I look around either people are fanatical Hindus – they cannot do anything, or they have one - sided political views. They cannot save the country. Our simple Chyk members alone have the vision, the understanding, and the readiness to make sacrifices if only they take it up. I am not asking you to do it because it is not a thing that I can ask you to do. I need not tell you that you should love your wife – how can I give you love for your wife? You have to discover love for your wife. It is very intimate; it must spring forth from within yourself. Start thinking about it. What can I give to my country? Don’t expect the leaders to do it. They released us from the shackles of the British and thereafter sat back to share the spoils and spoilt the whole nation.

In this chaotic madness, the saner youth is our Chyks and when you start marching in the right direction with the right inspiration in yourself, you shall find erelong a crowd behind you. The old generation had died; a new youthful leadership has come which has tremendous mass appeal and support. If at this moment we start, the Government will be with us, even imitate us. All this depends upon the energy you can put forth. You cannot find the necessary energy unless you have the faith in the goal that you are trying to achieve – the glory of the nation about which great poets like Tagore and Bharati have sung till their throats were sore. All that we know is what the Americans have to say, what the Britishers have to say – and what do they have to say? That India is not a nation – it is a mere conglomeration of people; that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life – as though religion and way of life are two different things. There cannot be a religion without a way of life. In fact, Religion is a ‘Way of Life’.

Have a vast vision. Just look at what we have done after independence and where we have landed – even if you realize that, it is enough. The rest will come automatically unless you are a damned generation and there is no future in this country, which I don’t believe. It is only the people in a country that make it a nation. INDIA, at this moment, is only a country, and not a nation. Each one sees his own problem – Punjab Problem, Assam Problem, Ahmedabad Problem. They don’t see and understand the country as a whole. They don’t realize that it is because of the country that the State has got any validity. The entity of the State is only for convenience in administration.

So, I want you children to rise above these limitations. See, in one sweep – the past, present and the possible future. From the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, it is my country. Everyone is my brother, be he a Christian or a Muslim. In India, there are only two societies – those who were Hindus, and those who are Hindus. The Indian tradition is a Hindu tradition because 82% are Hindus. If Hindus rise, the country rises, Redemption of Hindus is redemption of the country; the strength of Hindus is the strength of the country; the glory of Hindus is the glory of the country. The politicians are responsible for the present state of dirt and slime, but we are not going to spend time regretting it. We want to get out of it. You are responsible for the future of the country. I have said enough - the rest is for you to show in your actions.

Chyk – Chinmaya Yuva Kendra is the youth wing of the Chinmaya Mission. The members of this wing are called Chyks

The above article is a talk given by Swami Chinmayananda to the youngsters of the Chinmaya Mission (Chyks)…. It is a call to each of us to get together and make a positive contribution to the nation…. WE CAN ! ……WE WILL ! !…. WE MUST ! ! !

The Supreme State experienced by the mystics, pointed out in all the great scriptures of the world, is the state that has been indicated by a most popular term in Hinduism, 'Shivaratri'.

Shiva means auspiciousness, that state of supreme auspiciousness, the state of perfection and beautitude, is a state an individual experiences when all other usual fields of perception are transcended.

Just as in the night, when the darkness closes, every object becomes imperceptible to the human eye, a time when the usual world of plurality is blanketed away from our awareness, such moments of pure infinite subjective experience are that which is indicated as Shivaratri.

In order that it may come to the masses and the average man may spend time in lifting his mind, turning his mind's attention to the Lord, it has been brought into a very significant ritual, dedicating this day to Lord Shiva. On this auspicious day, seekers rededicate themselves to the subjective science and the pursuit of excellence in their daily lives."

A self-confessed agnostic and aimless drifter turning into a missionary and going about converting people - converting Hindus to Hinduism - that is the story of Swami Chinmayananda, founder of the Chinmaya Mission which has just completed 50 years.

Balakrishnan Menon, a journalist at the National Herald, Delhi, started for Rishikesh ``to find out how those holy men are keeping up the bluff!'' A chain-smoker with a postgraduate degree in English literature, he was by all description an unlikely candidate to don the orange robes and enter a life of contemplation.

His innate compassion for his fellowmen was evident in several pieces he had written for the paper. But he was essentially an extrovert, always talking and always on the move. His easygoing and spendthrift lifestyle had often moved his uncle and guardian to sermonise him on the virtue of hard work and the importance of earning one's own bread.

As it happened, the intellectualism, the humility and dynamism of Swami Sivananda, the master at the ashram he was visiting, attracted and held his attention. The man who came to scoff, stayed on. After a while Menon moved on to another teacher, Swami Tapovan of Uttarkasi, a stern disciplinarian from whom he learnt the Upanishads and obtained his diksha or ordination as a monk.

Many are of the view that Swami Chinmayananda's biggest contribution lay in taking the Gita to the masses. In doing so he even went against the advice of his mentor Swami Tapovan, who maintained that ``scriptures have no charm at all for ordinary folk''. He believed too that a swami should lead a life of seclusion and contemplation.

But the young mendicant was not to be dissuaded from his yagna of helping people attain eternal perfection in this very life. That, at a time when religion for the common Hindu has been reduced to performing rituals to obtain the favour of gods in the pursuit of mundane ends.

When Swami Chinmayananda was planning his Jnana Yagna at Pune, Swami Tapovan exploded: ``Poona! There are so many Brahmin Sanskrit scholars in Poona! How will you tackle them; they will never countenance a swami talking on the scriptures which they consider their private domain!'' However Swami Sivananda supported the young swami and told him: ``Go, roar like a Vivekananda!''

Many experiences built in him the necessary motivation and resolve. The death of a long-time friend, Shroff, who fell victim to cancer after much suffering, moved him. As he was carrying the pot containing the friend's ashes in train, he mused: ``The man who is usually with me is now in that small basket - a few bones and ashes... Flesh and life are gone!'' He became aware that life is empty and shallow without the inner expansion, the inner depth. This inner wealth alone can reinforce against ``the sledgehammer stroke of destiny, the conspiracy woven by the circumstances of life''.

``Swamiji, why did you take to sanyasa?'' his old associates, reporters from Delhi once asked him. ``What would you have me do?'' he shot back, ``marry, breed, fight, and talk shop until, wrecked with age and sorrow, this body drops down dead?''

``Chinmaya was tired of living in the tomb, so he walked out into the open to breathe, to bask, to work and to live'', the swami continued. This realisation of the uselessness of worldly values and goals prodded him on. He was determined to present the highest philosophy of the scriptures which largely remained unknown to the public. He wanted to present it in an easily intelligible form that would also make it practicable in immediate circumstances and daily living. At this crucial time in history, he felt, with ``the Brahmins and Kshatriyas putrefying themselves in the leprous warmth of luxury and power'', spiritual gurus should not ``live in a cave and meditate'' but need to be working among the people to spread the right values.

Once in a public address he had thundered: ``If Hinduism can breed for us only heartless shopkeepers, corrupt babus, cowardly men, loveless masters and faithless servants; if Hinduism can give us only a state of social living in which each man is put against his brother; if Hinduism can give us only starvation, nakedness, and destitution; if Hinduism can encourage us only to plunder, loot, and to steal; if Hinduism can preach to us only intolerance, fanaticism, hard-heartedness and cruelty; then I too cry `Down, Down' with that Hinduism''.

Has Chinmayananda, who preached and laboured inside and outside the country for several decades, made a difference to the situation as he saw it? He certainly tried.

Sri Swami Tapovanam was unique in that in spite of his inordinate erudition and scholarship, deep devotion and highest spiritual realization, he chose to remain in his humble, mud-plastered one-room kutia with a small verandah at Uttarkashi. He lived ever retent from the hubub of life, reveling in His own Self. He hated all ostentations, physical and mental.

He recommended study, reflection and attempts at direct experience. The birth of such a Master should be celebrated not with cheap tinsels and noisy crackers, high sounding talks or bell-ringing rituals. We must learn to lift our minds to meet Him wher He is in our own hearts.

A scholarly pundit from Jaipur who was Sri Gurudev's lifelong ardent devotee had composed a prayerful hymn upon Sri Gurudev, composed in the very vocabulary of the Upanishads, invokes the Supreme Self and the poet identifies that Self Divine with Swami Tapovanam. We must all come to realize that the infinite substratum for the entire universe concretized for blessing us all is Sri Gurudev, the Lord of Soumyakashi, Sri Swami Tapovanam.

I wish all our BalaVihars,CHYKS, study group members and all other devotees will chant this hymn (Tapovan Shatkam) everyday of the year. Let us invoke Him through this mass chanting to bless our country and all our efforts in reviving it's sacred culture. Let this hymn be sung throughout the world in all our centers in the same tune and in a chorus of sheer faith and pure devotion.

Hari Om

Wear and tear is natural for everything that is constantly in use. Even mountains must erode and crumble to the level of the earth as the fleeting steps of time march down its slopes. Not only gross substances in the outer world suffer thus from change but even our inner emotions must slowly decay. The law of diminishing utility in economics amply explains this phenomenon of erosion even in our mental life and this is not all.

Even the ideas and ideals have a knack of fading away as they wade through the dusty storms and tussles of history. What was conceived as a glorious tradition, as unquestionable faith, a perfect ideal, an incontrovertible theory, a scientific conclusion or a logical fact in the past, gets itself slowly spoilt to be a bundle of superstitions, a meaningless show, a dry exhibition, a purposeless belief, an idle hope or even a logical absurdity, in the context of the changed factors of more recent and modern times.

A traditional religion of the past thus becomes, if not unfit totally, at least ineffectual, in controlling, guiding and directing the energies and enthusiasm of a reinterpretation of timeless, immortal values becomes absolutely necessary. Coins in circulation will have to be now and then withdrawn by the mint and replaced by fresh ones of the same denomination and royal stamp.

Cultural ideas in circulation are a religion, and from time to time a religion’s needs must change. They must put on fresh robes and reappear on the stage of life to serve mankind. But the values they preach are always the same, be they through text books written in Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit or Pali. These new arrivals were not destructive revolutions but they were only constructive revivals.

Remember, members of the Chinmaya Mission today have an outstanding position in the society. They are being looked upto by an expectant part of the nation as perhaps the harbingers of a new hope into the chaotic conditions of the society.

Every activity of the Mission members is being critically watched by the others around. Think before you speak. Remember the Lord before you act. Let not an ugly action ever defile the face of the cherished hopes of the society. Let not even an unintended word from your mouth splash tears in the face of the community.

You are all white-clothed sadhus! You are looked upon, if not in reverence, definitely with admiration by those who are not members, for the brilliance of your emotions and the purity of your feelings. Upon the nobility of your thoughts and the chasteness of your actions will depend the future of your organisation, the glory of your country, the fulfilment of Vedanta on the foreign shores.

Are you ready ?
Will you cooperate ?
Have we such heroes ?
I shall be watching all through....

Lord Shiva's first son is described as the Supreme Leader (Vinayaka) or as the Leader of the "Ganas" (Ganapati) who attends upon and follows at all times Lord Shiva, as the Lord of all Obstacles (Vighneshwara). These names clearly show that He is a Master of all circumstances and not even the divine forces can ever obstruct His path. Since He is thus the Lord of all Obstacles, no Hindu ritual or auspicious act is ever undertaken without invoking Him. With His Grace, it is believed that no undertaking can fail due to subjective or objective obstacles.

He is considered as having married both Lakshmi and Saraswati, the Godesses of Wealth and Knowledge repectively. In short, He is the Master of Knowledge (Vidya) and champion of worldly achievements (Avidya).

In this characterization Shri Ganapati represents a Man of Perfect Wisdom, and a fully Realized Vedantin. Westerners are shocked to notice that Hindus revere a Divine Form which is so ridiculous and absurd. But the Elephant Headed Lord of all Difficulties in life indeed represents the highest and the best that have ever been given in our Scriptures. To a Vedantic student, since his "path of knowledge" is essentially intellectual, he must have a great head to conceive and understand the logic of the Vedantic thought, and in fact, the truth of Vedanta can be comprehended only through listening to a teacher and, therefore, Shravana (listening) is the initial stage to be mastered by the new initiate. Therefore, Shri Ganapati has large ears representing continuous and intelligent listening to the teacher.

After "listening" (shravana) to the truths of the Upanishads. Vedantic student must independently "reflect" (manana) upon what he has heard, for which he needs a sensitive intelligence with ample sympathy to discover in himself sufficient accommodation for all living creatures in the universe.

His intellect must have such depth and width in order to embrace in his vision the entire world - of - plurality. Not only must he, in his visualization, embrace the whole cosmos, but he must have the subtle discriminative power (viveka) in him to distinguish the changing, perishable, matter vestures from the Eternal, Immutable, All Pervading Consciousness, the Spirit. This discrimination is possible only when the intellect of the student has consciously cultivated this power to a large degree of perfection.

The trunk, coming down the forehead of the elephant face, has got a peculiar efficiency and beats all achievements of man and his ingenuity in the mechanical and scientific world. Here is a "tool" which can at once uproot a tree or pick up a pin from the ground. The elephant can lift and pull heavy weights with his trunk and, at the same time, it is so sensitive at its tip that the same instrument can be employed by the elephant to pluck a blade of grass. The mechanical instruments cannot have this range of adaptability. The spanner that is used for tightening the bolts of a gigantic wheel cannot be used to repair a lady's watch. Like the elephant's trunk, so should be the perfect discriminative faculty of an evolved intellect so that it can use its discrimination fully in the outer world for resolving gross problems, and at the same time, efficiently employ its discrimination in the subtle realms of the inner personality layers.

The discriminative power in us can function only where there are two factors to discriminate between; these two factors represent the tusks of the elephant and the trunk growing down between them. Between good and evil, right and wrong, and all the dualities must we discriminate and come to our own judgements and conclusions in life. Shri Vinayaka is represented as having lost one of His tusks in a quarrel with Parshurama, a great disciple of Lord Shiva. This broken tusk indicates that a real Vedantic student of subjective experience is one who has gone beyond the pairs - of -opposites (dwandwaatita). He has the widest mouth and the largest appetite. In Kubera's Palace, He cured Kubera's vanity that in his riches he had become the 'Treasurer of the Heavens '. When Kubera offered Him a dinner He ate all the food that was prepared for the entire guests. Thereafter, He started eating the utensils and then the decorative pandal, and still He was not satisfied. Then his father, Lord Shiva, approached Him and gave Him a handful of "puffed rice" to eat. Eating this he became satisfied.

The above story narrated in the Puranas, is very significant that a Man of Perfection has an endless appetite for life. He lives in the Consciousness and to him every experience, good or bad, is only a play of the Infinite through him. Lord Shiva, the Teacher, alone can satisfy the hungers of such sincere students by giving them a handful of "roasted rice", representing fried seeds, indicating the "baked vasanas", burnt in the Fire of Knowledge. When one's vasanas are burnt up, the inordinate enthusiasm of experiencing life is also whetted.

A Man of Perfection must have a big belly to stomach peacefully, as it were, all the experiences of life, auspicious and inauspicious.

When such a Mastermind sits dangling his foot down, it is again significant, in the symbolism of the Puranas. Generally we move about in the world through the corridors of our experiences on our two feet, or the inner subtle body, the mind and the intellect. A Perfect Man of Wisdom has integrated them both to such an extent that they have become in him as One - an intellect into which the mind has folded and has become completely subservient.

At such a great Yogi's feet are the endless eatables of life, meaning, the enjoyable glories of physical existence. All powers come to serve Him, the entire world of cosmic forces are, thereafter, His obedient servants, seeking their shelter at His feet; the whole world and its environment is waiting at His feet for His pleasure and command.

In the representation of Shri Vinayaka we always find a mouse sitting in the midst of the beautiful, fragrant readymade food, but if you observe closely, you will find that the poor mouse is sitting looking up at the Lord, shivering with anticipation, but not daring to touch anything without His command. Now and then, He allows the mouse to eat.

A mouse is a small little animal with tiny teeth, and yet, in a barn of grain a solitary mouse can bring disastrous losses by continuously gnawing and nibbling at the grain. Similarly, there is a "mouse" within each personality which can eat away even a mountain of merit in us, and this mouse is the power of desire. The Man of Perfection is one who has so perfectly mastered this urge to acquire, possess and enjoy, this self - annihilating power of desire, that it is completely held in obedience to the will of the Master. And yet, when the Master wants to play His part in blessing the world He rides upon the mouse. Meaning, it is a desire to do service to the world that becomes His vehicle to move about and act.

The Puranas tell us how once Shri Vighneshwara, while riding His mouse, was thrown down and it looked so ridiculous that the Moon laughed at the comic sight. It is said in the Puranas that the great - bellied Lord Vinayaka looked at the Moon and cursed that nobody would ever look at the Moon on that day - the Vinayaka Chaturthi.

When a Man of Perfection (Vinayaka) moves about in the world, riding on His insignificant - looking vehicle, the "desire" to serve (mouse), the gross intellects of the world (Moon, the presiding Deity of the Intellect) would be tempted to laugh at such prophets and seers.

The Lord of Obstacles, Shri Vighneshwara, has four arms representing the four inner equipments (antahkarana). In one hand He has a Rope, in another an Axe. With the Axe, He cuts off the attachments of His devotees to the world of plurality and thus ends all the consequent sorrows. With the Rope, He pulls them nearer and nearer to the Truth, and ultimately ties them down to the Highest Goal. In his third hand He holds a rice ball (modaka), representing the reward of the joys of sadhana which He gives His devotees. With the other hand He blesses all His devotees and protects them from all obstacles on their Spiritual Path of seeking the Supreme.

On the spiritual pilgrimage, all the obstacles are created by the very subjective and objective worlds in the seeker himself. His attachment to the world of objects, emotions and thoughts, are alone his obstacles. Shri Vighneshwara chops them off with an Axe and holds the attention of the seeker constantly towards the Higher with the Rope that He has in His left hand. Enroute, He feeds the seeker with modaka (the joy of satisfaction experienced by the evolving seeker of Reality) and blesses him continuously with greater and greater progress, until at last, the Man of Perfection becomes Himself the Lord of Obstacles, Shri Vighneshwara.

The above three of four examples should clearly bring to your mind the art employed by Vyasa in his mystical word paintings. It must be evidently clear to all sensitive thinkers that the representations given in the various symbolisms are not as many different Deities, but that they are vivid pen portraits of the subjective Truth described in the Upanishadic lore. The student must have the subtle sensitivity of a poet, the ruthless intellect of a scientist, and the soft heart of the beloved, in order to enter into the enchanted realm of mysticism created by the poet - seer, Vyasa.

To the crude intellect and its gross understanding, these may look ridiculous; but art can be fully appreciated only by hearts that have art in them. With at least a cursory knowledge of Vedanta, when we review the Puranas they cannot strike us as extremely noisy but reverberating with the clamouring echoes of the Upanishadic melody.

He wears a strange shade of Ochre, which looks almost like pink. There are silver knobs on his wooden sandals, which add at least three inches to his five-feet five. His long tresses cascade on to his shoulders framing with black and gray an intensely intelligent face.

Swami Chinmayananda, 65, is Hinduism's answer to the countless young men and women who have strayed away over the years, disgusted with the meaningless rituals and the tired theology of the world's oldest living faith. (Please note that this interview and write up was done in 1980)

A distinguished scholar, an ardent teacher and a compulsive globetrotter, the Swami is today held to be one of the few serious and credible missionaries that Hinduism has to offer. His missions are all over the world. So are his devotees and students. And they are growing at a rate which will soon, perhaps, make Swami Chinmayananda numero uno in the glittering pantheon of gurus, rishis, bhagavans and babas who hold sway over India's millions and many abroad.

In many ways, this is the best thing that could have happened to Hinduism. For the Swami is no quack healer or fast-buck merchant. He offers no miracles to lure the gullible. He makes no predictions, reads no fortunes and sings paeans to no politician. He makes no claims to being a God, except for argument's sake; nor does he offer you, for a fee, the quick route to nirvana. He simply teaches.

He is best known for his interpretation of the Gita and almost every day of the year, somewhere or other, in Bonn or Bangkok, Bombay or Baltimore, he has a class on. He is either trying to explain Arjuna's dilemma in the midst of battle or the innate logic of Krishna's persuasion.

Not all his students are Hindus. Neither are they all believers in any religion. More often they come out of curiosity to see the Swami defend a faith grown old and decayed by centuries of blind belief and senile commitment to rituals. There are the usual pot-bellied devotees who come to donate fractions of their ill-gotten wealth in the hope of buying happiness in another life. There's the same bunch of rich, semi-literate women in chiffons and diamonds who attend every religious event wearing the same moronic demeanor. There are also, thank God, the young ones, from whom the Swami derives his largest following. Pleasant faced young men, quietly listening to the voice of religion.

Swami Chinmayananda is, naturally, not his real name. He was born P. Balakrishna Menon on 8 May 1916, somewhere in the Malabar. There was nothing very brilliant about this particular Malayalee child, who grew up and eventually joined The National Herald as a cub-reporter. He joined the nationalist movement in 1941 and was briefly jailed. On release, he went to Rishikesh to meet Swami Shivananda Saraswati, to write a journalistic piece on the religion racket.

The Swami persuaded the young skeptic to stay back for six months at his ashram, to see things firsthand. By the end of the six months, Balakrishna Menon gave up his name and his profession and assumed the name of Chinmayananda. From Rishikesh, at the foot of the Himalayas he went further north to spend ten years at the feet of Tapovan Maharaj, the well known sage. While Swami Shivananda Saraswati gave him his name and his robes, it was Tapovan Maharaj who educated him in the sastras. Much of this is, of course, hearsay.

There is no official biography of Swami Chinmayananda and, unlike most of the other gurus, he offers very little information about himself or his achievements in mission handouts, books or lecture papers. When I asked him about his past, he laughed it away and said, "Never ask a Swami his past. If you knew the source of a river, would you ever drink from it?" He is modest, intelligent and accessible. He speaks with a sing-song accent and often mispronounces his words. But his passion shows. "Hinduism is the religion for our times," he asserts with confidence.

I met him over two long sessions at Calcutta, watched him deliver quite a few famous Gita lectures, saw some of his missions, listened to him articulate his views on life and death, freedom and spiritual bondage, religion in action and the existence of God, I saw the tired lines on his face as he smiled and bore the fawning and the sycophancy of his devotees, suffered stupid questions about the behavior of the stock exchange, drank coffee and fruit juice from persistent hostesses at half-hour intervals. " It must be tough to be a guru," I said to him, after a particularly tiresome session. "Not tough; it's lonely," said Hinduism's most famous hostage.

Q) Why do you give so much importance to the study of the Bhagavad Gita? You seem to imply that the Gita is the only way to gain insight into the Indian mind, into the Indian sensibility. Don't you think our other religious texts are of equal importance?

A) Every religious textbook is of equal importance. But I have no authority to recommend books I have not studied myself. I studied the Gita - and it was of great help to me - and, therefore, I recommend it to everyone. Unlike the other scriptures, the methodology followed by the Gita appears to be more conducive to the modern, scientific mind and the educated classes. For they don't believe in anything. They want everything to be rationally proved, intellectually defensible. And the approach of the Gita is very rational because Krishna had to address a dynamic, young, educated, intelligent man who was a born skeptic. Arjuna did not believe or understand that Krishna was an intellectual giant. It is only in the eleventh chapter that he got a glimpse - and, thereafter, his attitude changed. But till the eleventh chapter he was absolutely rational. He did not believe a word of what Krishna said. Krishna had to make him believe it by the strength of logic. This approach appeals to people like you and I. It converted me from an atheist into a believer........

Q) You were an atheist!

A) Of course. Any intelligent, rational man is an atheist. Until, of course he is initiated into religion. So when you write and attack religious people at times, I sympathize with you because I was also like that. I also thought that religion meant ritualism. I never knew there was a science to it, that ritualism was just a bark. The outer bark of the great tree that shelters the whole community. The bark is necessary for the tree. But the bark is not the tree. That I what I try to explain to young people like you.

Q) You are often exhorting young people to search for a new ideal that would give them motivation for self-sacrifice and dynamic action. Wherein do you think such an ideal lies?

A) ( Laughs loudly) An ideal I can never give you. You have to find out an ideal. Like, let's say, excellence in your own profession. Or a political belief, an economic system you may like to propound, a social value. Or, simply, your own moral attitude. Uncompromisingly you will have to live upto it, under any circumstance. You must be ready to die for it, if necessary, but not yield an inch. One ideal you find - and the best in you starts coming out. Until this ideal is there, the best never comes out. You might get superficial efficiency - but that's not enough. It's not the best. For example, look at Mahatma Gandhi. So long as he was M.K. Gandhi he was a third-rate man with no hope of any success. All that he achieved was that he passed barristery. And that is because nobody ever fails in barristery. ( Laughs) Now, when he comes to India.......

Q) Yes?

A) In Africa, nothing happened. African politics, third-rate.... All that he gained was that he lost his teeth. Nothing else. When he came back to India, as luck would have it, suddenly he got an ideal to pursue. Freedom for 400 million people! Once he got that ideal and was ready to sacrifice everything else for it, look how the man's personality grew up from week to week, month to month. He was no more a four-foot or five-foot high, big-headed man with spreading ears; a chinless man with effeminate words, stammering language... everything useless. Out of him came a brilliance - such that he has already carved out a permanent niche in world history. History is not complete without Gandhiji's chapter. Where did he get it all from? From his so uncompromising personality! One ideal, and the whole thing changes.

Vivekananda must have been there in Narendra. But as Narendra he was impotent - an ordinary, useless, university student. But once he got an ideal and started pursuing it, in five years' time you saw a magnificent unfolding of his personality. Out of Narendra came a Vivekananda.

A third-rate prince, Siddarth - a stupid fool I would call him, because at the age of 28 the fellow did not know that there was death, that there was old age, disease in the world! Think of the enormous ignorance of the man! Once he got an ideal and held onto it, out of the stupid mudplaster beamed out the eternal prince of compassion: Buddha. Without an ideal to hook yourself on, that depth of possibilities in you cannot be unearthed, dredged out. An ideal is necessary...

Q) Would you believe that political ideals can also help to transform the condition of our society? Straight political ideals, without any moral or spiritual strings attached?

A) Any ideal can. Not just political ideals. Artistic ones too. The belief that I can be the greatest artist - maybe a dancer or a painter, it doesn't matter. Even if it's a musician. The best in you then starts coming out.

Q) But this can also create a great but completely amoral artist. A great musician with a fascist vision of the world. A great writer or a great painter who is committed to his work but has a completely perverse worldview which can spark off totally negative political movements. Surely, an artistic ideal is not enough. A moral stand is important for any creative person. Otherwise, he could well be taking mankind backwards. Towards fascism, for instance.

A) It is not the ideal that puts man back. It is the interpretation. You can't say that religion is the cause for wars or the disaster in Iran. Can you say that? Islam is not the cause. It is Islam interpreted in a particular way. Similarly, Hinduism is not the cause for the harijan problem in the country now. It is the interpretation of Hinduism. Caste is a universal principle - it is man-made and you suffer for it. It's not Hinduism. Take democracy. Government of the people, for the people, by the people. But by the time you practice it in a parliament it becomes government of the people, for the people, by the people, on the people....and people suffer. So, even the best things when man-handled becomes the worst of things.

So, don't say that Nietzsche was the cause for Hitlerism. Na na. What Nietzsche said was that the Aryans are best among people - but he took only that out of context and interpreted it in his own way, and damned himself. What can we do?

Q) Many people believe, Swamiji, that there is a vast hiatus today between the world of religion and the world of everyday reality, and that this explains why more and more young people are moving away from the spiritual quest and seeking their answers in the tough, materialistic world around them where survival itself is the most challenging battle. Would you agree? Would you agree that religion is a luxury in a scenario where staying alive is so difficult, particularly in the poorer countries of the world?

A) I think you are partially blind. You see only with one eye. You see only people moving away from religion and striving to find their values in materialism. You don't see the other stream. People dropping out of universities and colleges and professions - and seeking spirituality. I got thirty students here to train in the last batch. Americans. Young boys and girls. It is they who are now running my school there, my Hindu seminary there in California. So, don't think that it's only one-way traffic.

Q) No. It's only that I still feel that this traffic of people moving away from religion is considerably larger than the traffic you speak of - purely in numbers.

A) I wouldn't say that. It can be because materialistic attractions draw people away from religion and self-discipline....

Q) But why is this vast gap, let's say, between the search for spiritual values and the quest for a materialistic reordering of society based on principles of justice and equality?

A) First tell me what is religion. Tell me and then you'll understand. Materialism you know. It is purely selfish. I want to be one up. My happiness is all important. My wife and my children must be happy. I don't care a hoot for others. It is utterly self-centered......

Q) But surely religion is the same. Each and every religious person is searching for his own private nirvana, his or her own self-realization. This is an equally self-centered search.

A) What does nirvana mean?

Q) Self-realization?

A) You see, nirvana is not a piece of cake that he wants to get. It is not wealth that he to put in a bank. He is trying to expand his consciousness. He wants to embrace the whole universe. Not with his hands. Not with power. Not with money. But with understanding. It's a new dimension of consciousness he is attempting. On one hand you have bhog: sensual, materialistic living. To withdraw the mind's attention from these wonders - this dissipation in the world of objects - and to quieten it to turn it towards the spring of life in you is called yoga. Yoga and bhog. It is not in the physical body; it is not in the place where you are staying; nor in the clothes you are wearing. It is in the mental attitude. Coated, booted, suited with beedi in hand, you can still be a yogi. A man who has got jatadhari - which is only vibhuti all over and nothing but a lengot - can be the greatest of bhogis. Isn't it? It's not the physical appearance; it's the mental attitude.

So, one is expecting or demanding or hoping for happiness from the aggrandizement of things outside. To acquire, possess, embrace, indulge and enjoy the objects outside. The other is now, in this finite world, in the realm of time, I cannot have a permanent, peaceful, happy state. These are all right as recreation but the main, permanent happiness cannot be here. Thus man withdraws his attention from the outer world and with a steady mind, through contemplation, tries to reach the higher echelons of consciousness in himself. That is religion or spiritualism. In fact, religion is the technology by which these spiritual ideals can be reached. So without religion, spirituality is zero. Religion means.. the....the.....

Q) Wherewithal?

A) No. Not wherewithal. The gymnasium where the mind is trained to withdraw from all these and turn towards the high. For good health, a gymnasium is necessary. Not only that; you must have good food and discipline. You must go to the gym to develop all your muscles. Similarly, in order to evolve spiritually, it is not only sufficient that we know philosophy - which is in the Upanishads, etc. - but we must have a technology by which we can reach there. Purify your mind. Learn the way to turn your mind away from the outer world. find out which direction you should turn your attention to.......

Q) But this spiritualism you are talking about has often been the means to social exploitation. Many practitioners of faith have over the centuries hoodwinked, shortchanged and manipulated the weak and the gullible. Many societies have been kept under the yoke of religion for years and years, without hope of escape or redemption. Look how the church exploited people. Look at how Hinduism has exploited our illiterate masses and kept them shackled over centuries. Look at the track record of most religions and you will know what I mean. Where do you find purity in such a exploitative system? Why has religion allowed itself to be used as a tool for social subjugation or political aggrandizement?

A) Have you noticed that in India religion has never been organized? In the west, on the other hand, it has always been so. This is because Christianity had to organize. They had to fight with Rome. But when religion becomes organized it becomes a power - and power has always a tendency to be abused.

Q) The state versus the church, with both sides equally corrupt......

A) State versus church, right! Until at last the church won and became as tyrannical as the state was. This is natural. Now, in India, religion was never organized. Look at you. You are a Hindu - and yet you have the right to say you don't believe! You are allowed this freedom. But if a catholic had said this, his marriage would be annulled, his children would be in deep trouble, his body would not be accepted in the burial ground. He will be under tremendous pressure. In fact, from birth onwards, he is under the pressure of church. Namakarana ceremony, baptism, christening - and then, afterwards, marriage, the christening of the children and so on it goes on till you are dead and your body is buried. From birth till death, you are tied down to the church. If you don't obey they can throw you out.

Q) In Iran today, the mullahs are as tyrannical....

A) That is what I am saying about all these semetical religions. Hinduism, on the other hand, is absolutely open. You, as a Hindu, you want to go to church - go. You want to go to a temple - go. You want to do only social work - do. Why is this? Because we believe that in freedom alone can perfection can be reached. Art can grow only in freedom. Art can never grow under compulsions, under govt. rules. Freedom is very important. You feel like meditating - meditate. You like doing puja - do puja. There are no compulsions, no shackles restraining you. You understand?

When Hinduism has been so free for a long time and the average man is not given education nor taught what is religion, slowly the whole thing becomes tainted. This happened around the 16th century in India. Power politics came into play. Religion when mixed with politics stinks. Politics also stinks when it comes into touch with religion - and religion decays when politicians enter the fray. In India, they were separate: the king and the rajguru. Dasharata, when he had problems went to Vishwamitra. Vishwamitra clearly said he had no prejudices and no party. He was impartial. He said: "This is dharma. If you think you can do it, do it. If you can't do it, do whatever you can to serve your country, and suffer the consequences.

But slowly and slowly power became hereditary - as we are now trying to do, you know! (Laughs - [Note from BVP - recollect that the interview was in 1980]). My son, my son, my son! By the time the third generation of kings came, things went awry. The first generation really sweated and craved out a kingdom. The second generation at least saw their fathers going out to fight. The third generation never saw their fathers going out anywhere. Subsequent generations thought it was their privilege to rule. `Some people are lucky - I am a king by birth!' So, by no fault of his, he became purely indulgent. The rajguru also became the same. The fourth great grandson of the rajguru had nothing spiritual about him. He said : " All right, raja saab, aap raja hai, why should you get into this mess? Whatever important papers are there, I will bring you and you sign them. You have the harem and you can drink from morning onwards. That is your privilege - why deprive yourself?" The raja said `Perfectly right!' So the raja was soon a de jure raja; the de facto raja was the minister. Now the minister wanted to hold all the reins of power in the community. How could he do so? How can you hold power in a community? You must have a party. So the rajguru - who was a Brahmin - brought the brahmanical community with him as his party. He became their patron. In those days, you couldn't be a patron by giving someone an import license. You couldn't give money because there was no money. What was available? Only land. So land was given to all the Brahmins.

Now land is a funny thing. Any amount of money you get, you can digest it, use it. What will you do after you get three acres of land? You, your wife and three children - how will you plough more than three acres? So you need an army of workers, who must work for you almost for nothing and bring in the profit. Only then is it profitable, isn't it?

Q) So you create your own serfdom as well as your army?........

A) Of course. But where will you get it as long as the Vedanta is prominent in your society? Everyone knows he is from Narayana; everyone is equal. So, the scripture books became dangerous for political maneuvering in those times. So, the Brahmin class said: `Proscribe the scriptures.' Not just did they proscribe the books they said: `The non-Brahmins cannot study Sanskrit.' Just as it is happening today. Ministers don't want anybody to study in English schools - while their own sons must go to English schools! (Giggles) You see! It's repetition. Man is not intelligent enough to think up a new mischief! (laughs) He repeats his old mischiefs.

So, Sanskrit was removed. They were told: `You are not to read the scriptures; we will tell you everything.' And what they told them was Rama Krishna stories. Five hundred years of this! Today, the brahmin doesn't even know the scriptures! For, why should he study! All the others accept that he is a brahmin. So why should he worry? So you can blame neither the brahmin today, nor the a brahmin. Neither of them know the scriptures! They must be retaught. And that is what we have been trying to do for the last 20 - 30 years. Now I think the average, intelligent, educated man knows something of his scriptures. At least he knows the spelling of Upanishads. Before that, they had not even heard of it!

Q) But the average, intelligent Indian is also a prey to a lot of hocus - pocus being peddled around in the name of religion?

A) Look. After all, if I believe my thumb is God, it does not matter. The mind returns to it and the individual gets his consolation. Why do we have all these recreations like the cinema, for instance? Are they not meant to make human society happy? Why not religion - if that can make some people happy, give them some comfort?

Q) What about the current Hindu pantheon of Gurus and Godmen who run their private industries, not just in this land but also overseas? What do you, as a scholar of Hinduism and one of the most distinguished teachers, think of this strange, esoteric bunch of faith - peddlers? I am referring to some of the well - known names like Satya Sai Baba, Balyogeshwar, Rajneesh, Mahesh Yogi, Ananda Murthi - or even Krishnamurthy. I know I am clubbing completely different kinds of people together. But what I am trying to ask you is whether you think Hinduism deserves such a vast variety of masters who often suggest completely different routes to salvation. In fact, the routes are quite often contradictory.

A) Have you watched the followers? They are all voluntary, free - no one forces them. They follow these masters because they find some consolation. So, at different levels, all of them are valid. I know that there are too many teachers, too many masters, too many gurus in this country. But I would wish there were more.

Q) Sure. As long as they are teachers - not quack healers or exploiters of the innocent.

A) Don't think that all teachers will teach only at the B.Sc level. Or that the M.Sc level teacher can teach everybody. There are students who must be taught only alphabets, only addition and subtraction. Isn't this true? In education, there are various levels and various teachers. If the M.Sc teacher, is given an elementary class to teach, he will become confused, go screaming mad. The elementary teacher cannot, similarly, take M.Sc classes. So, at different levels, different teachers, different teachers are valid. They don't know beyond their levels; just as their students cannot understand beyond the levels at which they speak.

Q) But would you like teachers of religion to also educate their students at whichever level they may be - with miracles, faith cures, materializing laddoos and Seiko watches out of nothing; or by teaching them that salvation and self - realisation lies exactly six inches below the navel? Do you think magic and group sex have anything to do with an understanding of religion?

A) It does not matter whether I believe in these things or not.....

Q) Do you think these are valid ways of learning and Self - discovery?

A) Are they not? Look at them. Go there one morning or evening and see the crowds. Don't look at the Sai Baba; Look at the people. See what an amount of consolation and comfort they are getting. Why the hell should I take it away from them? When you - the writer, the politician, the socialist, no one is giving them any comfort. This one single man moving about there, with every body prostrate before him, feeling so very happy about it. If one can give by mere darshan so much of comfort, why do you want to take it away from them?

Let them have it. Just as a few whiskeys inside him make him feel good. Maja maja hai! We know that drinking is not a maja; but the drunkard thinks that it is great fun. Rock and Roll is a head splitting noise to a sensitive musician but, then, there are youngsters who enjoy it thoroughly. Why do you grudge them their enjoyment?

Q) But that means it is a lower level of consciousness......

A) Yes, I admit it. It is a lower level of consciousness and, therefore, they can only appreciate it at that lower level. When they come higher, they will drop it themselves. There are many who have dropped Sai Baba. they went there first. It was an introduction for them; they were stunned by what the man could do. My intellect cannot explain it. It is scientifically impossible to explain. And when you ask him, he doesn't say it is all because of his glory. He says, you can also get this power. Turn towards him and sing the song.

The man sincerely does it for sometime and then drops him because he starts finding higher levels of consciousness. Then he wants to study the Gita. So he comes to me. He starts reading the Gita. And then wants to go to the Upanishads. I teach him. then he wants to go to the original. To the Sanskrit. So they go to Benares. I know thousands who have thus streamed out - from lower to the higher and higher. Those who are sincerely striving to quieten the mind and experience the world. I am not saying everyone - for everyone is not a Mozart or an Einstein. There are many science students; but there's only one Einstein.

Q) Would you believe, like some Godmen do, that liberating the libido is the only way for man to transcend his environment and achieve spiritual freedom?

A) Before answering this question, I would like to know, what is this word `godman'. everybody uses it; it's become a journalistic lingo.

Q) Well, let me try and explain. There are religious teachers: we call them gurus. Then, there are those who think they are more than teachers: we call them Godmen. I confess the term is a bit tongue in cheek. But then, what can you do when an acharya graduates into a Bhagwan or a materialiser starts with fistfuls of vibhuti and then begins to bring out latest model quartz watches? The gurus and the Bhagwans don't like being clubbed together. What can I do?

A) But what is God? (Laughs) Unless you know what is God how can you call anyone God-man or man-god? Man I know. But what is God?

Q) Bhagwan?

A) Bhagwan. Does it really mean God? A Bhagwan has certain qualities: he is a man who is capable of commanding nature, who can attract a large number of people, who can cure diseases, who can do something ordinary people can't. It is someone who has that mental power to forecast things correctly, to read other people's minds. These qualities were in Krishna and, therefore, we called him Bhagwan. And since Krishna is considered an avatar in this country, by association of ideas, the word can come to mean God. I have no objection. Because, according to Vedanta, even you, who do not know, you are nothing but a Bhagwan. I am a man. I can prove to you right now! But because too many people are sitting here, it will not be decent. But I don't know whether I am a God man. (laughs).

Q) To get back to my question now, do you think liberating the libido has anything to do with spiritual self realization?

A) What is the libido? According to Vedanta shastra, it is the pressure of the past on you. Habit. The tendency to repeat ad nauseum one's past actions - we call it vasanas. Vasana means fragrance - the fragrance of what we have done and thought of. Whatever we do - karma - and whatever we think of, they all leave impressions on us, they pressurize us to repeat ourselves. For five years, you drink a cup of coffee at three in the evening. After that, you don't need a wristwatch. Whatever you may be doing at that time, you will crave for that cup of coffee.That is the pressure of the past. It takes away your freedom to think anything original.

The average man is, therefore, only a repetitive bird, repeating like a tota, like a parrot. Unless these past pressures are eliminated, we cannot rethink and review the world we are seeing around us. We see now through our own mind coloured by the past. So to recognize the world as it is and to re-estimate one's own place in the scheme of things, first cleanse your mind. All the scriptures in the world tell you this. When the mind is freed from the past, it is free to fly into newer climes and make new discoveries. Only then does the mind become meditation - worthy -- just as a plane must be air - worthy, a boat must be ocean - worthy, a car road - worthy.

Some of the greatest of men have been notoriously immoral in their activities. This is the dichotomy in their personality. So spirituality is insisting upon self unfoldment. Lift yourself by yourself. So says the Gita. For it gives you the logic behind every term used...

Q) So you believe in logic?

A) O yes! The average man is intellectual. But the truth lies beyond the intellect. With the intellect we have to go beyond the intellect. Isn't it? So I must first convince the intellect that it is logical, only then will I consider the possibility that there is something beyond. Then there is a method by which from the intellect you can take off - it's called contemplation. So, first, the intellect has to be satisfied. Only then can we know freedom.

Q) What is this freedom you speak of?

A) At this moment, what is your freedom? Your freedom is to go on a marked line. If at early morning bed tea is not there, you are most miserable. If at the next moment your wife doesn't smile the exact amount, you are miserable. If she smiles too much, you are worried. Why is she grinning at me? And if it is less, then she is not happy. How dangerously balanced are our joys! Thereafter, comes breakfast. I must have the things I like. Nothing else. If it's anything else, life instantly becomes a misery.

When I go to office, everybody must smile at me. Everything you do, from morning till evening, you are repeating yourself. You have no freedom at all. I can make you angry in no time. I will confuse your papers on your table - change them around - and then look through the window: I will see you dancing around in anger! (Laughs loudly) Thus, we give our strings to the world outside to pull and make us dance as it wishes. We have no freedom. The outer world dictates to us all the time. And the mind and intellect persecutes us. I am a poor slave, being kicked from within by my own equipment and from without by the world around me. What freedom are you talking about? Only man who is detached can be free. he is like the wind.

Q) How does a man detach himself from the world around him?

A) O Narayana! That is the whole yoga, including rituals! (Giggles) The rituals which you rejected, including those as well. All this is necessary in order to learn the art of withdrawing yourself. Stand apart as a witness to everything. Even anger. They are in me: I am not in them. You must feel this. Just as a ocean does. How do you think an ocean will introduce itself? These what you see as waves are in me - but I am not in them.

Each wave conceiving itself as a separate entity has a birth date; it grows, reaches its highest peak, becomes vain, then it starts dipping. `O Lord, what have I done that this should happen to me!'. Until, at last, the small waves start eating it up. `Millions of waves have I eaten up myself -- and now these waves are eating me up!' the downcast wave starts screaming. Like this, millions of waves are always screaming. It is these stupid waves that make the roar of the seas. Now the ocean says: `The waves are in me, yes. Without me, there are no waves. But the sorrows and joys of the waves are not mine.' For why should the ocean be happy when a solitary wave is rising? Or why should it cry when a wave is dying?

In this way, you will have to detach yourself. The body, the mind and the intellect are in you -- but you are not in them. You are not a shareholder in their joys and sorrows. only then can you become a man, free from the equipments of life. This is called freedom. Freedom for man. Mukti.

Q)But can a society like ours progress in materialistic terms and retain this spiritual freedom?

A) Material development is not possible without this inner development. Character is important. Why is that the Chinese and Japanese are so good? Why are Americans good at materialism? Isn't it because they have materialistic ethics, commercial ethics. We have nothing. I am not talking of spirituality. We don't even have commercial ethics. Anything we send out from India if it has a market, never carries on for too long. they tell you soon to stop it. For the quality falls after a few consignments. All we want is to get rich quick - because you know that you are becoming rich not because of your quality but because of an accident, and you want to take advantage of it.

Q) But you are now talking in materialistic terms yourself. The ideal of progress is totally western. We never had progress on an altar in our country. In fact, this western concept of progress should strike us as illusory, Maya. Why are you, a Swami, impressed by such norms of progress? Isn't this kind of progress alien to our culture?

A) No. Lakshmi is worshipped in India. But we never worship Lakshmi without Narayana. What we want now is so called materialistic civilization that is Narayana should be ignored and we should wink at Lakshmi. Be careful. Lakshmi without Narayana, wealth without character is suicidal. A young man suddenly gets money; he will damn himself. A man of character, if he has got wealth, will use it wisely.

Q) Can modern science and religion coexist intelligently -- without constantly being at war? Must they walk separate routes?

A) You are talking in the language of the 19th Century. A century back, this question was valid. It no longer is. Physics and metaphysics have merged today (laughs).

Q) Are you referring to the attempts of people like Frijof Capra to bring Western physics and Eastern mysticism on a common platform? Are you referring to books like The Tao of Physics or The Dancing Wu Li Masters?

A) Yes, yes, yes. Beautiful books. Like the one about the repair of motorcycles.

Q) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

A) Ai Yea! Magnificent Book! Like our vedic textbooks. We have always had materialistic sciences studied together with religious sciences. This integration was always there in our scriptures. Ayurveda - the medicinal science - is a part of our Vedas. It is only through the materialistic sciences that we can reach out to the higher. We have been sent here to exhaustively chew the world around us - to chew it and spit it out with no regrets. If a man runs after women and wine, don't blame him. Let him do it intelligently. There's nothing wrong in that.

Q) But what is life and how can one learn to face death with greater confidence?

A) With Knowledge. even today, in Africa, they are afraid of a thousand things which we were afraid of many years ago. Knowledge is the answer to all fears, even of death. Today you are afraid of death because you don't know what it is. Fear arises out of ignorance. You are afraid of going into a dark room. Why? You don't know. Once you know there is nothing there, you are not afraid. Death is a fear because you are not given enough time to think about it.

Q) And you don't know what lies beyond it....

A) That's right. Similarly, many people are afraid of lightning. Every lightning, they think, has their name on it. Once you understand that the lightning that you see can never strike you -- that it has already struck somewhere else - you will never be afraid. The lightning that gets you, you will never see. Knowing this, you will, thereafter, always enjoy the fireworks in the sky - for lightning is one of the most beautiful sights you can ever see.

Q) So freedom from fear is.....

A) Freedom from everything. It is the first step towards true knowledge. Only when you are ignorant, you are afraid.

Q) Is there life after death?

A) What is death? Can you tell me what is on the other side? (laughs) Death is the empty body you leave behind when you leave your body and go away. So death is a state of the body and not you. (Claps with glee) who is you? Who is in this body? Who is now experiencing everything through the body?

Q) The self?

A) No. The mind and intellect, the inner equipment operates through the body. Right? I hear through my ears. I see through my eyes. I experience through my body, through my senses. I am the experiencer who experiences the outer world through this body. Just as I, in my business house, go to work everyday and through my business equipment -- the phones, computers, telex - I contact the outer world and do my business. When I gather all my equipment and move away from premises A to a better site B, I am born again in shop B. On the front of the shop A, I will write `moved to three blocks down, left' in American parlance. For I am there three blocks down. In the same way, when you move out of this body with everything that you have - all your equipment, your faculties - the condition of the body is called death. Every Body must die but nobody can die. This life of yours is just one incident in your eternal existence. You will appear again in another body - in fresh pastures, with a new body, with a new wife, with new children, new profession. (laughs) Maja hai marne me (it is fun to die).

Once you realise this, you will think of death as a great adventure. You will be anxious to die. Yeh to hum dekh liya; phir naya jagah dekhega ( I have seen this place; now I have to see a new place). The only things that hold you back are your attachments. The black money; the women in your life; the fixtures.

Play. Play with everything. With money, with everything in the world, knowing that you are here only temporarily. As a sojourner, not as a native of the place. Poet, writer, translator of the Upanishads - these are only parts of your present guise. Next time you will perhaps be a swami. Who knows?

Q) You have called schizophrenia `Arjuna disease' in one of your Gita talks. But it is no longer a human affliction. people, cultures, nations are suffering this break-up of personality. How can mankind cure this problem and find its true identity?

A) By reading the Gita. Arjuna conquered it by listening to Krishna. In the last chapter, he says: `I shall fight; did I say I won't? I don't remember having said I won't.' he conquered his indecision.

Q) But wasn't his indecision supremely moral? When a man refuses to fight, surely that is a moral decision in our time?

A) Such indecision is moral, true. But it can produce only disaster for the decision-maker and for the society. I won't say it's immoral but that which brings unhappiness to you and to the society is called evil. That which brings happiness to every one is a noble, virtuous act.

Q) But the same act, at different points of history, can have totally different connotations. It can be differently interpreted. Galileo was persecuted in his time. Today, he would be a hero, if he were to make the same kind of discoveries. Scientists, messiahs, poets and philosophers have been killed at some points of history and worshipped at others for saying almost the same things. How can you judge an act independent of its time frame?

A) Your attention is on the act. I am asking you to attend on the individual. let's take Rama walking away from the palace. When he walked away, he must have known that his father was very sensitive and might even die because of his decision to go away. The public said: `Remain Rama! Rama zindabad! Bharat murdabad!'. As the modern politician, Rama could have said: `The janata wants me: so I will stay.' But he said instead: `I must keep my father's promise. Even though it's my step mother. It's unjust I know, but it is a word given.' So he walked out. The readiness to sacrifice the comfort and security of the present, to live up to the ideals you have set for yourself is noble. That is a noble act. In Hinduism, the greatness of you lies in not what you possess but what you did with what you possessed. In the modern materialistic world, what you possess is the criterion of your glory. How you got it nobody questions. What you do with it. Nobody questions. In India, we are not concerned with what you have. It is what you did with what you had. This is in our vocabulary. In North India, a Swami is still called Maharaj. What is his job? Bhiksha. A swami is a beggar but still he is called a maharaj. Not just a Rajah. A maharaja. See how wonderful is our faith.

Q) But it is true in all faiths. When Mother Teresa gives up the securities of fer cloistered existence and chooses to come out and work with the poor and the dying, surely she is demonstrating religion in action. Most of us would have no interest in Mother Teresa, the catholic nun; but everyone of us deeply respects Mother Teresa, the social worker. The only religion of our time that has any respectability is religion in action. Not Hinduism, nor Christianity, Buddhism or Islam. Theologists can go to hell, as far as common man is concerned. We need those who actually work for social causes. For Love. Isn't this as it should be?

A). Perfect. But also remember that without Mother Teresa the nun you would never had a Mother Teresa the social worker. It is religion that is behind everything she does. So you cannot discount that. She is what she is because of her past.

Q) What is the future going to be like for man?

A) The future depends on the past modified by the present. Never ask anyone about the future. Not even an astrologer. The future is not in the sun, moon and the stars; it is not in the planets. The present is a product of the past; the future is past modified in the present. If you don't modify the past, you will continue it forever. Your future will be nothing other than the past.

Q) A last question. Do you believe in the existence of God or a supreme power?

A) Honestly speaking, if you want me to speak in a autobiographical mood, I will say I believe in God. But this question is illogical because my belief or disbelief is not going to help you or the world. You are inquisitive that's why you ask. It is my belief and you can't ask me why I believe. In belief there is no logic. I believe, full stop.

Recently, a youngster came to my ashram. He said: `Swamiji, yesterday I listened to your talk. Can I talk to you in private?'. So I asked everybody to go out. The youngster then said: `Swamiji, I don't believe in God.' When he said this, I asked him: Son, what God is this you are talking about? Which God are you not believing in? The fellow said:` Swamiji, this rascal God, who is the cause of all this confusion in the world, this poverty, death, infant mortality, these wars and so much of human suffering. I don't believe in such a God.' I said: Son, in this room at this moment there are two non believers. I also don't believe in such a God'. The fellow was flabbergasted. He said: `Then what God do you believe in?'

I said: Now that's a creative question. That I'll answer. So I clapped my hands and called everyone in - for there was nothing private about it anymore.

Yes, you have also asked me a creative question. My answer is simple: I believe in my God. Read your own translations of the Upanishads - read my introduction to them and you will know what that God is.

The present, added on to some period of time-becomes future. The present plus time is the future. So our present work plus the time in which we do and achieve things together becomes the future world. The future is not a continuity of the present world - it can never be. The present world is being handled, dandled, destroyed and created through this given period of time, and what remains will be the future world - good or bad, created or destroyed.

When we say that today's world is to be the future world, what we mean is, today's people and their contribution is that which is going to mold the world, its ways, and its life for the future. Today's people may not remain and survive in the future, but the expectation is, today's children will survive. Naturally, therefore, if the present children are molded in their attitudes, in their values, in their ideas, and in their ideals, we can expect a better and more organized world of tomorrow and achieve the design for the world that we hope for at this moment.

This future design may not come in our own life time, as it needs a long period of time for the changes to come. Change it will, but what kind of change is determined by the growing generation. Therefore, when we say that today's children are our future, we mean that we must strive now to mold the children to think correctly, to judge rightly, and to have the heroism to live up to those convictions. Today, India is in this sad condition because in the past the children seem to been neglected. In the past I feel they must have been neglected because of the texture of the people I see around today. There seems to be no intellectuals in our country, and a country without intellectuals has no future. All the progressive countries in the world are such because their progress is guided by, decided by, thought of, and planned by the intellectuals of the generation. In our country today, however, wherever I look, I only see animal human-beings, extremely selfish, never caring for other people or having a vision for the country, a love for the nation or a love for the people. These higher ideals have all been dried up. We seem to be like cattle - each one wanting to fill up his own belly, and perhaps breed vigorously! So the population increases and all the consequent problems arise.

So, whether in the political field, social field, economical field or even science field, India's contribution has been almost zero. We cannot be proud of our present times. How is it that we have fallen so low? Is it not because we have neglected to tend the present generation when they were young? That neglect of the past is shadowing us today and making today's world an ugly one - a very miserable and sad situation. Do you want in the future also, the country to be under a cloud of stupidity and selfishness or do you want a brighter world for our children to grow in?

We only suffer. We cannot come out of it immediately now; it is not overnight that things happen. It is not revolution that we are thinking of - but it is the evolution of a country's culture, its social status, its individual character. It is a slow process. So if the future is to be bright, we have to mold our children to think, not in our pattern which is disastrous - we have understood, but in a new pattern with a new inspiration, and with a new vision in their minds. Can we do it?

Everybody will accept the idea that our children are our future. True. But the implication of the idea, we have not realized or started thinking about. This understanding cannot happen just because some textbooks have been changed or because a lot of blabbering is going on in the newspapers and televisions - that there is going to be 'value-based' educational systems started around the country! Mere talk is not sufficient - it will not help.

We, the parents, must change. Children learn not from books. These higher values cannot be imparted to the students by institutions, by a society or a community, or even a committee. They imitate their parents. Unfortunately! Therefore, if their parents are vulgar...! In Ravana's kingdom every child will want to strive to become as vulgar as Ravana! In Hiranyakashipu's land everybody is another chhota Hiranyakashipu!

So it is said when Hiranyakashipu went to do tapas in the in the forest, Indra took the opportunity to do an experiment. He felt that if even one Hiranyakashipu was to great a threat to the good values of life, what would happen if every child growing up in that land wanted to be another Hiranyakashipu. Therefore, he collected all the pregnant ladies and took them to heaven where in that new atmosphere the children could be molded to become better people; the genes had gotten so bad that they had to be revitalized.

At that time, Devarishi Narada came along and in order to try his own experiment he requested to be given only one specimen - one pregnant lady - the queen of Hiranyakashipu. Narada took the queen to Vasistha's ashram where she was allowed to listen, day and night, to the discourses of Vedanta. In this way, though she herself may have understood very little, she was exposed to Vedantic ideas from the seventh to the tenth month of her pregnancy, and thus the child within her was remolded, not outside, but in the mother's womb - a pre-natal education.

It is that child who, as soon as he was born and brought back to the palace, became the great Prahlada! Though nobody taught him in this world, he was convinced of the higher values of life. His father was only anxious that he should become another Hiranyakashipu, but because of the pre-natal spiritual training, that one solitary little baby stood against the entire materialistic culture that was developing in the country at that time. He brought the country back again to the healthier and eternal values of the Upanishads.

But what is pre-natal education that mothers are giving their children today? Cinema, Video, those stupid big books, Hotel, Airport! These are the ideals you are feeding the children and when they come out as rakshasas you say, the children have gone astray! We don't understand what has happened to the world! It is our mistake. Let us have the square shoulders to accept that we are responsible for this terrible, monstrous age in which we are living at this moment.

So one little child can change the entire history of the country. That is how all the great men of the past were made - a Shivaji, an Einstein, a Tagore, a Mahatma Gandhi. From childhood onwards some ideas were inculcated into them and all of them, invariably, declare and shamelessly insist in their autobiographies and biographies, that for the greatness they achieved or for whatever good they were able to do, they were indebted to their mothers.

It is always the mother at home who gives the values and ideals to the child, who molds the mental thinking of the child. And when the mothers have left home and started wearing pants...! What do you expect? Your children are the future and the mothers are the molders of the children; if the mothers are monsters, what is the future going to be?

You may not like what I am saying, but I am on a platform where truth is to be brought out. Nobody else will do it because they all want a vote! I don't want a vote! I don't want anything from you.

So then friends, when we sit down and try to analyze how to remold and recast our future, we see that it is certainly through the children of today who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow. And we must supply them with a vision. But when the parents have neglected the child look at the vigorous dynamism of a Hitler, how crooked and ugly it became, and how through him the entire moral calibre of the whole of mankind has been brought down a few natches since the second world war: One solitary individual with a unhappy childhood, the neglected child of a cobbler - how he brought about disaster in the world outside.

Only when a plant is young and we are sincerely watching it, we can train the plant to grow straight. A plant can be trained but not a tree. If the tree has got a bend, it has got a bend - full stop! Then we can only trim the branches but not the trunk. Similarly, training of our children can only be done between the ages of 6 to 12, between ages 12 to 18 also can be done to an extent, but after 18 the tree has become set and one will have to go through fire in order to become hot and plastic enough to change. Once we have gone beyond the younger ages, it is not so easy to change our pattern of thoughts, our angle of vision, our attitude to things and beings. So early childhood is the time for training and mothers are mainly responsible.

The father can only come into the house like a storm in the evening, beaten out and wounded, angry with the world. He wants to explode somewhere or other but he dare not at the office; so if the children are in front of him they are the victims. But the mother cautions them saying " Get out and play It is coming!". She herself receives his anger with a smile or just stands silently, two tears running down her cheeks. Then perhaps a neighbour comes to borrow sugar, the father is in bad temper and yells "What do you want!" The mother, however, slips to the back door and secretly gives the lady the up of sugar she needs.

You see, for the child who is watching all this, his whole moral education is over with these two incidents. It is not many incidents that are necessary. Even if the father does sit down with the child for 10 minutes, what will he talk? Not the soft things of morality. He can only pump into the child the ideals of ambition, greatness, success "Beta, you must grow up and become a doctor, an engineer, you must earn a lot of money and have your own place, etc."

It is the mother alone who imparts the soft values, who gives to you the ideals of charity, goodness, tenderness, affection and forgiveness. She never imparts by giving you a discourse, but in her life the mother demonstrates these ideals and the child sees it, the idea becomes embedded in him.

But when the mothers themselves are wanting to grow mustaches and fight with man, the poor children are left - the soft touch gone. When the mothers have lost touch with the spiritual values of the country and the adult's lives have become loose and unethical, all the children also will be lowered down.

When the same children become youngsters they start looking around and they find that the values that have been given to them are all hollow, empty. They don't feel satisfied, but they dare not fight with the system around them. They want to escape. And how do they escape? Through drink, drugs. Are you not, then directly responsible for driving the youngsters to these self - ruinous, suicidal escapism? You think.

I am not accusing you though. I can't accuse because you never meant it. There is no motive behind it. But thoughtlessness has created this aberration in our society.

It is time now, therefore, that the ladies start learning the cultural values of the country - for the sake of the children and the future. Or, the only other alternative is to stop producing children - let the young girls become nuns. Just as when we have got a disease and so refuse to marry and beget children because they to would suffer; similarly, we are not psychologically prepared the responsibilities of motherhood. However, this is very difficult. Therefore, the other obvious choice is to learn the scriptures.

Don't you think that the television program of Ramayana has changed the colour of thinking in this country to a large extent? In Delhi, where I was just now, at that time on Sunday morning there was not even any traffic on the road. Everyone seeing Ramayana.! They didn't want to miss it. Why? In that old story you see the greater and nobler values being demonstrated which you are silently and expectantly hoping for in the youth of today. And you are charmed by it, because it belongs to the very genius of the country!

So, it is not so difficult to impart these ideas to the children. But we need workers - mainly girls. For it is only the motherliness of the lady that can impart these things to growing children.

So all schools must start a program, a period during the week to give special training to the teachers in how they may, whenever possible in their classrooms, make the children understand that there is an unseen hand which molds the affairs of the entire universe.

Why are you afraid to have such programs? Christian churches can do it, Islam is doing it in their schools; how is it that the Hindus alone cannot do it? And if the Hindus have no morality, India has no morality because in this country 82% are Hindus, the vast majority. However great the minority is, the country is what the majority are. Is it not?

Nowadays, however, children grow up as an unnecessary byproduct and the parents don't know what to do with them in the course of living. Between the father, the mother, and child, there is no inter- relationship. Breast-feeding has stopped - and that is the time when the mother intensively contemplates, looking into the eyes of the child, and they become intimate at the mental level. The infant also, while suckling, looks into the face of the mother. They feel extremely devoted to each other. But now that entire system is gone. We have to bring back the system which is healthy, which in our neglect we have thrown away.

Lastly, it is not sufficient only that the children be trained in the higher values of life. We must teach them to have the courage and heroism to live upto their convictions. That is another very important thing in India today. It is not that we actually have no intellectuals - we do; but unfortunately they are all impotent. Impotent intellectuals and congenital idiots are equally useful to the society. Meaning, they are not useful at all. Nobody has got the guts to think independently and to declare to the government what they are thinking. They are very eloquent in the coffee-houses, restaurants, etc., but will they tell the government? Never! Why? Because they are afraid that if they stand against the direction in which the world is going round and declare with logical reasoning how the present policies are wrong, their security will be in jeopardy. Think. When you are afraid, that intellectualism is no intellectualism at all.

In a country like Russia where we know that if you say one word against the government you will be prosecuted mercilessly - yet, how many dissidents are rising there? They are called honest intellectuals. A real intellectual cannot keep quiet when he sees an injustice, and he doesn't care what the consequences are!

Therefore, we must teach the children not only to have right values and convictions of their own but also the heroism to live upto them. If that kind of training we can impart to them - even to one child - we have proved that today's children are our future.

We are neglecting the children unconsciously. I don't say that Hindus or Indians are brutes, that they are deliberately destroying the children. No. But in your thoughtlessness, lack of correctly viewing things, you have become only machines to produce children. You expect the government to feed them and feel that you have nothing more to do than to bring out another child next year. Think. That is not motherhood or fatherhood. We have to take responsibility for molding and beautifying the child, prepare him to face the world of tomorrow and to lead and guide the world of the future. It is a tremendous responsibility. Once you realize the responsibility you will be handling the children more intelligently.

Even animals and birds train their children properly! Is there a bird that has neglected its young and not taught them how to be balanced on their wings! The mother spends time for it. It is only among intelligent human beings that the parents neglect their children.

Don't point out that it is a political situation. Political and economic situations are lived by whom? By people. So it is the people who create the good or bad destiny for the society or the country. And the people were once children: but when not molded carefully they become ugly in their character, in their attitude, in their behavior, and as a result the chaos comes.

The remedy is us. We are not giving enough respect, reverence, true love or affection to our children. Nature herself will guide every mother in how to train the children.

God alone does nothing. He is Aboktha. Man must strive to improve the world. Man alone, also, would not be able to do anything. He needs the blessings of things which are called God - the blessings of nature. Though spirituality and religion should not be organized, it can be unfolded; spiritual vitality can be unfolded within the heart of a human being, only in perfect liberty and freedom. The world today has moved to a situation wherein nothing can be done without organization. Even to bless the society, to spread values of life, organization has become very important and necessary. Organization is not in the Hindu tradition. In Vedic days, such organizations were not there. So, if you look for sanction of organized religion or the sanction of Vedic books, you will find none. But as the number of people in the society increased, the problems of the community multiplied, then religion could no longer sustain the needs or answer the needs of the community.

And thus the Puranic days came when religion first started conforming itself as an organization, centered in the various temples in India. But even at that time, there was only a minimum number of them--Badrinath, Benaras, Rameshwaram and Dwarka. Then, five hundred years B.C., organization became more urgently needed and the first Hindu who brought organization in the religion was Lord Buddha. Buddha had to organize his team of workers, unified as bikus, through centers called Buddha Vihars. Within another six or seven hundred years, Buddhism flourished and decayed and became very decadent. And thus, the Indian spiritual atmosphere became very chaotic. Hinduism also decayed. Buddhism also decayed. Spiritual values decayed.

It was at that time that Adi Shankara appeared on the horizon and brought about a certain amount of swift organization into Hinduism. More and more temples were built and as temples became prominent in society, they became the source of inspiration for the community. The temples became the center from where spiritual ideas and thought were spread into the community. But in time even these temples could no longer inspire the members of the community and they also reached a point of decadence. Again, in the nineteenth century, Vivekananda tried to organize Hinduism and the Ramakrishna Mission came into being. These Missions are nuclei for developing, perpetuating and spreading spiritual and ethical values, religious and moral ideals. There are Christian Missions, Islamic Missions, Buddhist Missions, Hindu Missions, and World Missions. We view them as organizations wherein inspired people come together to work and serve in the society for spreading spiritual values and to improve the moral quality of life in the community.

After Ramakrishna and Vivekananda's time, whenever the great acharyas appeared, they got a number of followers who organized themselves for the purpose of their own self-development. Many missions came about. Each acharya was, in his lifetime, able to inspire a large number of people to organize themselves so that they were more effective in their work. These missions were established as a result of a lot of human effort. Many social and material sacrifices went into creating temples, schools, hospitals and colleges. After all that, as soon as the Master leaves, the Mission collapses; because our loyalty is to the individual personalities and not to the ideal. The Mission's members do not have the vision, but only the membership of the Mission. The members are not inspired by the ideal that the teachers stood for.

We need a fundamental change of attitude. Otherwise we will never be able to organize ourselves for the development of society. We need to understand that an old vision may not suit changing times. We must adapt the vision to the new requirements of modern life. If that elasticity is not there in the vision, that mission becomes redundant. It is not that the vision was wrong, but societies are constantly changing and if the mission and its vision is not elastic enough to accommodate new demands of the community, the mission again fails. Adaptability has always been the quality of Hinduism. Hinduism has constantly changed, has always embraced the new dimensions and demands of society. When cultural revolutions lose this elasticity, religion becomes a dead carcass also been lost. They think it is only another organization with vested interests. Learn to keep a vision. Learn to have an ideal. Discover it in yourself. No one else can give it to you. True heroism is in living uncompromisingly up to your ideal. The world may threaten you. The community will not easily leave you free. But he is the hero who defiantly stands, firmly rooted, in his own conviction. That one, even a single individual who inspires the entire population, is the true hero, inspiring generations and generations thereafter. This uncompromising heroism of living up to the ideal is the very core of our avatars.

Whether it is Krishna or Rama, what is it that we glorify in them? They had heroism in their life. Otherwise they were like other human beings. We worship them, we revere them because they had heroism to live up to their ideals. Living up to their ideals was not easy. Jesus was crucified. Mahatma Gandhi was shot. But what does it matter? One day everyone has to die. You have not taken a contract that you will die in a hospital bed, surrounded by wife and children. Once you have found the joy and glory, why not die living up to your ideal?

That consciousness can arise in you when the vision is clear. He who has a vision rises to the highest. That vision is not a contract; it is not written on paper. It must be enshrined in the hearts and minds of everyone. And where there is a vision, when even a single member has developed and cultivated this courage, this heroism to live up to the vision, then that mission cannot die. It is such a vision that can serve the society, the community and the world at large.

It was a young man, modern, tight pants, tobacco pipe stuck at waist, trim thin moustache. He spoke Emglish with an Americanized drawl, and was evidently one of our university products, with higher education abroad. Sophisticated, to the points of his pointed toes.

Swamiji beamed. "Excellent!" With a broad welcoming smile, nodding his head slowly, Swamiji continued: "That's fine. I like you. You are the man I have been wanting to meet. I like your outspokenness. You are intelligent and you think independently. You have the courage to speak out your conviction, straight from the shoulder, as they say. Now come, WHAT KIND of GOD is it, that you don't believe in?"

The young man, who had made his statement about his non-believing, with a little hesitation, probably at his own audacity at denying GOD before a God-man, was pleasantly surprised at Swamiji's cordial tone and benign smile, and, feeling encouraged, went on:

"This God, who sits above the clouds, and judges men, and dispenses favours and punishments by remote-control, at his own sweet will, don't you think Swamiji, it is all hocus pocus?"

Swamiji laughed. "Shake hands, young man. I am entirely with you. Now, we are two, together. I too, don't believe in THAT KIND OF GOD. But........hmm, did ypu have breakfast before coming?"

"Yes, Swamiji."

"Well, What did you have for breakfast?"

"The usual things, porridge, toast, scrambled eggs, coffee...."

"Eggs. That's nice. Eggs! Now, where did the eggs come from Ram, that's your name isn't it?"

Ram, with his brows raised, feeling that Swamiji was leading up to something, said: " I don't exactly know, probably one of those new poultry farms near Poona".

Swamiji: "I don't mean that. How are eggs made? Do they grow in fields, or are they made in factories?"

"Simple. I think you are trying to pull my legs, but all the same I'll answer you. Hens, of course. Hens lay eggs, you know!" Ram said with an air of flippancy.

Nodding his head, up and down, thoughtfully, Swamiji continued: " I see, I see, so the eggs come from hens. Now where do the hens come from?"

Ram, an intelligent man, could see the trap he was being led into. He started saying: "Of course from.....". Then wide eyed, looked at Swamiji silently.

Swamiji smiled: "So, eggs come from hens, hens come from eggs, which again come from other hens, and so on, ad-infinitum. Can you, Ram, say with any certainty, which was the first cause? Egg or hen? How and why?

Swamiji, now addressing all the devotees present, went on: "You see, God is not just a person or individual, sitting in a palace above the clouds, dispensing favours. It stands to reason that every effect must have had a cause prior to it. The watch that you are wearing did not make itself. Your breakfast did not cook itself. There was a cause, in each case. The cause must have emerged from a previous cause. GOD is now the first cause. The sole cause. The UNCAUSED CAUSE. There was no cause before Him. He is the oldest, the most ancient, He was before TIME. The Sanaatanah, the Puraanah. This `Causation hunting' is the favourite pastime of the evolving human intellect -- trying to trace everything to its ultimate origin. That which is beyond the point at which the intellect gets stalled, is G-O-D. The intellect cannot come to a conclusion as to the ultimate cause as in the age - old example of the hen and the egg. `Thus far -- not farther' is the limitation of the capacity of the human intellect."

Ram was flushed with excitement. He was thrilled. In a faltering voice he asked " There does seem to be something in what you say, Swamiji. Am I to understand that THAT is God?"

"That, which you now speak of as GOD, my boy, the muslim calls Allah; the christian refers to as "My father in Heaven"; the Parsee as Ahura Mazda. These are a few of the different ways in which HE or IT is referred to, but all are referring to the SAME SUPREME PRINCIPLE. The cause behind all causes. The source of all that was, now is, and ever will be. The Vedas refer to it as BRAHMAN, the Absolute, the infinite. THE TRUTH IS ONE. THE WISE SPEAK OF IT VARIOUSLY."

" But, Swamiji, the description does not seem to be complete. Is that all that God is? How can one come to know Him?"

"Now, you are really getting somewhere. I have not `described' God. He cannot be described. To define is Him is to defile Him. What I pointed out only constitutes one way, one manner, of approaching the Truth. It is just one aspect. Now, Your second question asks `How can one come to know Him?'

`Know him!' He cannot be `known' as you know this table or this chair or your wife or your pipe. He is not an object of the intellect. He is the VERY SUBJECT. Have you heard of the great disciple of the Kenopanishad who approached the Master and enquired :"Revered Sir, What is IT, directed by which the mind cognizes objects, the eyes see, the ears hear and so on?' The master cryptically answered :"It is the eye of the eye; the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind'. In fact It is the VERY Subject that enables the eyes to see, the ear to hear etc. It is not an object of the senses or the Mind or the Intellect. Hence, to answer your question, I have to tell you that you cannot make God an object of Knowledge.

An example will elucidate the idea. You are walking along a dark country road at night, occasionally illuminating your path with the aid of a battery torch; you want to know how the torch gives light; you unscrew the torch, you will not be able to see the battery cells, as the bulb will not emit lighty unless powered by the battery of cells. Similarly, the eyes, the ears, the mind and the intellect, all of which get their own power to function from the LIFE PRINCIPLE, cannot understand IT as an object. God is thus conceived of as the life principle, in every one."

The audience sat spell bound listening to Swamiji, exposition of a difficult vedantic truth in easy lucid style.

"Then Swamiji, you say that God or Truth is something abstract, that cannot be seen or heard or touched -- or even thought of. Am I right?"

" You are very much right. In fact, God is all this and much more. The Bhagawad Geeta says: `Weapons cleave It not; fire burns It not; water wets It not; wind dries It not. This self cannot be cut, nor burnt nor wetted nor dried.' It is not material; It is not matter, understand."

"Why did you `Self'?"

"The Supreme, Life Principle, is also the SELF in you, in me and in everybody. It is the innermost core of your personality. The popular misconception is that `man is a body, with a soul'. That it is not correct. The Truth is that `Man is THE SOUL, in a body'. He is eternal. The role of the body is likened to a worn out garment that is discarded by the wearer at his will."

Now, the other members of the audience who had been listening with awe and reverence, took the oppurtunity to clear their doubts.

"Swamiji, if God cannot be seen or thought of, is an abstraction, is there any significance to idol worship?"

"Of course there is a lot. When your dear son is in America, and you cannot see him whenever you want, do you or do you not get solace by looking at his photograph? You do know that the photo IS NOT YOUR SON, but only a piece of paper with various tones of grey, but it reminds you of your beloved boy and his great love for you. So also the idols in temples are to remind the devotees of the ideal, the Supreme. Since the human mind cannot conceive of a formless Supreme, God is conceived of in the form as represented by an idol. To the earnest devotee, the idol appears as a living embodiment of his Lord, and he goes into ecstasy at its sight. It is, however, necessary to remember that the idol is NOT God, but represents God."

" Why is it, Swamiji, that as in Christianity or Islam, a particular day of the week is not earmarked in Hinduism for temple worship?"

At this question, Swamiji drrew himself up, straightened and roared at the top of His voice; " HINDUISM IS NOT A PART TIME RELIGION." He then explained at length that aspiration to associate with divinity cannot be restricted to any particular time." Have you heard of the school boy who said that `the earth is round on Sundays and flat on other days'? So also, a man cannot be made to be divine on Sundays and devilish on all other days. (Maybe, most of us are that way!)

So constant practice, frequent association with the good etc., are needed. The temple visits and worship should elevate the mind of the seeker and help him to keep his mind in a higher plane. He should also take other steps to continue the purification of the mind at all times of the day, at home, in the office, at the market place."

"What is a pure mind, Swamiji?"

"A pure mind is one which is calm, free from agitations. Agitations are caused mainly by our likes and dislikes and desires. Desires spell disaster, fulfilled or frustrated. Mahatma Gnadhi was very fond of the `Sthitha Pragna' portion of the second chapter of the Bhagawad Geeta, in which the causes and consequences of desire are most graphically described.

It is the ladder of fall: "When a man thinks of objects, attachments for them arises; from attachment, desire is born; from desire (unfulfilled) arises anger; from anger comes delusion; from delusion loss of memory, the destruction of discrimination; from destruction of discrimination he perishes."

Swamiji added: " The Lord also points out then the three great entrances to hell are lust, anger and greed." One in the audience asked: "I have read a good deal Swamiji, I also have convictions. Yet, to put these values in practice is my problem."

Swamiji :"This was exactly Arjuna's problem. The Lord advised him, Recognise your real enemies. They are desire and anger, born of passionate nature, all devouring and sinful'. Knowing your enemies will enable you to destroy them. Knowing your weaknesses, you will make efforts to discard them. Once you locate a dead rat in your wardrobe, that was emitting foul odour, you will promptly pick it up by the tail and throw it as far away as possible."

"Our sastras have laid down a clearcut procedure. The three - fold practice consists of Sravana, Manana and Nidhidhyasana - Hearing is not in one-ear-out-the other, `It is attentive listening to discourses on our great scriptures (including reading them), contemplating on the ideas contained therein, and lastly meditation.

Many people come and tell me that they have gone through the Geeta many times. I tell them `Let the Geeta go through you once atleast. It will do you more good.'

Not just hearing or reading but absorption of the great ideas contained therein, assimilating them, and living those values will alone produce a radiance in the life of an individual. Proper understanding, and correct attitudes are important. For example, we often meet the allegation that Hinduism is an `out-of-the world religion' meant only for the recluse. The spirit of Hinduism is not understood by those who say this. Wealth is not taboo for the seeker, but the constant craving for wealth IS. Property is not prohibited, but one is enjoined to use it in the service of society.

The vedantic concept of renunciation has nothing to do with have or have-not, in a physical sense; it means the attitude of non-attachment. The classical example of our ancient lore is that of Emperor Janaka, living in the luxury of a palace, but still considered such a great saint and sage that great aspirants went to him for guidance.

If you ask me `how to start', my answer is `Just start'. when? Now !

Today is the best day. A better day will not come.

The greatest master who lived and worked for the cause of religion in India, Adi Sankara, has laid down the prescription:

"Bhagawad Geeta and Vishnu Sahasranama are to be chanted; always the form of the Lord of Lakshmi is to be meditated upon. The mind is to be led towards the company of the good. wealth is to be shared with the needy".

Now, many people wait for retirement to take to religion. They will never take to it, because they will have new problems in the way.

"There goes the lunch time bell. All of you please have prasad at the annakshetra before you go."

Hari om! Hari Om!! Hari Om!!

To build a new edifice with fresh materials is comparatively easier than to repair an old, neglected palace, ruined by time and disuse. The mother of all religions, Hinduism, has a very firm foundation and a strong edifice, built with an extreme sense of beauty with many artistically built-in surprises. But for more than 1,500 years it has been neglected, abused, and misused, so that in spite of its heavily built charms and artistic proportions, today it stands as an ugly dilapidated Temple of Truth. To repair and rebuild the fallen columns is the work that is now facing the Hindu community.

In this ugly edifice, living together packed in its limited living space, the occupants feel no more any pride in their sacred home, nor do they feel any comfort and satisfaction to be under its leaking roofs. It is commodious enough to house all spiritually minded religious people in the whole world when once it is fully repaired and rebuilt. This should demand the cooperation and the involvement of every Hindu family. Can we inspire the necessary heroism in the hearts of all and the necessary muscle in the Hindu body politic? No doubt, we cannot. But all that we need now is only small groups of inspired Hindu youth working in every district of the country, with vigor and determination, demonstrating to all onlookers the great vision of a united, awakened, Hindu community, determined to discover a total Hindu renaissance.

The tradition of the world is that people come together in a spirit of cooperation only in the political and economic fields, but never in the fields of social revival, nurtured by a purely selfless sense of reverence to the past. If we can thus bring about such pockets of inspired activities, the millions of Hindus in India will draw a new inspiration and start their own seva independently, in their own individual environments.

Will the Hindu youth come forward to suffer and strive for rebuilding their own community, and therefore their own nation?

Just because you have accepted me as your President, you cannot sit back and hope that this sick, old man will accomplish any spectacular magic. Every community will have to lift itself by itself. The necessary inspiration is to bloom forth in the heart of each sincere worker. They must draw their inspiration from their clear understanding of the goal towards which they are all putting forth their efforts.

This we must achieve! We can achieve it! No doubt, we will achieve!

With Prem and Om,

Thy Own Self

Question: Swamiji, is it necessary to believe in reincarnation?

Swamiji: First, reincarnation is not a belief, it is an assumption of Hinduism. Religion must be supported by a philosophy which logically explains what I see and experience around me and its relationship to the Higher Reality. It is not necessary to accept the theory, but how else would you explain the differences, the injustices, you see in the world. If the explanation for one man being born as a leper's leprous son and another as a king's kingly son be the free will of God, then God becomes a power mad, lusty, partial Lord who blesses and curses according to His eccentric whims and fancies. This is against the observed rhythm and order that exists in all of nature.

Q: So reincarnation is a theory to explain why one man is born a king and another a beggar.

Swamiji: Yes, Man is a rational being who inevitably seeks a cause in every effect, and expects an effect from every cause. When man sees about him types, modes, kinds, and classes without number and observes that the experience of life as lived by two individual organisms is never the same, he naturally seeks a reason for the diversity. A Buddha, a Rama, a Ravana (a demon king), all had their own individual experiences of life, even though they were all sons of their respective royal fathers. Thus, to every given set of external circumstances, each entity reacts differently and each undergoes his unique experience.

When the disparities in life do not arise from any visible cause, they must be the effect of some invisible past cause or causes. Thus we arrive at the theory of reincarnation. If actions performed in the past bear fruit in the present as experiences, then we can conclude that we must have had embodiments in the past also.

Q: Why don't we remember any of our past lives?

Swamiji: Luckily, through the infinite mercy of God, nature has put a veil on the details of the past. Now, I ask you a question: what did you have for lunch last Saturday at noon?

Q: It must have been some vegetables and rice because that is what I always eat, but I don't remember precisely.

Swamiji: So you didn't bother to remember? So when we eat, at that time we enjoy the food. Afterwards, we forget because we have better things to do in life than to remember what we ate last week. You are the product of all that you have eaten, but, fortunately, the details are not available. In the same way, we don't remember all our previous births. Thank God that we cannot remember ! One wife with the present children are enough of a problem ! Can you imagine having the concern of 1,000 wives and 10,000 children ?

Although you do not remember all the thoughts and experiences you had in the last birth, the subtle impressions they left are still with you. They have, in fact, provided a motivation or a driving force for another manifestation, another birth as a human. So you are a product of all your past experiences; it cannot be otherwise. It is not by accident that you are what you are and I am what I am. We are all products of our own past. We Hindus believe in the reincarnation theory to explain these differences. But you do not have to extend the cause the effect pattern back to past lives. You can just look for the pattern in your present life, that's enough.

Q: Is there an interval between the departure from one body and entry into another?

Swamiji: This can be explained by the following example. When an officer is transferred from one city to another, say from Bombay to Delhi, he must first give up his charge and leave Bombay and then reach Delhi in order to take up his new appointment. He has handed over his duties at Bombay and is on his way to Delhi. If he is asked on the way if he is the officer, he will certainly confirm that, but when he is asked if he is an officer of Bombay or Delhi, he cannot answer, for, at that moment, he is neither in Bombay nor in Delhi. Yet he is still the officer inasmuch as he is getting paid for the interval period also. Therefore, the interval can be called the joining time. Similarly, when the subtle body leaves a given physical body in order to assume a new one, there must be an interval between the two events. The duration of this interval depends upon the relationship that you have with the body that you are shedding and the urgency you feel for the next embodiment.

Q: Can we contact the dead?

Swamiji: In our scriptures it is said that we can contact the dead, but the rishis strongly advise against it. They say that by calling our loved ones back here, we are perhaps asking them to come down into a lower world. If, at that time, our loved ones are at higher realms of experience, we stop their pilgrimage by calling them down, and instead of sending their blessings they will curse us. Some spirits, however, refuse to come down because they are not overpowered; thus they continue their pilgrimage to a higher plane.

Q: I am unhappy with my job because I have discovered that my boss is corrupt. He is requiring that I mislead some clients. Swamiji: Walk out !

Q: But I have to think of my family. Jobs are difficult to find these days.

Swamiji: If you have to work in this environment for the sake of your family, surrender all to the Lord. You follow the boss's exact instructions only. Carry out the tasks assigned to you exactly as he instructed, then mentally drop it. Don't worry about it or talk about it.

If you were really an honest person, you would not have been the one asked to do something dishonest. Corrupt, dishonest people quake in the presence of honesty. If you had been totally honest, the boss would not have had the guts to ask you to do something dishonest. Goodness has a positive beauty about it. Remember, it was your own past impressions that brought you to this situation. Now you have an opportunity to improve your attitude. All is for Him alone, good or bad.

Question: How can one impart values?

Swamiji: Values impartation must be started from the very beginning. Values are so subtle that even an elderly person will not be able to conceive the idea unless it is concretized in an individual acting those values in a given set of specific conditions. Thus when you relate Harishchandra's story to the children, they understand the compelling situations. Harishchandra's own son died, then the mother brought the body for cremation to that fellow who happened to be her husband who said, "Sorry, ten paise is the tax, you pay it." She said "I haven't got a pie. ""Then get out of here. My master has fixed me here to collect the tax. Wait here. When the master comes in the morning you discuss it with him. If the master says he has no objection, the matter could be settled." So the truthfulness, the honesty of words, you know all these from the story alone. You may forget the story but the idea goes in. This is the method. In our modern education we don't give the children any ideal. Data is given but no ideal to pursue. Ideals must be given. The story is not for history, it is for imparting an ideal. Give it to them and they will always check whether their action was morally good or not, beautiful or not. These children will grow up and in their togetherness will constitute the society.

The social behaviour in any part of the world, in any period of time, will be the sum total work of the team of people that constitute the society. Each individual functions in the world outside ordered by and governed by his thoughts. The quality and the nature of the thoughts are determined by what values the individual respects. If the values respected by the individuals are wrong, the individual's activities can never be good.

Similarly, if the values entertained by the community or the society are wrong, their total behaviour will be only bringing more and more sorrow to them. Hence, in modern times we are insisting upon value based education. The healthy values, psychologically healthy for the individual and, therefore, healthy for the community have been experimented upon and given out as moral and ethical principles.

First, we have to conceive and understand and appreciate these values. Thereafter, a mere possession is not sufficient. Each individual should learn to live upto them. In order to impart them to our growing children there is no way other than concretizing these values through the heroic stories of people who have lived these values… Hence the need for stories. The mythological stories of India are perfect and artistic examples on how to impart these values to children. Never can children's education be complete unless we impart to them a true appreciation of the eternal values of life and also help them to open up their sense of beauty and rhythm, their aestheticism and ethicism. That is the reason why we not only try to mould them with our stories of heroism and excellence in character but also give them a free choice to discover and develop their inner secret talents for music, dance, painting, etc. if has been found very rewarding in all our centers.

Q: Although each action in itself is relative, yet there are certain commandments, what we call values in life, that are recommended by all religions. For instance, truthfulness. What makes speaking the truth valuable? Why is it advised as a general principle?

Swamiji: Truthfulness consists mainly in uttering a thought as it is actually perceived. Ordinarily, a liar is one who does not have the moral courage to express what he sincerely feels. This disparity between thought and words creates in his mind a habit to entertain a sort of "self - cancellation" of thoughts. This impoverishes the individual's mental strength, will power, and dynamism. Such an exhausted mental character is too weak thereafter to make any progress in life's pilgrimage.

Truthfulness in its essential meaning is not merely giving a verbal expression to one's honest feelings, but in its deeper import it is the attunement of one's mental thoughts to his or her intellectual convictions. Unless we are ready to discipline and marshal our thought - forces to the unquestioning authority of our own reason, chastened with knowledge, in the ensuing chaos within, we could not grow to realize the fuller unfoldment of our true and divine nature.

Question: How can one impart values?

Swamiji: Values impartation must be started from the very beginning. Values are so subtle that even an elderly person will not be able to conceive the idea unless it is concretized in an individual acting those values in a given set of specific conditions. Thus when you relate Harishchandra's story to the children, they understand the compelling situations. Harishchandra's own son died, then the mother brought the body for cremation to that fellow who happened to be her husband who said, "Sorry, ten paise is the tax, you pay it." She said "I haven't got a pie. ""Then get out of here. My master has fixed me here to collect the tax. Wait here. When the master comes in the morning you discuss it with him. If the master says he has no objection, the matter could be settled." So the truthfulness, the honesty of words, you know all these from the story alone. You may forget the story but the idea goes in. This is the method. In our modern education we don't give the children any ideal. Data is given but no ideal to pursue. Ideals must be given. The story is not for history, it is for imparting an ideal. Give it to them and they will always check whether their action was morally good or not, beautiful or not. These children will grow up and in their togetherness will constitute the society.

The social behaviour in any part of the world, in any period of time, will be the sum total work of the team of people that constitute the society. Each individual functions in the world outside ordered by and governed by his thoughts. The quality and the nature of the thoughts are determined by what values the individual respects. If the values respected by the individuals are wrong, the individual's activities can never be good.

Similarly, if the values entertained by the community or the society are wrong, their total behaviour will be only bringing more and more sorrow to them. Hence, in modern times we are insisting upon value based education. The healthy values, psychologically healthy for the individual and, therefore, healthy for the community have been experimented upon and given out as moral and ethical principles.

First, we have to conceive and understand and appreciate these values. Thereafter, a mere possession is not sufficient. Each individual should learn to live upto them. In order to impart them to our growing children there is no way other than concretizing these values through the heroic stories of people who have lived these values… Hence the need for stories. The mythological stories of India are perfect and artistic examples on how to impart these values to children. Never can children's education be complete unless we impart to them a true appreciation of the eternal values of life and also help them to open up their sense of beauty and rhythm, their aestheticism and ethicism. That is the reason why we not only try to mould them with our stories of heroism and excellence in character but also give them a free choice to discover and develop their inner secret talents for music, dance, painting, etc. if has been found very rewarding in all our centers.

Q: Although each action in itself is relative, yet there are certain commandments, what we call values in life, that are recommended by all religions. For instance, truthfulness. What makes speaking the truth valuable? Why is it advised as a general principle?

Swamiji: Truthfulness consists mainly in uttering a thought as it is actually perceived. Ordinarily, a liar is one who does not have the moral courage to express what he sincerely feels. This disparity between thought and words creates in his mind a habit to entertain a sort of "self - cancellation" of thoughts. This impoverishes the individual's mental strength, will power, and dynamism. Such an exhausted mental character is too weak thereafter to make any progress in life's pilgrimage.

Truthfulness in its essential meaning is not merely giving a verbal expression to one's honest feelings, but in its deeper import it is the attunement of one's mental thoughts to his or her intellectual convictions. Unless we are ready to discipline and marshal our thought - forces to the unquestioning authority of our own reason, chastened with knowledge, in the ensuing chaos within, we could not grow to realize the fuller unfoldment of our true and divine nature.