Bhakti Yoga
A book by Swami Vivekananda
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QUALIFICATIONS OF THE ASPIRANT AND THE TEACHER
How are we to know a teacher then? The sun requires no torch to make him visible, we need not light a candle in order to see him. When the sun rises, we instinctively become aware of the fact, and when a teacher of men comes to help us; the soul will instinctively know that truth has already begun to shine upon it. Truth stands on its own evidence, it does not require any other testimony to prove it true, it is self-effulgent. It penetrates into the innermost comers of our nature, and in its presence the whole universe stands up and says, “This is truth.” The teachers whose wisdom and truth shine like the light of the sun are the very greatest the world has known, and they are worshipped as God by the major portion of mankind. But we may get help from comparatively lesser ones also; only we ourselves do not possess intuition enough to judge properly of the man from whom we receive teaching and guidance; so there ought to be certain tests, certain conditions, for the teacher to satisfy, as there are also for the taught.
The conditions necessary for the taught are purity, a real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance. No impure soul can be really religious. Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for anyone to be religious. As to the thirst after knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want. None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon. To pant for religion truly is a very difficult thing, not at all so easy as we generally imagine. hearing religious talks or reading religious books, is no proof yet of a real want felt In the heart; there must be a continuous struggle, a constant fight, an unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt and the victory is achieved. It is not a question of one or two days, of years, or of lives; the struggle may have to go on for hundreds of lifetimes. The success sometimes may come immediately, but we must be ready to wait patiently even for what. may look like an infinite length of time. The student who sets out with such a spirit of perseverance, will surely find success and realisation at last.
With regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures. The whole world reads Bibles, Vedas, and Korans; but they are all only words, syntax, etymology, philology—the dry bones of religion. The teacher who deals too much in words, and allows the mind to be carried away by the force of words, loses the spirit. It is the knowledge of the spirit of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true religious teacher. The network of the words of the scriptures is like a huge forest, in which the human mind often loses itself and finds no way out. 'kCntkya egkjjk;a fPkÙkÒzedkj.ka—“The network of words is a big forest; it is the cause of a curious wandering of the mind.” The various methods of joining words, the various methods of speaking in beautiful language, the various methods of explaining the diction. of the scriptures are only for the disputations and enjoyment of the learned, they do not conduce to the development of spiritual perception.
okUOkS [kjh 'kOn>jh 'kkErªO;k[;kud©'kYka A
OkSnq";a fOknq";aa fOknq"kka RkgRk~ eqDr;¢ AA
Those who employ such methods to impart religion to others, are only desirous to show off their learning, so that the world may praise them as great scholars. You will find that no one of the great teachers of the world ever went into these various explanations of the texts; there is with them no attempt at “text-torturing,” no eternal playing upon the meaning of words and their roots. Yet they nobly taught, while others who have nothing to teach have taken up a word, sometimes, and written a three-volume book on its origin, on the man who used it first, and on what that man was accustomed to eat, and how long he slept, and so on. Bhagavan Ramakrishna used to tell a story of some men who went into a mango orchard and busied themselves in counting the leaves, the twigs, and the branches—examining their colour, comparing their size, and noting down everything most carefully—and then got up a learned discussion on each of these topics, which were undoubtedly highly interesting to them. But one of them, more sensible than the others, did not care for all these things, and, instead thereof, began to eat the mango fruit. And was he not wise? So leave this counting of leaves and twigs and note-taking to others. This kind of work has its proper place, but not here in the spiritual domain. You never see a strong spiritual man among these “leaf-counters.” Religion, the highest aim, the highest glory of man, does not a require so much labour. If you want to be a Bhakta, it is not at all necessary for you to know whether Krishna was born in Mathura or says in Vraja, what he was doing, or just the exact date on which he pronounced the teachings of the Gita. You only require to feel the craving for the beautiful lessons of duty and love in the Gita. All the other particulars about it and its author are for the enjoyment of the learned. Let them have what they desire. Say “Shantih, Shantih” (peace, peace) to their learned controversies, and let us “eat the mangoes.”
The second condition necessary in the teacher is— sinlessness. The question is often asked, “Why should we look, into the character and personality of a teacher? We have only to judge of what he says and take that. up.” This is not right. If a man wants to teach me something of dynamics, or chemistry, or any other physical science, he may be anything he likes, because what the physical sciences require is merely an intellectual equipment; but in the spiritual sciences it is impossible, from first to last, that there can be any spiritual light in the soul that is impure. What religion can an impure man teach? The sine qua non of acquiring spiritual truth for one’s self, or for imparting it to others, is the purity of heart and soul. A vision of God or a glimpse of the beyond never comes until the soul is pure. Hence with the teacher of religion we must see first what he is, and then what he says. He must be perfectly pure, and then alone comes the value of his words, because he is only then the true “transmitter.” What can he transmit if. he has not spiritual power in himself? There must be the worthy vibration of spirituality in the mind of the teacher, so that it may be sympathetically conveyed to the mind of the taught. The function of the teacher is indeed an affair of the transference of something, and not one of mere stimulation of the existing intellectual or other faculties in the taught. Something real and appreciable as an influence comes from the teacher and goes to the taught. Therefore the teacher must be pure.
The third condition is in regard to the motive. The teacher must not teach with any ulterior selfish motive for money, name, or fame; his work must be simply out of love, out of pure love for mankind at large. The only medium sI through which spiritual force can be transmitted is love. Any selfish motive, such as the desire for gain or for name, will immediately destroy, this conveying medium. God is love, and only he who has known God as love can be a teacher of godliness and God to man.
When you see that in your teacher these conditions are all fulfilled, you are safe; if they are not, it is unsafe to allow yourself to be taught by him, for there is the great danger that, if he cannot convey goodness to your heart, he may le convey wickedness. This danger must by all means be guarded against. Üp¨f=;¨·OOkftu®∙dkegr® ;® czgefOkÙke% — “He who is learned in the Scriptures, sinless. unpolluted by lust, and is the greatest knower of the Brahman,” is the real teacher.
From what has been said, it naturally follows that we cannot be taught to love, appreciate, and assimilate religion everywhere and by everybody, The “sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything”—is all very true as a poetical figure: but nothing can impart to a man a single grain of truth unless he has the undeveloped germs of it in himself. To whom do the stones and brooks preach sermons? To the human soul, the lotus of whose inner holy shrine is already quick with life. And the light which causes the beautiful opening out of this lotus comes always from the good and wise teacher. When the heart has thus been opened, it becomes fit to receive teaching from the stones or the brooks, the stars or the sun or the moon, or from anything which bas its existence in our divine universe; but the unopened heart will see in them nothing but mere stones or mere brooks. A blind man may go to a museum, but he will not profit by it in any way; his eyes must be opened first, and then alone he will be able to learn what the things in the museum can teach.
This eye-opener of the aspirant after religion is the teacher. With the teacher, therefore, our relationship is the same as that between an ancestor and his descendant. Without faith, humility, submission, and veneration in our hearts towards our religious teacher, there can not be any growth of religion in us; and it is a significant fact that, where this kind of relation an between the teacher and the taught prevails, there alone gigantic spiritual men are growing; while in those countries which have neglected to keep up this kind of relation, the religious teacher has become a mere lecturer—the teacher expecting his five dollars, and the person taught expecting his brain to be filled with the teacher’s words, and each going his own way after this much has been done. Under such circumstances spirituality becomes almost an unknown quantity. There is none to transmit it and none to have it transmitted to. Religion with such people becomes business: they think they can obtain it with their dollars. Would to God that religion could be obtained so easily! But unfortunately it cannot be.
Religion, which is the highest knowledge and the highest wisdom, cannot be bought, nor can it be acquired from books. You may thrust your head into all the corners of the world, you may explore the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Caucasus, you may sound the bottom of the sea and pry into every nook of Tibet and the desert of Gobi, you will not find it anywhere until your heart is ready lor receiving it and your teacher has come. And when that divinely appointed teacher comes, serve him with childlike confidence and simplicity, freely open your heart to his influence, and see in him God manifested. Those who come to seek truth with such a spirit of love and veneration, to them the Lord of Truth reveals the most wonderful things regarding Truth, goodness, and Beauty.
INCARNATE TEACHERS AND INCARNATION
Wherever His name is spoken, that very place is holy. How much more so is the man who of speaks His name, and with what veneration ought im we to approach that man out of whom comes to us spiritual truth! Such great teachers of a spiritual truth are indeed very few in number as in this world, but the world is never altogether mc without them. They are always the fairest as flowers of human life vgrqdn;kfLkU?kq “the ocean of mercy without any motive.” vkPkk;Za eka fotkuh;kr~ — “Know the Guru to be Me,” says Shri Krishna in the Bhâgavata. The moment the world is absolutely bereft of these, it becomes a hideous hell and hastens on to its destruction.
Higher and nobler than all ordinary ones, are another set of teachers, the Avatâras of Ishwara, in the world. They can transmit spirituality an with a touch, even with a mere wish. The lowest and the most degraded characters become in one second saints at their command. They are the Teachers of all teachers, the highest manifesta tions of God through man. We cannot see God except through them. We cannot help worshipping them; and indeed they are the only ones whom we are bound to worship.
No man can really see God except through these human manifestations. If we try to see God otherwise, we make for ourselves a hideous caricature of Him and believe the caricature to be no worse than the original. There is a story of an ignorant man who was asked to make an image of the God Shiva, and who, after days of hard struggle, manufactured only the image of a monkey. So, whenever we try to think of God as He is in His absolute perfection, we invariably meet with the most miserable failure; because as long as we are men, we cannot conceive Him as anything higher than man. The time will come when we shall transcend our human nature and know Him as He is; but as long as we are men we must worship Him in man and as man. Talk, as you may, try as you may, you cannot think of God except as a man. You may deliver great intellectual discourses on God and on all things under the sun, become great rationalists and prove to your satisfaction that all these accounts of the Avatâras of God as man are nonsense. But let us come for a moment to practical common sense. What is there behind this kind of remarkable intellect? Zero, nothing, simply so much froth. When next you hear a man delivering a great intellectual lecture against this worship of the Avatâras of God, get hold of him and ask him what his idea of God is, what he understands by “omnipotence,” “omnipresence,” and all similar terms, beyond the spelling of the words. He really means nothing by them; he cannot formulate as theIr meaning the any idea unaffected by his own human nature; of he is no better off in this matter than the man ma in the street who has not read a single book. That man in the street, however, is quiet and does not disturb the peace of the world; while this big talker creates disturbance and misery among mankind. Religion is, after all, realisation, and we must make the sharpest distinction between talk and intuitive experience. What we experience in the depths of our souls is realisa tion. Nothing indeed is so uncommon as common sense in regard to this matter. By our present constitution we are limited and bound to see God as man. If, for instance, the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keeping with their own nature, see Him as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an idea of Him as a big fish; and man has to think of Him as man. And his these various conceptions are not due to morbidly active imagination. Man, the buffalo, and the fish—all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels, so to say. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water, each according to its own shape and capacity; in the man, the water takes the shape of man, in the buffalo, the shape of a buffalo, and in the fish, the shape of a fish. In each of these vessels there is the same water of the sea of God. When men see Him, they see Him as man, and the animals, if they have any conception of God at all, must see Him as animal—each according to its own ideal. So we cannot help seeing God as man, and, therefore, we are bound to worship Him as man. There is no other way. Two kinds of men do not worship God as man—the human brute who has no religion, and the. Paramahamsa who has risen beyond all the weaknesses of humanity and has transcended the limits of his own human nature. To him all nature has become his own Self. He alone can worship God as He is. Here, too, as in all other cases, the two extremes meet. The extreme of jgnorance and the other extreme of knowledge—neither of these goes through acts of worship. The human brute does not worship because of his ignorance, and the Jivanmuktas (free souls) do not worship, because they have realised God in theinselves. Being between these two poles of existence, if any one tells you that he is not going to worship God as man, take kindly care of that man: he is, not to use any harsher term, an irresponsible talker; his religion is for unsound and empty brains.
God understands human failings and becomes man to do good to humanity.
;nk ;nk fg ?keZL; EYkkfuHkZOkfr Hkkjr A
v?;qR;kue?keZL; rnkRekua l`TkkE;ge~~AA
ifjok.kk; lk?kwukaa fOkuk'kk;; Pk nq"d`rke~ A
?keZlaLFkkZ; laHkOkkfe ;qXks ;qXks AA
“Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails I manifest Myself. To establish virtue, to destroy evil, to save the good I come from Yuga to Yuga (age to age).”
votkufUr eka ew
ija HkkOkeTkkuURkks ee rwegsJje~ AA
“Fools deride Me who have assumed the human form, without knowing My real nature as the Lord of the universe.” Such is Shri Krishna's declaration in the Gitâ on Incarnation. “When a huge tidal wave comes,” says Bhagavân Shri Ramakrishna, “all the little brooks and ditches become full to the brim without any effort or consciousness on their own part; so when an Incarnation comes, a tidal wave of spirituality breaks upon the world, and people feel spirituality almost full in the air .”
