ॐ वीरेश्वराय विद्महे
विवेकानन्दाय धीमहि । तन्नो वीर: प्रचोदयात् ।
When the life-blood is strong and pure, no disease germ can live
in that body. Our life-blood is spirituality. If it flows clear,
if it flows strong and pure and vigorous, everything is right;
political, social, any other material defects, even the poverty
of the land, will all be cured if that blood is pure....It is
only when the body is weak that these germs take possession of
it and produce disease. Just so with the national life. It is
when the national body is weak that all sorts of disease germs,
in the political state of the race or in its social state, in
its educational or intellectual state, crowd into the system and
produce disease. To remedy it, therefore, we must go to the root
of this disease and cleanse the blood of all impurities. The one
tendency will be to strengthen the man, to make the blood pure,
the body vigorous, so that it will be able to resist and throw
off all external poisons.
We have seen that our vigour, our strength, nay, our national life is in our religion. .. That is the life of our race and that must be strengthened. You have withstood the shocks of centuries simply because you took great care of it, you sacrificed everything else for it. Your forefathers underwent everything boldly, even death itself, but preserved their religion. Temple alter temple was broken down by the foreign conqueror, but no sooner had the wave passed than the spire of the temple rose up again. Some of these old temples of Southern India and those like Somnâth of Gujarat will teach you volumes of wisdom, will give you a keener insight into the history of the race than any amount of books.
My idea is first of all to bring out the gems of spirituality that are stored up in our books ..in Sanskrit and to make them popular. I want to bring out these ideas and let them be the common property of all, of every man in India, whether he knows the Sanskrit language or not. ...It is culture that withstands shocks.. The only way to bring about the levelling of caste is to appropriate the culture, the education which is the strength of the higher castes. That done, you have what you want.
The Brahminhood is the ideal of humanity in India, .. This Brahmin, the man of God, he who has known Brahman, the ideal man, the perfect man, must remain; he must not go. ..The solution is not by bringing down the higher, but by raising the lower up to the level of the higher.
Be pure first, and you will have power. .. Something mysterious emanates from you, which makes them follow you, makes them hear you, makes them unconsciously, even against their will, carry out your plans. That is Rishihood.
The first of all worship is the worship of the Virat — of those all around us. Worship it. … the first gods we have to worship are our countrymen.
We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of the nation...You must dream it, you must talk it, you must think it and you must work it out. Till then there is no salvation for the race. ...Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library ….The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on national lines, through national methods as far as practical.
We must have a temple, for with Hindus religion must come first. Then, you may say, all sects will quarrel about it. But we will make it a non-sectarian temple, having only "Om" as the symbol, the greatest symbol of any sect. If there is any sect here which believes that "Om" ought not to be the symbol, it has no right to call itself Hindu.
Secondly, in connection with this temple there should be an institution to train teachers who must go about preaching religion and giving secular education to our people; they must carry both. As we have been already carrying religion from door to door, let us along with it carry secular education also. That can be easily done. Then the work will extend through these bands of teachers and preachers, and gradually we shall have similar temples in other places, until we have covered the whole of India...Money is not needed. Money is nothing...I want young men. "It is the young, the strong, and healthy, of sharp intellect that will reach the Lord", say the Vedas. This is the time to decide your future — while you possess the energy of youth, not when you are worn out and jaded, but in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work — this is the time; for the freshest, the untouched, and unsmelled flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and such He receives. Rouse yourselves, therefore, or life is short. There are greater works to be done than aspiring to become lawyers and picking quarrels and such things. A far greater work is this sacrifice of yourselves for the benefit of your race, for the welfare of humanity.
Life is short, but the soul is immortal and eternal, and one thing being certain, death, let us therefore take up a great ideal and give up our whole life to it. Let this be our determination.
(CWSV : VOL : 3 : Future of India) Read Full Lecture
We have seen that our vigour, our strength, nay, our national life is in our religion. .. That is the life of our race and that must be strengthened. You have withstood the shocks of centuries simply because you took great care of it, you sacrificed everything else for it. Your forefathers underwent everything boldly, even death itself, but preserved their religion. Temple alter temple was broken down by the foreign conqueror, but no sooner had the wave passed than the spire of the temple rose up again. Some of these old temples of Southern India and those like Somnâth of Gujarat will teach you volumes of wisdom, will give you a keener insight into the history of the race than any amount of books.
My idea is first of all to bring out the gems of spirituality that are stored up in our books ..in Sanskrit and to make them popular. I want to bring out these ideas and let them be the common property of all, of every man in India, whether he knows the Sanskrit language or not. ...It is culture that withstands shocks.. The only way to bring about the levelling of caste is to appropriate the culture, the education which is the strength of the higher castes. That done, you have what you want.
The Brahminhood is the ideal of humanity in India, .. This Brahmin, the man of God, he who has known Brahman, the ideal man, the perfect man, must remain; he must not go. ..The solution is not by bringing down the higher, but by raising the lower up to the level of the higher.
Be pure first, and you will have power. .. Something mysterious emanates from you, which makes them follow you, makes them hear you, makes them unconsciously, even against their will, carry out your plans. That is Rishihood.
The first of all worship is the worship of the Virat — of those all around us. Worship it. … the first gods we have to worship are our countrymen.
We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of the nation...You must dream it, you must talk it, you must think it and you must work it out. Till then there is no salvation for the race. ...Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library ….The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on national lines, through national methods as far as practical.
We must have a temple, for with Hindus religion must come first. Then, you may say, all sects will quarrel about it. But we will make it a non-sectarian temple, having only "Om" as the symbol, the greatest symbol of any sect. If there is any sect here which believes that "Om" ought not to be the symbol, it has no right to call itself Hindu.
Secondly, in connection with this temple there should be an institution to train teachers who must go about preaching religion and giving secular education to our people; they must carry both. As we have been already carrying religion from door to door, let us along with it carry secular education also. That can be easily done. Then the work will extend through these bands of teachers and preachers, and gradually we shall have similar temples in other places, until we have covered the whole of India...Money is not needed. Money is nothing...I want young men. "It is the young, the strong, and healthy, of sharp intellect that will reach the Lord", say the Vedas. This is the time to decide your future — while you possess the energy of youth, not when you are worn out and jaded, but in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work — this is the time; for the freshest, the untouched, and unsmelled flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and such He receives. Rouse yourselves, therefore, or life is short. There are greater works to be done than aspiring to become lawyers and picking quarrels and such things. A far greater work is this sacrifice of yourselves for the benefit of your race, for the welfare of humanity.
Life is short, but the soul is immortal and eternal, and one thing being certain, death, let us therefore take up a great ideal and give up our whole life to it. Let this be our determination.
(CWSV : VOL : 3 : Future of India) Read Full Lecture
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