Swami Vivekananda had said, 'Every-where I go in India, people come and tell me: "Swami, I want to renounce; I want to surrender everything to God." I just ask them: "What have you to renounce? What have you to surrender? Neither a strong body, nor a trained mind, nor any talents, nor money in the pocket or the bank, nor a well-developed individuality. A Buddha could renounce, he had a kingdom to renounce and a fine youthful personality; he had a world of achievement ahead in his grasp to renounce; but what have you?" '

What a beautiful idea! How inspiring and clear-cut! When I first read it as a boy, I felt inspired by the very idea of atma-vikasa, self-development, as the true scope of Vedanta. What a positive strengthening message this is for all people in all parts of the world! Very often most anaemic people resort to the higher dimensions of religion, without striving to fulfill this its early phase, and they make the whole of religion a farce, and human life a timid futility without the heroic element in it. That will not happen if they first resort to a teaching that they can digest, that will give them strength, that will slowly prepare them to climb the higher peaks, and even the highest peak, of religion. For religion, Vivekananda has said, is infinite in scope; it takes in everyone, just as education takes in everyone from wherever it finds him or her, and helps him or her to grow.

Source: From book 'Divine Grace', by Swami Ranganathananda, Published in 1980 by: Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.

RELIGION IS THE natural expression of man's being. We can no more get rid of it than we can do away with our very self. In our heart of hearts there is an inevitable craving for the eternal, the immutable. Man can never rest contented with the ephemeral. It can delude him for the time being, but it cannot suppress or subvert his inherent longing for the Truth. So long as there are changes in the world, so long as death and decay are the necessary conditions of life, this instinctive desire for the Real will force itself up time and again and set men on the quest of religion. Science, philosophy, and art have the same impulse behind them to discover the Truth. But while science, philosophy, and poetry end in a reasoned perception, a conceptual knowledge or an aesthetic apprehen­sion of the Reality, religion leads to its immediate vision.

Through religion alone we come in direct contact with the Reality and feel our kinship and become one with it. It penetrates all the layers of our being and manifests itself in the whole range of life. We live the Truth. Man's eternal relation with the divine and his union with it have been the keywords of all religions. In the storm and stress of life, these have been man's only hope, solace, and inspiration. This is why religion has been the strongest cementing force, the highest motive power, the greatest com­forter, and the supreme illuminator of life. In all ages and all countries man has paid the greatest homage to religion. Saints and seers have com­manded the highest veneration of mankind. The greatest sages were men with spiritual vision. Religion has proved the greatest cultural force. The best literature, architecture, music, and poetry have grown out of religious fervour. ...

An urge towards perfection is the motive power behind all human aspirations and activities. Why should man feel a natural attraction for the Reality that is beyond phenomena? Why can he not remain satisfied with the finite and the evanescent? He is not contented even to grasp the Reality through intellect or aesthetic imagination; he wants to see it face to face, to touch it. Nay, he seeks to be united with it, to lose himself in it.

This feeling of affinity with the Real, the eternal, the divine, is the first blossoming of religious consciousness. Man longs for the eternal and the infinite and at the same time feels his littleness, weakness, and imperfec­tion. This creates a sense of awe—a blended feeling of attraction and repulsion. It is not fear; for fear always repels, never attracts. Like attracts like. The human self is eternally related to the divine. Divinity is in its nature. The innate purity, eternity, luminosity, and blissfulness of the self have been acknowledged directly or indirectly by all great religions of the world. But in no other religion has this fact been given such prominence as in the Vedanta. . . .

To believe in the absolute purity of the self and to realize its divinity is the religion that demands acceptance by the scientific mind of today. Human nature is never against religion, the religious spirit is ingrained in man's very being. What man gets disgusted with, is the crystallized form, which, however appealing to the people of one age, fails to attract the men of a different age. . . .

This age requires a religion which does not depend on outer sanctities, but holds life and spirit as essentially sacred. It should not be confined in certain rites, objects, ceremonies, doctrines, or dogmas, but find adequate expression in thought and conduct. The reorientation of life has been the cry of the age. It is mankind's outlook on life that the world counts today, and not the particular act or belief however righteous it may be. The external distinction of the secular and the spiritual is fast fading away. The stress is laid on a higher conception of reality which should shape the judgment of values and transform human relationships, in fact the whole range of life.

Spiritual life, rightly understood, is not a life of isolation. It does not consist in mere disengagement of the spirit from the contagion of the flesh. The self should realize its aloofness from the physical and the mental being, and at the same time guide and restrain them according to its needs and ends. The spiritual consciousness must be infused into the whole system and expressed in concrete forms. Belief without conduct has no value. Our thoughts and acts are but expressions of self-consciousness. It is the greatest creative factor of life. We are what we believe ourselves to be. He who thinks that he is pure by nature, that wickedness and vice are foreign to him, pure he will be in no time. He who considers himself weak, his ideas and deeds will bear the impress of that mentality. Humanity progresses along the line of self-consciousness. Evolution of life means the evolution of consciousness. The higher the self-consciousness, the greater the life.

The more a man knows himself to be pure and perfect by nature, the more glorified will he be. The more he realizes that weakness, ignorance, and unhappiness are mere accretions on his ideal self, the greater will be the manifestation of divinity in him. His thoughts, views, aims, and sentiments will be coloured by that consciousness. . . The world will appear in him in a new light. As he will feel his inward goodness and greatness, he will perceive the same in others as well. His attitude to the world will consist of the highest and the noblest feelings of love, respect, and service. The consciousness "I am He" must develop its necessary counterpart "Thou art That." The two views will grow side by side. Never was human­ity so intensely realized as an organic whole as in the present age. . . .

With the knowledge of the self, man's vision of life will be clearer, wider, and deeper. He will feel that his self is at the same time the selves of others. It is one Self that exists in all. It is one Spirit that pervades the universe and shapes it from within. The immanence of a formative principle in the world system is more in conformity with modern thought than an extracosmic God. . . .

Faith in the self and the realization of the self are the religion of today. We do not mean thereby that that will be the only existing religion in the future, that other faiths will be obsolete or prove abortive. We only mean this of all others will come into prominence, as it will be embraced by the advanced section of humanity. Different faiths are necessary for different minds, which cannot find inspiration from a single creed. It is the age of synthesis. The faith of the enlightened must harmonize all other faiths. The monism of the Vedanta which declares the Atman to be Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is the key to all other religions. It can receive all into its infinite bosom. All faiths, morals, and theories are according to it more or less perfect presentations of one Truth.

Source: Article by Swami Ashokananda, Living Wisdom, Published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, 1995.

We ask: When shall we begin our spiritual life? The Gita and the Upanishads answer: When you are young, when your body is strong, when your mind is fresh and vigorous. But the answer of an other-worldly piety will be quite otherwise; it will tell you: Begin to think of religion when you are old and jaded! Enjoy sensory pleasures to the full in your youth and manhood and concern yourself with your other-worldly prospects when the body becomes unfit for them.

The philosophy of Vedanta bridges the gulf between action and contemplation, work and worship, the secular and the sacred. This was the philosophy that Swami Vivekananda preached in East and West alike at the end of the last century. Highlighting its unifying vision, Sister Nivedita {Miss Margaret Noble) writes ('Introduction: Our Master and His Message', Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 1, p. xv):

  'The many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the mind at different times and in different attitudes.

  ‘It is this which adds its crowning significance to our Master's life, for here he becomes the meeting-point, not only of East and West, but also of past and future. If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.

  ‘This is the realization which makes Vivekananda the great preacher of karma (detached action), not as divorced from, but as expressing, jnana (Self-knowledge) and bkakti (love of God). To him, the workshop, the study, the farmyard, and the field are as true and fit scenes for the meet­ing of God with man as the cell of the monk or the door of the temple. To him, there is no difference between service of man and worship of God, between manliness and faith, between true righteousness and spiritu­ality.’

Pointing out what such a unifying philosophy means to the emerging world and to all modern men and women— theists or atheists, believers or agnostics —I cannot do any­thing better than quote a moving passage, almost prophetic in spirit, from a lecture of Swami Vivekananda on ‘The Necessity of Religion’ delivered in London in 1896 (Complete Works, Vol. II, Tenth Edition, pp. 67-68):

  'As the human mind broadens, its spiritual steps broaden too. The time has already come when a man cannot record a thought without its reaching to all corners of the earth; by merely physical means, we have come into touch with the whole world; so the future religions of the world have to become as universal, as wide.

  'The religious ideals of the future must embrace all that exists in the world and is good and great, and, at the same time, have infinite scope for future development. All that was good in the past must be preserved and the doors kept open for future addition to the already existing store. Religions must also be inclusive and not look down with contempt upon one another because their particular ideas of God are different. In my life I have seen a great many spiritual men, a great many sensible persons, Who did not believe in God at all, that is to say, not in our sense of the word. Perhaps they understood God better than we can ever do. The Personal idea of God or the Impersonal, the Infinite, the Moral Law, or the Ideal Man—these all have to come under the definition of religion. And when religions have become thus broadened, their power for good will have increased a hundredfold. Religions having tremendous power in them have often done more injury to the world than good, simply on account of their narrowness and limitations.

  '...Religious ideas will have to become universal, vast, and infinite, and then alone we shall have the fullest play of religion, for the power of religion has only just begun to manifest in the world. It is sometimes said that religions are dying out, that spiritual ideas are dying out of the world. To me it seems that they have just begun to grow. The power of religion, broadened and purified, is going to penetrate every part of human life. So long as religion was in the hands of a chosen few or of a body of priests, it was in temples, churches, books, dogmas, ceremonials, forms, and rituals. But when we come to the real, spiritual, universal concept, then and then alone religion will become real and living; it will come into our very nature, live in our every movement, penetrate every pore of our society, and be infinitely more a power for good than it has ever been before.’

Spiritual life, according to Vedanta, thus covers the whole range of man's life, including its so called worldly stage, when man is the sole and supreme agent of his life with no partner called God.

Source: Divine Grace, by Swami Ranganathananda, Published in 1980 by: Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.