SWAMI VIVEKANANDA main reason for including the Swami's life-work in these biographical sketches is that though he was especially fond of metaphysics and religious specula tion, no one has striven more nobly to modernise the general tone of life in India. It is more than probable that some of the influences operative in his character were imbibed during his school days and when he was studying at a missionary college in Calcutta. But the supreme crisis in his life came when he was on a lecturing tour in America. He had4 frequent interviews with men of light and leading ; studied the methodical habits of the people and their capacity for practical tasks ; saw the condition of women's education and the organisation of medical facilities, and was impressed with the spirit of co operation obtaining in Western countries. So it is not surprising that we find him in India, an ardent supporter of women's education and the champion of the masses. Though he never swerved one inch from his central conviction that India's message to the world is in the realm of religion, he fully appreciated that life in Western countries was more progressive because of love of freedom, education and co-ordina tion of effort.
It is noteworthy that scientific inventions like wireless telegraphy or even the art of navigation struck his mind as appropriate media for the spread of spiritual ideals. He was fully conscious that the dreams of the Buddhist Emperor Asoka to federate humanity on a spiritual basis could not materialise because of lack of facilities for travel and absence of scientific inventions.
But on his second visit to America, he felt that in the heart of Western civilisation slumbered a volcano, and behind great commercial activities was the intoxication of power, love of greed and exploitation of the weak and the poor. This confirmed his previous impression—hence his message : " ism and all its miseries cannot be conquered by materialism. Armies, when they attempt to conquer armies, only multiply and make brutes of humanity. . Spirituality must conquer the West. . . . Now is the time to work for India's spiritual ideas penetrating deep into the West. . . We must go out. We must conquer the world through spirituality and philosophy. We must do it or die. The condition of Indian national life, of unashamed and vigorous national life is the conquest of the world by Indian thought." It was at the Chicago Parliament of Religions held in 1893, that Narendra Nath Dutt—the Swami's name before he entered on an ascetic life—first received European recognition for interpreting to the West what he conceived to be the best in Hindu thought and ideals, in modern language. His main contribution to the discussions then carried on, may thus be summed up : Z. God is " impersonal " so far as an ultimate analysis of His being is concerned, for since, in his essence, He is superior to spatial limitation or temporal sequence, He cannot be located in space or limited by time. At the same time, to the individual
believer, who has focussed his attention on some aspect of His Being, in his desire to visualise His nature and let it be a source of inspiration for his personal needs, God is " personal." But this is a lower degree of " realisation." To the initiated the Divinity is the Reality that pervades the whole Universe and is operative in human thought as well as in the evolution of the Universes. In that mighty consciousness slumbers the mysteries of the worlds and the secrets of human development.
2. Being and Becoming are different aspects of the same reality and are only relative to our intelligence. Man has the promise and potentiality of divine realisation, of spiritual perfection and therefore is God in the making, for even his humanity is intelligible only if regarded as an individualised self-expression of God. It is derogatory to human nature, there fore, to attribute sin to man. Besides, God being the sole• and supreme Reality, how could a foreign element like sin invade the sanctuary of being ? " The Hindus refuse to call you sinners Ye, divinities on earth, sinners ! It is a sin to call man so ! It is a standing libel on human nature." (from the Swami's address at the Parliament of Religions). On another occasion he wrote : " The sages who wrote the Vedas were preachers of principles. Now and then their names are mentioned, but that is all. We do not know who or what they were. At the same time, just as our God is an impersonal and yet a personal one, so our religion is a most intensely impersonal one, and yet has an infinite scope for the play of 3. The claim of Hinduism to be the universal religion is that it preaches principles and does not demand loyalty to persons. As for religions that have gathered round the personality of some individual, " smash the historicity of the man, and the religion tumbles to the ground. The glory of Krishna was not that he was a Krishna, but that he was a teacher of Vedanta.'' 4. Since God is all and all is God, the world per ceived by the senses is of an illusory nature, the only true world or state of being is that of intuitive realisation of spiritual reality, which is the recog nition of the soul's identity with the Ultimate Reality called Brahma. According to this hypothesis the Ideal and the Real merge into one and all dis criminations are brushed aside between Being and Becoming. It falls beyond the scope of this book to offer criticisms of the above statements. We can only say in passing that side by side with vigorous and bold thinking, there is serious confusion of issues and impatience with reducing the ideas to a system. The Swami's ideas have not been reduced to a coherent system, but are brilliant flashes of genius alternating with mere verbal jugglery and empty flourishes of rhetoric.