In 1893, the distinguished representatives of the world’s leading religions met at the World’s Parliament of Churches in Chicago. A young Swami named Vivekananda, only 30 years of age, electrified this audience by his direct, forceful and moving oratory, and almost single-handedly began a movement to make the world aware of VIVEKANANDA 82 modern Hinduism, a movement which has lasted to this day. Vivekananda combined in one personality an unusual range of qualities: the intense spirituality which had attracted him to the path of the Hindu samnyasin or renunciant, counterbalanced by real concern for social reform in his native India; great philosophical competence, especially with regard to the ideas of Sankara, combined with insights gained from yogic, religious experience; and added to these enormous energy, powers of persuasion and oratorical skill. Vivekananda believed with absolute sincerity that the Hindu outlook had much to offer the world, and devoted much of his short life to a brilliantly successful attempt to make these ideas known in the West.
Vivekananda (‘bliss of discerning knowledge’) is the religious name adopted in the early 1890s by Narendranath Datta. Born on 12 January 1863, son of a successful lawyer in the Calcutta High Court, Vivekananda was at first destined to follow his father into the legal profession. He was duly entered at college in Calcutta between 1878 and 1884. During these college years, his concern for social reform led Vivekananda to become a member of one of the liberal Indian reform organizations of the time, the Brahmo Samaj, though this movement was ultimately unable to satisfy his profound spiritual needs.
The search for that satisfaction had caused Vivekananda in 1881 to seek out the great Hindu visionary Sri Ramakrishna (1836– 1886 CE), who at once recognized in the younger man a hunger and aptness for spiritual experience. Vivekananda, though he recognized the spiritual genius of Ramakrishna, found him insufficiently interested in the social issues which had led him to the Brahmo Samaj. It was not until 1885, after his father’s death, that Vivekananda finally accepted Ramakrishna as his guru. He remained as Ramakrishna’s disciple, undergoing intensive spiritual training and attaining profound religious experience, until the latter’s death in August 1886. Appointed his successor by Ramakrishna, Vivekananda acted as leader to the other disciples for three years, but left them in 1890 as a result of a crisis of belief. During the extended pilgrimage in India which followed, Vivekananda worked out his own philosophical and religious outlook, based on the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara, combining it with elements both from Buddhism and the beliefs of Ramakrishna. It was with these convictions, to which he refers in his works as ‘practical Vedanta’, that Vivekananda set out for Chicago in 1893.
Following his success at the World’s Parliament of Churches and offers of academic appointments in America (which he declined), Vivekananda began work to realize his vision of a worldwide movement based ultimately on Hinduism. The Vedanta Society of New York was founded in 1895, soon followed by a London branch, and Vivekananda returned to India in 1897 to carry on his work. By May of that year he had founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which within two years established itself worldwide. By this time, the intensity of his programme of work had begun to undermine Vivekananda’s health. After one further brief visit to the West, he died in India on 4 July 1902.1
The metaphysical basis of Vivekananda’s thought is Advaita or nondual Vedanta, derived to a considerable degree from the philosophy of Sankara. Being-as-is or reality is not the phenomenal world of individual beings and entities, causally reacting in space and time. Reality or Brahman is a unity, oneness or absolute, changeless, eternal, and such that no predicates can apply to it:
in the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation. The idea of time cannot be there, seeing that there is no mind, no thought. The idea of space cannot be there, seeing that there is no external change. What you call motion and causation cannot exist where there is only one.2
Vivekananda himself had attained mystical awareness of Brahman during his period of discipleship to Ramakrishna. Aware, however, that western audiences were by and large innocent of such experiences, Vivekananda uses a number of arguments to support this view. Of these, the one he uses most frequently begins from an analysis of perception.
Perception, he argues, is a complex process. It begins with sensations produced as a result of stimulation of a sense-organ, and transmitted along neural pathways to the brain. Perception does not occur, however, unless we are paying attention to sensation, and attention is a property not of the brain but of the mind, which in Vivekananda’s view is not identical with the brain. Yet even the joint occurrence of sensation and attention is not sufficient for perception. The mental event which results from attended-to sensation is not a perception unless it is a property of a self, or, in other words, there cannot be a perception which is not someone’s perception. Human experience presupposes selfconsciousness. The process of perception ‘will not be completed unless there is something permanent in the background, upon which the picture, as it were, may be formed, upon which we may unify all the different impressions’.3 This unifying, constant background, the precondition of all experience, Vivekananda calls the soul or Atman. The Atman, he contends, is distinct not only from the body but also from the mind.
The next stage in the argument leads back to the concept of Brahman. The Atman or soul has no shape or form, and if it has neither shape nor form, it must be omnipresent, since whatever is without shape or form is without limit, and whatever has no limit or boundary logically cannot be located in a particular place. Again, time, space and causality, the preconditions for and generators of the phenomenal world of individuals, pertain to the mind but not to the soul. If Atman is beyond space, time and causality, it must be infinite. If Atman is infinite it must be One. If Atman is omnipresent, infinite One, Atman and Brahman must be one and the same:4 thus Vivekananda returns to the classic doctrine of the Upanisads.
This metaphysic of nondualism generates a number of profound philosophical difficulties, of which the first is this: why did the one manifest itself as the many? Why did the eternal become temporal, the infinite become finite, the immutable become mutable? Many thinkers in the orthodox Hindu tradition argue that the answer is delight (S: ananda): the universe is Brahman’s expression of delight in creation. Vivekananda’s reply is different: the question why the Absolute became finite cannot be answered because it is a logically incoherent question. It is an incoherent question because it applies to the Absolute concepts which cannot apply to it, and an answer would likewise have to be given in terms of human conceptual systems inapplicable to it:
To ask this question we have to suppose that the Absolute also is bound by something, that it is dependent on something. Thus we see that the very question as to why the Infinite became the finite is an absurd one, for it is selfcontradictory. 5
Even if it is not possible to say why Brahman manifested itself, it is possible to say a good deal, in Vivekananda’s view, about a closely related issue: how does it come about that the phenomenal universe takes the form it does, composed of causally interacting individuals in space and time? The Advaitist answer is that the phenomenal universe is an appearance only, an appearance which can be dispelled by appropriate spiritual discipline. The illusion of division is a product of ignorance (avidya). It functions through our ordinary patterns of conceptual thought, to which Vivekananda summarily refers by means of classic formulation ‘name and form’ (nama-rupa). The operation of nama-rupa generates the categories of space, time and causality (desa; kala; nimitta) and with them the whole phenomenal universe. To take the universe of nama-rupa for reality is to be in the grip of maya or illusion. The operation of maya Vivekananda likens to what is now called seeingas: when a rope is seen as a snake, the rope is really there, unchanged by the delusory perception, and the snake is not. Analogously Brahman is always what is really there, unaffected by the operation of nama-rupa.6Maya is no less than a way of describing the entire condition of those ignorant of the true nature of reality:
The whole of human knowledge is a generalization of this maya, an attempt to know it as it appears to be . . . Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within maya; for everything that is bound by the laws of time, space and causation is within maya.7
One of the most far-reaching of the errors we entertain in the condition of maya concerns the nature of the self. Vivekananda’s non-dualist metaphysic entails that our ordinary concept of the self as a limited individual is merely an instance of nama-rupa. Our real nature, our true individuality, does not reside either in bodily identity or a set of memories or a congeries of habits. All these are mutable, and could form the basis only for a frail, inconstant individuality. The truth concerning our real nature is quite otherwise: ‘There is no individuality except in the infinite . . . We are not individuals yet. We are struggling towards individuality; and that is the Infinite. That is the real nature of man.’8 The real self is the Atman, and the Atman and Brahman are one and the same. The real self is divine.
This belief in turn entails a particular view concerning the nature of immortality. The real self or Atman is eternal: it is beyond death, and so also can never be said to have lived: ‘That which does not die cannot live. For life and death are the obverse and reverse of the same coin.’9 This is a consequence of the identity of Brahman and Atman, for, if no predicates (like ‘living’ or ‘dead’) apply to the former, no more can they apply to the latter. It follows that the immortality which is a consequence of nondualism is not personal: it is immortality of the Atman, the One. Moreover, it follows also that, if the real self is to continue to manifest itself, it must do so by means of reincarnation in a number of mortal bodies. Thus Vivekananda regards reincarnation as ‘the only logical conclusion that thoughtful men can arrive at. If you are going to exist in eternity hereafter, it must be that you have existed through eternity in the past; it cannot be otherwise.’10 It is often objected to the doctrine of reincarnation that we cannot recall past lives, but this, Vivekananda contends, is merely because we live only on the surface of the psyche. There are depths of memory which can be tapped by yogic training, and memories of past lives can be recovered.11
There are further important consequences of nondualism in the area of moral philosophy. There is one belief, Vivekananda contends, which is common to all moral systems, which is to put others before oneself. The question arises at once: why should I be moral in this sense? What reason have I to put others before myself? The principle of utility, much discussed in the nineteenth century, can provide no convincing answer to this question, in Vivekananda’s view. At the time when he was writing, the most commonly advanced form of the principle of utility was: so act as to maximize the greatest happiness of the greatest number.12 Vivekananda objects first: ‘If happiness is the goal of mankind, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What prevents me?’13 Secondly, utilitarianism is an ethical system designed very specifically to suit society in its present stage of evolution. There is no reason to regard our current social structures as other than transient, and when they are swept away by time the destroyer, utility will cease to have any relevance to moral decision-making. The only philosophical system which can supply an answer to the question of why I should be moral, and indeed the only system which makes intelligible the central moral recommendation to put others before myself, is Advaita Vedanta. The truth behind the imperative to altruism is the nondualist assertion, the ‘eternal truth that “I am the universe; this universe is one”. Or else where is the explanation? Why should I do good to my fellow men? . . . It is sympathy, the feeling of sameness everywhere.’14 I do good to others because they are myself.
A second important moral consequence of nondualism is that it allows Vivekananda to give an answer to the serious philosophical issue of the problem of evil: how does it come about that Brahman manifests itself in such a way as to bring manifold pain and suffering into the phenomenal world? Brahman is pure delight (ananda), so how can this be? Vivekananda’s answer follows from the doctrine of maya: the concepts of good and evil, pleasure and pain are instances of namarupa, and have no counterpart in Brahman, to which no predicates apply. Hence, ‘throughout the Vedanta philosophy there are no such things as good and bad; they are not two different things; the same thing is good or bad, and the difference is only in degree’.15 All the universe is Brahman, manifesting itself both as what we call good and what we call evil. For those who attain to knowledge of the real self, that is, those who attain direct awareness of Brahman, the distinction between good and evil dissolves. Thus Vivekananda remarks with only apparent paradox that such a person realizes ‘How beautiful is good and how wonderful is evil’,16 for in reality nothing corresponds to this distinction.
Advaita has further important consequences in the philosophy of religion. As with other nondualisms – Zen is also an example – it follows that the kernel of religion lies not in adherence to a given set of beliefs or the practice of specific rituals but in direct awareness of the One. The path to religious truth is a voyage inward: ‘only the man who has actually perceived God and the soul is religious . . . religion is not in books and temples. It is in actual perception’,17 and this conviction led Vivekananda to believe in the possibility of a universal religion. Further, Vivekananda believed that just as the imperative to altruism is common to all moral systems, so all religions embody one common presupposition, ‘the knowledge that we are all advancing towards freedom’,18 and freedom consists in awareness that God and real self are one and the same. This belief, combined with his belief in the impersonal divinity of nondualism, leads Vivekananda to advocate extreme mutual toleration between the various religions of the world. Each is in its own way a valuable vessel of truth, and that adherents of diverse religions should persecute each other on the ground of disagreement over the less profound areas of belief struck him as madness. To those who have realized the truth of nondualism, all violence and all competition are against oneself, and so are pointless.19
In the light of this profound tolerance of the variety of religious belief, it is not surprising – and here he follows an ancient tradition in Hindu thought – to find that Vivekananda contends that there is no single form of discipline (or, as he would put it, yoga) suitable to lead all human beings to a realization of the truth of Vedanta. In his view, there are four major types of personality, and for each an appropriate yoga. To each of these yogas he devoted one of his major works. The approach to Vedanta via philosophy is the jnanayoga which has been outlined above, and which is suitable for the person in whom reason is the dominant feature of the personality. Others are primarily given to action (karma) or work, and for them karma-yoga is appropriate, outlined in a work with this title. The goal is to act or work whilst maintaining absolute non-attachment to the work or its fruits: ‘let us do good because it is good to do good . . . Any work that is done with even the least selfish motive, instead of making us free, forges one more chain for our feet.’20 In others, emotion is the strongest aspect of the personality, and for these adoration (bhakti) is the natural attitude to God. Yet the emotion of which this is typical usually creates bonds which bind us to this world of maya, rather than freeing us from it. In his work Bhakti-yoga, Vivekananda describes how emotion can be controlled for spiritual ends, the ultimate goal being to love God because it is good to love God, entirely without ulterior motive. Finally, there are those who aspire to direct awareness of Brahman in mystic experience, and the discipline for them is rajayoga, the king of yogas. Vivekananda’s work with this title is his commentary on the classic Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, describing the path to the ultimate religious experience.
The difficulties in Vivekananda’s philosophy are those of the Advaita of which it is a fine recent example, difficulties which centre on the possibility of articulating a satisfactory nondualist account of the relation of the one and the many, both in metaphysics and the ethical form of the problem of evil. That the West knows of this philosophy in such detail is in no small measure due to Vivekananda’s work, and in this connection he has with respect to Advaita a position somewhat analogous to that of Suzuki regarding Zen. This is the result not only of lucidity and rhetorical skills, but of the appeal of the transparently sincere and tolerant personality which informs all his works.
Unless otherwise indicated, references to Vivekananda’s works are to the compendium volume, ed. Swami Nikhilananda: Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, New York, 1953 (hereafter cited as VYOW).
1 Vivekananda’s life is well documented: cf. the works in the Bibliography by Swami Nikhilananda (1953) and Isherwood (1986), together with the Swami’s letters and autobiographical passages scattered throughout his works.
2 Jnana-Yoga, VYOW, p. 244. Jnana is knowledge or reality attained by means of philosophical reasoning, and jnana-yoga is the spiritual discipline based on this reasoning. The book by Vivekananda issued under the title Jnana-Yoga, in which most of his philosophical views are concentrated, is made up, like nearly all his works, of lectures transcribed by a stenographer. Granted the pace of Vivekananda’s life in his last decade, he would have had no time to write down and assemble such books himself. The lectures in Jnana-Yoga were given in the USA and the UK between 1896 and 1900. All Vivekananda’s works are written in excellent English.
3 op.cit., p. 325.
4 op.cit., p. 212.
5 op.cit., p. 245. The view that the Universe is a manifestation of Brahman’s delight is found throughout the Hindu tradition, from the earliest times to Aurobindo.
6 ‘The Vedanta philosophy’ (1896) in Miscellaneous Lectures, VYOW, p. 725.
7 Jnana-Yoga, VYOW, p. 233.
8 op.cit., p. 214.
9 op.cit., p. 307.
10 op.cit., p. 296.
11 cf. ‘Hinduism’ in Chicago Addresses (1893), VYOW, p. 187.
12 cf. the essays on Bentham and Mill in D.J. Collinson, Fifty Major Philosophers, London, Routledge, 1988.
13 Jnana-Yoga, VYOW, p. 204.
14 op.cit., p. 215.
15 op.cit., p. 266.
16 op.cit., p. 275.
17 op.cit., p. 264.
18 op.cit., p. 241.
19 op.cit., pp. 335–336 and the essay ‘The ideal of a universal religion’, (in Jnana-Yoga), passim.
20 Karma-Yoga, VYOW, p. 507.
Bkakti-Yoga
Chicago Addresses
Inspired Talks
Jnana-Yoga
Karma-Yoga
Raja-Yoga
Badarayana, Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Gandhi, Aurobindo, Radhakrishnan
Isherwood, Christopher, Ramakrishna and His Disciples, Vedanta Society of Southern California, 1986
Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Life, New York, Ramakrishna–Vivekananda Centre, 1953
Swami Nikhilananda (ed.), Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, New York, Ramakrishna– Vivekananda Centre, 1953 (contains all the items listed above under Major Works, together with some letters and poems; the same organization also issues Vivekananda’s Complete Works in eight volumes)
Williams, George M., The Quest for Meaning of Swami Vivekananda, California, New Horizons Press, 1974