External universe is nothing but shadowy projection of our internal universes, says SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
After every happiness comes misery; they may be far apart or near. The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does the one follow the other. What we want is neither happiness nor misery. Both make us forget our true nature; both are chains — one iron, one gold. Behind both is the ‘Atma’, who knows neither happiness nor misery. These are states, and states must ever change; but the nature of the soul is bliss, peace — unchanging. We don’t have to get it; we have it.
Stand upon the Self; only then can you truly love the world. Take a stand. Knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world. If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame. All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent; but within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free. It is bliss. The more we enjoy inner bliss, the more spiritual we are. The internal universe, the real, is infinitely greater than the external, which is only a shadowy projection of the true one. This world is neither true nor untrue; it is the shadow of truth. It is imagination — the gilded shadow of truth — says the poet.
We enter into creation, and then for us it becomes living. Things are dead in themselves; only we give them life and then, like fools, we turn around and are afraid of them or run after them.
We must not depend upon the world for enjoyment. Those who do are the tamasikas, the bound. Then there are the rajasikas, the egotistical, who talk always about ‘I’. They do good work sometimes and may become spiritual. But the highest are the sattvikas, the introspective, those who live only in the Self. These three qualities — tamas, rajas, and sattva — are in everyone, and different ones predominate at different times.
Creation is not a ‘making’ of something; it is the struggle to regain equilibrium, as when bits of cork, thrown to the bottom of a pail of water, rush to the top, singly or in clusters. life is and must be accompanied by evil. A little evil is the source of life. The little wickedness that is in the world is very good; for when the balance is regained, the world will end, because sameness and destruction are one. As long as this world exists, good and evil exist with it; but when we can transcend this world, we get rid of both good and evil and have bliss.
There is no possibility of ever having pleasure without pain, good without evil; for life itself is just lost equilibrium. What we want is freedom not life, nor pleasure, nor good. Creation is infinite, without beginning and without end, the ever moving ripples on an infinite lake. There are, however, unreached depths in this lake, where equilibrium has been regained; but the ripples on the surface are always there; the struggle to regain the balance is eternal. life and death are the two sides of the one coin. Both are maya, the inexplicable state of striving at one time to live, and a moment later having to die. Beyond this is our true nature, the ‘Atma’. What we call god is actually the Self, from which we have separated ourselves and which we worship as outside us; but it is our true Self.
To regain the balance we must counteract tamas by rajas, then conquer rajas by sattva, the calm, beautiful state that will grow and grow until all else is gone.
Excerpts from Swami Vivekananda’s discourses
