Om Asato Ma Sadgamaya Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya Mrityurma Amritam Gamaya Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om Lead us from the unreal to the real Lead us from darkness unto light Lead us from death to immortality Om Peace Peace Peace Swami Vivekananda in his Gyana Yoga lectures, he gave two talks, the
Macrocosm and the Microcosm in 1896 here in New York. And there he takes up the most fundamental
questions of humanity. What is this universe? What is the secret of this universe? What are we?
What is the purpose and ultimate, the destination or destiny of humanity? The purpose
of life? How are we to overcome suffering? So all of these fundamental questions of human
existence, he takes up for consideration. And he gave two talks. The first talk was
called The Macrocosm and the second The Microcosm. You see, our experience of the world is I
and this, subject and object. All our experience, all through our lives is ourselves and
everything else. So this investigation into the everything else, the objective universe,
this is the subject matter of macrocosm. The first talk that Swami Vivekananda gave,
the investigation into the object, and the investigation into ourselves, that was the
subject matter of the talk, the microcosm. Subject, object is basically the structure of
our experience. So all our investigation will be of one or the other. So this vast
universe, Swami Vivekananda speaks eloquently of the beauties and magnificence of this universe, its
stars and planets and nebulae and mountains and oceans. What is it? Where did all this come
from? What is its destiny? What's going on here? Because we see such a tiny slice of it in space. We
just see this little bit. And now, of course, with our instruments or telescopes, we see far out
into the universe. In time, our place in this universe is so little. Even humanity started
just a few million years ago. In the scale of billions of years, this is almost nothing. So we really
do not know. And from ancient times onwards, this was a great question. Where did all this come from,
the origin of this universe? In the most ancient of texts in the Rig Veda, one of the hymns, the
famous Nasadya Suktam, Na sadasid, no sadasid, that when there was neither ought nor not, what
existed? Kimasid gahanam gabhiram, in the profound depths what existed, from which
everything else has emerged? So these questions Swami Vivekananda says in his talk that I shall lay
before you the thinking of the ancient Indian sages in harmony with modern knowledge. So ancient Indian philosophy but
expressed in harmony with the latest findings of science. And by latest, of course, we mean more than 100 years ago when Swami
Vivekananda was here. He was always interested in this. It was not, what he was going to speak
about was not just a history of ancient Indian philosophy. Rather, the essential principles which are relevant even today in terms
of modern physics and cosmology. He was very interested in this. He met some of the leading minds of his
time including Nikola Tesla who in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago, in the science
exposition, Tesla had a pavilion. And Swami Vivekananda records how he says one of the leading scientific
minds of the West, he would shut down his pavilion when it was time for Swami Vivekananda's lecture and he would come and
stand at the back of the hall and listen to just Swami Vivekananda's talk and then go back to his
pavilion. And that was Tesla actually. And they struck up quite an interesting correspondence. Swami Vivekananda
writes that Tesla is very interested in the Sankhyan ideas of Akasha and Prana. And I am going to go to him and talk about it and he has said that he
will be able to demonstrate the truth of these ancient principles, ancient conclusions with mathematics. I give a mathematical proof of
Sankhyan cosmology. I do not know what happened. Probably, I don't think science was advanced
enough. Physics was certainly not advanced enough at that time. Maybe today there would be a better match between what Swami Vivekananda
was talking about in modern cosmology. But Swamiji was very interested in this. And the other Swamis who came
afterwards, we find Swami Abhedananda ji who was here in this Vedanta
society. In his diary he records how he met this inventor who took him to his
laboratory and showed him around and asked him questions about India and
Vedanta. And he also records the name of the inventor, Edison. So, what are the
conclusions which Swami Vivekananda placed before his audience here in
New York more than a hundred years ago? He says, when we look at this universe, what do we see? One thing is that
we see patterns. We see that you plant a little seed and it develops, a plant comes out
and then it develops into a tree and then it goes back to the seed again. That seed becomes a plant again and so on. He talks about the egg and the
chicken and egg problem. So, from the egg comes the chicken and from the chicken or the hen comes
the egg again and so on. The question we all generally ask is which was first, chicken or egg? But
that's not what Swami Vivekananda says. Swami Vivekananda says, that apart, which was first is a separate
question. But notice the pattern that from the egg comes the bird and
from the bird again comes the egg. He gives the example of water. The water cycle in fact which we all
studied in geography when we were kids. He says, look how the water becomes vapor and dances upwards on sunbeams
and when it reaches a higher region, it gets transformed. The vapor gets transformed into water and comes down as rain and falls
into rivers and ponds and again later on to go up as vapor. This cycle. We all learnt this. You know, it is the water cycle and you
have to draw it. And another example he gives, very poetic. He says, the mountains, the
high Himalayan mountains. I remember the first time I read that the Himalayas were at one time
underwater. That fossils have been found on the highest Himalayan peaks showing that
these peaks were at one time underwater, under the ocean. Millions and millions of years ago. Swami Vivekananda speaks about this.
He says that these towering mountains, they are being ground down and
pounded into sand by the action of glaciers and rivers. Till it flows into the oceans and layer after layer of sand is crushed
rock hard and becomes mountains and in the future will become the
mountains of the future. Which will again be transformed slowly over eons of time into sand and go
into the oceans. From sand come these mountains and unto sand they go. That is the
language Swami Vivekananda uses. So, you discern a pattern, a cycle if you will. And this thing Swami
Vivekananda, he says, thousands of years ago there was Kapila, an ancient
Indian sage. Swami Vivekananda calls him the first philosopher of humanity. He saw
this and he gave this principle of causality. From cause comes effect and the effect becomes the cause again for the
next effect. So, cause and effect go in a cycle. And what is creation? Cause becoming the effect. From the unmanifest
becoming the manifest. And from the manifest becoming the unmanifest, is destruction. So from, let's say, he gives an example of a table. When the table is
destroyed it goes back into its constituent parts. The wood particles maybe. So, going back to the cause from the manifest
to the unmanifest, this is destruction. And what is creation? It is going from the cause to the effect. From the
unmanifest to the manifest is creation. So, what we call birth is from egg to the chicken. That's the birth. From
the seed to the plant. And what we call death is when the plant dies or the chicken dies but
already, usually, it's already given rise to a new seed or a new egg
which will give rise to further effects. So, this idea of cause and effect. Now Swami Vivekananda says, if it be
true that nature is uniform, that what we see in this little slice of the world which we experience,
if this be the pattern of the universe, and he says there is nothing to
show otherwise. Science depends on the uniformity of nature. Then he says, by knowing a
grain of sand, we will know the secret of the universe. He is, I think, echoing William Blake. To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower. To hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. So, if
it be true that nature is uniform, then what you see in one little bit of nature, in our experience, little
experience of nature, you can extrapolate. Which means, from the example of the seed and the plant and the egg and
the bird and mountains and sand and so on and so forth, Kapila extrapolated it to the entire universe. That this entire universe
was at one time in a seed state, in an unmanifest state, in a potential
state. And then it has become this manifested universe. So, the creation of the
universe, remember the original cause, where has all this tremendous
variety come from? And now we are beginning to get an answer. This variety is the manifested
state, is the diversified, the fully realized state of the universe. But it has all come from a potential state. There must have been a state
where this diversity was not there. It was in a seed state. All these plants and animals, all these stars and
planets and galaxies, all of this was probably a single point. And Kapila gave it the name Prakriti, the root nature, from which
diversifies into this entire universe. So, this is the great principle of causality called Satkaryavada. The
theory of causality which says that the effect which you see now pre-
existed in some form in the cause. You see, this is an interesting fact. All this diversity that we see, it
has not come out of nothing. Swami Vivekananda says there, creation never comes out of nothing.
Something comes out of something. And from the unmanifest, at the most you can say from the unmanifest, the
manifest has come. From the undiversified, the diversified has come. In the seed, you do not see the branches and the roots and the flowers
and the fruits of the tree. But they are all there. Today with our understanding of genetics we know
that all of that is potentially there. All the information is there in the seed. In the tiny embryo, the entire
information, genetic information for creating at least the body of the
fully developed human being, it's already there. So, this was understood. They did not know the details of genetics in
those days probably. But they understood it in principle that it is entirely possible that all
this we see was potentially there in the seed state of nature before the
universe was created. Created means manifested. Now we speak the language of unmanifest to
manifest. One Kashmiri philosopher puts it so beautifully, poetically. He says the
peacock, the entire brilliant display of colors in the feathers of a
peacock are all there in the homogenous colorless yolk of the peacock's
egg. It doesn't seem to be colorful at all. But in principle all that comes
out of it must already be there. Next Swami Vivekananda says, next big idea, evolution. Now this is a
major development in modern thought from Darwin onwards. But you find this idea firmly in place thousands of years ago in Indian
thought. Sir Monier Williams who made, who made the first Sanskrit
English dictionary, he says that, he was a British Indologist, he says that these ancient
Indians were Darwinists a thousand years before Darwin. They talk about evolution, about more complex forms coming out of simple
forms. There is a sutra in the Yoga Sutras, Prakriti Aapuranath, by the
infilling of nature. Now there is a difference between Darwinian evolution and the way the
Sankhyans understood this. In modern evolution theory we understand that the genetic material
undergoes constant mutation. And at the macro level the environment keeps on changing. And some of
these mutations are favored for survival because they match what the
environment requires. I mean that's the language of the survival of the fittest. So, all the
mutations which result in different forms of the living creature are not
suitable for survival. Those which are suitable, they survive and they propagate. So, that's how
evolution works. Now this is all very fine. But what Kapila would say that these are not
the source of evolution. These are helps. These are the ones which bring out the potential. The source of
evolution, why evolution happens is that all of this potential already
exists in the cause. Just as a particular human being develops from the embryo, as the plant
develops from the seed, it's not just because of the pressure of the
environment. In the case of each individual it's the genetic material which uncoils
with the help of the environment. And that was the idea of evolution of these ancients. That it's all there
in a potential form. In Prakriti, in nature. And over time it evolves into this universe. So,
evolution was understood. We also say that when you look at the idea of God, how that evolves from
animal form, in the Dasa Avatar, the ten avatars of Vishnu. From the animal forms, you know, a fish and a tortoise and a half human,
half animal form like the Narsingha Avatar to a human form. Showing a kind of idea of evolution of forms which was there among the
ancients. So, this is the causality found in the Sankhyan theory of Kapila.
Vivekananda calls him the first philosopher of the human race. Then Vivekananda adds another idea which I must say is not yet admitted
by science. He says it's not just evolution. It's also what he calls involution. This
idea of involution is something that Vivekananda introduces. And this is found in the ancient Satkaryavada, the idea of causality.
What is this involution? It is not only that the seed becomes manifested from the unmanifest,
manifested into the plant. The egg into the chicken. The singularity into the universe. But also the
tree before it dies, it gives rise to the seed or many seeds. Where the entire potentiality of the tree, whatever it is, has been
poured back again into that tiny homogenous seed. Which is potential. Which is tremendous capacity of generating a new
tree. But the tree has in a sense gone back into the seed. Somebody was telling me just couple of days back, just as the globe is
heating due to global warming. And human beings tend to, and animals also, tend to migrate from areas
which are becoming too hot to cooler areas. Northward they tend to migrate. They told me that even the trees are
migrating. I said how can trees migrate? They don't move. The discussion was about the migration of birds. How can trees migrate?
They don't move. They move through seeds. And the seeds are being transmitted and the seeds which go further into
cooler climates, they germinate and they survive. So the whole species has moved a little bit northward. So the
potentiality, entire potentiality manifests as the effect and then goes
back into the potentiality. So the entirety of the tree, of the complexity of life is back in the
seed, in the embryo. This is what Swami Vivekananda calls involution. Now why wouldn't science
admit that? At this level science does admit it. But what Swami Vivekananda is suggesting and the Sankhyan suggested was,
this entire universe goes into that process. That one day this universe with all its diversity will go back into the
seed form. Containing all this diversity in a homogeneous form. It will not be
expressed. You will not see stars and planets and human beings and Vedanta lectures
going on in the seed form. But potentially the whole thing is there which will be the seed for the
next universe. This he says, if you combine the idea of evolution and involution, then
evolution instead of being the enemy of religion will actually prove the
truth of religion. He just says it and leaves it there. It's a very interesting idea. See one of the biggest blows to religious thinking has been the idea of
evolution. This variety of life, this diversity, the extremely sophisticated design
that we find in our bodies. The first reaction to this to thinkers was that there must have been this
intelligent designer who created all this diversity. But then Darwin came with his theory of evolution and showed all this
complexity and this design can emerge out of evolution. You don't require an external designer to create all this. It's not like a human being, the idea of the watchmaker. William Paley came up with this idea that if you are walking along and
you see a stone, you will think that it's natural. It's always been there. But if you are walking along in a garden you come
across a watch. In those days pocket watches. You will not say it's natural, it's always
been there. You will say somebody has dropped it, it's human made. Why? Why do you
say that? Even he says a primitive culture that does not have watches, artificial
watches. Even they will recognize this is not natural. This is artificial because
of the complexity and design. And so that led to this design theory that because there is complexity
and design especially in living bodies and the higher animals, there must be some kind of God who created these designs. But along comes Darwin and he shows complex designs can emerge out of
natural processes. Just by the process of the struggle to survive and the constant random
mutation of genetic material, you can have ever more sophisticated
bodies. Then there is no argument. The argument for the existence of God is now
knocked out. We don't need a designer of this universe. The universe can design
sophisticated living bodies, can produce sophisticated designs without
the help of God. I think it was Pascal who said, the king of France questioned him, but in
your entire thesis you have not mentioned God. I think he replied that I do not see the need for that hypothesis. That there is a God, I do not see the need for such a hypothesis. Why? Because the way we look at modern science now, especially evolution, it
can take the role of what God was supposed to do. So it becomes the enemy of religion. Swami Vivekananda says if you add
the idea of involution to it, then it becomes this whole idea of evolution and involution taken
together actually proves the truth of religion. How does it do so? Notice the Sankhyan idea of spirituality is a very
natural idea. It's talking about this world. It's not talking about something else
beyond this world which you have to believe in. By studying the emergence and the disappearance of the universe we can
prove that ultimate reality called God. Swami Vivekananda says that even the highest product of evolution, he
says the Buddha man of the Buddhists, the Christ man of the Christians and the free of the yogis that is the Jivan Mukta of the Vedantins. All
of this then must have been there in potential form in the first
protoplasm of life. And even if you go further back into the singularity at the beginning of
the universe, from there to the emergence of matter and energy and space
and time, to the emergence of stars and planets, to the emergence of life and the
evolution of life, to the emergence of intelligence and evolution of
civilization, to the coming of spirituality and religion and the appearance of these
highly spiritually evolved human beings. Evolved in the sense of morals and love and unselfishness and spiritual
insight. All of this must have been there at the very beginning of this
universe also in an unmanifest form. So this is the idea of the evolution and involution of the universe. That
reality which emerges from, now he introduces the term God. Swami Vivekananda for the first time introduced the term God. From that
idea of God, from that ultimate reality called God which emerges as a
seed and then evolves into this magnificent universe and goes back into the
seed and behind it all giving it existence, giving it light, making it
all possible, is that reality, that supreme power which Swami Vivekananda says now we
can use the term God. And then he says, if at the very beginning I had said God created this
universe, we would not have understood. We would have said this is just the same old thing which we learn in our
Sunday Bible class. It is true. But in what sense? So there is this reality which in Vedanta is called Brahman, which is of
the nature of existence, consciousness, bliss, which appears as this
universe. So the final form of the Vedantic theories, going from the Sankhya to the
Vedantic theory is this, about this entire universe. There is this existence, consciousness, bliss, the ultimate reality which
appears as this universe. And this universe which is appearing, goes through a cycle. In Sanskrit,
Brahma-vivarta-prakriti-parinama. The appearance of Brahman and the transformation of Prakriti. In English,
the appearance, the manifestation of God and the transformation of
nature. The transformation of nature, it goes through these two phases,
involution and evolution. So Prakriti cycles back, nature cycles between unmanifest and manifest.
This is called creation. God remaining in the background gives the entire thing existence. So this
is called creation. When Prakriti goes, cycles from the unmanifest to the manifest, the
entire universe appears. And then this is called destruction of the universe. In Sanskrit,
pralaya. When Prakriti, this manifest universe goes back to the unmanifest state
Prakriti. God remaining as God is, as existence, consciousness, bliss. This whole
thing taken together is called Saguna Brahman in Vedanta. Saguna Brahman means Brahman with qualities, Brahman with attributes. Existence, consciousness, bliss, that is Brahman, associated with
Prakriti or Maya. This is the idea of Saguna Brahman. This is the reality of the universe. And Swami Vivekananda ends the talk on macrocosm at that point. So this is the basic idea of the universe that there is a fundamental
reality which appears as this universe. And in this appearance it goes through birth and diversification and
death. From unmanifest to manifest back to the unmanifest again. The entire potentiality is always there. Nothing new appears. Swamiji uses the term, so this universe is the creation of Brahman,
rather it is the projection of Brahman, rather it is Brahman itself. Three stages. We see it as the creation of God. But creation is nothing
other than the projection. What was unmanifest is becoming manifest. And what was unmanifest, there
also the same Brahman was there. What is manifest now, here also the same Brahman is there. So he says it is Brahman itself in the unmanifest state when the universe
is not there. Brahman. In the manifest state, here when evolution is going on and all this
diversity has appeared and tremendous change is going on, it is Brahman
in reality. What is changing? Prakriti or nature. What is the unchangeable
background? Brahman itself. Then he goes on to turning inwards. It is very natural to go outwards and
so therefore the first question was always, what is all this? After examining this for some time, in ancient times, they found this
unsatisfactory. Still the question remains, so what? We have understood something about
the universe. We have understood what is maybe the origin of the universe. We have
understood how this diversity appears and what is cycling back and forth. And that what is appearing now existed in a potential form. That
something does not come out of nothing. All these things are possible. These are insights we gain into the
universe. But still, so what? What about us? What am I and what is my destiny and what is my purpose?
What am I to do in all this vastness? So the question now turned inwards. An investigation into the human, into
the subject. Microcosm and macrocosm. So having considered the macrocosm, now the
attention turns inwards into the microcosm, into ourselves. The question is asked about the human being, about our mind, not just the
body, but also about the inner person, the mind and the self and
consciousness. As the ancients, so the moderns. It is so interesting that consciousness
studies has become so important and such a vibrant field in the last, but
only in the last 20-30 years. Before that it was not even considered a serious field of research. How
strange is it? Does it not strike you as strange? That science, which is an investigation into reality, the reality which
is closest to us, our own minds and our awareness, our own self, that was
not investigated. The first thing that we investigated was the world. The closest thing
that we investigated to ourselves was the body. And all of that was good and it led to tremendous development of science. But the thing which is closest to us, which we think we are, our self,
our mind, our consciousness, that did not form the subject of
investigation, especially consciousness, until the last 20-30 years. I remember hearing Christoph Koch, who is the chief scientist of the Paul
Allen Brain Institute. He was saying that when he went into consciousness research about 40
years ago, all his colleagues and his professors told him, you are
destroying your career. It is a career destroying move. So, this investigation, what are we? When
the body dies, is anything left? When the physical body goes. This is the question from the most ancient
times. Is everything destroyed when the body is buried or burnt? Or is there something left over? If there is something that survives
physical death, then what is its destiny? Whence has it come? Where does
it go? The answers were found in the most ancient times. In the Vedas, in the
Upanishads, answers were found. But the question has been asked again and again and the answers have to
be restated. Swamiji is very clear. He says, I do not claim to tell you anything new.
It is the wisdom of the ancients but stated in the language of the modern
man. It is the wisdom of the ancient philosophers stated in the language of
the modern scientist. He says poetically, it is the language of the gods stated in the language
of poor humanity, so that we may understand. The truth which came from the divine essence, the divine essence from
which this truth has come, that divine essence is in all of us so that we
too may understand that truth today. There is Swami Vivekananda's language. So, the language of the ancients
in the language of modern scientists. Few months ago, the cosmologist Brian Greene who is here in Columbia, he
is one of the great popularizers of the latest ideas of cosmology and
physics today. Many of us have seen the PBS documentaries based on his book, The Elegant
Universe. He is a brilliant scientist and an expositor of science, popularizer of
science. So, his latest book, Until the End of Time, look at the title of the
book. Where did this universe come from and the entire journey of the universe
from its beginning. He says, until the end of time, until the universe is finished. Just by the way, he gave a very nice talk at Harvard and I was privileged
to attend that talk, on the launch of this book. And I was so inspired to see the eagerness for knowledge, the devotion,
the passion for understanding. So, this launch of a book and a big auditorium, I think 500 people or 800
people sitting in that auditorium in the Harvard Science Center for the
talk on this book. And he is a brilliant and dynamic teacher, a very good teacher. You feel
inspired when you listen to him. If you are interested, what will happen at the end of time? He said,
nothing much. The earlier idea was that the universe begins in a singularity through
the big bang, space, time, energy, fundamental particles are created. And then evolution, I mean, first of all cosmic evolution and then
biological evolution takes over. And finally there is the force of gravity will pull everything back and
it collapses into a singularity. This was the earlier idea. But the new idea is, the latest understanding is that the force of
gravity is not strong enough to pull back the expanding universe. So, the universe will keep on expanding. Stars and planets will, the
solar systems will keep flying away from each other. And he gave beautiful graphics where he showed the night sky which we are
seeing now. We are at a good time in cosmic history where we can study the universe.
We can see all of that. But all of it is flying apart further and further. Millions of years in
the future, if there are still human beings who are interested in
cosmology left, when they look out into the sky, they won't see anything. Because all the
stars would have flown so far apart that light would not have travelled
from those stars to the earth. So, you won't be able to see the stars and the solar systems and the
galaxies. They would have all flown far apart. And then the stars would run down, run out of their hydrogen fuel and
become these red dwarfs and that would be the end of the universe. It would die a heat death. So, at the end of the universe, at the end of
time, there would be nothing. Just free floating, some very fundamental
particles floating around in the emptiness of space. That's the end of the universe. Not a very exciting end. But still
billions of years left. So, there is time. I think somebody said that he is so energetic and enthusiastic and bubbly
and cheerful that even this gloomy tale, he makes you feel good about it. Now, why I am saying this is, his elder brother, Brian Green's elder
brother is a monk. He is a Vedantic monk and not of our order. He belongs to, you know, they are quite popular here in New York, the
Hare Krishnas, the ISKCON. And he said, I would often have these discussions with him. It's there in
his book too. That he would tell me the Vedic ideas of cosmology, of the evolution of
the universe. And I would talk about modern cosmology. And the question was, do you think they were right, these ancients? So,
his answer is a very considered balanced answer, Brian Green's answer. He said that the ideas that we find in the Vedas are like poetic echoes
of modern science. They are not science. But they are poetic echoes of modern science. They
seem to say the same thing but in general, in principle and in poetic
language, not in scientific language. That's as far as he would go. And he said, he was very happy to see me
because he saw this dress and so he had a little talk. He said, he asked the Dalai Lama once, do you think that Buddhism and by
extension Vedanta, Hinduism, has anything to contribute to science, to the scientific understanding of
the world? And the Dalai Lama considered the question for a moment and then he said,
as far as the external universe is concerned, we will look to you and your colleagues to deepen our understanding. But
as far as mind and consciousness are concerned, definitely Buddhism has something to say, has something valuable to
contribute. So, and he puts this story down in his book also, Until the end of time.
And that's it. So, as far as the macrocosm is concerned, I think the ancient ideas of
Kapila are amplified and our understanding is much deeper with modern
physics and cosmology. But as far as the microcosm is concerned, mind and consciousness, Vedanta
and the other systems of ancient philosophy, they have very valid, very deep insights, much more so than the modern
understanding given by consciousness studies. I have noticed personally how interesting it is that the further we get
away from ourselves to the body and to the world outside, the better that the modern science, you know, the modern science has an
edge over ancient wisdom. It describes the world and physics and chemistry. It describes the body,
biology and physiology. Probably better. But the closer and closer we come to ourselves, the more
and more ancient wisdom seems to be better than modern science. When we come to the body, there are ancient systems of medicine which do
have something to say, which have some effectiveness. When we come to the mind, the psychology of the yoga or Buddhism actually
is far superior to modern psychology. And when we come to consciousness, what modern science has to say,
consciousness studies, is pretty crude and to the level of being silly compared to what say Advaita Vedanta or Yoga and Sankhya or Buddhism have
to say. So the closer we come to ourselves, the more these ancient knowledge
systems seem to come to their own. A synthesis of both is called for. It's almost, the conclusion would be
we should have both. And we should have that kind, we should accept that kind of understanding
from the ancient knowledge systems which is compatible with modern
science. That was I think Swami Vivekananda's project too. So the microcosm, when
we look at ourselves, we find, Swami Vivekananda takes the path of
epistemology. How do we see for example? What do we find within ourselves? The way you
investigate it is, take up epistemology, the branch of philosophy which
deals with knowledge. So when I see a flower, there is an object outside and there is this
sense organ. The sense organ takes information from that object and
transmits it inwards. Part of this is physical. So there is the eyes and the optic nerves going
to the brain centers. But then it becomes mental, it becomes subtle because then the
information is now presented to the mind. So from this object to the senses to the mind. The moment we come to the
senses and the body, we have come to the microcosm, ourselves. And when we look inwards, at one point the senses, they stop at the brain
but the senses are also, they have a subtle part in the mind. What I mean by this is, by the senses, the sense organs, I don't just
mean the physical sense organs. It's very interesting that the mind is essential to the functioning of
the sense organs. Even without the physical sense organs, the mind can still in its own way
use sensory perception. What I mean by that is, suppose in your dreams, you fall asleep, your
eyes are actually, physical eyes are closed. But in your mind you see, you hear, you smell, you taste, you touch, all
those things go on in the dreams. Of course you are not seeing or hearing anything external. The whole
thing, whatever you are seeing and hearing is in the mind. But my point is, that experience in the dream is also a kind of sensory
experience. You say, in my dreams I saw this, in my dreams I heard this. Actually you
did not see or hear anything. But all of that was going on in the mind. The mind has a capacity to
simulate sensory experiences. So the senses have a subtle part in the mind. The data from the senses is
collected and brought to the mind. In the mind, there is a seeing which is going on. There is a hearing and
smelling and tasting and touching which is going on, based on the data brought in by the senses. And the mind is the one which
controls the senses, which coordinates the data, which directs the
senses. In the Kathopanishad, the mind is compared to the reins of a chariot,
where the reins control the horses. The horses are the senses and they are controlled by the reins. The reins
are the mind. And this is not the end. This mind which we are aware of directly, thoughts and feelings, but the
function of the mind is to take and coordinate and consider the data
brought in by the senses. Sankalpa Vikalpa Atmakam Manaha. The mind is which considers various
options and data brought in by the senses. Then it is presented to the intellect. Another part of the subtle body,
is presented to the intellect, the buddhi. The intellect decides, the intellect clarifies, the intellect
understands. In Sanskrit, Nishchayatmika Buddhi. Buddhi is the one, is the
determinative faculty, which says what is what. It could fail, then you would have incomprehension. But this is the
function of the buddhi, the intellect. This is not the end. The whole thing now is presented to the self, the
Atman, which is consciousness. And then at that level what happens? You become aware of everything. I
see this, I think about it, I understand it. All the functioning of the senses and the mind and the intellect is lit
up by consciousness. Then is perception complete. When this lighting up goes from the
intellect to the mind to the senses, down to the sensory level, we can finally say, I see, I hear, I smell, I taste, I understand. So finally behind all of these, there is this consciousness, the real
self. The real self is not the body, is not the senses, is not the mind, is not
the intellect. But this consciousness which lights up the intellect and the mind and the
senses, through that the body and the entire universe which is
experienced. So this consciousness is the self, the Atman. Then Swami Vivekananda talks about that now if you look at the entire
system, you can divide it into or you can analyze it into three
components. There is the gross component, the physical component, the body, including
the physical sense organs up to the brain. And then there is the subtle body. The subtle body, Swamiji uses the term
the finer body. The subtle body, sukshma sharira, the gross body is called sthula sharira
in Sanskrit. And the subtle body, sukshma sharira, which is the mind, including the
sensory powers, the mind, the intellect. And beyond that, the soul, the Atma, the consciousness. The soul or the Atman in Sanskrit, what is it made of? Consciousness. And that shines upon the subtle body. What is the subtle body made of?
Mind and intellect and sensory powers. And that pervades the physical body. What is the physical body made of?
Matter. So this is the microcosm described by ancient Sankhya, Vedanta, different
knowledge systems in India. And as you can see, if you look at ourselves, none of it is speculative
or theoretical. It's just a careful look at what's going on right now. That the physical body is there, there is no doubt about it. Everybody
knows. And the subtle body, it may sound speculative or occult. No. We all experience it. Everybody experiences it. You may not call it the
subtle body. We just call it my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, my memories, my
desires. This my, my, my, this is the ego. This is also part of the subtle body. This is also functioning of the subtle body. And beyond that, the
consciousness. This consciousness is the never changing light. He uses the term soul. Though I wonder if the soul actually accurately represents Atman. In ancient Greece, the words were anima, that which enlivens a physical
body. Pneuma, which is the word for breath. So, the original idea in the Middle
East and in the Mediterranean, in the ancients, what they considered the soul is what would correspond to the Prana in
Indian thought. Beyond the prana is the Atman, the real Atman. So, three bodies. The physical body, the subtle body and beyond that there is a causal body
which Swami Vivekananda does not mention here for fear of confusing his New York audience a hundred years ago. It is just the seed form of the subtle body. When we fall asleep, that's
the causal body. From which emerges the mind again. That's why it's called causal. It
causes, it's the cause of the mind. So, sthula sharira, sukshma sharira, karana sharira and beyond all of
this the Atman. Physical body, subtle body, causal body, beyond which is the Atman, which
we are, the Atman. This Atman, the consciousness, I will say consciousness of the Atman but
that the Atman is consciousness. It is just consciousness itself. Its consciousness is innate, intrinsic,
unfailing, unchanging. The consciousness of the mind which you feel, the mind and the intellect,
the awareness which we feel, it's a borrowed light. It's a borrowed light. Swami Vivekananda gives a couple of examples. He says, for example, the moon waxes and wanes. Why? Because its light is
borrowed from the sun. Depending on the change, the position of the moon, it becomes full moon
or half moon and then it becomes the new moon, it disappears. Because the light waxes and wanes. Another example he gives is iron. When iron which is cold and dark is thrust into fire and it becomes hot.
What happens? Red hot. It's very hot and it also glows red. So, light, it emits light and it
emits heat, none of which belongs to the iron. After sometime what will happen? The same cold dark iron. Similarly, even
the mind is not conscious. The physical body is not conscious, the mind is also not conscious. When
the physical body feels conscious, right now, when the mind and the senses feel conscious, it's not just the mind which
is conscious, our eyes and ears, they feel very conscious. The different kinds of sensory consciousness. All of this consciousness
is borrowed. How do we know? When we take a cup of coffee early in the morning, mind feels very
conscious, I am very alert. And late in the night the mind feels sleepy. Waking, alertness,
sleepiness, dreaming, deep sleep, these are not states of consciousness, these are states of the mind. We find this in Drig Drsya Viveka. Waking,
dreaming and deep sleep, only loosely we call them states of
consciousness. They are actually states of the mind. Consciousness, the Atman, is an
ever shining unchanging light. But the mind, depending upon its state, can sometimes channel this
consciousness effectively and it feels very alert and very conscious. Or when it weakens, maybe through aging and the body slows down and the
mind which is very closely connected to the body, that also slows down, it gets affected, it cannot channel this
consciousness so well and feels dull and sleepy and tired. You see, I am not as sharp as I used to be. When we have these classes,
Bill tells me after the class, so Bill is 96 years, he tells me after the class, I am not as quick as I used to be, I mean I
can't generate a question which I can ask in the class. Just the body which slows down along with the mind. But the consciousness
is aware. The consciousness which is aware of the quick mind, sharp mind is also aware of the failing memory and the slowing down mind.
Consciousness is not failed. Consciousness is not slowing down. So this unchanging consciousness whose very nature is light, it is not a
borrowed light. Swami Vivekananda says there, the consciousness, the Atman, it is not that the Atman exists, it is
existence itself. It is not that the Atman has knowledge, it is knowledge
itself. It is not that the Atman is happy, it is happiness itself. That existence
which is borrowed will go away, relative existence. Existence going away means it will die. In our day to day language,
death, destruction, which means it loses existence. A thing can lose existence only if it had gained existence. A thing gains
and loses existence only if it is borrowed, it is not its own. The Atman's existence is its own. It exists intrinsically. Everything
else, intellect, mind, sensory system, body, they all borrow existence and consciousness from the Atman. The
consciousness which is borrowed can be gained and lost. But the Atman is consciousness by its very nature. It cannot gain or lose
consciousness. Similarly with Ananda. Swami Vivekananda does not delve into this but he just states it. Joy or
bliss, the bliss in the mind, the bliss in the intellect, the bliss of the senses, the pleasure of the senses is gained and lost.
It is borrowed from the Atman whose very nature is bliss. But the bliss which you find in the mind, the mental, emotional joy, the
bliss which you find, the pleasure which you find in the senses, that comes and goes. Sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are not. That
increases and decreases. Sometimes more happy, even more happy, sometimes much less so. But the
Atman is the nature of bliss itself. Neither increases nor decreases, neither comes nor goes and is of
infinite nature. That means there is no lessening, there is no degree in
that bliss of the Atman or the Atman which is bliss. Then Swami Vivekananda having shown the nature of the Atman which is
Satchidananda, he considers a question. Why not say that the soul or the Atman borrows its consciousness and
existence from something higher than that? Why not that? The problem will be, he says, then where do you stop? If the body and the
senses have borrowed their consciousness from the mind and the mind has
borrowed consciousness from the intellect, intellect has borrowed consciousness from the self or the Atman and if
you say further back and further back, you go into what is called an
infinite regress. In Sanskrit it is called Anavastha, the logical fault of not having a
foundation. So infinite regress, that's a fault of logic. You have to stop somewhere and stop where you find it logical to stop.
The self as consciousness is the place where you can stop. If the self is not conscious by its own nature and borrows something
else, then that would be the self. So you always stop with consciousness, the self as consciousness. One more subject, important subject Swami Vivekananda investigates here
which we do not have time to go into but it is a very very interesting
subject. The subject of Karma and reincarnation. The law of Karma states that
whatever we do has consequences. What we consciously deliberately think, say and do, has consequences. The
consequences, the actions are called Karma and the results are also
called Karma. If we consciously do what we know to be good, Dharma, the result is merit
or punya and the result of that is Sukha or pleasant things happen in
life. So we say good Karma, you have good Karma. It's entered into English now,
especially American English. And if we do what is, we deliberately do what we know is bad, Adharma, it
leads to demerit, papa or sin and the result of that is said to be
suffering, dukkha. Unpleasant things happen in life. So this is the law of Karma. Whatever
we see in our life is the effect of our past Karma and whatever we do in
life will give rise to effects in the future. This leads to reincarnation, the theory of reincarnation. Why? Because
when a child is born, you see there is such vast differences across
children born across the world for example. A child born in a poor community, deprived of nutrition, of care, of
security, of education. I was thinking a dog born in Manhattan gets more facilities than the
human beings born in some poorer communities of the other world. If those are effects, then where are the causes? The causes cannot be in
this life because they have just been born. So there must be some past existence where the causes lie. So what we see
as a diversity of effects at the very beginning of our life, if there is any cause and effect relationship at all, if there are causes
to that, they must lie beyond, before this life. So we must have existed in some form earlier and as we go through life,
all the things that we do, do we get the results of all of that in this
life? It doesn't seem so. It's a common thing to hear that there are so many
evil people, they do bad things but I don't see them suffering. That means the results of those things have not come yet. Usually when it
comes to good things, we say that I did so much good, I didn't get my
rewards, the result of my good karma and for others we say they did so many bad
things, they didn't get punished enough. It's never the other way around. I did bad things and I didn't get
punished enough, nobody complains. So the point is karma remains over. That means we must accept the
possibility that there is karma remaining to be experienced and so there
is a future existence. After the death of this body, we will have newer bodies where the
leftover karma is experienced. But that's not the end because when we get newer bodies, we again do more
karma and that leads to more birth. So birth and rebirth, the cycle of birth and rebirth is fueled by karma,
is instigated by karma. So the karma, cause and effect leads to birth and rebirth. This is a
concept which is sort of axiomatic for Indian thought. So all the different schools, widely diverse schools of philosophy and
religion in India, they all accept, except the materialist, they all accept this karma and reincarnation, birth and rebirth, the
cycle of birth and rebirth. One Swami said once that, ye badi gambhir tattva hai, in Hindi. This is a
very profound philosophy, profound principle. Notice that the Buddhists and the Vedantists, the Buddhists do not accept
a permanent soul, they do not accept God. And the Vedantists uphold the existence of God and soul. Yet both with
such tremendously diverse views, they still accept that there is karma and rebirth, birth and rebirth. So
this idea is common to Indian thought, all systems of Indian thought. But I find a strange resistance, I was surprised actually, one of the
things that surprised me was the resistance to this idea in the West. Scholars, students and professors, I found this. Why it surprised me was,
what is the resistance to this? For, if you look at the history of Western thought, which is dominated by
Christian thought for example or Judaic thought, there is always the belief of some existence after death. All religion,
including Christianity and Judaism, talks about the existence of the soul after death. You talk about the
immortal soul, going to heaven or hell or whatever, but he exists after
death. If that idea is, I think that's the big step. That is really the big
step, that to accept something exists after death. If you have already accepted that or if you have already, even if you
don't accept it, if you understand the concept, the claim, that you do exist after death, then karma, birth and rebirth are just
extensions of that idea. It's not so difficult. If you exist after death, the question is how do
you exist? Do you always stay in the grave? Or do you get newer bodies and newer lives? I think it's much better,
more exciting and full of possibilities, not just to lie down in the
grave in your coffin, but to go through many more experiences and many more lives. So, the
possibility of many lives, once you admit that there is something that
survives the death of the physical body, then the possibility of karma and rebirth becomes almost inevitable. I
don't see why there is so much, why people consider it funny or strange. I just imagine what it would have been like more than a hundred years ago
when Swami Vivekananda was talking about these things to a New York
audience in 1896. Swami Vivekananda adds one note. That please note, he says, the karma is
a philosophy of human free will. It's not fatalism. It's often misunderstood and Indians are charged with
fatalism. It's a fatalistic kind of civilization where you say it's all my karma,
what can I do? But if you take a deeper look at karma, it's what we have
ourselves generated. What we are today is what we have created ourselves. It's not fixed by
some unknown force, some tyrannical God who has made it so. No, what we are experiencing today is what we ourselves have created. We
reap what we sow. So, all of this is generated by what we have done in
the past and the way we react now will generate our lives to come in the
future. What we will be in the future is in our hands today. There is always that
modicum of free will. Karma can only generate or determine the broad outlines of our lives.
Where we are born, our health and parents and the span of our lives. But how we react to it, that depends more on us than on karma. It does
not generate every little movement of our minds or our thoughts or our
direction that our life takes. So, we have freedom. Wherever there is mind and intellect lit up by
consciousness, there is freedom. We have the power to make our destiny. Swami Vivekananda says in inspiring language, take the whole
responsibility upon yourselves and work out your destiny. If what we think and say and do generates karma, if our bad karma is
there like tigers waiting to pounce on us, never fear because all the
good that you have done, that you have thought and felt and said and done, that is waiting with
the power of a thousand angels, nay a hundred thousand angels to come to
your help. This is the actual understanding of the law of karma. So, what do we have
at the end of it all? A grand synthesis. This consciousness which is also existence, which is also bliss, which we
find within ourselves in the microcosm, is the reality of the macrocosm
also. This is also what we found in the macrocosm. When you investigate the
macrocosm, you find this cycle of involution and evolution, the manifest
and the unmanifest. Prakriti going through cycles of the vast universe and beyond it all,
that same existence consciousness bliss. That, tat means in Sanskrit, tat means that. That means the reality of
this macrocosm. And tvam means thou, thou the reality of this microcosm that's inner and
subtler and inward to this physical body, sensory system. Subtler and inward to that, the mind. Subtler and inward to that, the
intellect. And inner most of all is this consciousness, the Atman, is
also this same existence consciousness bliss. What is that is also thou. Thou art that. Tat tvam asi. The reality of
the macrocosm is also the reality of the microcosm. So this is the grand synthesis which Vedanta arrives at. I pray to Swami
Vivekananda, to the Holy Mother, to Sri Ramakrishna, that what Swamiji
said in this very city more than a hundred years ago. This grand synthesis of the cosmos and ourselves, we may realize this in
our life and to the extent that we realize it, may we get the bliss and
the peace and the satisfaction of that. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Hari Om Tat Sat Sri Ramakrishna Arpanam Astu. Please stay safe wherever you are. May the Lord protect all of us. Thank you.
