The Background, the Reality, of everyone is that same Eternal, Ever Blessed, Ever Pure, and Ever Perfect One. It is the Atman, the Soul, in the saint and the sinner, in the happy and the miserable, in the beautiful and the ugly, in men and in animals; it is the same throughout. It is the Shining One.
- Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, II/168

The Upanishads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong, energized through them. They will call with trumpet voice to the weak, the miserable and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds and all sects, to stand on their feet and be free. Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom and spiritual freedom are the watchwords of the Upanishads.
- Ibid., III/238

Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come, when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.
- Ibid., III/193

Spiritual Knowledge Encourages Values

Our age has been called the age of progress and the age of science, but it has also been characterized as the age of tension. anxiety, depression, violence, crime and fear.

New technology also creates fresh ideas of crime, "crime of multinational nature" in various ways. As we reflect on it, we find our evils stem essentially from ignorance about the spiritual dimensions of life. Secular knowledge does not give us Self-knowledge; it has given us miraculous control over Nature, but it has added practically nothing to control our emotional life and social behavior. As a result, our life has been oriented to things. We have every sort of possession except self-possession and every sort of security except emotional and spiritual security. Spiritual knowledge encourages values that motivate improvement in human worth. Spiritual insight enriches our subjective life and brings harmony in our life and helps us to acquire some positive and enduring values in life.

Human Progress Based on Spiritual Growth

To most of us value is associated with "pay, promotion and pleasure"; man and his integrity of character are not taken into account. In this atomic age, everything has changed except our values of life. But time has come for a more practical use of our moral and spiritual insight, and more enthusiasm to pursue the "right conduct" We are to give up our old attitude of life and incorporate a new vision of human progress based on spiritual growth.

Albert-Szent-Gyorgyi, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1937 for his discovery of vitamin C says, "Snakes can grow only by bursting their skins. Moulting has to be a painful process and should it fail, the snake would die. Mankind grows by bursting the outgrown skin of antiquated ideas, thinking, and institutions." Our deep skin of superficial thinking is what we have to slough off for our survival.

Foster Spiritual Outlook and Generate Ethical and Moral Culture

Our inner mind is shrinking due to lack of spiritual nourishment, while the outer life is being overfed and over pampered. Progress does not mean only speed and comfort but also a sense of direction, a sense of purpose which culminates in finding fulfillment in life. Human progress, plainly, cannot be meaningful unless values enter into our every activity and thought. Life is significant because it has the capacity for striving towards the ideal; ideals are vital and valuable because they can make our life better, our mind stronger and our outlook nobler. Life begins with values that derive not from pleasure and immediate experience, but from wisdom transmitted to us from a long human heritage and honoured tradition. Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. Knowledge must rise to the level of wisdom to bring forth transformation of personality. Bertrand Russell says:

We are in the middle of a race between this skill as to the means and the folly as to ends. . . . Unless men increase in wisdom as much as knowledge, increase in knowledge will be increase of sorrow.
- Bertrand Russell, Impact of Science on Society, pp. 120-21

Values emerge in actual life at all levels. The fundamental values of a true community are those which keep the society together, bring harmony between the practical and the spiritual, help cultivate the virtues of renunciation and service and make people humane, cultured, and unselfish. The chief object of the society then, is to foster a spiritual outlook and generate ethical and moral culture.

Civilization is material, and culture spiritual; the former may be compared to the body and the latter to the soul. One gives happiness and the other peace. True culture is the humanizing factor in human life. Without a spiritual outlook, there can be no high and enduring culture. Culture and self-control are synonymous terms. The realm of culture is the realm of values. The multitude of such cultured people paves the way to human happiness.

Materialism is a One-eyed Monster

"Excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils (C.W., Vol. I, p. 425). Science and technology have released great power---greater than we can control and use for genuine human welfare. "War and preparation for war are standing temptations to make the present bad, God-eclipsing arrangements of society progressively worse as technology becomes progressively more efficient" (Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, p. 96). These dark forces have created chaos in society. War is an industry---it has been developed for economic reasons. Professor Maurice H. Wilkins, a Nobel laureate, said in 1986, "About half the world’s scientists and engineers are now engaged in war industries." He further remarked, "I feel very strongly that most of the scientists today are being led increasingly into a rather limited way of thinking, without much open-mindedness, working for material ends." Another Nobel laureate, George World, says: "Killing has become a profitable business now." Modern society has committed the fundamental error of disobeying the law of spiritual development. It has arbitrarily reduced man to an intellectual animal. It idealizes the intellect as the master key to open the secrets of nature. Swami Vivekananda comments:

It is one of the evils of civilization that we are after intellectual education alone and take no care of the heart. It only makes man ten times more selfish, and that will be our destruction . . .Intellect can never be inspired; only the heart, when it is enlightened, becomes inspired. An intellectual, heartless man can never become an inspired man . . .Intellect has been cultured, with the result that hundreds of sciences have been discovered, and their effect has been that the few have made slaves of the many-that is all the good that has been done. Artificial wants have been created; and every poor man, whether he has money or not, desires to have those wants satisfied; and when he cannot, struggles, and dies in the struggle. This is the result. The way to solve the problem of misery is not through the intellect but through the heart. If all this vast amount of effort has been spent in making men purer, gentler, more forbearing, this world would have a thousandfold more happiness than it has today.
- C.W., Vol. I, p. 415

Quest for Spiritual Enlightenment

According to Schopenhauer, "Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich rather than acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what man is, contributes more to his happiness than what he has."

Saul Bellow of the United States received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. He spoke before the Nobel committee: "The intelligent public is waiting to hear a broader, fuller, and more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we are, who we are, and what this life is for."

Swami Vivekananda anticipated the responsive attitude of the intelligent Westerners to accept the teachings of Vedanta and said:

Many, nay, most of the cultured men and women there are already weary of this competition, this struggle, this brutality of their commercial civilization, and they are looking forward towards something better. The thoughtful men of the West find in our ancient philosophy especially in the Vedanta, the new impulse they are seeking, the very spiritual food and drink for which they are hungering and thirsting. And it is no wonder that this is so.
- C.W., Vol. III, p. 182

Is it not curious that whilst under the terrific onset of modern scientific research, all the old forts of Western dogmatic religions are crumbling into dust; whilst the sledge-hammer blows of modern science are pulverizing the porcelain mass of systems whose foundation is either in faith or in belief or in the majority of votes of church synods; whilst Western theology is at its wit’s end to accommodate itself to the ever-rising tide of aggressive modern thought; whilst in all other sacred books the texts have been stretched to their utmost tension under the ever-increasing pressure of modern thought, and the majority of them are broken and have been stored away in lumber rooms; whilst the vast majority of thoughtful Western humanity have broken asunder all their ties with the church and are drifting about in a sea of unrest, the religions which have drunk the water of life at the fountain of light, the Vedas-Hinduism and Buddhism- alone are reviving?
- C.W., Vol. IV, pp. 348-49

Comments on this article can be sent to: VedantaSoc@aol.com

Books by Swami Tathagatananda (organized by the year of publication):

1. The Light from the Orient, 2005
2. The Journey of the Upanishads to the West, 2003
3. The Vedanta Society of New York -- A Brief History, 2000
4. Mahabharat--Katha (Bengali), 1998
5. Ramayan Anudhyan (Bengali), 1996
6. Healthy Values of Living, 1996
7. Meditation on Swami Vivekananda, 1994
8. Meditation on Shri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, 1993
9. Albert Einstein and His Human Face, 1993
10. Glimpses of Great Lives, 1989
11. Shubha Chinta (Bengali), 1988
12. Smaran--Manan (Bengali), 1987

You can order these books from The Vedanta Society of New York.

Other books on Vedanta can be purchased from any Vedanta Center.

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