THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA : 14.

When I was in America, I heard once the complaint made that I was preaching too much of Advaita, and too little of dualism. 

Ay, I know what grandeur, what oceans of love, what infinite, ecstatic blessings and joy there are in the dualistic love-theories of worship and religion. 

I know it all.

 But this is not the time with us to weep even in joy; we have had weeping enough; no more is this the time for us to become soft. 

This softness has been with us till we have become like masses of cotton and are dead. 

What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and the secrets of the universe, and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion even if it meant going down to the bottom of the ocean and meeting death face to face. 

That is what we want, and that can only be created, established, and strengthened by understanding and realising the ideal of the Advaita, that ideal of the oneness of all. Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God — this is the secret of greatness. 

If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. 

Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need. 

Why is it that we three hundred and thirty millions of people have been ruled for the last one thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners who chose to walk over our prostrate bodies? 

Because they had faith in themselves and we had not. 

What did I learn in the West, and what did I see behind those frothy sayings of the Christian sects repeating that man was a fallen and hopelessly fallen sinner? 

There I saw that inside the national hearts of both Europe and America reside the tremendous power of the men's faith in themselves. 

An English boy will tell you, "I am an Englishman, and I can do anything." 

The American boy will tell you the same thing, and so will any European boy. 

Can our boys say the same thing here? 

No, nor even the boy's fathers. 

We have lost faith in ourselves. 

Therefore to preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. 

It is, therefore, that I preach this Advaita; and I do so not as a sectarian, but upon universal and widely acceptable grounds.

Continues...