Practical Vedanta

Practical Vedantaindividuality, of self-preservation is no more heard. She will eat the worst food,but her children will have the best. So for all the people we love we are ready todie.[On the one hand] we are struggling hard to keep up this individuality; on theother hand, trying to kill it. With what result? Tom Brown may struggle hard. Heis [fighting] for his individuality. Tom dies and there is not a ripple anywhereupon the surface of the earth. There was a Jew born nineteen hundred years ago,and he never moved a finger to keep his individuality. . . . Think of that! That Jewnever struggled to protect his individuality. That is why he became the greatest inthe world. This is what the world does not know.In time we are to be individuals. But in what sense? What is the individuality ofman? Not Tom Brown, but God in man. That is the [true] individuality. The moreman has approached that, the more he has given up his false individuality. Themore he tries to collect and gain everything [for himself], the less he is anindividual. The less he has thought of [himself], the more he has sacrificed allindividuality during his lifetime, . . . the more he is an individual. This is onesecret the world does not understand.We must first understand what is meant by individuality. It is attaining the ideal.You are man now, [or] you are woman. You will change all the time. Can youstop? Do you want to keep your minds as they are now — the angels, hatreds,jealousies, quarrels, all the thousand and one things in the mind? Do you mean tosay that you will keep them? . . . You cannot stop anywhere . . . until perfectconquest has been achieved, until you are pure and you are perfect.You have no more anger when you are all love, bliss, infinite existence. . . . Whichof your bodies will you keep? You cannot stop anywhere until you come to lifethat never ends. Infinite life! You stop there. You have a little knowledge now andare always trying to get more. Where will you stop? Nowhere, until you becomeone with life itself. . . .Many want pleasure [as] the goal. For that pleasure they seek only the senses. Onthe higher planes much pleasure is to be sought. Then on spiritual planes. Then inhimself — God within him. The man whose pleasure is outside of [himself]becomes unhappy when that outside thing goes. You cannot depend for thispleasure upon anything in this universe. If all my pleasures are in myself, I musthave pleasure there all the time because I can never lose my Self. . . . Mother,father, child, wife, body, wealth — everything I can lose except my self . . . blissin the Self All desire is contained in the Self. . . . This. is individuality which neverchanges, and this is perfect.. . . And how to get it? They find what the great souls of this world — all greatmen and women — found [through sustained discrimination]. . . . What of thesedualistic theories of twenty gods, thirty gods? It does not matter. They all had theone truth, that this false individuality must go. . . . So this ego — the less there isof it, the nearer I am to that which I really am: the universal body. The less I thinkof my own individual mind, the nearer I am to that universal mind. The less I thinkfile:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Chitra%20Selv...ksBySwami/PracticalVedanta/PracticalVedantaPDF.html (109 of 113)2/26/2007 12:24:34 AM