Experience is the only source of
knowledge. In the world, religion is the only science where there is
no surety, because it is not taught as a science of experience.
This should not be. However, there is always a small group of men
who teach religion from experience. They are called mystics, and these mystics
in every religion speak the same tongue and teach the same truth. This is
the real science of religion. As mathematics in every part of the world
does not differ, so the mystics do not differ. They are all similarly
constituted and similarly situated. Their experience is the same and
this becomes law. In the church, religionists first learn a religion, and then
begin to120
practice it. They do not take experience as the basis of their belief.
But the mystic starts out in search140 of truth, experiences it first, and
then formulates his creed. 150
The church takes the experience of others; the mystic160 has his own
experience. The church goes from the outside in; the mystic goes from
the inside out. Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world
just as chemistry and the other natural sciences deal with the
truths of the physical world. The book one must read to learn chemistry is the
book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and
heart. The sage is often ignorant of physical science, because he reads the240
wrong book—the book within. The scientist is too often ignorant of religion,
because he too reads the wrong book—the book without.
All
science has its particular methods; so has the science of religion. It has more
methods also, 280 because it has more material to
work upon. The human mind is not homogeneous like the external world. According300
to the different nature, there must be different methods. Some
special sense predominates in every person. One person will320 see most, another
will hear most. So, there is a predominant mental sense, and through this gate
each person must reach his mind. However, through all minds runs a
unity, and there is a science which may be applied to all. This360
science of religion is based on the analysis of the human soul. It has no
creed. No one form of religion will do for all. Each is a pearl on a
string. We must be particular above all else to find
individuality in each. No man is born to any religion. He has a religion in
his own soul. Any420 system which seeks to destroy
individuality is in the long run disastrous. Each life has a current
running through it, and this current will eventually take it to God.450
The end and aim of all religions is to realize God. The greatest of all
training is to worship God alone. If each man chose his own ideal and stuck to480
it, all religious controversy would vanish. This world is not for
cowards. Do not try to fly. Do not look for success or failure. Join yourself
to the perfectly unselfish will and work on. You must know that the
mind which is born to succeed joins itself to a determined will and perseveres.
You have the right to work, but do not become so degenerate as to look
for results. Work incessantly, but see something behind the work. Even
good560
deeds can find a man in great bondage. Therefore, you should not be
bound by good deeds or by desire for name and fame. Those who know this
secret pass beyond this round of birth and death and become immortal.600
The ordinary Sanyasi gives up the world, goes out, and thinks of God. The real
Sanyasi lives in the world, but is not of it. Those who deny themselves, live
in the forest, and chew the cud of unsatisfied desires640 are not true renouncers.
Live in the midst of the battle of life. Anyone can keep calm in a cave
or when asleep. Stand in the whirl and madness of action and reach the centre.
If you have found the centre, you cannot be moved.
The
idea of psychology in the West is very much degraded. Psychology is the science700
of sciences. But in the West, it is placed upon the same plane as all other
sciences, which means that720 it is judged by the same criterion
of utility. How much practical benefit will it do to humanity? How much will it
detract from our rapidly increasing pain? Such is750 the criterion by
which everything is judged in the West. People seem to forget that about ninety
per cent of all our knowledge cannot be applied in a practical way to add to
our material happiness or to lessen our misery. Only the smallest fraction of
our scientific knowledge can800 have any such practical application to
our daily lives. This is so because only an infinitely small percentage of
our conscious mind is on the sensuous plane. We have just a little
bit of sensuous consciousness and imagine that to be840 our entire mind and
life. But as a matter of fact, it is but a drop in the mighty ocean of
subconscious mind. If all there is of us were a bundle of
sense-perceptions, all the knowledge we could gain could be utilized in
the gratification of our sense-pleasures. But fortunately, such is
not the case. As we get900 further and further away from the
animal state, our sense-pleasures become less and less, and in a rapidly
increasing consciousness of scientific and psychological knowledge, our
enjoyment becomes more and more intense, and “knowledge for the sake
of knowledge” becomes the supreme pleasure of the mind.
We
are all slaves to our senses. We are slaves to our own minds, conscious960
and subconscious. The reason why a criminal is a criminal is not because he
desires to be one, but because980 he does not have his mind
under control and is, therefore, a slave to his own conscious and
subconscious mind, and to the mind of everybody else. He must follow
the dominant trend of his own mind. He is forced onward in spite of
himself, in spite of his own better promptings, his own better nature. He is
forced to obey the dominant mandate of his own mind. We1050 see this in
our own lives constantly. We are constantly doing things against the
better side of our nature, and afterwards we upbraid ourselves for doing
this and wonder what we1080 could have been thinking of, and
how we could do such a thing. Yet again and again we do it, and
again and again we suffer for it and upbraid ourselves. At the same time, we
think that we desire1120 to do it, but we only desire it
because we are forced to desire it. We are all slaves to our own and to
everybody else’s mind. It makes no difference whether we are good or bad. We
are led here and there because we cannot help ourselves. We think
because we have to think. We act because we have to. We are slaves to
ourselves and to others. Deep down in our subconscious mind are stored up all
the1200
thoughts and acts of the past, not only of this life, but of all other
lives we have lived. This great boundless ocean of subjective mind is
full of all the thoughts and actions of the past. Each one of these is striving
to be recognized, pushing outward for expression. We take these thoughts for
natural desires, talents, etc. It1260 is because we do not realize their
true origin. We obey them blindly and unquestioningly.
In
the West, the powers1280 of the mind, especially unusual
powers, are looked upon as bordering on witchcraft and mysticism.
The study of higher psychology has been retarded and is being identified with
mere alleged psychic phenomena, as is done by some mystery-mongering
order of Hindu fakirs. Physicists obtain pretty much the same
results the world over. They do not differ in their general facts or in the
results which naturally follow from such facts.1350 This is because
the data of physical science are obtainable by all and are universally
recognized, and the results are logical and conclusions based upon these
universally recognized facts. In the realm of the mind, it is
different. Here there are no data, no facts observable by the
physical senses, 1400 and therefore no universally
recognized materials from which to build a system of psychology after their
being equally experimented upon by all who study the mind. If you intend to
study the mind, you must have systematic training. You1440 must practise to
bring the mind under your control, to attain to that consciousness from which
you will be able to study the mind and remain unmoved by any of its wild
gyrations. Otherwise, the facts observed will not be reliable; they
will not apply to all people and therefore will not be truly facts or data
at all. Among1500 those classes who have gone
deeply into the study of the mind, the facts observed have been the same, no
matter in what part of the world such persons may be or what religious
belief they may have. The results obtained by all who go deep enough
into the mind are the same. The mind operates by perception and impulsion.
For instance, the rays of the light enter by eyes, are carried by the nerves to
the brain, and still I do not see the light. The brain then conveys the impulse
to the mind, but yet I do not1600 see the light. The mind then reacts,
and the light flashes across the mind. The mind’s reaction is impulsion, and as
a result the eye perceives the object. 1630
