MY MASTER

MY MASTER - 2

Swami Vivekananda spoke about his Master Bagavan Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in Newyork.nearly two hundred years ago. His speech is summarised for you to enjoy in small parts -- J.K.Sivan

The baby playing with its doll, is childish and thinks that his doll is the only possession that is to be coveted in this whole universe. So a nation which is great in the possession of material powers thinks that that is all that is to be coveted, that is meant by progress, that is all that is meant by civilization, and if there are other nations which do not care to possess, and do not possess these powers, they are not fit to live, their whole existence is useless.

On the other hand, another nation may think that mere material civilization is utterly useless. From the Orient came the voice which once told the world that if a man possess everything- that is under the sun or above it, and does not possess spirituality, what matters it? This is the Oriental type, the other is the Occidental type.

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Each of these types has its grandeur, each has its glory. The present adjustment will be the harmonizing, the mingling of

these two ideals.

To the Oriental, the world of spirit is as real as to the Occidental is the world of senses. In the spiritual, the Oriental finds everything he wants or hopes for; in it he finds all that makes life real to him.

To the Occidental he is a dreamer; to the Oriental, the Occidental is a dreamer, Each calls the other a dreamer. But the Oriental ideal is as necessary for the progress of the human race as is the Occidental, and I think it is more necessary. Machines never made mankind happy, and never will make. He who is trying to make us believe this, will claim that happiness is in the machine, but it is always in the mind. It is the man who is lord of his mind who alone can become happy, and none else. But what, after all, is this power of machinery? Why should a man who can send a current of electricity through a wire be called a very great man, and a very intelligent man? Does not nature do a million times more than that every moment? Why not then fall down and worship nature? What matters it if you have power over the whole of the world, if you have mastered every atom in the universe?

That will not make you happy unless you have the power of happiness in yourself, until you have conquered yourself.

Man is born to conquer nature, it is true, but the Occidental means by " nature " only the physical or external nature. It is true that external nature is majestic, with its mountains, and oceans, and rivers, and with its infinite powers and varieties. Yet there is a more majestic internal nature of man, higher than the sun, moon and stars, higher than this earth of ours, higher than the physical universe, transcending these little lives of ours ; and it afifords 'another field of study. There the Orientals excel, just as the Occidentals excel in the other.