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Oṃ Bhadraṃ Karṇevihi Śṛṇu Yāma Devā Bhadraṃ Paśyām Akṣābhiryajatrāḥ Sthirairaṅgaiḥ Tuṣṭuvāṃsas Tanūbhir Vyśema Devahitaṃ Yadāyuḥ Svasti Na Indro Vṛddhaśravāḥ Svasti Naḥ Pūṣā Viśvavedāḥ Svasti Nastārkṣyo Ariṣṭanemiḥ Svasti No Vṛhaspatir Dadhātu. Oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ. Respected Swāmī Maheshwarānandajī Mahārāj, Ambassador Srinivasan, Ambassador Mendis, your ambassador to our country, and fellow lovers of yoga and of wisdom, let me say at the outset what a great pleasure it is for my wife and me to be here in this glorious city of Vienna. We came here about thirty-five years ago when I was in the cabinet, and we have not been back since. About a month, six weeks ago, I was speaking at a religious function in Delhi, and I found seated next to me the distinguished Swāmījī, whom I had met briefly earlier. We got to talking, and he said that he was in Vienna. So I said, "Look, by a strange coincidence, I am also going to be in Vienna." Then, when my programme was being finalised, Ambassador Srinivasan rang me and said, "Would you like to speak either at the Diplomatic Academy or at Swāmījī's Āshram?" The choice was fairly simple, I must say, with due respect to diplomats—and I have been one myself, in the sense that I was Indian ambassador to the United States for a short while. Today it is a great pleasure for us to be here in this marvellous city, which has played such a unique role in European and world history down through the ages. I have been asked to speak on Vedānta. May I say, friends, that we live in an age of great turmoil and tension, where the old is collapsing and the new is struggling to be born. Our generations find ourselves precariously poised between a disappearing past and an indeterminate future. I travel around the world, and I find that there is a great churning of human consciousness. There is a quest for new certitudes, but there is also a great deal of tension and turmoil. In a situation like this, we look into our scriptures not in order to go backwards in time—there can be no going backwards for the human race; we have to move forwards all the time—but we look to the scriptures for the wisdom, the courage, and the compassion to move ahead successfully. In Hinduism, we have been blessed with a large spectrum of texts, many of them hundreds of thousands of words: the Vedas, the Upaniṣads, the Brāhmaṇas, the Āraṇyakas, the Epics, the Purāṇas, on every conceivable subject. But the Vedānta, I think, is generally accepted as being the high watermark, not only of Indian philosophy, but of world philosophy. The word Vedānta, as you perhaps know, means the end of the Vedas. In other words, it is not only chronologically at the end of the Vedas, but it is also their high watermark. So what I thought I would do today is share with you what I consider to be some of the crucial concepts of the Vedānta. Swāmījī must already have told all of you a great deal about this; you must have read about it. But let me say that the Upaniṣads, which are the quintessence of the Vedānta, are some of the most remarkable texts in the world. The Upaniṣads are to Eastern philosophy what the Platonic dialogues and the New and Old Testament together are to Western philosophy. The Upaniṣads are also dialogues. They are not monologues. They are not prescriptions given by some invisible God in some seventh heaven. They are dialogues between students and teachers. The students ask searching questions, and the teachers give replies born from their own wisdom. They are brilliant and inspiring texts, and I would strongly urge that anyone who is interested in the Vedānta should go to the Upaniṣads to study them. They are so full of content that it is almost impossible to condense them, as it were. But as I said, I will try and show that the concepts of the Vedānta are not only significant but are growing increasingly significant as humanity moves into the global society. Always remember that a scripture, to be really relevant, has to be of use to us today and tomorrow, not merely something in the past. Otherwise, it becomes a fit subject for PhD theses and scholars. It does not have any immediacy. Unless a philosophy of life gives us immediate help in the situations we face and immediate clarity into the human dilemma, it is not really of great use. So there are six concepts that I would like to put before you briefly today. The first, the basic concept of the Vedānta, is the all-pervasiveness of the divine. Everything that exists—not merely this tiny speck of dust that we call planet Earth, but the billions upon billions of galaxies in the unending universe around us—we are all illuminated, informed, inhabited by the same divine force, the Brahman. "This magnificent universe" is a phrase they use. The universe is not a terrible mistake that should never have occurred. The universe itself is an emanation of the divine, and that light of the divine informs and illuminates everything that exists. In a way, this is the philosophical correlate to the unified field theory that the scientists are looking for. They are looking for a single theory that can explain everything, and this philosophical concept of the all-pervasive Brahman is the great contribution of Vedānta to human thought. So that is the first: it is, as it were, a spiritual unified field theory, the Brahman. The second key concept is the divinity inherent in each human being. The Lord resides in the heart of all beings. No chosen race, no chosen country, no chosen caste—of all beings. This is the great concept of the Vedānta, that every human being, by the very act of being human, encapsulates a spark of the divine. Fanning that spark of the divine into the blazing fire of spiritual realization is the true goal of human existence. The Upaniṣads have a marvelous word for the human race: "Amṛtasya Putrāḥ," children of immortality. So we are not just specks of dust blown hither and thither by some unseen destiny. Despite our apparent helplessness, we do encapsulate within ourselves the capacity for growth, the capacity to access the divine within us, and ultimately the capacity to have a direct contact with the divine. That is the second basic concept of the Vedas: the all-pervasive Brahman and the Ātmā, that is the spark of the Brahman in each human being. The third concept is something that Swāmījī referred to, and that is yoga. Yoga comes from the same root as the English word "yoke"—to join. Yoga is the act or the process of joining the Ātmā with the Brahman, God immanent with God transcendent. Swāmījī is an expert on yoga, but let me just point out that there are four main paths of yoga in our tradition. There is the Jñāna Yoga, the way of wisdom, the way of discrimination between the real and the unreal. That is the Jñāna Yoga in the Western tradition. It is like Plato's contemplation of the eternal truths that are behind manifestation. So the Jñāna Yoga is really, in some ways, the most important yoga because it helps us to open the eye of wisdom, as it were, and to comprehend—to transcend, in fact, rationality—and to comprehend the illimitable illumination and greatness of the Divine. The second path is the Bhakti Yoga. The Jñāna Yoga is the way of the mind. The Bhakti Yoga is the way of the heart, the way of devotion to an individual form of the Divine. I am a worshipper of Lord Śiva. I try and open my heart in love and adoration to the Divine. The Bhakti Yoga—you can have Jesus Christ as the focus of Bhakti Yoga, a very powerful symbol. In fact, today is the day after Pentecost, and we went this morning to a very beautiful church out in the country and paid our homage there to the Madonna and child. So the Bhakti Yoga would be like Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint John of the Cross or Saint Teresa of Avila, people who fell in love with the divine, who fell in love with the Lord. We have the great Sikh Gurus, we have Maulana Jalāluddīn Rūmī in the Muslim tradition, we have so many Bhaktas in the Hindu tradition: the Nāyanmārs, the Āḻvārs, Tulsī Dās, Sūr Dās, Mīrā, Śrī Chaitanya, a whole spectrum. So that is the second path. The first path is the Jñāna Yoga, the way of wisdom. The second path is the Bhakti Yoga, the way of devotion. The third path of Yoga is the Karma Yoga. Karma Yoga is the way of dedicated works that Swāmī was talking about, trying to help people who are in distress. That is the way of Martha rather than the way of Mary. That is the way, for example, of Mother Teresa, who was trying to help the children who were abandoned. But not simply works—works dedicated to the Divine. Remember that work itself, the Gītā teaches us, can be a powerful modality for realisation. By worshipping through one's work the divinity that pervades the universe, man moves towards perfection. Therefore, work itself—dedicated, devoted work, consecrated work—is a very powerful methodology of yoga. That is what, for example, Swāmī Vivekānanda did; that is what Swāmījī here is doing by trying to help people who are in distress. And the fourth main path of yoga is Rāja Yoga. Jñāna Yoga is the way of the mind, Bhakti Yoga is the way of the heart, Karma Yoga is the way of the hands, and Rāja Yoga is the way of spiritual discipline, the royal path. Meditation, Prāṇāyāma, the awakening of the Kuṇḍalinī Śakti, the power, Haṭha Yoga, which you do the āsanas, are all part of Rāja Yoga. So you have hundreds of different yogas, of course, but you have four main parts of yoga, and these are not mutually exclusive; each one can follow one or more paths; it is not necessary to follow only one path. So that is the third major concept of the Vedas. The first was the all-pervasive Brahman, the second was the Ātmā in each human being, the third is the methodology of joining the two—the intellectual, the emotional, the physical, and the psychic—the path of yoga. Then we come to the fourth concept of the Vedānta. If all human beings encapsulate a spark of the divine, then the entire human race is one extended family. Vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam, a very powerful phrase which means the world is a family. This is particularly relevant today as we move into the global society. When the ṛṣis, the great seers of the Upaniṣads, had this concept, you could only walk ten or twelve miles a day. Today, science and technology have, in fact, made us global citizens. You can pick up a small machine like that and talk to anybody in India or in New York. It's quite astounding via the satellite. It would appear miraculous to anybody even a hundred years ago. Now, this science and technology is unifying our lives outwardly, but unless there is an inner commitment to human unity—Swāmījī talked of world peace—how can we have world peace if we do not have an inner commitment to the concept of the human race as an extended family? Therefore, the whole śloka is: "ayam nijaḥ paro veti gaṇanā laghu-chetasām"—"This is mine, that is yours," is a narrow and unsatisfactory way of looking at things. For those of the greater consciousness, the world is a family. Now, this concept of the Vedānta, I think, is particularly relevant and will become increasingly relevant as we move onwards down the corridors of time. Unless we interiorize this, the human race may well be in danger of finally extinguishing itself. Then let us come to a fifth concept of the Vedānta. And that is the essential unity of all religions. "Ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti." The Ṛg Veda tells us, "The truth is one, the wise may call it by many names." There can be many manifestations of the divine, but if there is a divinity that pervades this universe, then in the ultimate analysis, it cannot be different for people of different religions. This is one of the key concepts of the Vedānta. In the Vedānta, there is no monopoly of divine wisdom. There is no sole proprietorship of the divine. Who are we, tiny creatures living on a tiny speck of dust in the universe, to say that the divine can appear only in this form and at this time and in this place? It's prima facie unacceptable. There are billions of people who are born before, there are billions of people who are born afterwards; how can we claim a monopoly? Unless we accept the multiplicity of paths to the divine, the human race will constantly be torn by conflict, as we see in many countries around us, as we are seeing even today as I speak. All religions are to be revered. We are Hindus, but today we worshipped at the church. There was no problem for us. Therefore, it is very important that the interfaith movement—and that is where we have been having these conferences. We had one for the last century. A lot of work happened in the interfaith movement. The first meeting was in 1893 in Chicago. Then, in the 20th century, a large number of functions took place, many of which we attended. The second World Parliament of Religions was in Chicago again in 1993. The third was in Cape Town in 1999. In 2000, the United Nations called a meeting of spiritual and religious leaders which Swāmījī attended. I also had the privilege of presiding over the opening plenary. We are having more meetings; the fourth parliament will be held in Barcelona next year, next September. So these interfaith meetings try to bring together people of different religions in harmony. It is not a question of arguing which religion is superior. You have every right to stick to your own religion, and you have also the right to feel that your religion is perhaps the best way to the divine. But you do not have the right, therefore, to say that everybody else has also got to follow your religion, and anybody who doesn't follow your religion is somebody who should be killed or persecuted or massacred or tortured. That is unacceptable. So the Vedānta very clearly lays down—and this is, I feel, perhaps one of the most important teachings of the Vedānta—the multiplicity of paths to the divine. Go through whichever path you like, whichever yoga you like, whichever religion you like, but go, move, move onwards on the spiritual path. It's like if you have to cross a river, and if you stay on the side arguing how deep is the river, how fast is it, when does it flow, you will never get anywhere. You have to jump in. So jump in, whichever way you like. But remember, everybody who is in the river, who has stepped into the stream, as the Buddhists put it, they are all striving for the same divine. Never allow fanaticism and fundamentalism and intolerance and bigotry, regardless of what religion does it, never allow that to distort your vision or to destroy your consciousness. This, I think, is tremendously important because we see even today, even today around the world, we are coming across religious fanaticisms which everybody thought had been buried; they are surfacing again, and they are creating chaos and havoc. And now, with nuclear weapons proliferating, the situation is becoming increasingly dangerous. So that is the fifth concept of the Vedānta: the all-pervasive Brahman, the Ātmā residing in all human beings, the four paths of yoga joining the two, the concept of the human race as an extended family, the concept of the essential unity of all religions, and finally, the welfare of all beings. The Vedāntic prayers are never for individual salvation; may all beings be happy. And in beings, it is not only human beings. We talk of ecology, we talk of the environment. In the Vedas, you will find prayers to the rivers, to the mountains, to the oceans, to the wind, to the sky. Why? Because they are also part of nature; they are also permeated by the divine. We do not have a monopoly over the other creation. We reject the concept that the human race has in some way been given sovereignty to exploit and destroy the human environment. We are part of the human environment, and therefore our prayers are for the welfare of all beings—animals, birds, nature itself—because, as the Sri Lankan High Commissioner said, if we continue to exploit and destroy our environment, this is what will happen: global warming. Vienna seems to be caught in global warming at present, by the way. We left Delhi in the fond hope that we were coming to a cool and pleasant climate, only to find that it is nice and warm here too. So that is what Swāmījī is doing. I think it is a perfect illustration of the Vedāntic attitude that a Hindu organization based in a Christian majority country, Austria, is collecting money for a Buddhist majority country, Sri Lanka. I think it is a marvelous thing, you know, it really makes one happy that this is living Vedānta, not merely theoretical Vedānta, because unless we live the Vedānta, all of these concepts remain merely theoretical. And so, friends, I feel, taken together, the six concepts that I have placed before you provide a holistic paradigm for a global philosophy. They stress convergence in place of conflict, cooperation in place of competition, and holism in place of hedonism. The link with world peace is quite clear because all of these concepts are necessary if there is going to be peace in the world. If you have inter-religious strife, if you destroy nature, if you are constantly fighting, if you do not accept the divine at all, then you will have situations where there is not only going to be no world peace, there may well be world disaster. Let us not forget that the human race has got some of the noblest concepts, and yet you have seen yourselves, the elderly people here, or maybe your parents will remember what happened in Europe in the last century. The nadir of cruelty was touched. So you have both of these elements; it is like the samudra manthana, when there was the churning of the milky ocean. All sorts of gems emerged which were divided between the two blocks, shall we say, but then suddenly there was the appearance of a terrible poison, the garala, and neither the devas nor the asuras knew about that; they fled in terror. And it was then that Lord Śiva appeared, far beyond the avarice and the dichotomy of the devas and the asuras, and he drank the poison, and that poison turned his throat blue, hence he is known as Nīlakaṇṭha, the blue-throated one. And so, friends, I know it is a difficult path; there are no soft options left now, either for individual salvation or for collective salvation. But it is a path we all have to tread; it is a path that we have to tread with courage, with compassion, with understanding, with wisdom. And if we tread that path, regardless of what it is that we are doing—you can be a minister, you can be a peon, you can be a shopkeeper, you can be whatever it is—what you do in your outer life is not so significant as what it is that you are doing in your inner life. Are you skimming across the surface of life without plunging deep into the depths? Many people live as if life was a meaningless journey from the womb to the tomb. It is not. It is a unique opportunity for spiritual growth and realization. Therefore, I will end my talk with that great exhortation from the Kaṭhopaniṣad, which exhorts us to awaken, arise, and move across the razor-edged path, a difficult and dangerous path. But we have to move across it if we are to reach our goal. And the goal is a new consciousness, the goal is a new humanity, the goal is a new world; that is the goal of Vedānta. Thank you.