He asked the Indians to stop complaining. Let them make use of the power that lay in
their hands. That power was so great that if they only realized it and were worthy of it,
they could revolutionize the world. India was the Ganga of spirituality. The material
conquests of the Anglo-Saxon races, far from being able to dam its current, had helped
it. England's power had united the nations of the world; she had opened paths across
the seas so that the waves of the spirit of India might spread until they had bathed the
ends of the earth.
What was this new faith, this word that the world was awaiting?
The other great idea that the world wants from us today — more perhaps the lower
classes than the higher, more the uneducated than the educated, more the weak than the
strong — is that eternal, grand idea of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe, the
only Infinite Reality, that exists in you and in me and in all, in the self, in the soul. The
infinite oneness of the soul — that you and I are not only brothers, but are really one
— is the eternal sanction of all morality. Europe wants it today just as much as our
downtrodden races do, and this great principle is even now unconsciously forming the
basis of all the latest social and political aspirations that are coming up in England, in
Germany, in France and in America. (Extracts from the lecture 'The Mission of the
Vedanta.')
What Swami Vivekananda preached was the essence of the non-dualistic Vedanta, the
deepest and the unique expression of India's spirit.
I heard once the complaint made that I was preaching too much of Advaita, absolute
non-dualism, and too little of dualism. Ay, I know what grandeur, what oceans of love,
what infinite, ecstatic blessings and joy there are in dualistic religion. I know it all. But
this is not the time for 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. What our country now wants is muscles of iron and
nerves of steel, gigantic will, which nothing can resist, which will accomplish their
purpose in any fashion, even if it means 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 realizing the ideal of Advaita, that
ideal of the oneness of all. Faith, faith, faith in ourselves! ... If you have faith in the
three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which
foreigners have introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there
is no salvation for you. Have faith in yourselves and stand upon that faith. Why is it
that we three hundred and thirty millions of people have been ruled for the last
thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners? Because they had faith in
themselves and we had not. I read in the newspapers how, when one of our poor
fellows is murdered or ill-treated by an Englishman, howls go up all over the country; I
read and I weep, and the next moment comes to my mind the question of who is