religion is realization

i am now ensconced in vedanta: voice of freedom. like all others in recent times, this book happened upon me (thank you a & b). on more than a few occasions has my heart felt like singing as it reads the words of swami vivekananda. i extract for you a passage that speaks, in part, to a conversation we had yesterday, as also to the religious turmoil that afflicts the society of today, while the memory of mumbai is still fresh.

Religion is a question of fact, not of talk. We have to analyze our own souls and find what is there. We have to understand it and realize what is understood. That is religion. No amount of talk will make religion. So the question of whether there is a God or not can never be proved by argument, for the arguments are as much on one side as on the other. But if there is a God, He is in our own hearts. Have you ever seen Him?

The sages of the world alone have the right to tell us that they have analyzed their minds and have found these facts, and if we do the same we shall also believe, and not before. That is all that there is in religion. But you must always remember this: that as a matter of fact, ninety-nine percent of those who attack religion have never analyzed their minds, have never struggled to get at the facts. So their arguments do not have any weight against religion any more than the words of a blind man who cries out, "You are all fools who believe in the sun," would affect us.

This is one great idea to learn and to hold on to, this idea of realization. This turmoil and fight and difference in religion will cease only when we understand that religion is not in books and temples. It is in actual perception. Only then who has actually perceived God and the soul has religion. There is no real difference between the highest ecclesiastical giant, who can talk by the volume, and the lowest, most ignorant materialist. We are all atheists - let us confess it. Mere intellectual assent does not make us religious.

Take a Christian or a Mohammedan or a follower of any other religion in the world. Any man who truly realized the truth of the Sermon on the Mount would be perfect and become a god immediately. Yet it is said that there are many millions of Christians in the world. What is meant is that mankind may at some time try to realize that Sermon. Not one in two million is a real Christian. So, in India there are said to be three hundred million Vedantists. But if there were one in a thousand who had actually realized religion, this world would soon be greatly changed. We are all atheists, and yet we try to fight the man who admits it. We are all in the dark. Religion is to us mere intellectual assent, mere talk, mere nothing.

We often consider a man religious who can talk well. But this is not religion. "Wonderful methods of joining words, rhetorical powers, and explaining the texts of the books in various ways - these are only for the enjoyment of the learned, and are not religion." Religion comes when that actual realization in our own souls begins. That will be the dawn of religion, and then alone we shall be moral. Now we are not much more moral than animals. We are only held down by the whips of society. If society said today, "I will not punish you if you steal," we would just make a rush for each other's property. It is the policeman who makes us moral. It is really social opinion that makes us moral, and really we are little better than animals. We understand how much this is so in the secret of our own hearts. So let us not be hypocrites. Let us confess that we are not religious and have no right to look down on others. We are all brothers, and we shall be truly moral when we have realized religion.

If you have seen a certain country and a man forces you to say that you have not seen it, still in your heart of hearts you know you have. So when you see religion and God in a more intense sense thn you see this external world, nothing will be able to shake your belief. Then you will have real faith. That is what is meant by the words in your Gospel, "If ye have faith as a grain of a mustard seed." Then you will know the Truth because you have become the Truth.

This is the watchword of Vedanta: Realize religion. No talking will do.