[A Jnâna-Yoga class delivered in New York, Wednesday, December
11, 1895, and recorded by Swami Kripananda]

The word Jnâna means knowledge. It is derived from the root Jnâ — to know
— the same word from which your English word to know is derived. Jnana-
Yoga is Yoga by means of knowledge. What is the object of the Jnana-Yoga?
Freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from our imperfections, freedom from
the misery of life. Why are we miserable? We are miserable because we are
bound. What is the bondage? The bondage is of nature. Who is it that binds us?
We, ourselves.
The whole universe is bound by the law of causation. There cannot be
anything, any fact — either in the internal or in the external world — that is
uncaused; and every cause must produce an effect.
Now this bondage in which we are is a fact. It need not be proved that we are in
bondage. For instance: I would be very glad to get out of this room through this
wall, but I cannot; I would be very glad if I never became sick, but I cannot
prevent it; I would be very glad not to die, but I have to; I would be very glad
to do millions of things that I cannot do. The will is there, but we do not
succeed in accomplishing the desire. When we have any desire and not the
means of fulfilling it, we get that peculiar reaction called misery. Who is the
cause of desire? I, myself. Therefore, I myself am the cause of all the miseries I
am in.
Misery begins with the birth of the child. Weak and helpless, he enters the
world. The first sign of life is weeping. Now, how could we be the cause of
misery when we find it at the very beginning? We have caused it in the past.
[Here Swami Vivekananda entered into a fairly long discussion of "the very
interesting theory called Reincarnation". He continued:]
To understand reincarnation, we have first to know that in this universe
something can never be produced out of nothing. If there is such a thing as a
human soul, it cannot be produced out of nothing. If something can be
produced out of nothing, then something would disappear into nothing also. If
we are produced out of nothing, then we will also go back into nothing. That
which has a beginning must have an end. Therefore, as souls we could not have
had any beginning. We have been existing all the time.
Then again, if we did not exist previously, there is no explanation of our
present existence. The child is born with a bundle of causes. How many things
we see in a child which can never be explained until we grant that the child has
had past experience — for instance, fear of death and a great number of innate
tendencies. Who taught the baby to drink milk and to do so in a peculiar
fashion? Where did it acquire this knowledge? We know that there cannot be
any knowledge without experience, for to say that knowledge is intuitive in the
child, or instinctive, is what the logicians would call a "petitio principii".*
It would be the same [logic] as when a man asks me why light comes through a
glass, and I answer him, "Because it is transparent". That would be really no
answer at all because I am simply translating his word into a bigger one. The
word "transparent" means "that through which light comes" — and that was the
question. The question was why light comes through the glass, and I answered
him, "Because it comes through the glass".
In the same way, the question was why these tendencies are in the child. Why
should it have fear of death if it never saw death? If this is the first time it was
ever born, how did it know to suck the mother's milk? If the answer is "Oh, it
was instinct", that is simply returning the question. If a man stands up and says,
"I do not know", he is in a better position than the man who says, "It is instinct"
and all such nonsense.
There is no such thing as instinct; there is no such thing as nature separate from
habit. Habit is one's second nature, and habit is one's first nature too. All that is
in your nature is the result of habit, and habit is the result of experience. There
cannot be any knowledge but from experience.
So this baby must have had some experience too. This fact is granted even by
modern materialistic science. It proves beyond doubt that the baby brings with
it a fund of experience. It does not enter into this world with a "tabula rasa" —
a blank mind upon which nothing is written — as some of the old philosophers
believed, but ready equipped with a bundle of knowledge. So far so good.
But while modern science grants that this bundle of knowledge which the child
brings with it was acquired through experience, it asserts, at the same time, that
it is not its own — but its father's and its grandfather's and its greatgrandfather's.
Knowledge comes, they say, through hereditary transmission.
Now this is one step in advance of that old theory of "instinct", that is fit only
for babies and idiots. This "instinct" theory is a mere pun upon words and has
no meaning whatsoever. A man with the least thinking power and the least
insight into the logical precision of words would never dare to explain innate
tendencies by "instinct", a term which is equivalent to saying that something
came out of nothing. But the modern theory of transmission through experience
— though, no doubt, a step in advance of the old one — is not sufficient at all.
Why not? We can understand a physical transmission, but a mental
transmission is impossible to understand.
What causes me — who am a soul — to be born with a father who has
transmitted certain qualities? What makes me come back? The father, having
certain qualities, may be one binding cause. Taking for granted that I am a
distinct soul that was existing before and wants to reincarnate — what makes
my soul go into the body of a particular man? For the explanation to be
sufficient, we have to assume a hereditary transmission of energies and such a
thing as my own previous experience. This is what is called Karma, or, in
English, the Law of Causation, the law of fitness.
For instance, if my previous actions have all been towards drunkenness, I will
naturally gravitate towards persons who are transmitting a drunkard's character.
I can only take advantage of the organism produced by those parents who have
been transmitting a certain peculiar influence for which I am fit by my previous
actions. Thus we see that it is true that a certain hereditary experience is
transmitted from father to son, and so on. At the same time, it is my past
experience that joins me to the particular cause of hereditary transmission.
A simply hereditary transmission theory will only touch the physical man and
would be perfectly insufficient for the internal soul of man. Even when looking
upon the matter from the purest materialistic standpoint — viz. that there is no
such thing as a soul in man, and man is nothing but a bundle of atoms acted
upon by certain physical forces and works like an automaton — even taking
that for granted, the mere transmission theory would be quite insufficient.
The greatest difficulties regarding the simple hypothesis of mere physical
transmission will be here: If there be no such thing as a soul in man, if he be
nothing more than a bundle of atoms acted upon by certain forces, then, in the
case of transmission, the soul of the father would decrease in ratio to the
number of his children; and the man who has five, six or eight children must, in
the end, become an idiot. India and China — where men breed like rats —
would then be full of idiots. But, on the contrary, we find that the least amount
of lunacy is in India and China.
The question is, What do we mean by the word transmission? It is a big word,
but, like so many other impossible and nonsensical terms of the same kind, it
has come into use without people understanding it. If I were to ask you what
transmission is, you would find that you have no real conception of its meaning
because there is no idea attached to it.
Let us look a little closer into the matter. Say, for instance, here is a father. A
child is born to him. We see that the same qualities [which the father possesses]
have entered into his child. Very good. Now how did the qualities of the father
come to be in the child? Nobody knows. So this gap the modern physicists
want to fill with the big word transmission. And what does this transmission
mean? Nobody knows.
How can mental qualities of experience be condensed and made to live in one
single cell of protoplasm? There is no difference between the protoplasm of a
bird and that of a human brain. All we can say with regard to physical
transmission is that it consists of the two or three protoplasmic cells cut from
the father's body. That is all. But what nonsense to assume that ages and ages
of past human experience got compressed into a few protoplasmic cells! It is
too tremendous a pill they ask you to swallow with this little word
transmission.
In olden times the churches had prestige, but today science has got it. And just
as in olden times people never inquired for themselves — never studied the
Bible, and so the priests had a very good opportunity to teach whatever they
liked — so even now the majority of people do not study for themselves and, at
the same time, have a tremendous awe and fear before anything called
scientific. You ought to remember that there is a worse popery coming than
ever existed in the church — the so-called scientific popery, which has become
so successful that it dictates to us with more authority than religious popery.
These popes of modern science are great popes indeed, but sometimes they ask
us to believe more wonderful things than any priest or any religion ever did.
And one of those wonderful things is that transmission theory, which I could
never understand. If I ask, "What do you mean by transmission?" they only
make it a little easier by saying, "It is hereditary transmission". And if I tell
them, "That is rather Greek to me", they make it still easier by saying, "It is the
adherence of paternal qualities in the protoplasmic cells". In that way it
becomes easier and easier, until my mind becomes muddled and disgusted with
the whole thing.
Now one thing we see: we produce thought. I am talking to you this evening
and it is producing thought in your brain. By this act of transmission we
understand that my thoughts are being transmitted into your brain and your
mind, and producing other thoughts. This is an everyday fact.
It is always rational to take the side of things which you can understand — to
take the side of fact. Transmission of thought is
perfectly understandable. Therefore we are able to take up the [concept of]
transmission of thought, and not of hereditary impressions of protoplasmic cells
alone. We need not brush aside the theory, but the main stress must be laid
upon the transmission of thought.
Now a father does not transmit thought. It is thought alone that transmits
thought. The child that is born existed previously as thought. We all existed
eternally as thought and will go on existing as thought.
What we think, that our body becomes. Everything is manufactured by thought,
and thus we are the manufacturers of our own lives. We alone are responsible
for whatever we do. It is foolish to cry out: "Why am I unhappy?" I made my
own unhappiness. It is not the fault of the Lord at all.
Someone takes advantage of the light of the sun to break into your house and
rob you. And then when he is caught by the policeman, he may cry: "Oh sun,
why did you make me steal?" It was not the sun's fault at all, because there are
thousands of other people who did much good to their fellow beings under the
light of the same sun. The sun did not tell this man to go about stealing and
robbing.
Each one of us reaps what we ourselves have sown. These miseries under
which we suffer, these bondages under which we struggle, have been caused by
ourselves, and none else in the universe is to blame. God is the least to blame
for it.
"Why did God create this evil world?" He did not create this evil world at all.
We have made it evil, and we have to make it good. "Why did God create me
so miserable?" He did not. He gave me the same powers as [He did] to every
being. I brought myself to this pass.
Is God to blame for what I myself have done? His mercy is always the same.
His sun shines on the wicked and the good alike. His air, His water, His earth
give the same chances to the wicked and the good. God is always the same
eternal, merciful Father. The only thing for us to do is to bear the results of our
own acts.
We learn that, in the first place, we have been existing eternally; in the second
place that we are the makers of our own lives. There is no such thing as fate.
Our lives are the result of our previous actions, our Karma. And it naturally
follows that having been ourselves the makers of our Karma, we must also be
able to unmake it.
The whole gist of Jnana-Yoga is to show humanity the method of undoing this
Karma. A caterpillar spins a little cocoon around itself out of the substance of
its own body and at last finds itself imprisoned. It may cry and weep and howl
there; nobody will come to its rescue until it becomes wise and then comes out,
a beautiful butterfly. So with these our bondages. We are going around and
around ourselves through countless ages. And now we feel miserable and cry
and lament over our bondage. But crying and weeping will be of no avail. We
must set ourselves to cutting these bondages.
The main cause of all bondage is ignorance. Man is not wicked by his own
nature — not at all. His nature is pure, perfectly holy. Each man is divine. Each
man that you see is a God by his very nature. This nature is covered by
ignorance, and it is ignorance that binds us down. Ignorance is the cause of all
misery. Ignorance is the cause of all wickedness; and knowledge will make the
world good. Knowledge will remove all misery. Knowledge will make us free.
This is the idea of Jnana-Yoga: knowledge will make us free! What
knowledge? Chemistry? Physics? Astronomy? Geology? They help us a little,
just a little. But the chief knowledge is that of your own nature. "Know
thyself." You must know what you are, what your real nature is. You must
become conscious of that infinite nature within. Then your bondages will burst.
Studying the external alone, man begins to feel himself to be nothing. These
vast powers of nature, these tremendous changes occurring — whole
communities wiped off the face of the earth in a twinkling of time, one volcanic
eruption shattering to pieces whole continents — perceiving and studying these
things, man begins to feel himself weak. Therefore, it is not the study of
external nature that makes [one] strong. But there is the internal nature of
man—a million times more powerful than any volcanic eruption or any law of
nature — which conquers nature, triumphs over all its laws. And that alone
teaches man what he is.

"Knowledge is power", says the proverb, does it not? It is through knowledge
that power comes. Man has got to know. Here is a man of infinite power and
strength. He himself is by his own nature potent and omniscient. And this he
must know. And the more he becomes conscious of his own Self, the more he
manifests this power, and his bonds break and at last he becomes free.

How to know ourselves? the question remains now. There are various ways to
know this Self, but in Jnana-Yoga it takes the help of nothing but sheer
intellectual reasoning. Reason alone, intellect alone, rising to spiritual
perception, shows what we are.
There is no question of believing. Disbelieve everything — that is the idea of
the Jnani. Believe nothing and disbelieve everything — that is the first step.
Dare to be a rationalist. Dare to follow reason wherever it leads you.
We hear everyday people saying all around us: "I dare to reason". It is,
however, a very difficult thing to do. I would go two hundred miles to look at
the face of the man who dares to reason and to follow reason. Nothing is easier
to say, and nothing is more difficult to do. We are bound to follow superstitions
all the time — old, hoary superstitions, either national or belonging to
humanity in general — superstitions belonging to family, to friends, to country,
to fashion, to books, to sex and to what-not.
Talk of reason! Very few people reason, indeed. You hear a man say, "Oh, I
don't like to believe in anything; I don't like to grope through darkness. I must
reason". And so he reasons. But when reason smashes to pieces things that he
hugs unto his breast, he says, "No more! This reasoning is all right until it
breaks my ideals. Stop there!" That man would never be a Jnani. That man will
carry his bondage all his life and his lives to come. Again and again he will
come under the power of death. Such men are not made for Jnana. There are
other methods for them — such as bhakti-yoga, Karma-Yoga, or Râja-Yoga —
but not Jnana-Yoga.
I want to prepare you by saying that this method can be followed only by the
boldest. Do not think that the man who believes in no church or belongs to no
sect, or the man who boasts of his unbelief, is a rationalist. Not at all. In
modern times it is rather bravado to do anything like that.
To be a rationalist requires more than unbelief. You must be able not only to
reason, but also to follow the dictates of your reason. If reason tells you that
this body is an illusion, are you ready to give it up? Reason tells you that heat
and cold are mere illusions of your senses; are you ready to brave these things?
If reason tells you that nothing that the senses convey to your mind is true, are
you ready to deny your sense perception? If you dare, you are a rationalist.

It is very hard to believe in reason and follow truth. This whole world is full
either of the superstitious or of half-hearted hypocrites. I would rather side with
superstition and ignorance than stand with these half-hearted hypocrites. They
are no good. They stand on both sides of the river.

Take anything up, fix your ideal and follow it out boldly unto death. That is the
way to salvation. Half-heartedness never led to anything. Be superstitious, be a
fanatic if you please, but be something. Be something, show that you have
something; but be not like these shilly-shallyers with truth — these jacks-of-alltrades
who just want to get a sort of nervous titillation, a dose of opium, until
this desire after the sensational becomes a habit.

The world is getting too full of such people. Contrary to the apostles who,
according to Christ, were the salt of the earth, these fellows are the ashes, the
dirt of the earth. So let us first clear the ground and understand what is meant
by following reason, and then we will try to understand what the obstructions
are to our following reason.
The first obstruction to our following reason is our unwillingness to go to truth.
We want truth to come to us. In all my travels, most people told me: "Oh, that
is not a comfortable religion you talk about. Give us a comfortable religion!"
I do not understand what they mean by this "comfortable religion". I was never
taught any comfortable religion in my life. I want truth for my religion.
Whether it be comfortable or not, I do not care. Why should truth be
comfortable always? Truth many times hits hard — as we all know by our
experience. Gradually, after a long intercourse with such persons, I came to
find out what they meant by their stereotypical phrase. These people have got
into a rut, and they do not dare to get out of it. Truth must apologize to them.

I once met a lady who was very fond of her children and her money and her
everything. When I began to preach to her that the only way to God is by
giving up everything, she stopped coming the next day. One day she came and
told me that the reason for her staying away was because the religion I
preached was very uncomfortable. "What sort of religion would be comfortable
to you?" I asked in order to test her. She said: "I want to see God in my
children, in my money, in my diamonds".

"Very good, madam", I replied. "You have now got all these things. And you
will have to see these things millions of years yet. Then you will be bumped
somewhere and come to reason. Until that time comes, you will never come to
God. In the meantime, go on seeing God in your children and in your money
and your diamonds and your dances."
It is difficult, almost impossible, for such people to give up sense enjoyment. It
has grown upon them from birth to birth. If you ask a pig to give up his sty and
to go into your most beautiful parlour, why it will be death to the pig. "Let go, I
must live there", says the pig.
[Here Swami Vivekananda explained the story of the fish-wife: "Once a
fishwife was a guest in the house of a gardener who raised flowers. She came
there with her empty basket, after selling fish in the market, and was asked to
sleep in a room where flowers were kept. But, because of the fragrance of the
flowers, she couldn't get to sleep for a long time. Her hostess saw her condition
and said, 'Hello! Why are you tossing from side to side so restlessly?' The
fishwife said: 'I don't know, friend. Perhaps the smell of the flowers has been
disturbing my sleep. Can you give me my fish-basket? Perhaps that will put me
to sleep'."]*
So with us. The majority of mankind delights in this fish smell — this world,
this enjoyment of the senses, this money and wealth and chattel and wife and
children. All this nonsense of the world — this fishy smell — has grown upon
us. We can hear nothing beyond it, can see nothing beyond it; nothing goes
beyond it. This is the whole universe.
All this talk about heaven and God and soul means nothing to an ordinary man.
He has heaven already here. He has no other idea beyond this world. When you
tell him of something higher, he says, "That is not a comfortable religion. Give
us something comfortable". That is to say that religion is nothing but what he is
doing.

If he is a thief and you tell him that stealing is the highest thing we can do, he
will say, "That is a comfortable religion". If he is cheating, you have to tell him
that what he is doing is all right; then he will accept your teaching as a
"comfortable religion". The whole trouble is that people never want to get out
of their ruts — never want to get rid of the old fish-basket and smell, in order to
live. If they say, "I want the truth", that simply means that they want the fishbasket.

When have you reached knowledge? When you are equipped with those four
disciplines [i.e. the four qualifications for attainment discussed in Vedantic
literature: discrimination between the real and the unreal, renunciation, the six
treasures of virtue beginning with tranquility, and longing for liberation]. You
must give up all desire of enjoyment, either in this life or the next. All
enjoyments of this life are vain. Let them come and go as they will.

What you have earned by your past actions none can take away from you. If
you have deserved wealth, you can bury yourself in the forest and it will come
to you. If you have deserved good food and clothing, you may go to the north
pole and they will be brought to you. The polar bear will bring them. If you
have not deserved them, you may conquer the world and will die of starvation.
So, why do you bother about these things? And, after all, what is the use of
them?

As children we all think that the world is made so very nice, and that masses of
pleasures are simply waiting for our going out to them. That is every
schoolboy's dream. And when he goes out into the world, the everyday world,
very soon his dreams vanish. So with nations. When they see how every city is
built upon ruins — every forest stands upon a city — then they become
convinced of the vanity of this world.

All the power of knowledge and wealth once made has passed away — all the
sciences of the ancients, lost, lost forever. Nobody knows how. That teaches us
a grand lesson. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity and vexation of the spirit. If we
have seen all this, then we become disgusted with this world and all it offers us.
This is called Vairâgya, non-attachment, and is the first step towards
knowledge.

The natural desire of man is to go towards the senses. Turning away from the
senses takes him back to God. So the first lesson we have to learn is to turn
away from the vanities of the world.

How long will you go on sinking and diving down and going up for five
minutes, to again sink down, again come up and sink, and so on — tossed up
and down? How long will you be whirled on this wheel of Karma — up and
down, up and down? How many thousands of times have you been kings and
rulers? How many times have you been surrounded by wealth and plunged into
poverty? How many thousands of times have you been possessed of the
greatest powers? But again you had to become men, rolling down on this mad
rush of Karma's waters. This tremendous wheel of Karma stops neither for the
widow's tears nor the orphan's cry.
How long will you go on? How long? Will you be like that old man who had
spent all his life in prison and, when let out, begged to be brought back into his
dark and filthy dungeon cell? This is the case with us all! We cling with all our
might to this low, dark, filthy cell called this world — to this hideous,
chimerical existence where we are kicked about like a football by every wind
that blows.
We are slaves in the hands of nature — slaves to a bit of bread, slaves to praise,
slaves to blame, slaves to wife, to husband, to child, slaves to everything. Why,
I go about all over the world — beg, steal, rob, do anything — to make happy a
boy who is, perhaps, hump-backed or ugly-looking. I will do every wicked
thing to make him happy. Why? Because I am his father. And, at the same
time, there are millions and millions of boys in this world dying of starvation
— boys beautiful in body and in mind. But they are nothing to me. Let them all
die. I am apt to kill them all to save this one rascal to whom I have given birth.
This is what you call love. Not I. Not I. This is brutality.
There are millions of women — beautiful in body and mind, good, gentle,
virtuous — dying of starvation this minute. I do not care for them at all. But
that Jennie who is mine — who beats me three times a day, and scolds me the
whole day — for that Jennie I am going to beg, borrow, cheat and steal so that
she will have a nice gown.

Do you call that love? Not I. This is mere desire, animal desire — nothing
more. Turn away from these things. Is there no end to these hideous dreams?
Put a stop to them.

When the mind comes to that state of disgust with all the vanities of life, it is
called turning away from nature. This is the first step. All desires must be given
up — even the desire of getting heaven.

What are these heavens anyhow? Places where to sing psalms all the time.
What for? To live there and have a nice healthy body with phosphorescent light
or something of this kind coming out of every part, with a halo around the
head, and with wings and the power to penetrate the wall?

If there be powers, they must pass away sooner or later. If there is a heaven —
as there may be many heavens with various grades of enjoyment — there
cannot be a body that lives forever. Death will overtake us, even there.

Every conjunction must have a disjunction. No body, finer or coarser, can be
manufactured without particles of matter coming together. Whenever two
particles come together, they are held by a certain attraction; and there will
come a time when those particles will separate. This is the eternal law. So,
wherever there is a body — either grosser or finer, either in heaven or on earth
— death will overcome it.

Therefore, all desires of enjoyment in this life, or in a life to come, should be
given up. People have a natural desire to enjoy; and when they do not find their
selfish enjoyments in this life, they think that after death they will have a lot of
enjoyment somewhere else. If these enjoyments do not take us towards
knowledge in this life, in this world, how can they bring us knowledge in
another life?

Which is the goal of man? Enjoyment or knowledge? Certainly not enjoyment.
Man is not born to have pleasure or to suffer pain. Knowledge is the goal.
Knowledge is the only pleasure we can have.

All the sense pleasures belong to the brute. And the more the pleasure in
knowledge comes, these sense pleasures fall down. The more animal a man is,
the more he enjoys the pleasures of the senses. No man can eat with the same
gusto as a famished dog. No man was ever born who could feel the same
pleasure in eating as an ordinary bull. See how their whole soul is in that
eating. Why, your millionaires would give millions for that enjoyment in eating
— but they cannot have it.

This universe is like a perfectly balanced ocean. You cannot raise a wave in
one place without making a hollow in another one. The sum total of energy in
the universe is the same throughout. You spend it in some place, you lose it in
another. The brute has got it, but he spent it on his senses; and each of his
senses is a hundred times stronger than that of man.

How the dog smells at a distance! How he traces a footstep! We cannot do that.
So, in the savage man. His senses are less keen than the animal's, but keener
than the civilized man's.

The lower classes in every country intensely enjoy everything physical. Their
senses are stronger than those of the cultured. But as you go higher and higher
in the scale, you see the power of thought increasing and the powers of the
senses decreasing, in the same ratio.

Take a [brute], cut him [as it were] to pieces, and in five days he is all right.
But if I scratch you, it is ten to one you will suffer for weeks or months. That
energy of life which he displays — you have it too. But with you, it is used in
making up your brain, in the manufacture of thought. So with all enjoyments
and all pleasures. Either enjoy the pleasure of the senses — live like the brute
and become a brute — or renounce these things and become free.

The great civilizations — what have they died of? They went for pleasure. And
they went further down and down until, under the mercy of God, savages came
to exterminate them, lest we would see human brutes growling about. Savages
killed off those nations that became brutalized through sense enjoyment, lest
Darwin's missing link would be found.

True civilization does not mean congregating in cities and living a foolish life,
but going Godward, controlling the senses, and thus becoming the ruler in this
house of the Self.

Think of the slavery in which we are [bound]. Every beautiful form I see, every
sound of praise I hear, immediately attracts me; every word of blame I hear
immediately repels me. Every fool has an influence over my mind. Every little
movement in the world makes an impression upon me. Is this a life worth
living?

So when you have realized the misery of this physical existence — when you
have become convinced that such a life is not worth living — you have made
the first step towards Jnana.