Return to India
even the lowest of the low have the Atman within, who never dies and never is born — Him whom the sword cannot pierce, nor the fire burn, nor the air dry, immortal, without beginning or end, the all-pure, omnipotent, and omnipresent Atman. ('Extracts from 'My Plan of Campaign.') 'Ay, let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness or strength, hear and learn that behind the strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind everyone, there is that Infinite Soul, assuring all the infinite possibility and the infinite capacity to become great and good. Let us proclaim to every soul: Arise, arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, do not deny Him!' (Extracts from 'The Mission of the Vedanta.') 'It is a man-making religion that we want. It is a man-making education all round that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. And here is the test of truth: Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating. Give up these weakening mysticisms and be strong. The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence. 'Therefore my plan is to start institutions in India to train our young men as preachers of the truths of our scriptures in India and outside India. Men, men — these are wanted : everything else will be ready; but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized. The will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God: a pure and strong will is omnipotent.' (Extracts from 'My Plan of Campaign.') 'If the brahmin has more aptitude for learning on the grounds of heredity than the pariah, spend no more money on the brahmin's education, but spend all on the pariah. Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed. If the brahmin is born clever, he can educate himself without help. This is justice and reason as I understand it.' (From 'The Mission of the Vedanta.') 'For the next fifty years let all other vain Gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake: our own race — everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears, He covers everything. All other Gods are sleeping. Why should we vainly go after them, when we can worship the God that we see all around us, the Virat? The first of all worships is the worship of the Virat, of those all around us. These are all our Gods — men and animals; and the first Gods we have to worship are our own countrymen.' (From 'The Future of India.')
These stirring words did not fall on deaf ears. The spirit of India vibrated to the Swami's call. India became aware of the power of the soul — of God sleeping in man and of His illimitable possibilities. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were the first awakeners of India's national consciousness; they were India's first nationalist leaders in the true sense of the term. Ramakrishna was the power and Vivekananda the voice. The movement for India's liberation started from Dakshineswar. The subsequent political leaders of the country, consciously or unconsciously, received their inspiration from Vivekananda's message, and some of them openly acknowledged it. The Bengal revolutionaries were ardent readers of Vivekananda's books, some
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