Desalinating sea-water: A big bang reform for economic revival

The health-crisis occasioned nation-wide lockdown is yet to be lifted. However, one need not be a rocket-scientist to decipher that the Indian economy is in shambles and economic outlook for the entire financial year has already received a battering. The silver lining is that the event has shaken up fixated notions to an extent that nothing seems impossible. Translated in economic terms, the projects which earlier appeared impractical, in a role-reversal, can become the order of the day, especially bold and gigantic economic projects. This article implores on one such ultra-mega project which is capable of pioneering economic activity across a variety of sectors and simultaneously generating massive employment opportunities, equally for the white-collar and the blue-collar. Desalinate sea-water and supply it to the hinterlands. Neither from the look or sound of it this project appears to quench the quest for such big-bang reform. However, as is demonstrated here, the time for ripe for its implementation. 

There are international examples where huge regions survive solely on desalinated sea-water. In fact, countries like Kuwait, Israel, almost exclusively source potable water from the desalination process. The proliferation of this technology is also rampant across large regions, such as and Singapore, California, Perth, etc. A 2015 paper published in the MIT Technology Review made a compelling case to highlight that seawater desalination is perhaps the only futuristic response to the growing demand for potable water. Massive investment and economic costs are cited to reject forward movement in this direction. However, those very reasons which earlier worked for repelling the proposal, now make it an irresistible choice. 

It is a known fact that desalinating sea water to make it potable is an expensive proposition. This is exactly why this idea is worth doing in today’s economic paradigm as it, let’s call it the desalination project, shall entail huge investments by the Government in diverse sectors. Firstly, in solar energy front, by establishing floating solar panels across vast stretches of oceans to energise the desalination process. This will also mean consistent demand for electricity, and thus translate into economies-of-scale for this struggling industry. Secondly, massive demand build-up for cement, iron and steel and other infrastructure goods, needed for laying down huge pipelines across State frontiers for transporting treated sea-water. Such pipelines already exist for oil and natural gas, and thus there are precedents. Thirdly, linking the desalination project with the ongoing inter-linking of rivers will spur the demand across other related sectors. The scope of inter-linking process can be expanded by including within its ambit dredging of dried up distributaries, desilting the existing water-channels and provisioning smaller canals to ensure that the desalinated water reaches every local area.

The desalination project has massive potential to further integrate the topographical spread and reduce regional inequities. For example, treated water from the coast of Gujarat can be brought to drier States, such as Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and others in North India. Similarly treated water from West Bengal can be brought to parched areas in eastern states like Bihar, Jharkhand, etc. Desalinated water from Odisha would supplement the water requirement for MP and Jharkhand, etc. Furthermore, areas with acute water shortage within the coastal States, such as Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, etc. can be supplied water from the desalinated plant within their respective States. Calibrated through dedicated SPVs across different regions, working in tandem with municipalities and other local bodies, to finetune the supply network, an all-India level desalination project augers well with the flagship program of the Union Jal Shakti Ministry to provide clean drinking water till the last mile. 

Considering its sheer size, the desalination project will generate massive employment opportunities. Whether it be by collaborating in public-private partnership, or by the public health department in form of large-scale recruitment of engineers (across various streams), construction workers, besides wide-ranging allied occupation and fields, there will be an overwhelming demand for both skilled and unskilled manpower. 

A crucial challenge in the design would be ensuring that the desalination project is not rendered cyclic and instead operates perennially, across the year, though in suitable moderation tied up to the seasonal rains. One way to achieve this, which can also reduce the costs to some extent, is by feeding the seasonal rivers and canals with the pipelines, which will ultimately converge in the mainstream rivers. This will ensure that the traditional irrigation channels are not disturbed, while at the same time supplementing the water-flow in the rivers, thus addressing the vagaries of monsoon. At the cost of repetition, pursued alongside interlinking of rivers, the desalination project can be modelled in a fashion that dedicated water-hubs are created across the length and breadth of the country which will obviate water-related regional disparities.  

The desalination project is replete with positive after-effects. Perennial and assured water-supply will render moot the crop-failures linked to irrigation woes. In fact, this will permit multiple crop plantations across the year, thereby, also in a sense addressing the target of doubling farmer income. Arid regions and depleting green cover, would also be unwitting beneficiaries.  

Before embarking on such a project, however, it must be unfailing appreciated by the policy-makers that there cannot be any half-hearted attempts in such expeditions. At any rate massive projects like nation-wide desalination cannot be undertaken, not even in parts, by private players or even large corporations. This is so on account of huge investments which are required coupled with lack of immediate and attractive returns, which are necessary to excite private participation. This does not imply that the project should be entirely undertaken by the Government as part of its socio-welfare obligations. Instead, multiple avenues should be created to obtain benefit of private initiative and expertise by suitable revenue modelling of the various parts of the grand design. Nonetheless the Government will have to be the lead driver in this strive to push desalination. 

In the current economic paradigm, selection of alternatives towards economic revival must be made basis three crucial touchstone; (a) creating employment opportunities, (b) addressing inequities which have permeated this country; and (c) setting into motion a series of events which will have a domino effect so as to fast-track economic demand and supply. The simple yet massive desalination project is one such idea which not just overwhelms other alternatives on economic potential but is also a path-breaker in terms of socio-welfare programs. Once a dream, electrification of every village is already a reality. Successful implementation of desalination project translates into perpetual availability of clean drinking water for every household. Thus, in the short term the desalination project is an immediate boost to address the growing unemployment and arresting receding economic growth while in the long term, attaining another frontier on the welfare agenda. The existing MGNREGA schemes, CSR activities, NGO guidelines, etc. can be suitability tweaked so as to institute the desalination project within the national mainstream. For that matter, considering its wide-ranging benefits, this project can be modelled as a mission in itself with a catchy tune of Pradhan Mantri Samudra se Jal Yogna. It would perhaps also be an apt tribute to the Mahatma whose walk to desalination is a vivid national memory.

River Saraswati Traced

I recently came across a news item that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has traced the map of the mythical river Saraswati through the use of satellite technology. On the basis of this report I applied to them under the Right to Information Act to supply me a copy of that map. Sure enough I am in receipt of that map, which clears shows the entire map in which River Saraswati flowed. 

This includes the inception / sources of the river to its culmination. In as much as I feel that like me many other fellow Indian and for that matter even those foreign to India would be interested in having a look at the map, I am sharing it on this platform.

The map shows River Saraswati in dark blue colour flowing from East to West cutting across the north Indian plains after originating from the icy himalayas and flowing towards the current Gujarat. The map has been certified as correct by ISRO. 

A lot of stories / fables revolve around this River Saraswati and the most recent bestsellers (Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi and The Krishna Key by Ashwin Sanghi) also make a reference to this River. Hindu Mythology also believes that this river meets River Ganga and River Yamuna at prayag in Allahabad. 

India, the next best thing on Earth?

The above picture of snow-drenched Europe (thanks to a dear friend) makes me reflect upon a the scenario that India presents for the mankind. Appropriately I have titled this post as "India, the next best thing on Earth?', the next best thing as the motherland is always the best thing, now matter whether the biggest in size or the tiniest island on the planet. The immediate cause of reflection is the news which has been flashing on television channels recently that snow-storms have hit European nations and the landscape is covered in thick white layers. The naturally corollary is the seizure of all activity, whether professional or recreational (unless of-course making snow-creatures is discounted for). While the same is good at a personal level in which the family-folk get time to inter-mix, the conditions outside the household being indomitably against traveling to work. However it leads to a loss of nation as a whole. 

Stand-still scenario is not good for the economy as economic activity is the basis on which a nation and in fact even a society survives and not just thrives. It is not good for the employers / manufacturers as the invested capital (in monetary as well as material perspective, both) lies idle and thus the rate of returns diminishes or in fact turns negative. Sustained inactivity is also not a rosy scenario for the employed / professional in as much as the room to work, and thus the earning capacity, is simply not available. Thus society, which requires interaction of its members on economic platforms, arrives at a point which due to natural reasons is unable to engage in meaningful interaction. On a non-monetary aspect as well. It comes on account of idle time attributable to folks. People who do not work become lethargic, gain weight and add to all sorts of social problems. No point enlisting the evils of an empty mind, but then we have seen it more than heard that an empty mind is devil's workshop.

So, how is this related to India? In a sense it is. There are no snow-storms, no natural variations to affect the work flow. On the contrary a nearly permanent tropical weather for most parts of the country presents a conducive environment for work at its appropriate pace. The stark lack of any dominating chieftains (as it used to be a couple of decades back, as reflected in the Hindi cinema of those times), the moral aspect of this aspect irrespective, has allowed the increase in working hours and employment of a working force which has now grown used to working abysmally long hours. With rich endowments from mother-earth in the form of natural resources, and a citizens dedicated to the cause of work more than work itself, the country has grown into a grove that is not just meant to be sustaining but in fact it looked upon as the harbinger of growth for both its western and eastern counterparts.

The impact of the progressive reins of Indian economy is so much so that today even the IMF is impressed with the deft approach of the Indian policy-makers (who only ensure to stay out of the way, lest turn into a stumbling stone in the path of growth of the self-driven Indian entrepreneurs), This the same IMF which enlisted India at the edge of bankruptcy not long back so as to be ebbed away from memory. Nonetheless we Indians take, just like all else, even this in our stride as we continue to march in our quest not just to be labelled as a developed nation but rather lead but example to all rest, as we were in the past a few centuries ago.

The newly independent India witnessed the migration of elite and talented to serve the western nations. Though they might have well been settled as of right abroad, the urge for them to be treated specially, be it as 'Persons of Indian Origin' or 'Overseas Citizen of India' etc., it reflective of the revived status of India that it is has turned "cool" for one to be associated with this proud-nation. The current Prime-Minister sees this trend as 'brain gain' whereas it is also to note that those seeking to rework the forgotten ties with this nation are not the unsuccessful ones looking to return but those who have made their name amongst the very best of the best. These distinguished persons are known internationally for their contribution to the global-village that this planet is and not just confined to the cause of a state or nation.

More importantly, what i personally like is the spirit of fighting-back. Be it massive floods (which have almost become a normal feature), tsunamis, earthquakes or even terrorist attacks, the country never stops. The productive activity never comes under a seize so as to turn dormant. Not just for earning livelihood, the people in this country also work for the sheer sense of joy that it brings to invent, invigorate, create, with the things around us. Though as a flip side of the all the industrialization activity no doubt the habitat has declined a bit compared to its pristine form, yet what matters is the fact, the bad manners notwithstanding, the we carry out with us an admirable capacity of owning up. A group pollutes, another tidies it up.

And, with all pun intended, just a reminder to other. The size of scams which we have are of such magnitude that few of them can equal the whole economic output of some nations. But then we turn a blind eye to these in our daily interaction, being assured that the scale will balance eventually and those responsible will be booked, the incident being just a bubble in a bath.  ...

The immortal words of Swami Vivekananda

Response to Welcome At The World’s Parliament of Religions

Chicago, 11th September 1893

Sisters and Brothers of America, It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. l thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects. My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration.I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to the southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:

As the different streams having there sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:

Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

At The World’s Parliament of Religions

Chicago, 15th September 1893

I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, “Let us cease from abusing each other,” and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story which would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course, the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story’s sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another flog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

“Where are you form?”

“I am from the sea.”

“The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?” and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.

“My friend,” said the frog of the sea, “how do you compare the sea with your little well?”

Then the frog took another leap and asked, “Is your sea so big?”

“What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!”

“Well, then,” said the frog of the well, “nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this; this fellow is a liar, so turn him out.”

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. l have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

Vivekananda at World Parliament of Religion: PAPER ON HINDUISM

Chicago, 19th September 1893

Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks, and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the sea-shore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing Hood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith. From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu’s religion.

Where then, the question arises, where is the common center to which all these widely diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis upon which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? And this is the question I shall at- tempt to answer.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honor them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women.

Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd-Therefore, there never was a time when there was no creation.

If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, zoning parallel to each other. God is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time, and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day:

‘The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and the moons of previous cycles.’

And this agrees with modern science. Here I Stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence, ‘I,’ ‘I,’ ‘I’, what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, ‘No’ I am a spirit living in a body: I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here I am in this body; it will fall, bull shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination, which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health with beautiful body, mental vigor, and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable; some are without hands or feet; others again are idiots, and only drag on a wretched existence. Why, if they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in a ôare one. Why should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?

In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel Rat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes, then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence - one of the mind, the other of matter. If matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been evolved out of matter; and if a philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by his past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would, by the laws of affinity, take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. This is in accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetitions. So repetitions are necessary to explain the natural habits of a new born soul. And since they were not obtained in this present life, they must have come down from past lives.

There is another suggestion. Taking all these for granted, how is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue; in fact, no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the surface of mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up. and you would be conscious even of your past life.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up - try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life.

So then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce - him the fire cannot burn - him the water cannot melt - him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere but whose center is located in the body, and that death means the change of the center from holy to body. Nor is the soul bound by the conditions of matter.

In its very essence, it is flee, unbounded, holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matter and thinks of itself as matter. Why should the free, perfect, and pure be thus under the thraldom of matter, is the next question. How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect? We have been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say that no such question can be there- Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining. The question remains the same. How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; and his answer is: ‘I do not know.’ I do not know how the perfect being, the soul, came to think of itself as imperfect, as Joined to and conditioned by matter.’ But the fact is a fact for all that. It is a fact in everybody’s consciousness that one thinks of oneself as the body. The Hindu does not attempt to explain why one thinks one is the body. The answer that it is the will of God is no explanation. This is nothing more than what the Hindu says, ‘I do not know.’

Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of center from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and from at the mercy of good and bad actions - a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect - a little moth placed under the wheel of causation, which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow’s tears or the orphan’s cry? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? - was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: ‘Hear, ye children of immortal bliss! even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again. ‘Children of immortal bliss’ -what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name -heirs of immortal bliss - yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners. We are the Children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings divinities on earth - sinners! It is a sin to call a ma. so; it is standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but that at the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One, ‘by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain and death stalks upon the earth.’

And what is His nature?

He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. ‘Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life.’ Thus sang the Rishis of the Veda. And how to worship Him? Through love He is to be worshiped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.’

This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth.

He taught that a man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world - his heart to God and his hands to work.

It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love’s sake; and the prayer goes: ‘Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth; but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward - love unselfishly for love’s sake.’

One of the disciples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, wag driven from his kingdom by his enemies and had to take shelter with his queen, in a forest in the Himalayas and there one day the queen asked how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery. udhishthira answered, ‘Be hold, my queen, the Himalayas, how grand and beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me any- thing but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to beloved; my nature is to love Him, and therefore I love. I do not pray for any- thing; I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love’s sake. I cannot trade in love.’

The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery- And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. He is no more the freak of a terrible law of causation. This is the very center, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories, If there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, he wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful universal Soul, he will Rota Him direct. He must see Him, and that alone can destroy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God, is: ‘I have seen the soul; I have seen God.’ And that is the only condition of perfection. The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing - not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God, and see God; and this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus.

And what becomes of a man when he attains perfection? He lives a life of bliss infinite. He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in which man ought to have pleasure, namely God, and enjoys the bliss with God.

So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects of India; but then perfection is absolute, and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahman, and it would only realize the Lord as the perfection, the reality, of its own nature and existence, the existence absolute, knowledge absolute, and bliss absolute. We have often and often read this called the losing of individuality and becoming a stock or a stone.

‘He jests at scars that never felt a wound.’

I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must be greater happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, the measure of happiness increasing with the consciousness of an increasing number of bodies, the Rim, the ultimate of happiness, being reached when it would become a universal consciousness.

Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little prison - individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life, then alone can misery cease when I am one with happiness itself, then alone can all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and this is the necessary scientific conclusion- Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter, and Advaita (unity) is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, Soul.

Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are hut manifestations, and the science of religion become perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no farther. This is the goal of all science.

All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today; and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

Descend we now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the ignorant. At the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, one will find the worshipers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence. to the images. It is not polytheism, nor would the name henotheism explain the situation.

‘The rose, called by any other name, would smell as sweet.’ Names are not explanations.

I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was, that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick. what could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, ‘If I abuse your God, what can He do?’ ‘ou would be punished,’ said the preacher, ‘when you die.’ ‘So my idol will punish you when you die,’ retorted the Hindu.

The tree is known by its fruits. When l have seen amongst them that are called idolaters, men, the like of whom, in morality and spirituality and love, I have never seen anywhere, l stop and ask myself, ‘Can sin beget holiness?’

Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can Do more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing- By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you. it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. finer all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word ‘omnipresent’, we think of the extended sky. or of space - that is all.

As we find that somehow or other, by the laws of our mental constitution, we have to associate our ideas of infinity with the image of the blue sky, or of the sea, so we naturally connect our idea of holiness with the image of a church, a mosque, or a cross. The Hindus have associated the ideas of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms. But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindu is centered in realization. Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood; but on and on he must progress.

He must not stop anywhere. ‘External worship, material worship’ ?,’ say the scriptures, ‘is the lowest stage,’ struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized., Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, ‘Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine.’ But he does not abuse anyone’s idol or call its worship sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of life. ‘The child is father of the man.’ Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?

If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor, even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not traveling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognized it. Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry he must go without a coat to cover his body. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols - so many pegs to hang spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand, it is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths. The Hindus have their faults, they sometimes have their exceptions; but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, and never for cutting the throats of their neighbors. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of Inquisition. And even this cannot be laid at the door of his religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity.

To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a traveling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.

It is the same light coming through glasses of different colors- And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindu in His incarnation as Krishna: ‘I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there. ‘ And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, ‘we find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed.’ One thing more. How, then, can the Hindu, whose whole fabric of thought centers in God, believe in Buddhism which is agnostic, or in Jainism which is atheistic?

The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son bath seen the Father also.

This, brethren, is a short sketch of the religious ideas of the Hindus. The Hindu may have failed to carry out all his plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these. and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being from the lowest grovelling savage, not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.

Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you. Asoka’s council was a council of the Buddhist faith. Akbar’s. though more to the purpose. was only a parlor meeting. It was reserved for America to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every religion.

May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea! The star arose in the East; it traveled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world, and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of the Sanpo, a thousand fold more effulgent than it ever was before.

Hail Columbia, motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, who never dipped her hand in her neighbor’s blood, who never found out that the shortest way of becoming rich was by robbing one’s neighbors, it has been given to thee to march at the vanguard of civilization with the flag of harmony.

Courtesy: The Universal Wisdom.