With all my love for India,and with all my patriotism and venerations for the ancients,I cannot but think that we have to learn many things from other nations. ? We cannot do without the world outside India; it was our foolishness that we thought we could,and we have paid the penalty by about a thousand years of slavery. That we did not go out to compare things with other nations, did not mark the workings that have been all around us, has been the one great cause of this degradation of the Indian mind. We have paid the penalty; let us do it no more.
Some Of these old temples of Southern India,and those like Somnath of Gujarat will teach you volumes of wisdom., will give you a keener insight into the history of the race than any amouflt of books. Mark now these temples bear the marks of a hundred attacks and a hundred regenerations, continually destroyed and continually springing up out of the ruins, rejuvenated and strong as ever! That is the national mind, that is the national life-current.
For the next fifty years this alone shall be our keynote ?this, our great Mother India.Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our minds.This is the only god that is awake, our own race ? ?everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covets everything.? All other gods are sleeping. What vain gods shall we go after and yet cannot worship the god that we see all round us, the Virat? when we have worshiped this, we shall be able to worship all other gods.
We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular educations of the nations. Do you understand that... The education that you are getting now has some good points, but it has a tremendous disadvantage which is so great that the good things are all weighed down. In the first place it is not a man-making education. It is merely and entirely a negative educations. A negative education or any training that is based on negation, is worse than death.
India I loved before I came away, now the very dust of India has become holy to me, the very air is now tome holy, it is now the holy land, the place of pilgrimage, the Tirtha.
If you want to become equal with the Englishman of the American, you will have to teach as well as to learn, and you have plenty yet to teach to the world for centuries to come. This has to be done.
The degenerations of India came not because the laws and customs of the ancients were bad, but because they were not allowed to be carried to their legitimate conclusions.
When you have men who are ready to sacrifice their everything for their country, sincere to the backbone - when men arise, India will become great in every respect. It is the men that make the country!
I consider that the great national sin is the neglect of the masses, and that is one of the causes of our downfall. No amount of politics would be of any avail until the masses in India are once more well educated, well fed, and well cared for.
Keep the motto before you: ?Elevation of the masses without injuring their religion.?
Education, education, education alone! Travelling through many cities of Europe and observing in them the comforts and educations of even the poor people,there was brought to my mind the state of our own poor people? and I used to shed tears.What made the difference ? Education was the answer I got. Through education comes faith in one's own self, and through faith in one's own self the inherent Brahman is waking up in them. While the Brahman in us is gradually becoming dormant.
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