Action is the only way to gain God

 It was the wish of this Acharya that the truth should be as radiant as the truth. There is no harm in bowing or compromise; No priest, no powerful man, no king needs to be flattered. No one needs to bow down to a superstitious practice no matter how old it may be; It is not necessary to accept any program or book just because it is from the distant past. He has denied all scriptures and religious mantras. He even rejected the teaching of Sanskrit in India, so that his followers could not accept the reforms associated with that language.

The theory we have been discussing for so long can be seen from a different point of view - from a Hindu point of view. We say that this teaching of self-sacrifice of the Buddha can be better understood by judging from our point of view. The Upanishads contain deep theories about the soul and Brahman. Atma and Parabrahma are identical. Everything is a soul — the only soul is an honest object. In Maya we see many souls. The soul is but one, not many. That one soul is manifested in many ways. People are brothers, because all people are one. The Vedas say: Man is not just my brother, he is my nature. I hurt myself by hitting any part of the world. I am the universe. I think that I am such and such this is Maya. The farther you go towards the real nature, the farther this Maya will go. The more diversity and discrimination disappears, the more you will feel that everything is one paramatma. There is a God, but he is not in the sky. He is the pure soul. Where is his abode? He is in the depths of your heart; He is the soul. How would you perceive him as isolated from you? When you think of Him as separate from you, you do not know Him; ‘You are him’ — this is the saying of the Indian sages. You see such and such — and everything in the world is different from you, such a feeling is mere selfishness. You think, you and I are different. You don't think about me at all. You go home and eat and go to bed. Even if I die, your food and drink will be fine. But when the rest of the world suffers, you cannot enjoy happiness. We are all one. The delusion of inequality is the root of sorrow. There is nothing but the soul — nothing!

The Buddha's teaching is that there is no such thing as God, man is everything. He rejected all conventional attitudes toward God. As he saw it, this attitude made people weak and superstitious! If you pray to God for everything, then who is going out to do it? God comes to those who work.

From Swami Vivekananda's 'Mahapurusha Prasanga'