Now the Vedanta has to answer every conceivable question. It has to! Otherwise it will not be a Universal religion. For man, every type of person, has to be taken where he stands – his questions, his doubts. It may be really intellectual or it may be silly but still they have to be answered. If you say “don’t ask questions, we don’t care for your doubts, you are not a believer. So go away” then people do go away. These days they don’t care. So the Vedanta says “well let us bring the individual to a relationship with his ideal. Ideal, namely, manifestation of the Divinity.
So the second aspect of spiritual life they tell us in Vedanta is the desire for this manifestation of the Divinity. Your desire is important. You read “man is Divine”, you read “the goal of life is to manifest this Divine.” Then you will be happy, the world, the same world can be a happy place. Happier than what you can conceive.
If you have a spiritual goal these are all statements but still suppose your desire is not there, you know there is an essential wanting. It is like you are wanting to buy something from somewhere. I don’t care, I don’t care to possess a car or something like of this type so who can compel you to possess it or own it. So who can compel an individual to have the desire for spiritual life for God or God realization.
See that is the crux of the problems – how to take a father and a mother can take the child to the church? And it has been so well set in this world you know that every religion starts by indoctrinating the child so that they think the child obeys the father in a hundred things. So also in his religious conviction. So let us train him – that is the best, that the parents can do is they cannot neglect their duty, their right.
They would love to see the child grow an integral person and religion is part of his life because it helps manifestation of the Divinity. So they tell him several things and also this, namely, “we worship” or “we like this particular type of self-manifestation so you also try to come with us and pick it up.”
As a boy, as a child but still you see the individual liking can always be different. You never know. So what happens? How can the Vedanta teacher make the individual desire God? He has a wonderful answer. He says “when you are hungry you seek food so the Vedanta teacher talks not a word about spiritual life or about Divinity to a person who is not ready, who does not care for it.” That is their best way – never tell a person about God or about spiritual life unless you feel as the teacher that he or she is really ready, wants God, is seeking something and that the teacher should be able to know so they always talk to several people but they tell different things to different persons. So that is the way they actually draw people to religious life.
I give you an example. Swami Brahmananda’s example you know. Swami Brahmananda, one of the chief disciples of Shri Ramakrishna as many of you know, he was always silent but when he talked he talked the most wonderful truths. He was not too very talkative but still when he did talk it was just like hitting the nail on the head. Just the thing that should be said.