A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

438 THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA.tion, in some cases they try to appear veryoriginal, and afew there are bold and grateful enough to mention t"hesourceand acknowledge their indebtedness to it. ^ Myfriends, when .1 was in America, I heard it once complainedthat I was preaching too much of Advaita, and too littleof dualism. Aye, I know what grandeur, what oceans oflove, what infinite, ecstatic blessings and joy the*r-*tre inthe dualistic love theories of worship and religion. I knowit all. But this is not the time with us to weep even injoy ; we have had weeping enough ;no more is this thetimefor us to become soft. This softness has been on ustillwe are dead ;we have become like masses of cotton.What our country now wants is muscles of iron and nervesof steel, gigantic wills which nothing can resist,which canpenetrate into the mysteries and the secrets of theuniverse,and will accomplish their purpose even if itmeant going down to the bottom of the ocean and meetingdeath face to face in every fashion. That is what wewant, and that can only be created, established andstrengthened by understanding and realisingthe idealof Advaita, that ideal of the oneness of all. Faith,faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this isthe secret of greatness. If you have faith in all the-330 millions of your mythological gods and in all thegodswhich foreigners have now and againsent intoyourmidst, and still have no faith in yourselves, thereisno salvation for you. Have faith in yourselves, andstand up on that faith and be strong that is what weneed.Why is it that we 300 millions of people have been;ruled for the last one thousand years by any and everyhandful of foreigners who chose to walk over our prostratebodies? Because they had faith in themselves and we hadnot. "What did I learn in the West, and what did I see-