I
AM NOT UNMINDFUL that some of
you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of
you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have
come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered
by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of
brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering.
Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back
to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go
back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our
northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and
will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends,
so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I
still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American
dream.
I have a dream that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are
created equal."
I have a dream that one day on
the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons
of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the
table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even
the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be
transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four
little children will one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of
their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down
in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having
his lips dripping with the words of interposition and
nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys
and black girls will be able to join hands with little white
boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every
valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made
low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places
will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the
faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will
be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling
discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray
together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand
up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of
God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My
country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from
every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great
nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the
prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the
mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the
heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the
snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the
curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom
ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout
Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill
and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let
freedom ring!
And when this happens, when we
allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village
and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be
able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men
and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old
Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God
Almighty, we are free at last!"
Your Mind—Your World
THE
WORLD IS BUT A SHOW,
glittering and empty. It is, and yet it is not. It is there as
long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease
caring, it dissolves. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self
or Atma. To the Self, the world is but a colorful show, which he
enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever
happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with
laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show.
Without desire or fear, he enjoys it as it happens.
The universe is a stage on which the world drama is being
played. Sportsmen seem to make tremendous efforts: yet their
sole motive is to play and display.
All that lives and works for protecting, perpetuating and
expanding consciousness—this
is the world's sole meaning and purpose. It is the very essence
of Yoga—ever
raising the level of consciousness, and discovering new
dimensions with their properties, qualities and powers. In that
sense, the entire universe becomes a school of Yoga.
Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and
death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me, they are
all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I may perceive
the world just like you, but you believe to be in it, while I
see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of
consciousness.
The whole of it is imagination. Even space and time are
imagined. All existence is imaginary. All depends on you. It is
by your consent that the world exists. Withdraw your belief in
its reality and it will dissolve like a dream.
There is only imagination. It has absorbed you so completely
that you just cannot grasp how far from reality you have
wandered. No doubt imagination is richly creative. Universe upon
universe are built on it. Yet they are all in space and time,
past and future, which just don't exist.
Out of a lump of gold, you can make many ornaments—each
will remain gold. Similarly, in whatever role I may appear and
whatever function I may perform,
I remain what I am: the
"I am"—
immovable, unshakable, independent. What you call the universe
or nature, is my spontaneous creativity. Whatever happens,
happens. But such is my nature that all ends in joy.
"I am" is an ever present fact, while "I am created" is an idea.
Neither God nor the universe have come to tell you that they
have created you. The mind, obsessed by the idea of causality,
invents creation and then wonders "who is the creator?" The mind
itself is the creator. Even this is not quite true, for the
created and its creator are one. The mind and the world are not
separate. Do understand that what you think to be the world is
your own mind. All space and time are in the mind.
This world is painted by you on the screen of consciousness and
is entirely your own private world. To know the picture as the
play of light on the screen gives freedom from the idea that the
picture is real.
Consider the world in which you live—who
else knows about it? Within the prison of your world appears a
man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions,
which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent, and
is based on a misunderstanding. He pleads with you to get out of
it. You got into it by forgetting what you are, and you will get
out of it by knowing yourself as you are. There is no reality in
it. It cannot last.
The world has no existence apart from you. At every moment it is
but a reflection of yourself. You create it, you destroy it.
Your personal universe does not exist by itself. It is merely a
limited and distorted view of the real.
You are not of the world—you
are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You
create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot
separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer
world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the
world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created.
The world is but a reflection of my imagination. Whatever I want
to see, I can see. To know that you are a prisoner of your mind,
that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the
dawn of wisdom.
I see you suffer in your dream and I know that you must wake up
to end your woes. When you see your dream as dream, you wake up.
You need not bring your dream to a definite conclusion, or make
it noble, or happy, or beautiful; all you need is to realize you
are dreaming. Stop imagining, stop believing. See the
contradictions, the incongruities, the falsehood and the sorrow
of the human state, the need to go beyond.
You
insist that your world is independent of your mind. How can it
be? Your desire to know other people's minds is due to your not
knowing your own mind. First know your own mind and you will
find that the question of other minds does not arise at all, for
there are no other people. You are the common factor, the only
link between the minds. Being is consciousness. "I am" applies
to all.
Ultimately nothing is mine or yours, everything is ours. Just be
one with yourself and you will be one with all, at home in the
entire universe.
What you see is nothing but yourself. Call it what you like, it
does not change the fact. Through the film of destiny, your own
light depicts pictures on the screen. You are the viewer, the
light, the picture and the screen. Even the film of destiny is
self-selected and self-imposed.
Nothing exists by itself. All is the Self, all is myself. All is
you and yours. There is nobody else. This is a fact.
Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity. When all
the false self-identifications are thrown away, what remains is
all-embracing love. To see myself in everybody, and everybody in
myself, most certainly is love.
When you realize that all is in your mind, and that you are
beyond the mind, that you are truly alone, then all is you. Love
says "I am everything." Wisdom says "I am nothing." Between
these two, my life flows.
Let Freedom Ring!
