Swami Vivekananda - Spiritual Prophet of Modern Times

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Para and Apara

... all knowledge is divided into two classes, the Apara, secular, and the Para, spiritual.
One pertains to perishable things, and the other to the realm of the spirit. ... ...

It is not that secular and spiritual knowledge are two opposite and contradictory things; but they are the same thing -- the same infinite knowledge which is everywhere fully present from the lowest atom to the highest Brahman -- they are the same knowledge in its different stages of gradual development.

This one infinite knowledge we call secular when it is in its lower process of manifestation, and spiritual when it reaches the corresponding higher phase.

- Swami Vivekananda, (an article written for Udbodhan)

Religion Getting into Kitchen

Give up all those old discussions, old fights about things which are meaningless, which are nonsensical in their very nature.
Think of the last six hundred or seven hundred years of degradation when grown-up men by hundreds have been discussing for years whether we should drink a glass of water with the right hand or the left, whether the hand should be washed three times or four times, whether we should gargle five or six times.

What can you expect from men who pass their lives in discussing such momentous questions as these and writing most learned philosophies on them!

There is a danger of our religion getting into the kitchen.
We are neither Vedantists, most of us now, nor Pauranics, nor Tantrics. We are just "Don't touchists". Our religion is in the kitchen.
Our God is in the cooking-pot, and our religion is, "Don't touch me, I am holy". If this goes on for another century, every one of us will be in a lunatic asylum.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Address at Manamadurai,'Lectures From Colombo to Almora')

British Rule in India

Your questions have tapped the very source of pessimism, however.
British rule in modern India has only one redeeming feature, though unconscious; it has brought India out once more on the stage of the world; it has forced upon it the contact of the outside world.
If it had been done with an eye to the good of the people concerned, as circumstances favored Japan with, the results could have been more wonderful for India. No good can be done when the main idea is blood-sucking.
On the whole the old regime was better for the people, as it did not take away everything they had, and there was some justice, some liberty.

A few hundred, modernized, half-educated, and denationalized men are all the show of modern English India -- nothing else. The Hindus were 600 million in number according to Ferishta, the Mohammedan historian, in the 12th century -- now less than 200 million.

In spite of the centuries of anarchy that reigned during the struggles of the English to conquer, the terrible massacre the English perpetrated in 1857 and 1858, and the still more terrible famines that have become the inevitable consequence of British rule (there never is a famine in a native state) and that take off millions, there has been a good increase of population, but not yet what it was when the country was entirely independent -- that is, before the Mohammedan rule. Indian labor and produce can support five times as many people as there are now in India with comfort, if the whole thing is not taken off from them.

This is the state of things -- even education will no more be permitted to spread; freedom of the press stopped already, (of course we have been disarmed long ago), the bit of self-government granted to them for some years is being quickly taken off. We are watching what next! For writing a few words of innocent criticism, men are being hurried to transportation for life, others imprisoned without any trial; and nobody knows when his head will be off.

There has been a reign of terror in India for some years. English soldiers are killing our men and outraging our women -- only to be sent home with passage and pension at our expense. We are in a terrible gloom -- where is the Lord? Mary, you can afford to be optimistic, can I? Suppose you simply publish this letter -- the law just passed in India will allow the English Government in India to drag me from here to India and kill me without trial. And I know all your Christian governments will only rejoice, because we are heathens. Shall I also go to sleep and become optimistic? Nero was the greatest optimistic person! They don't think it worth while to write these terrible things as news items even! If necessary, the news agent of Reuter gives the exactly opposite news fabricated to order! Heathen-murdering is only a legitimate pastime for the Christians! Your missionaries go to preach God and dare not speak a word of truth for fear of the English, who will kick them out the next day.

All property and lands granted by the previous governments for supporting education have been swallowed up, and the present Government spends even less than Russia in education. And what education?

The least show of originality is throttled. Mary, it is hopeless with us, unless there really is a God who is the father of all, who is not afraid of the strong to protect the weak, and who is not bribed by wealth. Is there such a God? Time will show.

- Swami Vivekananda, (in a Letter to Mary Hale from Ridgely Manor, October 1899)

God as Child

This idea of loving God as a child comes into existence and grows naturally among those religious sects which believe in the incarnation of God.
For the Mohammedans it is impossible to have this idea of God as a child; they will shrink from it with a kind of horror.
But the Christian and the Hindu can realise it easily, because they have the baby Jesus and the baby Krishna.

The women in India often look upon themselves as Krishna's mother; Christian mothers also may take up the idea that they are Christ's mothers, and it will bring to the West the knowledge of God's Divine Motherhood which they so much need.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Bhakti-Yoga)

Castes and Institutions of India

Though our castes and our institutions are apparently linked with our religion, they are not so.
These institutions have been necessary to protect us as a nation, and when this necessity for self-preservation will no more exist, they will die a natural death.

But the older I grow, the better I seem to think of these time-honoured institutions of India.
There was a time when I used to think that many of them were useless and worthless; but the older I grow, the more I seem to feel a diffidence in cursing any one of them, for each of them is the embodiment of the experience of centuries.
A child of but yesterday, destined to die the day after tomorrow, comes to me and asks me to change all my plans; and if I hear the advice of that baby and change all my surroundings according to his ideas, I myself should be a fool, and no one else.

Much of the advice that is coming to us from different countries is similar to this. Tell these wiseacres: "I will hear you when you have made a stable society yourselves. You cannot hold on to one idea for two days, you quarrel and fail; you are born like moths in the spring and die like them in five minutes. You come up like bubbles and burst like bubbles too. First form a stable society like ours. First make laws and institutions that remain undiminished in their power through scores of centuries. Then will be the time to talk on the subject with you, but till then, my friend, you are only a giddy child."

- Swami Vivekananda, (Address at Jaffna, 'Lectures From Colombo to Almora')

Free-Will Sheer Nonsense

As long as you are in the network of time, space, and causation, to say you are free is nonsense, because in that network all is under rigorous law, sequence and consequence.
Every thought that you think is caused, every feeling has been caused; to say that the will is free is sheer nonsense.
It is only when the infinite existence comes, as it were, into this network of Maya that it takes the form of will. Will is a portion of that being, caught in the network of Maya, and therefore "free will" is a misnomer.
It means nothing -- sheer nonsense.

So is all this talk about freedom.
There is no freedom in Maya. ... ...

True freedom cannot exist in the midst of this delusion, this hallucination, this nonsense of the world, this universe of the senses, body, and mind.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in New-York)

Great Hinduism

Here I find a quotation from a speech by Sir Monier Williams, professor of Sanskrit in the Oxford University. It is very strange as coming from one who every day expects to see the whole of India converted to Christianity.

"And yet it is a remarkable characteristic of Hinduism that it neither requires nor attempts to make converts. Nor is it at present by any means decreasing in numbers, nor is it being driven out of the field by two such proselytizing religions as Mahomedanism [sic] and Christianity. On the contrary, it is at present rapidly increasing. And far more remarkable than this is that, it is all receptive, all embracing and all comprehensive. It claims to be the one religion of humanity, of human nature, of the entire world. It cares not to oppose the progress of Christianity nor of any other religion. For it has no difficulty in including all other religions within its all embracing arms and ever widening fold. And in real fact Hinduism has something to offer which is suited to all minds. Its very strength lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human characters and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosophical higher classes. Its practical and concrete side suited to the man of affairs and the man of the world. Its aesthetic and ceremonial side suited to the man of poetic feeling and imagination. Its quiescent and contemplative side suited to the man of peace and lover of seclusion.
"Indeed, the Hindus were Spinozists 2,000 years before the birth of Spinoza, Darwinians centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists centuries before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the Huxleys of our time, and before any word like evolution existed in any language of the world."

This, as coming from one of the staunchest defenders of Christianity, is wonderful indeed. But he seems to have got the idea quite correct.

- Swami Vivekananda, (in a Letter to Mrs G W Hale from New York, July 1894)

Mission of India

Each race, ..., has a peculiar bent, each race has a peculiar raison d'être, each race has a peculiar mission to fulfill in the life of the world. Each race has to make its own result, to fulfill its own mission.

Political greatness or military power is never the mission of our race; it never was, and, mark my words, it never will be.
But there has been the other mission given to us, which is to conserve, to preserve, to accumulate, as it were, into a dynamo, all the spiritual energy of the race, and that concentrated energy is to pour forth in a deluge on the world whenever circumstances are propitious.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Address at Colombo, 'Lectures From Colombo to Almora')

Advaita for Strength

Marriage and Chastity

. . . In my opinion, a race must first cultivate a great respect for motherhood, through the sanctification and inviolability of marriage, before it can attain to the ideal of perfect chastity.

The Roman Catholics and the Hindus, holding marriage sacred and inviolate, have produced great chaste men and women of immense power.
To the Arab, marriage is a contract or a forceful possession, to be dissolved at will, and we do not find there the development of the idea of the virgin or the Brahmacharin.
Modern Buddhism -- having fallen among races who had not yet come up to the evolution of marriage -- has made a travesty of monasticism.

So until there is developed in Japan a great and sacred ideal about marriage (apart from mutual attraction and love), I do not see how there can be great monks and nuns.

As you have come to see that the glory of life is chastity, so my eyes also have been opened to the necessity of this great sanctification for the vast majority, in order that a few lifelong chaste powers may be produced. . . .

- Swami Vivekananda, (in a Letter to Mrs Ole Bull from Belur Math, May 1902)

Rational and Religious at Same Time

Only Moksha - Problem with Buddha and Christ

What does Buddha or Christ prescribe for the man who neither wants Moksha nor is fit to receive it?-- nothing!
Either you must have Moksha or you are doomed to destruction -- these are the only two ways held forth by them, and there is no middle course. You are tied hand and foot in the matter of trying for anything other than Moksha. There is no way shown how you may enjoy the world a little for a time; not only all openings to that are hermetically sealed to you, but, in addition, there are obstructions put at every step.

It is only the Vedic religion which considers ways and means and lays down rules for the fourfold attainment of man, comprising Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha. Buddha ruined us, and so did Christ ruin Greece and Rome!

Then, in due course of time, fortunately, the Europeans became Protestants, shook off the teachings of Christ as represented by Papal authority, and heaved a sigh of relief.
In India, Kumarila again brought into currency the Karma-marga, the way of Karma only, and Shankara and Ramanuja firmly re-established the Eternal Vedic religion, harmonising and balancing in due proportions Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha.

- Swami Vivekananda, (The East and The West)

Shraddha

Question: How did we come to lose this Shraddha?

Swamiji: We have had a negative education all along from our boyhood. We have only learnt that we are nobodies.
Seldom are we given to understand that great men were ever born in our country. Nothing positive has been taught to us. We do not even know how to use our hands and feet!
We master all the facts and figures concerning the ancestors of the English, but we are sadly unmindful about our own. We have learnt only weakness. Being a conquered race, we have brought ourselves to believe that we are weak and have no independence in anything.
So, how can it be but that the Shraddha is lost?
The idea of true Shraddha must be brought back once more to us, the faith in our own selves must be reawakened, and, then only, all the problems which face our country will gradually be solved by ourselves.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Conversations and Dialogues,at Calcutta, Diary of Surendra Nath Sen)

Buddhism - Fulfillment of Hinduism

(26th September, 1893)

I am not a Buddhist, as you have heard, and yet I am.
If China, or Japan, or Ceylon follow the teachings of the Great Master, India worships him as God incarnate on earth.
You have just now heard that I am going to criticize Buddhism, but by that I wish you to understand only this. Far be it from me to criticize him whom I worship as God incarnate on earth. But our views about Buddha are that he was not understood properly by his disciples.
The relation between Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and what is called Buddhism at the present day is nearly the same as between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shakya Muni as God and worship him.
But the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism and what we should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha lies principally in this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new. He also, like Jesus, came to fulfill and not to destroy. Only, in the case of Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realize the import of this teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfillment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfillment of the truths of the Hindu religion. Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy, but he was the fulfillment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the religion of the Hindus.

The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and the spiritual. The spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks. In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest may become a monk in India, and the two castes become equal. In religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution. Shakya Muni himself was a monk, and it was his glory that he had the large-heartedness to bring out the truths from the hidden Vedas and throw them broadcast all over the world. He was the first being in the world who brought missionarising into practice -- nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of proselytizing.

The great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy for everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Some of his disciples were Brahmins. When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no more the spoken language in India. It was then only in the books of the learned. Some of Buddha's Brahmin disciples wanted to translate his teachings into Sanskrit, but he distinctly told them, "I am for the poor, for the people; let me speak in the tongue of the people." And so to this day the great bulk of his teachings are in the vernacular of that day in India.

Whatever may be the position of philosophy, whatever may be the position of metaphysics, so long as there is such a thing as death in the world, so long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God.

On the philosophic side the disciples of the Great Master dashed themselves against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush them, and on the other side they took away from the nation that eternal God to which every one, man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India. At the present day there is not one who calls oneself a Buddhist in India, the land of its birth.

But at the same time, Brahminism lost something -- that reforming zeal, that wonderful sympathy and charity for everybody, that wonderful leaven which Buddhism had brought to the masses and which had rendered Indian society so great that a Greek historian who wrote about India of that time was led to say that no Hindu was known to tell an untruth and no Hindu woman was known to be unchaste.

Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realise what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor the Brahmin without the heart of the Buddhist. This separation between the Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause of the downfall of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred millions of beggars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for the last thousand years. Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmins with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanising power of the Great Master.

- Swami Vivekananda, (at Chicago Parliament of Religions)

False Argument against Hinduism

Politics, social improvement, in one word, this world, is the goal of mankind in the West, and God and religion come in quietly as helpers to attain that goal. Their God is, so to speak, the Being who helps to cleanse and to furnish this world for them; this is apparently all the value of God for them.

Do you not know how for the last hundred or two hundred years you have been hearing again and again out of the lips of men who ought to have known better, from the mouths of those who pretend at least to know better, that all the arguments they produce against the Indian religion is this -- that our religion does not conduce to well-being in this world, that it does not bring gold to us, that it does not make us robbers of nations, that it does not make the strong stand upon the bodies of the weak and feed themselves with the life - blood of the weak.
Certainly our religion does not do that.

It cannot send cohorts, under whose feet the earth trembles, for the purpose of destruction and pillage and the ruination of races. Therefore they say -- what is there in this religion?
It does not bring any grist to the grinding mill, any strength to the muscles; what is there in such a religion?

- Swami Vivekananda, (Address at Kumbakonam, Lectures From Colombo to Almora)

Europeanised-Indian with No Backbone

There are two great obstacles on our path in India, the Scylla of old orthodoxy and the Charybdis of modern European civilisation.
Of these two, I vote for the old orthodoxy, and not for the Europeanised system; for the old orthodox man may be ignorant, he may be crude, but he is a man, he has a faith, he has strength, he stands on his own feet; while the Europeanised man has no backbone, he is a mass of heterogeneous ideas picked up at random from every source -- and these ideas are unassimilated, undigested, unharmonised. He does not stand on his own feet, and his head is turning round and round.
Where is the motive power of his work?-- in a few patronising pats from the English people.
His schemes of reforms, his vehement vituperations against the evils of certain social customs, have, as the mainspring, some European patronage.

Why are some of our customs called evils?
Because the Europeans say so. That is about the reason he gives. I would not submit to that.

Stand and die in your own strength; if there is any sin in the world, it is weakness; avoid all weakness, for weakness is sin, weakness is death.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Address at Ramnad,Lectures From Colombo to Almora)

Eternal Fountain of Love

The nearer we approach God, the more do we begin to see that all things are in Him.
When the soul succeeds in appropriating the bliss of this supreme love, it also begins to see Him in everything.
Our heart will thus become an eternal fountain of love.

And when we reach even higher states of this love, all the little differences between the things of the world are entirely lost; man is seen no more as man, but only as God; the animal is seen no more as animal, but as God; even the tiger is no more a tiger, but a manifestation of God.

Thus in this intense state of Bhakti, worship is offered to every one, to every life, and to every being.

    एवं सर्वेषु भूतेषु भक्तिरव्यभिचारिणी |
    कर्तव्या पण्डितैर् ज्ञआत्वा सर्वभूतमयं हरिम् || --
"Knowing that Hari, the Lord, is in every being, the wise have thus to manifest unswerving love towards all beings."

- Swami Vivekananda, (Bhakti-Yoga)

Om - Perfect Symbol for Sphota

The letter A is the least differentiated of all sounds, therefore Krishna says in the Gita Aksharaanaam Akaarosmi — "I am A among the letters".

Again, all articulate sounds are produced in the space within the mouth beginning with the root of the tongue and ending in the lips — the throat sound is A, and M is the last lip sound, and the U exactly represents the rolling forward of the impulse which begins at the root of the tongue till it ends in the lips.
If properly pronounced, this Om will represent the whole phenomenon of sound-production, and no other word can do this; and this, therefore, is the fittest symbol of the Sphota, which is the real meaning of the Om.

And as the symbol can never be separated from the thing signified, the Om and the Sphota are one.
And as the Sphota, being the finer side of the manifested universe, is nearer to God and is indeed that first manifestation of divine wisdom, this Om is truly symbolic of God.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Bhakti-Yoga)

Broad Hinduism

Worshiping God as Human Being

Two kinds of men do not worship God as man --
the human brute who has no religion, and the Paramahamsa who has risen beyond all the weaknesses of humanity and has transcended the limits of his own human nature.
To him all nature has become his own Self. He alone can worship God as He is.

Here, too, as in all other cases, the two extremes meet.
The extreme of ignorance and the other extreme of knowledge -- neither of these go through acts of worship.

The human brute does not worship because of his ignorance, and the Jivanmuktas (free souls) do not worship because they have realized God in themselves.
Being between these two poles of existence, if any one tells you that he is not going to worship God as man, take kindly care of that man; he is, not to use any harsher term, an irresponsible talker; his religion is for unsound and empty brains.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Bhakti-Yoga)

Books Alone won't Help

We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spiritually.
It is not true that a high order of intellectual development always goes hand in hand with a proportionate development of the spiritual side in Man.
In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyse the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the utmost it is only our intellect that derives profit from such studies, and not our inner spirit.

This inadequacy of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and the living of a truly spiritual life, we find ourselves so awfully deficient.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Bhakti-Yoga)

Religion - Positive Something

Tell your children that religion is a positive something, and not a negative something.
It is not the teachings of men, but a growth, a development of something higher within our nature that seeks outlet.

Every child born into the world is born with a certain accumulated experience. The idea of independence which possesses us shows there is something in us besides mind and body.
The body and mind are dependent.
The soul that animates us is an independent factor that creates this wish for freedom.

If we are not free how can we hope to make the world good or perfect?

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in Brooklyn)

March of Humanity

Each religion, as it were, takes up one part of the great universal truth, and spends its whole force in embodying and typifying that part of the great truth.
It is, therefore, addition, not exclusion. That is the idea.

System after system arises, each one embodying a great idea, and ideals must be added to ideals.
And this is the march of humanity.
Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth -- but it is never from error to truth.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in Pasadena, California)

Sankhya Philosophy

The meditative state is called always the highest state by the Yogi, when it is neither a passive nor an active state; in it you approach nearest to the Purusha.

The soul has neither pleasure nor pain; it is the witness of everything, the eternal witness of all work, but it takes no fruits from any work.
As the sun is the cause of sight of every eye, but is not itself affected by any defects in the eye or as when a crystal has red or blue flowers placed before it, the crystal looks red or blue, and yet it is neither; so, the soul is neither passive nor active, it is beyond both.

The nearest way of expressing this state of the soul is that it is meditation.
This is Sankhya philosophy.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in New York)

Impossible Question

... how is it that what is infinite, ever perfect, ever blessed, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, has come under these delusions?
It is the same questions that has been asked all the world over. In the vulgar form the question becomes, "How did sin come into this world?" This is the most vulgar and sensuous form of the question, and the other is the most philosophic form, but the answer is the same.

The same question has been asked in various grades and fashions, but in its lower forms it finds no solution, because the stories of apples and serpents and women do not give the explanation. In that state, the question is childish and so is the answer.
But the question has assumed very high proportions now: "How did this illusion come?" And the answer is as fine.
The answer is that we cannot expect any answer to an impossible question. The very question is impossible in terms. You have no right to ask that question. Why?

What is perfection?
That which is beyond time, space and causation -- that is perfect. Then you ask how the perfect became imperfect.
In logical language the question may be put in this form: "How did that which is beyond causation become caused?" You contradict yourself.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in New York)

Walking in Dreams

We seem to be walking in dreams.
Dreams are all right in a dream-mind; but as soon as you want to grasp one of them, it is gone.
Why? Not that it was false, but because it is beyond the power of reason, the power of the intellect to comprehend it.

Everything in this life is so vast that the intellect is nothing in comparison with it. It refuses to be bound by the laws of the intellect! It laughs at the bondage the intellect wants to spread around it.
And a thousandfold more so is this the case with the human soul.

"We ourselves"-- this is the greatest mystery of the universe.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in Los Angles, California)

Secret of Success - Unselfishness

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, then, is this: the man who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish man, is the most successful.

It seems to be a paradox.

Do we not know that every man who is unselfish in life gets cheated, gets hurt?
Apparently, yes. "Christ was unselfish, and yet he was crucified."

True, but we know that his unselfishness is the reason, the cause of a great victory -- the crowning of millions upon millions of lives with the blessings of true success.

- Swami Vivekananda, (Talk in Los Angles, California)

Mind and Brain

We can only know experience as a mental process, a fact in the mind as well as a mark in the brain. We cannot push the brain back or forward, but we can the mind; it can stretch over all time -- past, present, and future; and so facts in the mind are eternally preserved.

All facts are already generalized in mind, which is omnipresent.

- Swami Vivekananda

Between You and God

Let nothing stand between God and your love for Him.
Love Him, love Him, love Him; and let the world say what it will.
Love is of three sorts — one demands, but gives nothing; the second is exchange; and the third is love without thought of return — love like that of the moth for the light.

"Love is higher than work, than Yoga, than knowledge."

- Swami Vivekananda

This Universe is Zero

Say "Soham, Soham" whatever comes.

Tell yourself this even in eating, walking, suffering; tell the mind this incessantly -- that what we see never existed, that there is only "I". Flash -- the dream will break!

Think day and night, this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.

- Swami Vivekananda

----------- Om Tat Sat -----------