Jnâna Yoga, Part II: Seven LecturesVivekananda, Swami
Religion
Jnâna Yoga, Part II: Seven Lectures
Vivekananda, Swami
Vedanta; Yoga, Jñana
The great question of all questions at the present time is this: Taking
for granted that the known and the knowable are bounded on both sides
by the unknowable and the infinitely unknown, why struggle for that
infinite unknown? Why shall we not be content with the known? Why shall
we not rest satisfied with eating, drinking, and doing a little good to
society? This idea is in the air. From the most learned professor to
the prattling baby, we are told to do good to the world, that is all of
religion, and that it is useless to trouble ourselves about questions
of the beyond. So much is this the case that it has become a truism.
But fortunately we _must_ question the beyond. This present, this
expressed, is only one part of that unexpressed. The sense universe
is, as it were, only one portion, one bit of that infinite spiritual
universe projected into the plane of sense consciousness. How can
this little bit of projection be explained, be understood, without
knowing that which is beyond? It is said of Socrates that one day while
lecturing at Athens, he met a Brahmin who had travelled into Greece,
and Socrates told the Brahmin that the greatest study for mankind is
man. The Brahmin sharply retorted: “How can you know man until you know
God?” This God, this eternally unknowable, or absolute, or infinite,
or without name,--you may call Him by what name you like,--is the
rational, the only explanation, the _raison d’être_ of that which
is known and knowable, this present life. Take anything before you,
the most material thing; take one of the most material sciences, as
chemistry or physics, astronomy or biology, study it, push the study
forward and forward, and the gross forms will begin to melt and become
finer and finer, until they come to a point where you are bound to make
a tremendous leap from these material things into the immaterial.
The gross melts into the fine, physics into metaphysics, in every
department of knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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