A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

METAPHYSICS IN INDIA:REINCARNATION.*Both you and I have passed through many births ;You know them not, I know them all. Bhagavad Gita.F the many riddles that have perplexed the intellect ofman in all climes and times, the most intricate ishimself. Of the myriad mysteries that have calledforth his energies to struggle for solution, from the verydawn of history, the most mysteriousis his own nature.It is at once the most insoluble enigma and the problemof all problems. As the starting-point and the repositoryof all we know and feel and do, there never has been, nora time when man s own nature will cease towill be,demand his best and foremost attention.Though through hunger after that truth, which of allothers has the most intimate connection with his veryexistence ; though through an all-absorbing desire for aninward standard by which to measure the outward universe ;though through the absolute and inherent necessityof finding a fixed point in a universe of change }man hassometimes clutched at handf uls of dust for gold, and even,,when urged on by a voice higher than reason or intellect,he has many times failed rightly to interpret the realmeaning of the divinity within still,there never wasa time since the search began when some race, or someindividuals, did not hold aloft the lamp of truth.* Metaphysical, Magazine, March, 1895.