A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL. 137essence of knowledge the difference is only in degree, and;riot in kind. cJKe difference in knowledgebetween thelowest worm that crawls under our feet or the highestgenius that the heavens may produce, is only one ofdegree, and not of kind. So the Vedantin thinker saysboldly that the bliss of the enjoyments in this life that wehave, even the most degraded joy, is but the manifestation ofthat one Divine Bliss, the essence of the soul.This one idea seems to be the most prominent, and, as Ihave said, to me itappears that every religion holds thissame doctrine, I have yet to know the religion which hasnot that as its basis.It is the one universal idea workingthrough all religions. Take the Bible, for instance. Youfind thee the allegorical statement, how Adam came firstand was pure, and that purity was obliterated byhis evildeeds afterwards. It is clear from this allegory that theythought that the nature of the primitive man, or howeverthey may have put it, the real man, was already perfection.The impurities that we see, the weakness that we feel,are but super-impositions, and the subsequent history ofthat very religion shows that they also believe in the possibility, nay, the surety of regaining that old state. Thisis the whole history of the Bible, Old and New Testamenttogether. So with the Mahommedans, they also believedin Adam and the purity of Adam, and since Mahommedcame the way opened to regain that lost state. Sowith the Buddhists, they also believed in the state calledNirvana, which is beyond this relative world of ours.It is exactly the same which the Vedantins call theBrahman, and the whole system of the Buddhists is adviceto regain that lost state of Nirvana. So in every system,we find that one doctrine always present, that you cannotget anything which was not yours already. You are