A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"The""138 THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL.indebted to nobody in this Universe. You will claim yourown birthright, or as it has been most poetically put bythe great Yedantin philosopher, by makingit the title ofone of his booksattaining to our Empire.That empireis ours ;we have lost it and we have to regainit.Mayavadin, however, says that this losing of theempire was an hallucination ; you never lost it. This isthe only difference.that we had theAlthough all the systems agree so far,empire, and that we have lost it, they give us varied advicehow to regainit.One says that you must perform certainceremonies, pay certain sums of money to certain idols,eat certain sorts of food, live in a peculiar fashion toregainthat empire. Another says that ifyou jv^ep andprostrate yourselves and ask pardon of some Being beyondNature, you will regain that empire. Another says, ifyou love such a Being with all your heart, you will regainthat empire. All this varied advice is in the Upanishads.As I go on you will find it so. But the last and thegreatest counsel is, that you need not weep at all. Youneed not go throughall these ceremonies, and need nottake any notice of how to regain your empire, because younever lost it.Why should you go to seek for what younever lost. You are pure already, you are free already.If you think you are bound, bound youwill be. Not onlythat : it is a very bold statement as I told you at thebeginning of this course, I shall have to speak to you mostboldly. It may frighten you now, but youwill come toknow by-and-by that it is true, when you think of it,andwhen you realise in yourlife the truth of it. For, supposing it is not your nature, freedom is not your nature ; byno manner of means can you become free. Supposing youwere free and in some way you lost the freedom, then you.