A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""MAYA AND ILLUSION. 151is, that in their enquiry into the principle, the Hinduthinkers were ,as bold as, and in some cases much bolderthan, the moderns. The principle was going on, and theyfound some of the biggest generalizations that have yetbeen reached, and some are there still as theories, whichmodern science has yet to get, perhaps as theories even.For instance, they not only arrived at the ether theory, butwent beyond a classified mind also, as a still more rarefiedether. Beyond that, they found a still more rarefied ether.Yet there is no solution, it does not answer the problem.No amount of knowledge of the external world wouldanswer the problem. We find here we were just beginningto know a little ;wait a few thousand years and we shallget tke solution.No," says the Yedantist, for he hasproved beyond all doubt that the mind is limited we can;not go beyond certain limits, we cannot go beyond time,space and the law of causation. As no man can jump outof his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits thathave been put upon us by the laws of time and space.Every attempt to solve the law of causation, time and space,would be futile, because the very attempt would haveto be made by taking for grantedthe existence of thesethree. It cannot be. What form does the statement ofthe existence of the world take then ?This world hasno existence," Jaganmithya. What is meant thereby ?That it has no existence absolute. It exists only asrelative to my mind, to yours, and to the minds of everybody else. We see this world with the five senses. Ifwe had another sense, we would see in it something else.If we had still another sense, it would appear as somethingyet different. So on we go. It has, therefore, no existence :that unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence it has not.Nor can it be called, non-existence, seeing that it exists,