A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"ButMAYA AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD. 177finite or by any other name you please, even that idea iswithin thisIt cannot beMaya.otherwise, and the wholeof human knowledge is generalisation of this Maya, tryingto know it as it really is. This is the work of Narna Rupaname and form. Everything that has form, everythingthat calls up an idea in your mind, is within Maya, for, asthe German philosophers say, everything that is bound bythe laws of time, space, and causation, is within Maya.Let us go back a little to those ideas of God, and seewhat became of them. We perceive at once that with sucha state of things the idea of some being who is eternallyloving us the word love in our sense eternally unselfishand almighty, ruling this Universe, cannot be. It requiresthe boldness of the poet to withstand this idea of the personal God. Where isyour just, merciful God ? the poet asks.Does He not see millions and millions of His children perish,either in the form of men, or of animals ;for who can liveone moment here without killing others ? Can you draw abreath without destroying thousands of lives ? You livebecause millions die. Every moment of your life, everybreath that you breathe, is death to thousands, every movement that you make is death unto millions. Every morselthat you eat is death unto millions. Why should they die ?There is an old sophism, they are very low existences."Supposing they are ;it is a question. Who knowswhether the ant is greater than man, or the man than theant ? Who can prove one way or the other ? Man canbuild a house or invent a machine, therefore the man isgreater The same argument will apply, because the ant!cannot build a house nor make a machine, therefore he isgreater.There is no more reason for one than the other.Apart from that question, even taking it for grantedthat these are very low beings, still why should they die 212