A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

192 MAYA AND FREEDOM.highest as well as the lowest. What we call the most/arrant superstition and the highest philo&ophy all come to xthat common standpoint, that they try to show the wajout of this same difficulty and in most of them this way isthrough the help of some one who is outside this Universe,some one who is not himself bound by the laws of Nature,in one word some one who is free. In spite of all thedifficulties and differences of opinion about the nature ofthe one free agent, whether he is God, whether he is apersonal God, whether he is a sentient being like man,whether he tis a conscious being, whether masculine,feminine, or neuter, the discussions have been endless, andyet they do not alarm us. In spite of the almost helplesscontradictions of the different systems, we find the goldenthread of unity running through them* all, and in thisphilosophy, this golden thread has been traced, revealedlittle by little to our view, and the first step to this revelation is this common ground, that all are approachingtowards freedom.One curious fact is present in the midst of all oursorrows and joys, our difficulties and struggles,we arepatiently journeying towards freedom. Thequestion waspractically, What is this Universe ? From what does itarise? Into what does itgo? And the answer was, infreedom it rises, in freedom it rests, and into freedom, inthe long run, it melts away.This curious fact you cannotrelinquish, your actions, your very lives will be lost without it, this idea, of freedom, that we are free. Everymoment we are being proved by Nature to be slaves, andnot free. Yet, simultaneously rises the other idea, still Iam free. Every step we are knocked down, as it were, byMaya, and shown that we are bound, and yet the samemoment, together with this blow, together with this feeling