A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

196 MAYA AND FREEDOM.and the God of Heaven becomes the God in Nature, tillthe God in Nature becomes the God who is Nature, and \the God who is Nature becomes the God within this temple fof the body, and the God living in the temple of the body,becomes the temple itself, becomes the soul and man, andthere it reaches the last words it can teach ;He whom thesages have been seeking in all these places the voice that;you heard as wr right, says the Vedanta, but the directionyou gave to the voice was wrong. That ideal of freedomthat you perceived was correct, but you projected it outsideyourself, and that was your mistake. Bringit nearer andnearer, until you will find that it was all the time withinyou, it was the Self of your own self. That freedom wasyour own nature, and this Maya never bound you. Thi*nature was never powerful over you. Like a frightenedchild you were dreaming that this Nature was throttlingyou, and the release from this is the goal ; not only to seeit intellectually, but to perceive it, actualise it,much moredefinitely than we perceive this world. Then we shall befree. Then, and then alone, will all difficulties vanish,then all the perplexitiesof the heart will be smoothedaway, all crookedness made straight, then will vanish thedelusion of manifoldness, and Nature and Maya, instead ofbeing a horrible, hopeless dream as it is now, will becomebeautiful, and this earth, instead of becoming a prisonhousewhich it is now, will become your playground, andeven dangers and difficulties, even all sufferings,will become deified, as it were, and show us their real nature,that behind everything, as the substance of everything, isHe standing there, and He is my own Real Self.