A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"214 THE REAL AND THE APPARENT MAN.world requires a few hundred bold men and women. It isvery hard to be bold. That animal boldness, the tigerscan do better. "Wolves have it naturally. Even the ants /are better than all other animals. What use to talk of thisphysical boldness ! Practise that boldness which does notquake before death, which welcomes death, which standsthere and knows it is the spirit and in the whole universe,no arms can kill it,not all the thunders can kill it. Notall the fire in the universe can burn it.Which dares knowthe truth, and shows the truth in life. This is the freeman, this is the real soul. And it is practised in thissociety, and in every society. This Atman is first to beheard, then thought about, and then meditated upon."There is a great tendency in modern times to talk toomuch of works and decry all thought. Doing is verygood, but even that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy which have originated in thought areescaping through the muscles and are called work. Wherethere is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain,therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals, place themday and night before you, and out of that will come greatwork. Talk not about impurity, but tell the mind we arepure. We have hypnotised ourselves into this thoughtthnt \ve are little, that we are born and that we are goingto die, and into living in a constant state of fear.There was a lioness, heavy with young, going about insearch of prey, and there was a flock of sheep, and thelioness jumped upon the flock. She died in the attemptand a little baby lion was born, motherless. It was takencare of by the sheep and the sheep brought it up and it grewwith the sheep, lived on grass like the sheep, bleated likethe sheep, and althoughit became a big full-grown lion, toall intents and purposes itthought it was a sheep. In