A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"246 UNITY IN DIVERSITY.among them all to understand anything of tjiereal teachintellyou that you are going outside to the other world. Onthe other hand, we read in black and white here that theydo not want to go to any other world, but depreciate theseworlds as places where people weep and laugh for a littleand then die.So long as we are weak we shall have to gothrough the same thing there, but whatever is true is here,and that is the human soul. And this also is insisted ufon,that we cannot escape the inevitable by committing suicide,we cannot evade it. But the right pathis hard to find.The Hindu mind is just as practical as the Western, onlywe differ in our views of life. One man says build a goodhouse, and have good clothes and good food, and intellectual knowledge, knowledge of science and so on, this is thewhole of life ;and in that he isimmensely practical. Butthe Hindu says the knowledge of the world means knowledge of the soul, metaphysics, and he wants to enjoy thatlife. In America there is a great Agnostic orator, he is avery noble man, a very good man, and a very fine speaker.He lectured on religion and said it was no use, we need notbother our heads about other worlds, and he employed thissimile : we have an orange here, and we want to squeeze allthe juice out of it.you entirely."I met him once and said,I agree withI have this orange and I want to squeeze thejuice out of it. Only we differ as to the fruit. You think itis an orange, I think it is a mango. You think it is onlynecessary to live here and eat and drink and have a littlescientific knowledge, but you have no right to say, that isthe whole idea of life. To me such a conception is nothing.If I had only to know how an apple falls to the ground, orhow an electric current shakes my nerves, I would commitsuicide the next moment. I want to know the heart ofthings, the verylife itself. Your studyis the manifestaion