A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

254 THE COSMOS : THE MACROCOSM.the cause. It is only that this effect is a reproduction of ijhecause in a grosser form. Next we learn that all theselittle particular forms which we call plants or animals ormen are being repeated ad infinitum rising and falling.The seed produces the tree. The tree goes down andbecomes the seed, againit comes up as another tree, goesdown as another seed, again comes up as another tree, andso on ;there is no end to it. The water drop rolls*\iownthe mountains, goes back to the ocean again, rises again asvapour, goes back to the mountain, and again comes downto the river. Rising and falling, the cycle is going on. Sowith all lives, so with all existence that we can see,feel, hear, imagine. Everything that is within the boundsof our knowledge and is proceeding in the way, just asbreathing in and breathing out in the human body. Thewhole of this creation, therefore, is progressing in this formone wave rising, another falling, rising again, falling again.Each wave has its hollow, each hollow has its wave. Inthis whole universe, on account of its uniformity, the samelaw must apply. Bo we see that the whole of this universemust melt down, as it were, into its causes, the sun, moon,stars, earth, the mind, the body, everything we have inthis universe must melt down and come to its finer causes,disappear-, as it were, be destroyed. But they will live inthe causes as fine forms. Out of them they will emergeagain and throw up earths, and suns, moons and stars,once more.There is one fact more to learn about this rising andfalling. The seed comes out of the tree ;it does not immediately become the tree. It has to have a period of rest,or rather a period of very fine unmanifested action. Theseed has to work for some time beneath the soil.It has tobreak itself into pieces, as it were, degenerate itself, and