A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"REALIZATION. 283hei;e for three days without food, and you are a guestworthy of respect. Salutation to thee, O Brahman, andwelfare to me. I am very sorry I was not at home. Butfor $hat I will make amends. Ask three boons, one foreach day."And the boy asked, My first boon is thatmy father s anger against me may pass away, that he bekind to me and recognise me when you allow me to depart."Yama gf anted this fully. The next boon was that hewanted to know about a certain sacrifice which took peopleto heaven. Now we have seen that the oldest idea whichwe got in the Samhita portion of the Vedas was only aboutheaven, where they had bright bodies, and lived with thefathers. Gradually other ideas came, but they were notsufficient ;there must be something higher than that. Livingin heaven would not be very different from life in this world.At best it would be only a very healthy rich man s life,plenty of enjoyment of the senses, plenty of things to enjoy,a sound body which knows no disease. It would be thismaterial world a little more refined, and just as we haveseen, there is this difficulty, that this external material worldcan never solve the problem. So it would be there ;noheaven can solve the problem. If this world cannot solvethe problem no multiplication of this world can do so,because, we must always remember that matter is onlyan infinitesimal part of the phenomena of Nature. Thevast part of phenomena which we actually see is notmatter.For instance, in every moment of our life how much isyour own feeling, how much isthought phenomena, andhow much is actual phenomena outside ? How much doyoufeel and touch and see How ? vast it is going on withtremendous rapidity. And the sense phenomena is verysmall compared with the mental phenomena. The heaven