A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

one318 THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.that it has nothing to do with such things. No one ofthese Yogas gives up reason, no 1of them asks you todeliver your reason, hoodwinked, into the hands of priests,of any type whatever. No one of them asks that you giveyour allegiance to any superhuman messenger. Each one ofthem tells you to cling to your reason to hold fast to reason.We find in all beings three sorts of instruments of knowledge.The first is the instinct, which you find mostly irr animals,and to some degree in man, the lowest instrument of knowledge. What is the second instrument of knowledge ? Reasoning. You find that mostly in men. Now in the first placeinstinct is insufficient as ; you see in the animals, the sphereof their action isvery limited, and within that limit instinctacts. When it comes in man, itisaleveloped into reason. Thesphere has become enlarged. Yet it is stillvery insufficient. It can get only a little way and then it stops. Thereit tells us it cannot go any further, and ifyou want to pushjt any further, the result is helpless confusion reason itself;becomes unreasonable. The whole of logic becomes anargument in a circle. Take for instance the very basis ofour perception, matter and force. What is matter ? Thatwhich is acted upon by force. And force ? That whichacts upon matter. You see the complication, what thelogicians call see-saw, one idea depending on the other, andthat also depending on this one. You find a tremendouswall before the reason, beyond which reasoning cannot go ;yet it wants to get into the infinite beyond. This world ofours, this universe which our senses feel, or our mind thinksof, is but one bit of the infinite which has been projectedinto the plane of conciousness, and within that little limitwhich has been caught in the network of consciousness worksour reason, and not beyond. Therefore there must be someother instrument to take us beyond, and that instrument