A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"324 THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.miserable byturns. After a time the lower bird ate anexceptionally bitter fruit, and got disgusted and looked up,and there was the other bird,"that wondrous one - ofgolden plumage. He eats not, neither sweet nor bitter.Neither is he happy nor miserable, but calm, the self-centredone, nothing beyond his self. But the lower bird forgotit,and again began to eat the sweet and bitter fruits ofthat tree. In a little while another exceptionally bitterfruit comes ;he feels miserable, looks up, and goes forward,and wants to get nearer to the upper bird. Again heforgets and again looks up, and so he goes on. After awhile an exceptionally bitter fruit comes ; again he looksup, and comes nearer, and nearer, and nearer ;thereflections of light from the plumage of that bird playaround his own body, and he changes and seems to meltaway ; still nearer he comes everything melts away, and atlast he finds the change. The lower bird was only the shadow,the reflection ;he, himself, was the upper bird all the time.This eating of fruits sweet and bitter, this lower little bird,weeping and happy by turns, was a vain chimera, a dream,the real bird was there calm and silent, glorious and majestic ; beyond grief, beyond sorrow. The upper bird is God rthe Lord of this universe, and the lower bird is the humansoul, eating the sweet and bitter fruits of this world, andthen comes a blow. For a time he stops and goes towardthe unknown for a moment, and a flood of light comes.He thinks this world is vain. He goes a little further,yet again the senses drag him down, and he begins to eatthe sweet and bitter fruits of the world. Again an exceptionally hard blow comes. He becomes open again thus;he approaches and approaches, and as he gets nearer andnearer he finds his old self melting away, and that he isGod. When he has come near enough he finds He whom