A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

VEDANTA.*jjjyWO worlds there are in which we live, one the ex-\Jy ternal, the other the internal. Human progress vhas been, from times of yore, almost^ in parallellines along both these worlds. The search began in theexternal, and man at first wanted to get answers for allthe deep problems from outside nature. Man wanted tosatisfy his thirst for the beautiful and the sublime fromall that surrounded him ;man wanted to express himself and all that was within him in the language of theconcrete ;and grand, indeed^ were the answers, most marvellous ideas of God and worship, most rapturous expressions of the beautiful. Sublime ideas came from the external world indeed. But the other, opening out forhumanity later, laid out before him a universe yet sublimer,yet more beautiful, and infinitely more expansive.In the Karma Kdnda portion of the Yedas we find themost wonderful ideas of religion inculcated, we find themost wonderful ideas about an over-ruling Creator,Preserver and Destroyer and this universe presented before us in language sometimes the most soul-stirring.Most of you, perhaps, remember that most wonderfulsloka in the Rig Veda Samhita where you get the description of chaos, perhaps the sublimest that has ever beenattempted yet. In spite of all this we find it is only apainting of the sublime outside, in spite of all this we findthat yet it is gross, that something of matter yet clings onto it.of the In-Yet we find that it is only the expression* A lecture delivered at Lahore on the 12th November, 1897.