A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

i390 VEDANTA.the essence of things. We have seen how here alone wecan take a firm stand against all the onrush of logic aadHere at last reason, hasscientific knowledge and so forth.a firm foundation, and, at the same time, the IndianVedantist does not curse the preceding steps ;he looks backand he blesses them, and he knows that they were true,only wrongly perceived, and wrongly stated. They were,the same things, only seen through the gla^s of mayadistorted, it may be, yet truth, and nothing but truth.The same God whom the ignorant man saw outside nature,the same whom the little-knowing man saw was interpenetrating the universe, and the same whom the sagerealises as his own self, and the whole universe itself, allare the one and the same being, the same entity, seen fromdifferent standpoints of vier.v, seen through different glassesof maya, perceived by different minds, and all the difference was caused by that. Not only so, but one must leadto the other. What is the difference between science andcommon knowledge? Go out into one of these streets, andifsomething is happening there ask one of the gonwars(boors) there. It is ten to one that he will tell you itis a ghost causing the phenomenon. He isalways goingafter ghosts and spirits outside, because it is the natureof ignoranceto seek for causes outside of effects. If astone falls it has been thrown by a devil or a ghost,it issays the ignorant man, arid the scientific man saysthe law of Nature, the law of gravitation.What is the fight between science and religion everywhere? Religions are encumbered with such a mass ofexplanations which are outside one angel is in chargeof the sun, another of the moon, and so on ad infatiitwrn,and every changeis caused by a ghost, the one commonthing of which is that they are all outside the thing; and