A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"""""""""412 VEDANTA IN INDIAN LIFE.the brain becomes giddy, and man does notknow his wayout from the maze of that literature, none of them yet.If it be human literature, it must be the production of:a race, which has not yet lost a bit of its national vigour.Strength, strength, is what it talks to me from every page,is the one great thing to remember ;it has beentile ojie great lesson I have been taught in my life ;strength, it says strength, oh man be not ^veak. Aye,are there no human weaknesses, says man ;there are, saythe Upanishads. But will more weakness heal it, wouldyou try to wash dirt with dirt ? Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness ?Strength, oh man, strength say theUpanishads, stand up and be strong ; aye, it is the onlyliterature in the world where you find nabhayethfearless used again agd again in no other; scripture inthe world is this adjective applied either to God or to man.Nabhayeth," fearless and to; my mind rises from thepart the vision of the great Emperor of the West, Alexanderthe Great and I see as it were in a picture the greatmonarch standing on the banks of the Indus, talking to-one of our Sanyasins in the forest, and that old man hewas talking to perhaps naked, stark naked, sitting upon ablock of stone and the Emperor astonished at his wisdomtempting him with gold and honor,Greece. And this man smiles at his goldto come over toand smiles at histemptations and refuses and then the Emperor standingon his authority as an Emperor says, I will kill you, ifyou do not and the man bursts into a come," laugh, andhe says you never told such a falsehood in your life, asyou tell just now. Who can kill me ? Me, you killEmperor of the material World ! Never, for I am spiritunborn and undecaying, never was I born and never do Idie, I am the Infinite, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient,