A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

414 VEDANTA IN INDIAN LIFE.and Atavism. The soul goesiback, becomes contracted asit were ;itspowers become potential and by good deedsand good thoughtsitexpands again, reveals its naturalperfection. With the Adwaitist the one difference is thathe admits evolution in nature and not in the soul. Suppose.there is a screen and there is a small hole in the screen.I am a^man standing behind the screen and looking at this.grand assembly I can only see very few faces/ tere. Sup;pose the hole to increase as it;increases more and more allthis assembly is revealed to me,till the hole becomesidentified with the screen. There isnothing between youand me in this case neither ; you changed nor I changed ;all the change was in the screen. You were the same fromfirst to last ; only the screen changed. This is the Adwaitists position with regard/x/E volutionevolution of natureand manifestation of the Self within. Not that the Selfcan by any means be made to contract. It is unchangeable, the infinite one. It was covered as it were with^aveil, the veil of Maya and this Maya veil becomesthinner and thinner more and more, and the inbornnatural glory of the soul comes out and becomes manifest.This is the one great doctrine which the world iswaitingto learn from India. Whatever people may talk, howeverthey may try to boast, they will find out day after daythat no more can there be, a society without recognisingthis. Do you not see how everything is being revolutionised ? Do you not know how it was the custom to take forgranted that everything is wicked until it proves itselfgood ? In education, in punishing criminals, in treatinglunatics, in the treatment of common diseases even, thatwas the old law. What is the modern law ? The modernlaw says the body itself is healthy ;it cures disease of itswn nature. Medicine can at best only help the storing