A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"He442 THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA.nature, call upon the sleeping soul to see how it rises,Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come ypurity will come, and everything that is excellent- willcome, when this sleepingactivity.soul is roused to self-consciousAye, if there is anything in the Gita that I like,,it is these two verses, coming out strong as the very gist,the very essence, of Krishna s teaching ^who seesthe Supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, Imperthe1ishable in things that perish, sees indeed. S?or seeing &*Lord as the same, everywhere present, hedoes not destroythe self by the self, and then he goes to the highestgoal.Thus there is a great opening for the Vedanta to dobeneficent work both here and elsewhere. This wonderfulidea of the sameness and omnipresence of the Supreme-Soul has to be preachecl for the amelioration and elevationof the human race, here as elsewhere. Wherever there isevil and wherever there isignorance and want of knowas ourledge, I have found out in my experience that,scriptures say, all evil comes by relying upon differences^and that all good comes from faith in equality, in ih&underlying sameness and real oneness of things. This isthe great Vedantic ideal. To have the ideal is one thing,and to apply it practically to the details of daily life isquite another thing in every case. It is very good tapoint out an ideal, but where is the practical way toreachit ? Here, naturally, comes the difficult question whichhas been uppermost for centuries in the minds of ourpeople, the vexed question of caste and of social reformation. I must frankly let this audience know that I amneither a caste-breaker nor a mere social reformer.I havenothing to do directly with your castes or with your socialreformation. Live in any caste you like, but that is no