A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"454 THE SAGES OF INDIA.wind, nor any of the organs That has been the declaration for ages and ages. Nature outside cannot give usany answer as to the existence of the soul,^the existence ofGod, the eternal life, the goal of man, and all that. Thismind is continually changing, always in a state of flux ;it is finite, it is broken into pieces. What can this naturetalk of the infinite, the unchangeable, the unbroken, theindivisible, the eternal ? It can never be. And whenevermankind has striven in vain to get an answer from milldead matter, history knows how disastrous the results havebeen. How comes, then, the knowledge which the Vedasdeclared ? It comes through being a Rishi. This knowledgeis not in the senses, but is the senses, the be-all and theend-all of the human be^ng. Who dares say that thesenses are the all in all of man. Even in our lives, in thelife of everyone of us here, there come moments of calmness,perhaps, when we see before us the death of one we loved,when some shock comes to us, or when extreme blessednesscomes to us ; manyother occasions there are when themind, as it were, becomes calm, feels for the moment itsreal nature, and a glimpse of the Infinite beyond, wherewords cannot reach, nor the mind go, is revealed to us.This is in ordinary life, but ^t has to be heightened, practised, perfected.Men found out ages ago that the soul is notbound or limited by the senses, no, not even by consciousness.We have to understand that this consciousness is only thename of one link in the infinite chain. Beingis notidentical with consciousness, but consciousness is only onepart of Being. Beyondconsciousness is where the boldsearch. Consciousness is bound by the senses. Beyondthat, beyond the senses, men must go in order to arrive attruths of the spiritual world, and there are even nowpersons who succeed in going beyond the bounds of the