A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE SAGES OF INDIA. 461sorrows vafnish, and we forgetlove for everything else butfor Thee and Thee alone."Aye ! forget first the love forgold, and name and fame, and for this little threepennyworld of ours. Then, only then, you will understand theloveof the Gopis, too holy to be attempted without givingup everything, too sacred to be understood until the soulhas becam perfectly pure. People with ideas of sex, andof money, and of fame, bubbling up every miniate in thehearf , daring to criticise and understand the love of theGopis That ! is the very cream of the Krishna incarnation,*Even the Gita, the great philosophy itself, does notcompare with that madness,for in the Gita thedisciple is taught slowly how to walk towards the goal,,but^here is the madness of enjoyment, the drunkenness oflove, where disciples and teachers* and teachings and books,and all these things have become one, even the ideas offear and God, and heaven. Everythinghas been thrownaway. What remains is the madness of love. It isf orgetfulness of everything, and the lover sees nothing inthe world except that Krishna, and Krishna alone, whenthe face of every being becomes a Krishna, when his ownface looks like Krishna, when his own soul has becometinged with Krishna colour. That was the great Krishna.Do not waste your time upon little details. Take up theframe work, the essence of the life. There may be manyhistorical discrepancies, there may be interpolations in thelife of Krishna. All these things may be true, but, at thesame time, there must have been a basis, a foundation forthis new and tremendous departure. Taking the life ofany other sage or prophet, we find that that prophet is onlythe evolution of what had gone before him, we find thatthat prophet is only preaching the ideas that had been scattered about his own country even in his own times. Great