Maya and Illusion

[Guest guest]

Again, we often hear that it is one of the features of evolution that

it eliminates evil, and this evil being continually eliminated from

the world, at last only good will remain. That is very nice to hear,

and it panders to the vanity of those who have enough of this world's

goods, who have not a hard struggle to face every day and are not

being crushed under the wheel of this so-called evolution. It is very

good and comforting indeed to such fortunate ones. The common herd

may suffer, but they do not care; let them die, they are of no

consequence. Very good, yet this argument is fallacious from

beginning to end. It takes for granted, in the first place, that

manifested good and evil in this world are two absolute realities. In

the second place, it makes a still worse assumption that the amount

of good is an in-creasing quantity and the amount of evil is a

decreasing quantity. So, if evil is being eliminated in this way by

what they call evolution, there will come a time when all this evil

will be eliminated and what remains will be all good. Very easy to

say, but can it be proved that evil is a lessening quality? Take, for

instance, the man who lives in a forest, who does not know how to

cultivate the mind, cannot read a book, has not heard of such a thing

as writing. If he is severely wounded, he is soon all right again;

while we die if we get a scratch. Machines are making things cheap,

making for progress and evolution, but millions are crushed, that one

may become rich; while one becomes rich, thousands at the same time

become poorer and poorer, and whole masses of human beings are made

slaves. That way it is going on. The animal man lives in the senses.

If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something

happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery

and his happiness begin and end. As soon as this man progresses, as

soon as his horizon of happiness increases, his horizon of

unhappiness increases proportionately. The man in the forest does not

know what it is to be jealous, to be in the law courts, to pay taxes,

to be blamed by society, to be ruled over day and night by the most

tremendous tyranny that human diabolism ever invented, which pries

into the secrets of every human heart. He does not know how man

becomes a thousand times more diabolical than any other animal, with

all his vain knowledge and with all his pride. Thus it is that, as we

emerge out of the senses, we develop higher powers of enjoyment, and

at the same time we have to develop higher powers of suffering too.

The nerves become finer and capable of more suffering. In every

society, we often find that the ignorant, common man, when abused

does not feel much, but he feels a good thrashing. But the gentleman

cannot bear a single word of abuse; he has become so finely nerved.

Misery has increased with his susceptibility to happiness. This does

not go much to prove the evolutionist's case. As we increase our

power to be happy, we also increase our power to suffer, and

sometimes I am inclined to think that if we increase our power to

become happy in arithmetical progression, we shall increase, on the

other hand, our power to become miserable in geometrical progression.

We who are progressing know that the more we progress, the more

avenues are opened to pain as well as to pleasure. And this is Maya.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued