Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 89)

[Guest guest]

Parts 1 to 88 were posted earlier. This is part 89. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 89

 

Every religion has it that humanity's present and future are modified by the past and that the present is but the effect of the past. How is it, then, that every child is born with an experience that cannot be accounted for by hereditary transmission? How is it that one is born of good parents, receives a good education and becomes a good person, while another comes from besotted parents and ends on the gallows? How do you explain this inequality without implicating God? Why should a merciful Father set His child in such conditions which must bring forth misery? It is no explanation to say God will make amends later on - God has no blood-money. Then, too, what becomes of my liberty, if this be my first birth? Coming into this world without the experience of a former life, my independence would be gone, for my path would be marked out by the experience of others. If I cannot be the maker of my own fortune, then I am not free. I take upon myself the blame for the misery of this existence and say I unmake the evil I have done in another existence. This, then, is our philosophy of the migration of the soul. We come into this life with the experience of another [life], and the fortune or misfortune of this existence is the result of our acts in a former existence, always becoming better, till at last perfection is reached. (55)

The human race is in a process of development; all have not reached the same altitude. Therefore, some are nobler and purer in their earthly lives than others. Everyone has the opportunity, within the limits of the sphere of his or her present development, of making him or herself better. We cannot unmake ourselves; we cannot destroy or impair the vital force within us, but we have the freedom to give it different directions. (56)

Each one of us is the maker of his or her own fate. This law at once knocks on the head all doctrines of predestination and fate and gives us the only means of reconciliation between God and humanity. We, we, and none else, are responsible for what we suffer. We are the effects, and we are the causes. We are free, therefore. If I am unhappy, it has been of my own making, and that very thing shows that I can be happy, if I will. If I am impure, that is also of my own making, and that very thing shows that I can be pure, if I will. The human will stands beyond all circumstances. Before it - the strong, gigantic, infinite will and freedom in humanity - all the powers, even of nature, must bow down, succumb, and become its servants. This is the result of the law of karma. (57)