MAYA AND ILLUSION

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Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Tue Nov 27, 2007 6:41 pm (PST)

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MAYA AND ILLUSION - Swam Vivekananda

 

All religions are more or less attempts to get beyond nature -- the

crudest or the most developed, expressed through mythology or

symbology, stories of gods, angels or demons, or through stories of

saints or seers, great men or prophets, or through the abstractions

of philosophy -- all have that one subject, all are trying to get

beyond these limitations. In one word, they are all struggling

towards freedom. Man feels, consciously or unconsciously, that he is

bound; he is not what he wants to be. It was taught to him at the

very moment he began to look around. That very instant he learnt

that he was bound, and he also found that there was something in him

which wanted to fly beyond, where the body could not follow, but

which was as yet chained down by this limitation. Even in the lowest

of religious ideas, where departed ancestors and other spirits --

mostly violent and cruel, lurking about the houses of their friends,

fond of bloodshed and strong drink -- are worshipped, even there we

find that one common factor, that of freedom. The man who wants to

worship the gods sees in them, above all things, greater freedom

than in himself. If a door is closed, he thinks the gods can get

through it, and that walls have no limitations for them. This idea

of freedom increases until it comes to the ideal of a Personal God,

of which the central concept is that He is a Being beyond the

limitation of nature, of Maya. I see before me, as it were, that in

some of those forest retreats this question is being discussed by

those ancient sages of India; and in one of them, where even the

oldest and the holiest fail to reach the solution, a young man

stands up in the midst of them, and declares, " Hear, ye children of

immortality, hear, ye who live in the highest places, I have found

the way. By knowing Him who is beyond darkness we can go beyond

death. "

 

to be continued...

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2 [ Page :102 ]

(Lecture Delivered in London)

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the

laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery. The great

secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the person who

asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most

successful.

- Swami Vivekananda